What I foud striking about that study was that no less than 2/3 of the teams he looked at had a managerial change or a significant return from injury.
I don't believe, personally, that building a line-up that is not geared toward thumper-offense is a guarantee of line-up failure. If the Mariners all had down years together in 2010, it's not because they lacked a clean-up hitter IMHO...it's because they lacked clubhouse leadership and the ability to focused on putting hard at bats up there as a team. When they went through their 2-weeks, 8 runs slumps (and there were two or three of those), that was a series of really...really lazy at bats...the hitters were up there arm swinging with their eyes closed...it wasn't fear...it was laziness that I saw. It may be that what the team needed was not so much a power hitter or two...but a professional hitter or two in the middle of the order. Ichiro did his thing, but other than he and Figgins putting as many tough at bats as they could up there...the rest of the team got horribly...horribly lazy. A bunch of guys who had career P/PA near 4 suddenly put smaller numbers up in that category.
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