Kansas City Royals’ Matt Duffy had an idea for helping a younger teammate through slump

Three hours before his scuffling Kansas City Royals are set to take the field against the most dominant pitcher on Earth, Michael Massey reads.

The rest of his Royals teammates scroll through their phones at lockers or tables. But Massey leans back in a cushy black chair meant for lounging, pen in hand, furrowing his brow and studying the words on page 55.

It’s Friday afternoon ahead of the Royals’ series opener at Angel Stadium, and Massey will bat fifth against Angels ace Shohei Ohtani. At the moment, he’s hitting a paltry .122 (though two hits Sunday would help raise his average to .143).

“Just going through it,” Massey says when asked what he’s reading. “Got some good pointers in here.”

“Here” is The Mental Keys to Hitting: A Handbook of Strategies for Performance Enhancement. Written by late baseball mental-health guru Harvey Dorfman and available for about $18 on Amazon, the tome has been embraced by a legion of baseball dads, high school coaches and ... Royals infielder Matt Duffy.

Duffy, the one-time cult hero with the San Francisco Giants who’s now quite possibly Kansas City’s best hitter, sees Massey and remembers. Remembers the days he spent pressing as he fluttered around .250 in college, the thought creeping in that, Maybe I’m just not good at this level.

Duffy also recalls how a hitting coach gave him a copy of Dorfman’s book before Duffy’s first spring training in the majors. He further recalls coming into games with a completely new mindset after reading it.

So in the midst of the previous week’s homestand, Duffy brought that same copy to Kauffman Stadium and passed it on to Massey.

“’Hey, I think this would be good for you to read,’” Massey recalled Duffy saying. “Take a look at it. It’s something that’s helped me a lot.”

Massey, formerly a top second-base prospect for the Royals who recently surpassed 200 big-league at-bats, is reading through it fast. Almost too fast, Duffy says, perhaps only half-joking.

“He’s trying,” Duffy says, “to make it happen.”

So it’s here, three hours before another shot at trying to “make it happen,” that Massey is already on page 55. But the guidance is yet to take. That night he flies out in his first at-bat and pops to the catcher in his second. In his final plate appearance, he whiffs on an Ohtani sweeper down and in, drops to one knee and flings his helmet into the dirt.

“The strongest statement is, ‘I will,’” page 55 of Dorfman’s book reads. “But what if a hitter does not? Well, he’ll just make an adjustment next time … this, instead of making excuses or cursing his fate — or himself.”

Some slumps are simple to fix: a tweak in approach, perhaps. And Massey’s fix may eventually prove simple, too. But Duffy knows that when you’re a young guy, in the midst of such a skid, answers can just feel so far off.

Massey’s OPS stands at .246, worst in the league among all players with at least 50 at-bats. But nobody around him seems particularly concerned — not Royals manager Matt Quatraro, not Duffy and not Massey’s other teammates. It’s a small number of plate appearances, Quatraro noted.

But as Duffy said, such perspective is tough to come by when you’re the one who’s struggling.

One of the biggest game-changers for Duffy was the Mental Keys chapter on perspective. You spend your whole life as a ballplayer trying to get to this very spot, Duffy explained, and you just want it to work out so desperately that the very notion of taking a bird’s-eye view feels impossible.

Now 32, perspective these days comes easier for Duffy. He entered Sunday’s game in Anaheim hitting .394 amid one of the best starts of his career. And he’s been around. But when he was younger, trying to make simple adjustments was sometimes tough.

Massey’s been trying to try to stay in the zone with his aggressiveness, Quatraro said, while also putting a “stranglehold” on results.

“The whole phrase, ‘It’s a new day’? It’s really not a new day,” Massey said. “You just kind of carry it over.”

The Royals are in a developmental year, and Massey is not alone. And neither is he making excuses. That’s never been his way. John McCarthy, his former coach at Brother Rice High in Chicago, said there were a million stories about coaches showing up for Saturday morning practice and Massey already being there, taking swings.

Massey, McCarthy said, is an “average guy that made it big.” Blue-collar. Hardworking. Beloved by his local community back in Illinois.

McCarthy said Massey always employed the same routine in batting practice: swing middle, middle, then middle-away. Massey’s process of preparation set him apart in the minors, too, where Royals first baseman Vinnie Pasquantino called his fellow infielder a “beautiful mind.”

And for a long time, the results were outstanding. Massey blossomed into one of the Royals’ top prospects, a .294 hitter with an OPS of .862 in the minors.

“Michael has the ability to be the best hitter on this team for a very long time, and I’m hoping he taps into that,” said Pasquantino, who played with Massey for two years in the Royals’ farm system. “Because he has it in him … I wish he could see how much confidence I have in him.”

For now, Massey continues to seek solutions to his struggles at the plate. Duffy, his wizened elder teammate, knows that’s easier said than done.

“It’s like a bar of soap,” Duffy said. “Need to have a loose grip on it. You can’t just let it go, but squeeze it too tight, and it’s going to slip out of your hands.”