Add new comment

The key point I would make in regard to trying to get "too much" out of a lineup is it begins with the concept of attempting to get "too much" ***something*** out of an individual hitter that he is incapable of.
Clearly, no sane individual is going to expect HRs from Figgins.  The skill set he brings has never and will never produce HRs.  Heck, his career ISO is under 90.  If there was any hitter on the planet with any more evidence of "pressing" than Figgins, I've never seen him.  Yet, Wedge gives the exact same advice to Figgins as Cust?!?
The problem I see is that - even assuming the reality of the Wedge position is as nuanced as many believe - (which I am beginning to doubt) - it seems utterly ridiculous to me to believe that every hitter in the majors needs the exact same advice to succeed.  Fixing Adam Dunn should not require the same remedy as fixing Ichiro.  The entire concept that is does is what I find disturbing.
"You have to be aggressive to escape a slump".  That is the public Wedge position.  I believe the position is flawed and that if you see a hitter pressing, then the best advice (and one I *OFTEN* heard was what was directed at Andruw Jones during his worst slumps), was that he needed to be more patient, more relaxed, try to go "with the pitch" more than he normally did *until* his timing and contact returned.
Now, I fully supported the dumping of Bradley and Langerhans (based on defensive inadequacy).  But, at this point, considering the Peguero defense in LF ... I am of the opinion that DESPITE Bradley and Langerhans producing decent ISO numbers ... that the reason they were dumped was ... they liked taking pitches. 
But, I remember in early April, how Doc *GUSHED* about how many pitches the club was taking ... as we forced SPs to work hard and run up large pitch counts early.  And the key men in that area were: Bradley, Langerhans, Cust and Figgins.  And Ichiro was taking a lot more pitches early, too.
Look at the team offensive results for the first three months:
April - 112-BB; .235/.316/.339 (.656)
May - 72-BB; .228/.289/.325 (.614)
June - 68-BB; .219/.277/.354 (.631)
After 109 runs in April, it was 84 in both May and June.  And April is historically the lowest scoring month of the season, which is why when they left Langerhans and Bradley had OPS+ figures of 95 and today stand at 90.
What is missing is the understand that each hitter has weaknesses.  You want Beltre to stop swinging at the outside slider ... but he cannot recognize the pitch in time to do so.  It's fine and well to say - "stop swinging at that".  It's another to understand pitch recognition is not a constant from player to player.
Figgins and Cust and Bradley and Langerhans, etc. all have pitches they "see" better than others and pitchers, too I would bet.  Bradley is "waiting" for a pitch that he recognizes AND is in a zone he can do something with.  So, when a pitch he 'reads' as "change-up low" ends up being FB down the middle, Wedge gets upset.  The downside is that what you're doing is convincing the player to swing at the change-up low as well as the FB down the middle.  But, the pitchers throw the change-up low a LOT more than the FB down the middle.
This doesn't mean there aren't players that are too passive.  I think by the end, Saunders had become a complete 'guess' hitter and was hosed.  But, Cust and Bradley (and Figgins too) were hitters with experience, who knew what pitches they could handle - who had proven that they had reasonable balance between patience and aggression. 
As average and OBP continue to plunge, at some point, you have to conclude that the strategy and tactics and coaching are not helping.