Not sure that's a direct criticism of the hitting coaches. Cora has similarly criticized JD this year for pitch selection and expanding the zone. Given JD's approach and reliance on his own coaching, that's probably just on JD, not a particular fault of the coaches.
Still, you can't fire the players...
You can coach them. And frankly, yes, you can fire them. You control their careers. So, "You practice X and do Y, or you won't see the bigs or stay in them." That's pretty tacitly understood, I'd think.
The recent Sox have been all about pushing launch angle and aggressively early in the count. Under Cora's tenure they haven't (by and large) pinch hit, stolen bases, or manufactured runs. They certainly weren't preached the virtues of patience or drawing walk or running up pitch counts on starters. Because they don't do those things. This iteration of the ballclub either does not have those skills (at large) or they're atrophied from non-use.
I think what we're seeing is the result of an application of a hitting philosophy that's ill-matched to many of the players.
Duran's sort of the perfect poster child for this. He's got a skill, but the club really seemed to have no idea how to play to that skill in games, beyond "He's fast. So when he gets on base he'll be like everyone else but faster." He was brought up because (in part) he hit MiL pitchers for power. Launch angle, all that jazz. But that does not translate to ML pitchers for whatever reason. Same with Dalbec and Cordero, generally. Schwarber provided a negative example. He shows up and preaches patience in late 2021, and, in the process rebuilds Dalbec's swing and approach to something that's very effective.
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Also, whatever Cora says to the media is ass-covering bullshit. If he wanted to push patience and more walks and situational hitting, he could have done that from spring training in 202
1. He can't seriously say that this is all on the players all off the sudden. The players are approaching these situations
they same way they have all year long.
My guess is that when the team started cold, and they blamed external factors and bad luck, but decided to stick with the same game approach and hitting philosophy. Then the team got hot with the same approach (and Story/JD's streaks) and they felt vindicated. Over the long-haul they would score X runs with this approach, and X runs would be enough to keep them in contention. So why change things? Weather's getting hotter, keep barreling balls and hope for the best. It will all come out in the wash.
Except it didn't.
And, if the shift ban is real, they'll probably stick with it, just to see if BABIP changes with the "smack it hard and early" philosophy. If it's not, the club's offense will probably look very much the same in 2023. Maybe good in aggregate (if they're healthy), but inflexible and often plain shitty.