But I don't want him being worried, 24/7, about something mechanical.  I want him in there for the way he handles a staff (especially the spaghetti we're rolling out there onto the mound), frames pitches, does all the catcher-y things.

Any batting adjustment has to be simple and non-cerebral.  I don't want him thinking about THAT.  I want him thinking about the next 4 batters the bad guys have coming to the plate.

A Mongo-sized bat?  I'm good with that.  But mostly I would have him choke up 2 inches on the bat, stand at the back of the box, and wait. And I would have him watch Pete Rose videos.  I am convinced there is an innate tendency to shorten up, slow up, and look for solid contact when you choke up on a baseball or golf lever.  I'll bet RockiesJeff would corroberate.  It's why every coach in history, up until a decade or two ago, instructed players to choke up with two strikes. Rhythm completely shot on the golf course?  Choke up and shorten up.

The biggest benefit is that such an approach is simple and non-cerebral. 

As a young man, Pete Rose was hitting a dozen homers a year with that short stroke, back of the box approach.  Mike Zunino bench presses Pete Rose for breakfast.  He can't hit 12 homers a year that way?  At age 45, in a walker, wearing tri-focals and mainlining Geritol, Pete Rose had a .394 OBP and an 86/35 Eye.

I want Mike Zunino to bring the shortest, most simple and least "neuron-ic" approach to the plate that he can.  As a fast-twitch, tater hitting masher, he's overmatched vs. MLB throwers.  It isn't mechanical: In his "hot" 2nd half of '16, he still only hit .204 and K'ed in 34.8% of his PA's.  

Mike Zunino is too valuable to power-flush and I think DiPoto knows it.  But Zunino as Gary Carter doesn't work and never will.  Have him choke up, shorten up, simple up and square-it up.

It's probably the one thing we haven't tried.  

Just keep him.  I'm fine if he hits .200.

Why?

Last night De Jong is up 2-1, two quick outs in the fifth, 1-2 count on Pillar.  

Next pitch is a slider away  Fine, tried to get him to chase.

Next pitch?  The same slider down and away that he didn't fish for the first time.  

So it's 3 an 2, you've got a young and no doubt nervous pitcher on the mound, a batter at the plate who is below average in exit velocity in the first place, and even more so up and in.  Plus, you've now got him leaning. So the obvous call is a fastball on the inner half.

And what do we get?  A curve ball--yeah, that'll fool him!

Except that missed, too...and I think everyone saw what happened from there.

I'm not going to jump on Gosewich too hard, because it woudn't surprise me if our genius pitching coach called that from the bench.

But I do firmly believe Zunino would have asked for the fastball there (and he doesn't need to check with Stottlemyre)...and chances are, we stay in the game at least for a while longer.  

Do we need our hitters to hit better...or our pitchers to pitch better?

I'm fine with Zunino  

The business end of a short lever more closely follows the path of the hands and has a shorter path to the ball.

Somewhere I once saw a hitting video with Tony Gwynn, made long after his playing days, when he was coaching college ball.

He was swinging some sort of wooden hitting-aid bat, one that had a much larger knob on the end and even bigger knob between the hands and the barrel.  I imagined that it was designed to change the weight distribution of the bat. A bat has almost all of its weight in the barrel, but by choking up on a biat you've "counter-balance" that weight distribution.  I think that batting-aid was trying to do something like that, in an exaggerated manner.

I apologize for going back to golf, but I think it can apply here:  When you choke up on a golf club, you've "counter-balanced" it.  Not only are you swinging a shorter lever but you have changed the feel of it, too.  That changed feel makes it really hard to "swing for the fences."  

For a long time I made my own golf clubs.  You know, buy the shafts, heads, ferrules, and grips.  Cut and epoxy kind of stuff.  Probably used 6 different drivers  that I built and 4 different sets of irons.  I go back and forth now between two home-built drivers (one shorter than the other), but being a dinosaur I've put back in my bag a set of Titleist blades I bought in '86.  When building drivers, you quickly learn that adding length (made doable by lighter composite shafts) adds "swing weight," which is an expression of the weight distribution of a golf club.  Two golf clubs of the same total weight, but of differing lengths, do not feel as if they are of the same weight.  The longer one feels heavier.  One of my two drivers is one inch longer than the other, but because the weight is a bit further from my hands, it feels as if I have to really get after it.  The difference between 45 and 44 inches "feels" significant. 

Shortening a driver by 1 inch changes its swing weight by 5 or 6 pts, which is a huge difference in terms of that "feel."

Some players have experimented with counter-weighting the club (using a grip with a weighted butt) to change the feel and reduce the swingweight.

The same must be true of a baseball bat. It is why choking up on a bat makes it feel so different.  

Per Doc, above: A shorter 40 oz. bat will have a similar "swing-weight" to a longer 34 oz. bat.

Get Zunino to choke up 2 inches and you've changed the feel, making it more "unnatural" to swing for the fence.  You've also created a shorter lever with a shorter path to the ball. A shorter lever is always easier to make solid contact with.  It's why hammers aren't 2 ft long.

I'm not trying to be a yahoo here. A simple fix for Zunino is a quick fix.  I want him back and I don't want him thinking about mechanics.

J.P Arrencibia talking about bats and batting on Star Talk: https://youtu.be/gA0A4RsLLUU?t=23m5s

They go through the talk about bigger bats and also smaller, lighter ones and how it affected him.

Not always you get to hear this stuff from a player, so kinda fun.

Also didn't realize how much seams mattered for the hitter as much as the pitcher.