Braves’ Simmons and hitting coach Seitzer forge bond

When baseball’s best defensive shortstop and the Braves’ new hitting coach first worked together in February, Andrelton Simmons and Kevin Seitizer came away thinking it might be a long and difficult journey.

But the coach, Seitzer, quickly came to appreciate Simmons’ steadfast desire to improve.

“He’s a very cerebral guy, and very ‘feel’ guy,” Seitzer said, the latter quality referring to hitting approach. “I’ve never worked with a hitter quite like him, in a sense that he wants to be so perfect and wants to do so good and wants to help the team win. He’s probably one of the most unselfish players that I’ve ever been around. He just wants to help the team in any way he can.”

All well and good, but Seitzer just wanted the shortstop to dial back the energy expenditure a bit and stop being so hard on himself. Eventually, the message got through.

“He can handle my craziness in the cage,” Simmons said, looking back on the past eight months together. “That was a great thing, because I can be a tough nut to crack. He’s been good. He can handle me.”

What is their to handle, exactly?

“Just all that goes on in my head,” Simmons said, smiling as he tried to explain. “He can handle me. At the beginning of spring training I didn’t think he was going to be able to deal with all my craziness, but he’s proven me wrong.”

Simmons entered Sunday’s season-ending doubleheader against the Cardinals batting .263 with a .320 on-base percentage, 28 extra-base hits and 42 RBIs. His batting average and OBP will be easily the highest in his three full seasons in the majors – previous full-season bests: .248 average and .296 OBP — while his .331 slugging percentage before Sunday was the same he finished with in 2014.

He hit a two-run homer in the seventh inning of Sunday’s doubleheader opener, only his fourth homer of the season after hitting seven in 2015 and 17 in 2014.

Simmons has been one of the toughest hitters to strike out since he reached the majors, and this season he’ll finish with his lowest full-season strikeout total (48 in 580 plate appearances before Sunday).

Simmons, who turned 26 last month and is expected to win his third consecutive Gold Glove, is still very much a work-in-progress offensively. But the Braves seem pleased with strides made in his first season with Seitzer — the third hitting coach Simmons has had in the majors — and Seitzer’s assistant, Jose Castro.

“He’s a much improved (hitter) than he was last year,” Braves manager Fredi Gonzalez said. “His first year he hit 17 home runs; I think that was just a byproduct of it being his first year, nobody knows him, here’s a first-pitch fastball hitting in the eight hole. I really like his approach this year better than I’ve seen him in 2 ½ or three years. He has stayed in that (middle) part of the field and he’s been more consistent this year.”

Not that it’s been a stress-free experience for those most involved in the process.

“His heart is just amazing. But it took us a ton of back and forth for the first few months,” said Seitzer, who was a .295 career hitter in 12 major league seasons, and a hitting coach with the Royals, Diamondbacks and Blue Jays before coming to Atlanta. “I mean, me and Nachy (Castro) had to double-team a lot of times, and it was build the trust, build the relationship, win him over as to what we were seeing, adjustments he needed to make, and then getting him to believe it.

“That’s the hard part with hitters today – when they go to make adjustments, it doesn’t feel comfortable, it doesn’t feel right, and then you can either fight or you can just kind of roll with it for a while. And when you’re going through the season, hitters want to see results. So it was hard for him because he wasn’t always getting results.”

Consistency is often the last thing to come for hitters at the big-league level. Simmons’ season was a case in point: He hit .277 with 17 extra-base hits, a .329 OBP and a .405 slugging percentage in his first 51 games, then just .229 with three extra-base hits, a .304 OBP and .246 slugging percentage in his next 50 games through Aug. 1.

In 45 games since, Simmons was batting .284 with a .326 OBP and .333 slugging percentage, including .310 (27-for-87) in his past 23 games before Sunday.