Baseball Toaster was unplugged on February 4, 2009.
Ballard's piece on Bobby V isn't the only reason to check out SI this week. Tom Verducci deconstructs Alex Rodriguez's hitting. Verducci gets the skinny from the Yankees hitting coach, Kevin Long, who "identified three major flaw" with Rodriguez's 2006 swing:
• Rodriguez would sometimes drag his back foot forward rather than leave it in place as he began his swing, which decreased his leverage.• He would let his hands drift too far from his body during the swing, making it longer and "looser."
• His front leg kick, a trigger mechanism, had become grossly exaggerated. Rodriguez would sometimes lift his left knee as high as his waist, then step toward the pitcher with that leg -- a maneuver that would cause him to bring his front foot down late and violently, which created a tightness and imbalance in his swing.
"His leg kick was getting to a point where it wasn't getting down on time," Long says. "Your front foot has to land when the ball is about halfway to the plate. His was coming down much later than that. When that happens, you have to catch up a lot. You rush, and your body tends to drift [toward the pitcher]."
Long drastically cut the height of Rodriguez's leg kick and virtually eliminated the stride, instructing him to simply move his left foot up and down, not toward the pitcher. Now Rodriguez's left foot lands much softer and earlier, which gets him into a loaded, better-balanced position to hit. The changes also eliminated his drift and allowed him to keep his hands in tighter to his body, improving his core rotation. Think of a spinning figure skater: The closer the hands are to the body and the more stable the axis, the faster the skater spins. For Rodriguez, a faster, tighter spin has created better bat speed and power.
Rodriguez grooved his rebuilt swing through the winter to hit balls on a line into the back of the cage's net, an approach that de-emphasized lift and the temptation to pull the ball. Whereas Rodriguez actually fretted last season about how many home runs he hit in batting practice, Long has encouraged Rodriguez to maintain his line-drive approach in batting practice this year. Indeed, A-Rod did not hit one batting practice home run on Friday at cozy Fenway Park.
Over at The Baseball Analysts, Jeff Albert has a great take on Rodriguez's April, complete with images. Albert concludes:
While I am not so sure A-Rod will top 120 HR this season, I don't feel that this is simply a hot streak. What we are seeing is a great player making great adjustments and setting himself up for a great year.
Our good pal Jay Jaffe also tackles Rodriguez's hot start over at BP and The New York Sun.
Meanwhile, Jon Heyman has the latest on The Boss and the boys at River Ave. Blues tell us everything we need to know about Phillip Hughes (but were afraid to ask).
Good schtuff.
I am SO impressed with ARod. He's already in the HOF and will breeze to 500 HR. He's the highest paid, highest profile BB player. He could easily sit back and ride out a still-great career.
Yet Boras says: You could be thinner, so ARod loses 15 lbs and gets his body fat to 10% (my God). A new hitting instructor is in town, and he's living with ARod (at ARods request) within a week. Bowa says he talks to much, so he puts on headphones and shuts up. And people say he's got a big ego? No way.
I'm just amazed. The guy is open to learning, open to advice, open to help. This is rare in a star.
If he stays healthy, he's going to be up there with Ruth and Gehrig. Please.... somebody tell me Cashman is not going to let him get away.
"A-Rod is like Picasso," Boras says. "He's like a great artist or performer. When the level of your performance is so great, whatever you do to present yourself to society is never going to match the same level of your performance. So what you say in explaining yourself and your performance will be held against you by others. So you realize that what represents you the best is simply the beauty of your performance. Leave it at that."
Can see why Boras makes the big bucks - he's got a way with words.
Still, you sir 4 are absolutely correct. It's weird that journalists are so afraid of breaking the third wall and using he dreaded "I". Here 'Duc did an absolute butcher job on Alex's "head" (which appeared three weeks after his slump ended - couldn't let all that good research go to waste!). Now it's "Arod had a mechanical flaw in his swing". Shit, one paragraph that briefly covers the silly psychoanalyzing that went on last year, with some self-reference to his own "work", that's would have sufficed. Instead he looks like a hack that simply covers a story depending on the direction of the wind. Where was the analysis of Arod swing then? It's not like people weren't saying it.
In fact, I'm not sure if he's been to the Stadium since reporters and producers ambushed him with questions about Swindal.
I didn't understand when A-Rod signed his 10 year $252 M contract, but I do now. He is a once-in-a-lifetime talent. You pay them, and that's that.
Cashman understands this. This is the exact kind of situation where the Yanks' overwhelming financial resources should be used - not overpaying for middling talent (COUGHFarnsworthCOUGH).
Makes sure you read the River Ave Blues writeup. Hughes is legit and he's ready now. It might take a few starts, but the kid will help this team and they'll do everything they can to keep him injury-free.
A sampling:
"The only problem with Hughes's numbers is the sample size. Everything else looks magnificent. Not once in his minor league career did he break a 1.00 WHIP. He's never broken 2.50 BB/9, and never dipped below 9.00 K/9. His home runs shouldn't even be measured by a rate stat: he's given up just six in his entire minor league career, and three of them came in his first two AA outings. And, as his Eastern League numbers show, he kind of settled in."
Why did it take Kevin Long to figure out the problems in A-Rod's swing? Why didn't Mattingly figure it out, seeing he was the hitting coach?
This is the second time this week I'm wondering what Mattingly's role is behind the goings-on in Yankeeland. My earlier question was, if Torre is over-managing, which he seems to be doing, isn't Donnie trying to say something about this, since he's bench coach? Or is he a contributing factor to it? I wish I had some answers.
And is it just me, or does that picture make Phil look like a cross between Jesus (what they were going for) and Jar-Jar Binks?
Not to apologize for Mattingly with respect to A-Rod's problems last year, but
I wouldn't read too much into a certain coach's success/failure with a particular player.
Maybe Long is a better coach than Mattingly. Maybe Alex is a better student (more receptive?) to Long than he was to Mattingly.
I personally believe A-Rod's hitting struggles were all in his head last year. So did he. So did everybody. When he was slumping he looked like a physical wreck from head to toe in the batter's box.
When he was like that he looked like he didn't even belong in the Majors.
If A-Rod goes into an extended slump this year will it be Long's fault?
Is Long responsible for Melky's early struggles? If he can help A-Rod, why can't he make Minky hit? (ok, not a fair question)
Bottomline: I try not to give coaches too much credit, or too much blame.
If it was more advantageous to have multiple hitting coaches, I don't know why teams don't do that. Other than its out of the box, and it costs money, and baseball traditionally doesn't work that way.
This is why I'd love to see Mark Cuban buy the Cubs or the Pirates, or another MLB team. He would probably have all sorts of out of the box ideas that he would try.
I remember during the ALDS last year, just when we seemed to have one of the Detroit pitchers on the ropes Leyland would go out to the mound and settle them down. Who knows what he said, but it always seemed to work. When Torre wakes up from his nap and sends Guidry out for the same task I always feel like Gator gets this "deer in the headlights" look, mumbles something unintelligible, pats the pitcher on the behind and trots back to the dugout thinking "boy, I'm glad that's over".
I just wonder what would happen if we had a more experienced guy in that job. Sure, a great pitching coach is not going to help all of your pitchers. But at the same time, how many pitchers are going to be helped by a bad pitching coach?
I don't have a real sense of what Kerrigan contributes (or, honestly, what any bullpen coach contributes) and/or interlaces with Guidry. Any thoughts?
Just sayin'.
Commence with the lovefest....
The really remarkable thing about Bonds was that if he was lucky, he'd get maybe two pitches to hit all week, and he'd homer on both of them.
7 Alex Rodriguez is one of the game's true greats. He's on par with Mays and Aaron, but Ruth and Gehrig were on a whole other level as hitters--they're two of the five best to ever step to the plate--and Rodriguez is simply not there. Never has been, never will be, even with the season he's having right now. In fact, its those sorts of expectations that caused the problems he had with the fans last year.
http://tinyurl.com/fukth
For those who don't know the story:
https://bronxbanter.baseballtoaster.com/archives/546902.html#6
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