posted on Sunday, May 04, 2008 2:02 AM
by
Jim
The 2008 White Sox: No coaching required
Joe Cowley relayed a couple of interesting and depressing notes highlighting the depths of the White Sox slump during today's loss to the Toronto Blue Jays:
Here's another one -- the Sox saw exactly four 2-0 counts, which is what they have averaged since the start of the series against the Twins Tuesday. They entered the two-game set averaging over 7 2-0 counts a game.
(For comparison, the free-swinging Twins have the lowest amount of 2-0 counts in their favor at 5.14 per game.)
Making matters worse, two of them were courtesy of Shaun Marcum's inability to hit the mitt at the end of his start. He couldn't have thrown a strike if he wanted to, and looking at the game logs, pitchers haven't shied away from throwing strikes.
There's a chicken/egg dilemma in this stat, because it's hard to tell if the Sox are struggling because pitchers are getting ahead, or pitchers are getting ahead because the Sox offense is in the toilet. Today's game showed it goes both ways. In the fourth:
And in the sixth, when they were keying on the first pitch:
For what it's worth, the latter was a much better looking inning. Joe Crede doubled off the very top of the wall in left center, and then Nick Swisher hit a rocket ... right at Lyle Overbay.
It's easy to say the Sox should try swinging at first strikes more after watching Marcum and Co. pour in 20 first-pitch strikes to 31 batters, but that might only compound problems. If guys like Paul Konerko are uncomfortable swinging at the first pitch, asking them to go up hacking might have the same effect as asking them to hit from the opposite side of the plate.
Then again, getting ahead in the count might not help the Sox out much after all. They're hitting .218 after 2-0 counts, 80 points under the league average and second-worst in the AL.
Maybe the Sox should look at
Chuckie Carr as a hitting coach.
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Speaking of hitting coaches, Ozzie Guillen says
Greg Walker isn't going anywhere:
“That's not going to happen,’’ Guillen said of a possible coaching
change to try and remedy the slumping offense. “To be honest with you,
I don't think we need coaches. Look at the lineup. Everyone is a
veteran, everyone knows what they're doing, everyone has experience,
everyone went through it. I think you can ask the players. I'm not
going to blame Walker about it. Greg is not a babysitter."
“Greg gives the best information and works hard, works harder than
anybody and ‘Walk’ sometimes takes this game too deeply, too serious. I
bet you one guy who is sick to his stomach now is him. It's not easy to
be a hitting coach, it's not easy.’’
I'll admit that the firing of hitting and pitching coaches is an inconsistent practice and often a panic move that yields no reward. But here are some things I do know about this particular situation:
No. 1: Once again, allow me to
cite the circumstances that led to Gary Ward's dismissal back in May 2003. I don't need to add anything else since the situation surrounding Walker hasn't changed. Performance-wise, the only difference between Walker and Ward is that Walker has a World Series ring.
No. 2: The one hitter who hasn't slumped since the first two weeks of the season is
the guy who makes his own sauce adjustments:
Which reminds me of
the question I never got answered.
No. 3: Walker probably does work hard, but
advance scouting has come into question more than once.
That said, I'm not digging the message Ozzie is transmitting here. Let's blow up one sentence in particular:
To be honest with you,
I don't think we need coaches.
Considering the circumstances, I don't think it's a stretch to interpret it as a form of graft:
To be honest with you, I don't feel coaches make a difference, so I may as well keep a friend of mine on the payroll because we've had some good times together and he seems to have a fair amount of emotional investment.
If this is Ozzie's real mindset (and not a red herring of a quote), then the Sox don't figure to have any hope against control pitchers with changeups or lefties because the hitters are who they are. It's almost like the Sox are taking the Leslie Nielsen school of putting and applying it to hitting. To paraphrase, in order to hit changeups tomorrow, they'll have to hit changeups today. And the only way to be able to hit changeups today is to be able to hit them yesterday.
Yesterday, in terms of the Sox, was 2007. Great times ahead.
By the way, I'd never looked up Greg Walker's career splits until today. Here's what they look like:
- vs. RHP: .274/.339/.479
- vs. LHP: .224/.289/.368
And his career ended in 1990, which means he played largely before the specialization craze.
Just something to think about.
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Minor league roundup:- Birmingham 2, Charlotte 0
- Carlos Torres threw six shutout innings for the second straight outing. He allowed only two hits and a walk, and struck out five.
- Derek Rodriguez (2 IP) and Jon Link (1 IP) preserved the shutout.
- Maurice Stefan Gartrell had two hits and two RBI.
- Dave Cook had two hits, and Jared Price hit a solo homer.
- Winston-Salem 8, Wilmington 5
- John Shelby blasted three homers on the second game back from his hamstring injury, driving in five.
- Brandon Allen and C.J. Retherford also added solo homers. The wind was blowing out to center at 10 m.p.h.
- Paulo Orlando had three hits out of the leadoff spot.
- Matt Long allowed two unearned runs over five innings, striking out five. He allowed four hits and two walks.
- Charlotte vs. Buffalo PPD
- Kannapolis vs. Lake County PPD