Chaos, Confusion, Coherency

 ...............

So Baker decides I've traded on his fame and fortune one too many times, such as this time, and posts a Cage Match Call-Out on his website.  To Baker's surprise, Dr. D signs up, and the venue is set:  the Seattle Mariners clubhouse carpet.

Baker, pre-match, is perfectly coherent.  He's an athletic young football player, and I'm a 49-year-old out-of-shape blogger, so his plan is --- > to show a little mercy after I've learned my lesson.  Maybe.

Dr. D's plan is what it always is, against an unfamiliar sparring partner.  Keep the hands high and extended, "tangle" the punches, and at the right moment when he's engaged at chest level, surprise him with a power front kick or two.  After a few of these, he'll try a kick back, and when he does I'll trap the leg.  My "signature move," as it were, Mojo.

We're both coherent as we square off, Mariners forming a no-escape circle and cash flying into the hands of the clubhouse bookie, whom we presume is Brendan Ryan...

........

Baker doesn't come in hard, to my surprise.  He circles, buying time and letting me get out of breath - yes, in boxing you get tired even if you don't throw punches.  I get a little bit confused.   Fortunately, Aiki-Doc has done his cold-water bathing.  How's that for an obscure reference?

Time is on the youngster's side.  So wanting to get things over with sooner rather than later, I come in, fake a few half-position punches and .... huh!  They're kinda scarier than Baker expected, at least coming from a dancing Panda, anyway...  He gets a little bit rattled.  I throw a front kick to get things going.  To my surprise, he hops back in plenty of time, despite the fact that he was focused on my hands.  But he didn't like the look of it.  We're both thinking very little at this point.  

And at the speed this match is occurring -- the whole thing will be over in 45 seconds -- do we have time to re-evaluate new plans?  Nooooo wayyyyy.   Now we're not thinking.  We're in brainless mode.

.........

I try my third front kick, Baker steps back, and then DIVES in with a football tackle, taking me down easily.  Here's the point:  imagine you're me as you back-roll over to go with the tackle.  At this moment, does anybody even remember my pre-match plan?  When Ichiro's on first and Chone Figgins just saw a pitch he didn't even expect, does he even remember his plan against this pitcher?  I bet he doesn't.

Geoffy himself is surprised and confused to find out that I wrestle, and I hook a shoulder, going with his momentum, and reverse him.  It suddenly occurs to him that I've got about sixty pounds on him, and maybe he didn't want this to go too the ground.  However, he doesn't know that I pulled a lat muscle flipping him over, although he does know that I'm sucking wind hard and he probably suspects the truth, that I'm actually seeing stars because of O2 deficit.  

All right.  We kind of lock up in a wrestling stall as we both try to figure out new plans...

.

=== Chaos and Confusion ===

If Chone Figgins has an OBP of .350 this year, I won't assume that it's because he's a little jerk, or that it's because he's stupid, or that he has a personality disorder, or any of that other kind of stuff.  I'll assume that it was because he was confused at the plate last year.

If you're not an athlete, that's great, but .... it's hard to convey just how easy it is to become confused.  And therefore passive.  In the chaos of real action, sometimes it can take a miracle to become coherent.

Moving Chone Figgins to leadoff will, we hope, make him automatically coherent.  He forgets the runners, and his job (be standing on 1B) is primally clear, loaded into the primitive part of his brain.  As the Hultzen changeup pops a parachute, Figgins is coherent even then.  His job is basal.

.

=== Coaching ===

Sabermetricians don't like the idea that a manager might coach an ML player and make the player better than he was expected to be.  Tell a sabermetrician that Chone Figgins might perform better, leading off, and he'll react like he'd stepped in something brown and unpleasant.

But coaching occurs in baseball.  Weaver On Strategy contains many examples of this .... one pitcher, Weaver couldn't understand why he wasn't moving off the plate on 0-and-2, or something, and it suddenly occurred to Weaver that the player was just not very intelligent.  Weaver took to explaining things very slowly and very simply:  "On 0-and-2, aim for six inches off the plate.  Always."  And the player got better.

........

Other examples?  You could say that EVERY time a player gets better -- by an unexpected amount, now -- that he's been coached towards it.  

Jason Vargas was coached, by Felix Hernandez, to turn his front shoulder and throw harder.  Mike Carp was coached, maybe by himself, to do the Earl Weaver thing:  "Look to hit the 2-0, 3-1 pitch out of the ballpark."  Coaching occurs all the time; it's merely that sabermetricians do not credit breakthroughs, or even UP seasons, to coaching.

Ichiro has been the subject of brilliant coaching this offseason, his own coaching.  Whether it will work, we'll see.

.........

There's nothing farfetched about the idea that Chone Figgins might get coached -- via the lineup move -- to go at his job more simply and coherently.  In Chone Figgins' case, it seems particularly feasible, doesn't it?  Dumb it down for him.

That's what the confused virtual Doc needed in his cage match:  somebody to dumb it down for him -- but to dumb it down into the right direction.  "He's in a lower weight class.  Wade in there firing away as hard as you can for as long as you can."  Or whatever the key was.  For virtual Geoffy, the Troy strategy:  "Make him swing and miss.  He'll tire quickly."  Suddenly we've both leaped a plateau; we're doing what we do good, and doing them simply.

Sports are confusing.  Any time you can find coherency, you've got a shot to leap a plateau.

Comments

1

The difference between the 5 slot and the 4 slot in the lineup doesn't seem like much.  If fact, most SABRs would say it doesn't mean anything significant.  But to a player it is very significant, as alluded to by both Wedge and Smoak last year.  Same from #1 to #2, I would imagine.
Chone did not view the #9 slot as a "second leadoff position" - he viewed it as a massive demotion and slur on his character, and never recovered emotionally.  Going back to #1 in the lineup could absolutely impact Chone's approach.
Will he be able to retain that approach when he struggles for a few weeks during the season?
The size of the fight in that dog is my question, so I hope he starts off hot and finds a groove.  Putting him back in his comfort zone couldn't hurt him.  Let's hope it doesn't hurt us.
~G
 

2

He was ripping along fine in the 5 hole, as you've pointed out, and then he goes to fourth and BAM, zero home runs forever (or in the month he was there).  Way overswinging.
If the athlete's attitude and mindset change, his performance is going to change...

3

Simplicity in in the mental approach to sports is almost always a good thing.
Hitters get on smoking streaks and say,simply, "I'm really seeing the ball well!"  When that happens they are also not locked up in swing mechanics. They see the ball, they swat it.
When Aiki-Doc blocks an opponent's blow, he does it with a smooth, sudden, simple purpose.  No paralysis by analysis.
When golfers have a multitude of thoughts coursing through their noggins they usually are not good bets to go low.
Mike Reid, one of the great putters of his day, once talked about getting way hot by just imagining two lines of singing green worms defining his putting line.  His only thought was to roll it between the line of worms.  That's pretty simple.
I played with variations of that while I was competing, yet I never putted like Mike Reid.
So simplicity has its limits.  The question then is whether Figgins can be "saved" by the simplicity of batting first or whether he just ain't very good anymore.
I'm leading toward the later.  He may simply have lost his eye. A guy like Figgins must have that.  He's a career nibbler.  If he can't determine which pitches to nibble at he's doomed.
Career-wise, batting 1st hasn't been that big of deal for him. Check out his career splits.  He's nearly as good batting #9 as he is batting #1 (5 OPS+ points in differents), despite last year's debacle at the #9 spot.  He certainly didn't hurt his leadoff stats last year, did he?
In '07 he batted better in the 2nd slot than he did leading off.  Nearly 40% of his AB's came at #2.
From '04-'06, he batted at least as well at #9 than he did at #1.  In '06 he was significantly better at #9.
In '08 and '09 he was almost exclusively a lead off hitter, and that stacks the numbers in leadoff's favor, because he had such abysmal numbers in '10 and '11 not leading off.  But, historically, it hasn't meant much in relation to his productivity.
OK, we've made it as simple as possible for him. You get to play 3rd base, you get to lead off.
Man up now, Chone.  Let's see the .400 OBP in ST.  You've just got an undeserved gift.  Now earn it and shut me up.
moe
 
 
 

4

Personality might be a constant.  But humans change behavior and react in different ways all the time.  My current meme on this subject is:  It matters where you start from.
Back in 1986 I moved to Raleigh and my friend Jim (who carried a 180 average), invited me to bowl with him on a league, (my first).  Jim, who had bowled since age 6, coached me.  After averaging 125ish for the first half of the league, I made a plateau leap and ran about a 144 in the second half.  In a handicap league this is massive.  With me bowling 15-20 pins over average in the second half, we won the second half and made the final roll-off -- my first.
In the finals, all three of my teammates were bowling great.  We should have crushed the opposition.  Only thing is - I was beyond terrible.  I failed to break 100 in EITHER of the first two games.  It was without a doubt the worst bowling night of my life.  Funny thing is ... I didn't "feel" nervous.  I had anticipated nerves and worked to relax and maybe I overdid it.  Whatever the case, I was a complete disaster.
Then, in the middle of the third game, I strung three strikes together, (my only ones of the night).  That was enough, (thanks to the rest of the team kicking butt), and we won that league.  But, the demonstrated to me on a very personal level just how unpredictable results can be for 'newbies' to an experience.
The point here is that my implosion in my first bowling final was never repeated.  I went on to win other leagues with Jim.  I even became anchor bowler for some teams when my average climbed to 170, often (but not always) coming through in the clutch.  But, that first disaster didn't define my play for the next 20 years. 
I don't know if Smoak will succeed in the majors or not.  But, I do know that one should not assume that simply because the first time a player is put in a position and fails that this means you should never revisit the situation.  Michael Jordan was cut from his first HS basketball team. 
Figgins may or may not bounce back.  But his 2009 and 2011 seasons were both produced by the same guy.  Mental state is not a constant.  It is not only impacted by what is happening today, but also by what happened yesterday.  There is probably not player on the team who could possibly benefit more from the mental reset of a new season than Figgins.  Yeah, it's probably too late and he's too old to expect much.  But, maybe low expectations are precisely what Figgy needs to put up a redemption season.
 

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