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Wednesday, October 15, 2014

Yanks Get Permission To Talk To Chili

The Yanks have received permission to talk to Chili Davis about their vacant hitting coach position.  I am wildly in favor of this.  Chili was a patient hitter and has had success as a hitting coach.    He's still under contract to A's until November 1, but there's no one to coach around now, so they can and should wait.   17 teams now have 2 hitting coaches, and maybe the Yanks could hire Chili and someone like Rowson from the system.   We'll see.   I hate what has become of the Yanks' plate discipline up and down the chain.

posted by Kalel9 @ 2:58 PM

9 Comments:

At 7:32 PM, Blogger Mike in Mississippi said...

If he can get Teixeira and McCann to stop hitting into the shift and stress an overall patient approach, he'll have done his job.

 
At 8:15 PM, Blogger Kalel9 said...

Indeed, and if they can pass it down the chain, I will be very happy.

 
At 8:26 PM, Blogger Lawyer in NJ said...

In fairness, McCann tried. Tex is a lost cause.

 
At 11:34 PM, Blogger Kalel9 said...

McCann swung at ball 4 too often.

 
At 6:26 AM, Anonymous Stottlemyre68 said...

I recall reading or hearing somewhere that someone tried a shift on Mickey Mantle. After he went something like 5-for-5 once or twice, the experiment was discontinued. The problem starts when people lose sight of the idea of simply keeping the inning going, do your thing but let the next guy do his.

Parallel question -- we have all these speedsters in the minors, including some getting close to the majors such as Dugas. Is anyone trying to teach them to bunt? It frustrates the dickens out of me to see Gardner batting .256 when, if he could drag bunt, he'd be an easy .300 and have a chance at getting higher, and mediocre power numbers don't make up for that. Maybe it's too late for a 30-year-old, but the kids in GCL, including the huge international free agent crew, are young enough, as is Katoh.

 
At 8:16 AM, Blogger Billy Martin said...

Bunting is a terrible strategy and it makes me cringe watching Yost call for all these sac bunts and still somehow pull out wins. I guess even talent trumps terrible managerial decisions.

 
At 8:26 AM, Blogger Lawyer in NJ said...

Yeah, McCann isn't patient, but I meant trying to beat the shift.

How old was Mantle when they tried to shift on him?

Tex became more more of a pull hitter in YS. I think the dimensions of the park along with a stunningly fast decline in bat speed further exacerbated the pull-happy mentality.

Plus his LH swing is an upper cut, which Long tried to mitigate last year. His RH swing is actually quite level.

I think he is a part-time player now, and if A-Rod can hit and not play 3B, I would make him the primary 1B.

A productive A-Rod along with bounce back seasons from Beltran (which I think is possible) and McCann (he'll probably hit for power at least, along with Tanaka and Pineda being healthy and pitching to their peak level could enable them to be a decent team.

But if that all happened, that gives you an opportunity to work in Refs and Murphy, and then maybe Severino as the season wears on.

We'll they do that? It would shock me. I think they're trade chips to them (not Severino).

 
At 9:42 AM, Anonymous Stottlemyre68 said...

I was thinking of bunting for base hits. You don't raise your average with a sac. Sometimes sacbunts are good, such as when you desperately need one run and you have a man on second with no outs. So it's good to have in the arsenal, leaving aside when or how often to use it.

 
At 11:17 AM, Blogger Kalel9 said...

I'm against sac bunting unless you have a terrible player at the plate. But I am in favor of weaponized bunting for base hits.

 

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