KANSAS CITY -- Noah Cameron’s recent surge has plenty of moving parts, but one of the simplest tools in the Royals’ bullpen may be helping tie it all together.
Before Cameron’s July 24 outing against Detroit - the one that sparked this run with seven scoreless innings in relief - he put together a bullpen session that stood out even in a long season of side work. Luke Maile, who catches as many of those sessions as he can, called it the best bullpen he’d caught all year. Cameron had a different way of putting it.
“ridiculous.”
The reason was obvious to anyone watching. Cameron was piling up strikes.
“I was hitting every corner you could imagine, every pitch was in the strike zone, exactly where I wanted it to be,” Cameron said. “I threw 30 pitches and like 30 strikes.
Of course, I was like, ‘Let’s do that more.’ And then I went to Detroit, pitched really well, and it was like, ‘OK, let’s do that every time.’”
There’s been plenty of attention on Cameron taking over pitch-calling duties, and for good reason. Since July 24, the left-hander has posted a 1.29 ERA - seven earned runs in 48 2/3 innings - while making better use of his mix, including leaning more on his slider. But there’s another piece to the puzzle, and it’s not just for him.
The Royals have put a physical strike zone in their bullpen at Kauffman Stadium, built from pipes, bungee cords and bright orange string. It’s there to give pitchers a visual target during side sessions, and several arms have already bought in.
Cameron uses it whenever he can. Randy Dobnak likes it.
Daniel Lynch IV has started working with it, too.
The idea came from assistant pitching coach Mike McFerran, who had used it while serving as the A’s pitching coordinator in 2025. The setup is meant to resemble the Automated Ball-Strike System zone used in games, giving pitchers immediate feedback on where the pitch actually traveled.
“What I saw it do was give guys a visual that they can then measure their shapes off of: Where is this pitch starting, where is this pitch actually ending?” McFerran said.
“It gives you more direct feedback because it bounces right back into place with the bungees. … There was a lot of benefit to it.
But for the most part, it’s a visual constraint that they have to move through.”
Getting it right took some tinkering. The Royals had to physically place the pipes into the ground and adjust the bungees so the zone could move up and down with the height of the strike zone.
And once the Royals wanted the setup on the road, the project got a little more improvised. When the club was in Anaheim, McFerran made a Home Depot run for poles, rubber clamps and string.
“There were a couple of iterations,” McFerran said. “Fun side project.”
Trackman data is still part of the process in every bullpen, but McFerran sees the physical zone as something that turns the numbers into something pitchers can actually see. Dobnak, who has used similar setups with other organizations, jumped on board quickly.
“Sometimes it’s hard to know where the pitch is actually going in bullpens,” Dobnak said. “You’re working on stuff, so it’s nice to see the actual result. I want this sinker away, did I land it or did it just look good?”
McFerran said the concept fits with the kind of constraint-based training he’s long believed in, including the work he used at Wake Forest. The point is to make the correct movement easier to repeat by physically guiding it. A pitcher trying to shorten his stride, for example, could be shown exactly where to land with a PVC pipe or string instead of just being told.
“You end up installing the move much more quickly,” McFerran said. “It’s the same idea for throwing strikes.”
And for the Royals, that repetition matters. The more often pitchers can feel the right movement in practice, the more likely it is to show up when the game starts.
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