The Hitting - Coaches and Players

[Rovin Romine]

I thought this might be a good topic to discuss.

First, by contrast, we've had a spring-cleaning in the pitching department. There's been reporting that Breslow and Bailey have started a more interactive "Run Prevention Unit" (or something like that) and have gotten buy-in from many pitchers resulting in a different approach to common wisdom. IIRC, the recent reporting is that "throwing strikes" is now much more nuanced than just pounding the zone, as though that were a magic trick. We'll see if it bears fruit, but I'm excited for a change.

OTOH, our hitting coaches remain the same. Fatse is a local guy, and seems nice enough. He's been in the org as an assistant hitting coach since 2019 and has been the head hitting coach for 2022 and 2023. Luis Ortiz and Ben Rosenthal were his assistants in 2022 and 2023.

I'm not particularly pleased with the recent performance here. Mostly because I can't think of any surprise successes on the hitting front for quite some time. To qualify that, I'm not saying that the hitting coaches turn gold to shit or anything of that sort. They seem to have gotten out of the way of a 2022 Contract Push Boegarts and Devers for example.

But do they help guys up their game? Do they help hitters transition? And are they better than average at this or worse? For example, in 2023, Casas made a successful transition from hitting MiL pitching to hitting ML pitching. . .but it took him a fairly long time to do so. Not unusually long, but it wasn't quick. Or take Story; he came back from a long layoff and never really got it together with the bat, which is understandable, but he was absolutely awful. And he was green-lit at some level within the org. Meanwhile, guys like Reyes and Urias arrived relatively hot and cooled off. And then, as a sort of counter-example, there was Abreu, who arrived hot (not being coached by the MLB staff), and stayed so.

However, across the board in 2023 we had mediocre/underperforming/awful seasons from: Wong, Arroyo, Hernandez, Devers, Verdugo, Refsnyder, McGuire, and basically all of the short term SSS call-ups.

It was a similar story in 2022. (Dalbec, Hernandez, JBJ, Cordero, Pham, Plawecki, Arroyo, Verdugo, and all the SSS guys.)

The only real "success" I see, where the hitting coaches helped someone adapt or up their game might be 2023 Duran. He hit well in a call-up, cooled off, then started hitting again in July. https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/split.fcgi?id=duranja01&year=2023&t=b

Am I missing anyone?

The competency and effectiveness of the hitting coaches have again become a concern for me with this article on Yoshida at fangraphs: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/masataka-yoshida-lost-himself/ It seems like he was on a different and not-productive track for several months before a correction was made. It's light on what happened behind the scenes, but the numbers are pretty convincing.

***

I know there's variance and injury and all that, and I'm not arguing that there should only be successes, or that all players are fixable.

Is this the best we can do?

Might better staffing here not be smarter than trying to bring in the magic player that these guys can actualize?

Or is not the coaches but something else in the org? Meaning they're brilliant at what they do, but there's a different reason the results haven't been there on the field? I kind of doubt this, because if we start making excuses for every player it begins to look like "the worst luck in the world."

 

[Big Papi's Mango Salsa]

Or is not the coaches but something else in the org? Meaning they're brilliant at what they do, but there's a different reason the results haven't been there on the field? I kind of doubt this, because if we start making excuses for every player it begins to look like "the worst luck in the world."

I don't mean this to be as glib as it sounds, but I'm voting for the "something else in the org", and basically, I think for whatever reason, they just didn't bring in particularly good players the past several seasons.

When I look at the "current" state of the roster and the organization, there is just so much redundancy that I can't overcome that. I get the "idea" that you don't draft for need, especially in baseball, but there are so many players (or at least notable acquisitions) that have a relatively similar profile.

It's such a high preponderance of LH hitters that don't really have a defensive home. It just really strikes me as poor construction more than anything else.

They also seem to be trying to take a lot of "1 WAR" players and think that they can make them into something more, vs actually going out and getting talented baseball players. Almost like the adage of trying to expect someone to do to much (or more than they're capable of).

Just to use Refsnyder as an example - since he's still on the team - he's a career 86 OPS+ player, almost entirely driven up by one year of success at his age 31 season. I don't think he under-performed last year (maybe even "over-performed a little). I think he was basically exactly whom he's been for his entire career - and people refuse to see the one year as the outlier vs the other 7 seasons - or somehow think that other players aren't able to adjust to whatever adjustment was made FOR Refsnyder in 2022.

Similar to someone like McGuire - any time he's had more than 125PA he's been "exposed" - 78OPS+ in Toronto in '21; 56OPS+ in ChW in '22; 80 in Boston last year. Was only a career .670OPS player in the minors.

To use someone no longer on the team, Hernandez is a career 93 OPS+ player that has been below average (offensively) in 6 of his 10 seasons (and above it in 4 of them). He's a utility player that was asked to be a starter in Boston, and he had one great year - which was awesome - but you're talking about someone that has more seasons of being below average than above it over the course of an entire career - including 4 of his 6 seasons in LA before even getting to Boston.

I think it's just plain old acquisition of baseball players that aren't good enough to be starters for a big market team - at least one that has ostensible designs on success being "more than contending for the last wild card."

 

[simplicio]

Casas showing up cold and Abreu showing up hot seems mostly like the difference between a .152 BABIP and a .431 to me. Not pure luck; there were quality of contact differences and such, plus whatever weird situation there was with Casas and the umps that seemed to get smoothed out, but enough to have a huge effect on perception.

Fwiw, I recall Masa did credit the hitting group with getting him out of his awful slump to start the year. I don't why they became less effective at fixing him through the season, but to me the simplest answer still seems to be fatigue.

 

[Rovin Romine]

I don't mean this to be as glib as it sounds, but I'm voting for the "something else in the org", and basically, I think for whatever reason, they just didn't bring in particularly good players the past several seasons.

(Read, but snipped for space)

Like I said, I don't think that all hitters are infinitely improvable. But some - some have to be capable of getting better here, especially going to a hitter's park and all.

 

[Fishy1]

Part of what was so frustrating about last year's team was the utter lack of discipline. With the exception of Casas, Refsnyder, Urias, and Abreu (and Devers and Turner to lesser extents), the team was full of hackers. Yoshida, Duran, Arroyo, Kike, Chang, Verdugo -- none of these guys were particularly impressive in terms of pitch ID or ability to lay off stuff. Some of these guys had always been hackers but others -- Yoshida, Kike, and Verdugo in particular -- have had years where they were much more patient than they were this year.

I'm agnostic about whether or not the coaching affected this, but I do think it's possible Cora set a dour and fatalistic tone in the clubhouse, that the hitting coaches were not engaging with guys in the right way, and that led some of the guys who were more marginal players to flail a little bit for fear of losing their role or even career.

I'm ultimately agnostic about the effect of coaches but I also believe that you should try your damndest to get your best out of your players, giving them as many resources and as much encouragement as possible to improve on their weaknesses. And if you see guys flailing across the board, yeah, then there might be a teamwide issue with the coaching.

I think the Sox are better set-up this year in part because a lot of the marginal flailers are gone, and the guys we've added are mostly fellows with good bat-to-ball skills and discipline. O'Neill has posted BB% around 8% for his career, Grissom has never hit below .310 in the minors, Story has usually been around 9%, and I think Abreu will probably post something north of 10% in a full season. If Yoshida can find the discipline he had in Japan, that's in my opinion a more disciplined lineup on the whole, even with the loss of Turner.

 

[Big Papi's Mango Salsa]

Like I said, I don't think that all hitters are infinitely improvable. But some - some have to be capable of getting better here, especially going to a hitter's park and all.

Sure, but I think you're mostly seen that from players that one would have (or at least should have) expected that for.

Casas is the example I'd give. I know you mentioned him, but I think we would have to agree to disagree on the length of time it took him. He was "alright" in his initial call up, heavily weighted toward OBP obviously, but he did still put up a more than respectable 113 OPS+ / 120 wRC+ in his first taste of the majors. The league adjusted to him (because, you know, other teams are trying too) with a horrendous subsequent ~100PA. He then moved back up to this absolutely monstrous "everything after May."

I think the coaching deserves a ton of credit there (as does the player, of course). There was a very good prospect with good minors numbers and they got him to produce as should have been expected. All good things.

Duran is, I think, another good example, like you mentioned. But again, a highly regarded prospect that they got good production out of.

Just to play the game, say Rafaela is up all year. I think they'll be able to make him into a decent MLB hitter as well, even with the flaws in his game. If they can't, I will / would hold that against them far more than not making guys that just really aren't good into good players.

Dalbec is, I think, the most "damning" in that he was at least seen as a roughly top 100 prospect that produced in the minors and could never do it at the MLB level. That's a "fail" in my opinion. Not some huge Kelenic style issue because Dalbec's issues were well known and it wasn't like he was always seen as a top prospect - but I think not getting production out of that player is worse than not getting it out of guys that have entire career track records of being "meh", injured or both (ie Arroyo).

I really don't expect them to get much out of O'Neill to be fair (but I do expect him to be roughly average for ~80 games and get hurt).

Grissom will be a good case study for me - but he's always hit and I expect him to continue to do that here. The challenge will be seeing if they can help him make those adjustments after the league has adjusted to him (the way they did Casas).

I do expect them to get a lot out of Anthony and Teel though; Valdez, Abreu, Meidroth, whomever, probably won't be all that good (though more bullish on Abreu than the others, clearly).


But when you look at guys like Arroyo, Hernandez, Refsnyder, McGuire, Cordero, Pham, Plawecki, etc, you're talking about a bunch of guys that basically all of MLB had characterized as "back up / utility" types but for some reason Boston thought they'd be "first division" (do we still use that term) starters. I don't blame those hitting coaches any more than I blame those in Oakland or Kansas City. You're talking about players that just haven't shown any real reason to assume they are more than they are.

Even Verdugo - it's not like he was some huge bust based on what he did in the minors. He was a career .811 OPS guy in the minors (.842 in AAA, in the PCL no less and .743 in AA for the high minors) and he has been roughly the same guy in LA (.784 OPS/106 OPS+) as in Boston (.765OPS /105 OPS+).

The entire Boston "plan" at the MLB level the past 4 years has been short term deals (ie guys not good enough to command long term deals) and hoping that they could take bench players and make them starters (they've done the same on the pitching side too). That is a failure on the part of whomever is responsible for building the roster for whatever reason, and expecting different results.

Had the Sox signed Garret Cooper, for instance, I'd have expected him to be roughly the same guy he always has been. A roughly 110 OPS+ bat if he's asked to take call it 375PAs that would probably get exposed if asked to do as such over the course of 600PAs.

The Sox have a roster (and organization) that is offensively Devers, Casas, Story and lest say Duran and then totally full of "platoon" players, which is great and all if the Red Sox get approval on that requested waiver to have a 52 man active roster, but just isn't very good otherwise. For the record, I think Grissom is MUCH more than that and belongs behind Devers and Casas but ahead of current version Story and Duran - but there is no data of the current hitting team working with Grissom, so I can't really put him in one spot or the other with any degree of reasonability.

 

[jwbasham84]

I love this thread idea RR. Thanks for starting it. My thoughts are the coaches cannot turn a terrible hitter into a prime Manny Ramirez. No amount of coaching will increase the amount of god given talent a player has. But they sure can help with situational hitting I would think. There were so many times that our players last year couldn't score a man from third base with less than 2 outs. From my less than stellar memory (if you ask my wife), I only recall Turner being a steady performer in this arena. We went up and chopped grounders or struck out. There was no getting a pitch that you could lift into the air to drive in a run. It was hack away. Again that can be totally on the player and not the coaches, but this was a prevalent theme throughout the lineup. If the coaches weren't advocating for such a strategy you would think they would be talking to the hitters to try and develop a more disciplined approach that never arrived. I have always thought it was damning that Schwarber showing up in 2021 immediately installed a level of plate discipline in the team that Fatse seemed to not be able to. But that is just my opinion...

 

[Heating up in the bullpen]

I love this thread idea RR. Thanks for starting it. My thoughts are the coaches cannot turn a terrible hitter into a prime Manny Ramirez. No amount of coaching will increase the amount of god given talent a player has. But they sure can help with situational hitting I would think. There were so many times that our players last year couldn't score a man from third base with less than 2 outs. From my less than stellar memory (if you ask my wife), I only recall Turner being a steady performer in this arena. We went up and chopped grounders or struck out. There was no getting a pitch that you could lift into the air to drive in a run. It was hack away. Again that can be totally on the player and not the coaches, but this was a prevalent theme throughout the lineup. If the coaches weren't advocating for such a strategy you would think they would be talking to the hitters to try and develop a more disciplined approach that never arrived. I have always thought it was damning that Schwarber showing up in 2021 immediately installed a level of plate discipline in the team that Fatse seemed to not be able to. But that is just my opinion...

I'm completely with you. The hitting coaches can't change the talent level of the guys they're working with. But they can affect approach. And yes, too many Sox hitters went up to the plate last year with a terrible approach. Particularly, as you said, with runners in scoring position. Shoot, a mediocre hitter can help his team by making outs when they're the right kind of outs. Sometimes the pitcher just beats you. Tip your cap and get him next time. Too many times last year Sox hitters beat themselves. I'd love to see that change this year.

 

[Big Papi's Mango Salsa]

I'm completely with you. The hitting coaches can't change the talent level of the guys they're working with. But they can affect approach. And yes, too many Sox hitters went up to the plate last year with a terrible approach. Particularly, as you said, with runners in scoring position. Shoot, a mediocre hitter can help his team by making outs when they're the right kind of outs. Sometimes the pitcher just beats you. Tip your cap and get him next time. Too many times last year Sox hitters beat themselves. I'd love to see that change this year.

Genuinely curious here - and I don't know if there is an answer and admit there might not be, however...

Do we have any idea how much of what the hitting coaches are instructed to say (or philosophy they're aligned with and thus hired because of) is directed by the front office and analytics.

The extreme example of course is the Twins and how they handled Ortiz, but how much of this do we know about the Red Sox and how they've been run recently.

So much of baseball has been geared toward a three true outcomes mindset (homeruns, walks, strikeouts) so have the Red Sox WANTED their coaches to instruct players to take the hypothetical out (do you ground the ball to the right side with a runner on 3rd and one out) or are they told to keep swinging hard because of the higher analytical likelihood of the proverbial big inning.

To be clear - I agree with you - that's why I was a huge fan of Bogaerts and his ability (and consistency) with slapping the ball to the right side, driving in the run, and moving on. I'm hopeful this is the kind of player Grissom is (though this is mostly scouting the box score). But my question is have the Red Sox been instructing their coaches (or accepting of their coaches) even taking this kind of approach.

There was a lot of talk about the idea of "keeping the line moving" in 2018, and it was awesome (of course, that line up had FAR more talent than any line up since, which isn't really a shocking thing to anyone). I haven't really heard anything like that recently.

 

[Heating up in the bullpen]

Genuinely curious here - and I don't know if there is an answer and admit there might not be, however...

Do we have any idea how much of what the hitting coaches are instructed to say (or philosophy they're aligned with and thus hired because of) is directed by the front office and analytics.

The extreme example of course is the Twins and how they handled Ortiz, but how much of this do we know about the Red Sox and how they've been run recently.

So much of baseball has been geared toward a three true outcomes mindset (homeruns, walks, strikeouts) so have the Red Sox WANTED their coaches to instruct players to take the hypothetical out (do you ground the ball to the right side with a runner on 3rd and one out) or are they told to keep swinging hard because of the higher analytical likelihood of the proverbial big inning.

To be clear - I agree with you - that's why I was a huge fan of Bogaerts and his ability (and consistency) with slapping the ball to the right side, driving in the run, and moving on. I'm hopeful this is the kind of player Grissom is (though this is mostly scouting the box score). But my question is have the Red Sox been instructing their coaches (or accepting of their coaches) even taking this kind of approach.

There was a lot of talk about the idea of "keeping the line moving" in 2018, and it was awesome (of course, that line up had FAR more talent than any line up since, which isn't really a shocking thing to anyone). I haven't really heard anything like that recently.

Good question (bolded). I don't know. But looking at last year's line-up, I'd say Devers, post-May Casas, and Turner would be the only hitters I wouldn't be asking to take that approach. And Turner is such a pro he would do it on his own (my recollection of the season is that he was the only reliable run-producer with a runner on third and less than two outs).
But yeah, what they're actually asking them to do? Who knows.

 

[SirPsychoSquints]

Good question (bolded). I don't know. But looking at last year's line-up, I'd say Devers, post-May Casas, and Turner would be the only hitters I wouldn't be asking to take that approach. And Turner is such a pro he would do it on his own (my recollection of the season is that he was the only reliable run-producer with a runner on third and less than two outs).
But yeah, what they're actually asking them to do? Who knows.

Sox as a whole knocked in 212 runs, out of 341 PA with a runner on third and less than two outs. Turner knocked in 35 in 44 chances. That’s almost 8 runs better than the team as a whole, averaged over his chances, 28% or so more.

I can check each teammate later, but I imagine in such small sample sizes there’s a large variance.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/split.fcgi?id=turneju01&year=2023&t=b

Edit: here’s the whole team: https://stathead.com/tiny/MyfVa

edit2: Refsnyder, Duran and Duvall look better than Turner, everyone else worse or tiny sample.