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Post by redsoxfan2 on Aug 11, 2014 9:00:02 GMT -5
With the Red Sox scuffling offensively and having very minimal bright spots in the offense this season, I was wondering how the Red Sox hitting coach should be evaluated.
Here are a few key notes:
David Ortiz:
2014: .245/.338/.490/.828
Career: .284/.379/.545/.924
Dustin Pedroia:
2014: .282/.344/.378/.723
career: .300/.367/.446/.813
Jackie Bradly Jr:
.211/.281/.289/.571 *107K/29BB
Xander Bogaerts:
.230/.295/.349/.644 *108K/32BB
Will Middlebrooks:
.188/.278/.302/.580
Grady Sizemore
With Boston: .216/.288/.324/.612
With Philly: .315/.358/.427/.785
A.J. Pierzynski
With Boston: .254/.286/.348/.633
With St. Louis: .286/.342/.400/.742 (Only 35 AB)
Note: I included Tim Hyers because he was an interim hitting coach for a while when Greg Colbrunn was dealing with brain hemorrhaging.
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Post by caseytins on Aug 11, 2014 9:26:20 GMT -5
I think Colbrunn is gone in the offseason. The team has had an anemic offense all season and literally no one has shown any sign of improvement. In general, I think it is the easy way out to dismiss a coach, but in this case, it is long overdo.
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Post by jimed14 on Aug 11, 2014 9:47:03 GMT -5
It's hard to blame everything on coaching, but JBJ could use some good hitting instruction more than anyone. I think it's pretty clear he hasn't gotten it.
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Post by jmei on Aug 11, 2014 10:12:32 GMT -5
I don't think you can externally evaluate coaches like this. Almost all of what a coach does is behind closed doors, and only someone privy to his day-to-day activities can fairly assess his job performance.
Judging a hitting coach solely by how well the team has hit, on the other hand, seems highly speculative at best. It is essentially impossible to isolate Colbrunn's contribution to the above players' struggles. He didn't assemble the roster, and blaming him for their struggles seems like searching for a scapegoat more than anything else. That's especially true when you conveniently omit the players who have hit well this year (Napoli, Holt, Nava since his return) while emphasizing Sizemore's 95 PA, BABIP-driven line with the Phillies. Remember, the 2013 Red Sox hit incredibly well-- did Cobrunn just become a massively worse hitting coach in a year's time?
Maybe he really has done a bad job this year. But my point is that we don't know, and judging him on the basis of one season's worth of results doesn't get us much closer to knowing.
That's not to mention how callous it is to call for a guy to get fired months after he had a stroke on the job. But I digress.
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Post by redsoxfan2 on Aug 11, 2014 10:36:40 GMT -5
I'm not calling for him to be fired, just to have a discussion of his performance. If we can critique a manager, we should be able to do the same with a hitting coach. Fair or unfair a manager looks as good as his team performs. The same is true for hitting and pitching coaches.
I do agree that i should have listed some of the plus performers though Nava really struggled to open the season and I think, though i could be wrong, that he and JBJ started to coincidentally started turning around in June which might actually hurt his case, not help.
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Post by jimed14 on Aug 11, 2014 11:01:32 GMT -5
Well it's a lot easier to criticize a manager when his decisions are shown to us directly in games than when we're guessing about what a hitting coach is doing in private.
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Post by jmei on Aug 11, 2014 11:23:17 GMT -5
I'm not calling for him to be fired, just to have a discussion of his performance. If we can critique a manager, we should be able to do the same with a hitting coach. Fair or unfair a manager looks as good as his team performs. The same is true for hitting and pitching coaches. I do agree that i should have listed some of the plus performers though Nava really struggled to open the season and I think, though i could be wrong, that he and JBJ started to coincidentally started turning around in June which might actually hurt his case, not help. You might not explicitly be calling for him to be fired, but that's the clear subtext. The big difference, as jimed mentions above, is that we have more opportunities to meaningfully evaluate a manager. He talks with the media everyday, so we can get a rough estimate of his personality and management philosophy. We can also scrutinize his lineup, tactical (pinch-hitting, etc.), and bullpen decisions. Nothing like that is available for a hitting or pitching coach. |
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Post by grandsalami on Aug 11, 2014 12:07:55 GMT -5
I think Colbrunn is gone in the offseason. The team has had an anemic offense all season and literally no one has shown any sign of improvement. In general, I think it is the easy way out to dismiss a coach, but in this case, it is long overdo. I doubt it. Given what happened to him this year. He is also the same hitting coach who coached the sox last year when we were in the top 5 in every offensive stat. |
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Post by MLBDreams on Aug 11, 2014 12:30:59 GMT -5
It's best for Colbrunn & Rodriguez to be resign (instead of firing them) as RS hitting coaches due to ALL players being the worst stats of their career. I do feel bad about Greg's recently health situation. Not his fault.
The whole team is horrible with hitting all season which is the reason why they were in last place. Some of you seen they got only 6 hits in 19th inning game from recent Sat-Sun event. Both Detroit-Toronto were also played 19th inning game from yesterday which both teams got 22 & 17 hits.
Maybe the next new hitting coach is able to fix WMB, Bogaerts & JBJ. They won't improve at all if the hitting coaches remains for next season. I doubt it.
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Post by GyIantosca on Aug 11, 2014 12:40:51 GMT -5
You know what look at the difference Butterfield worked on Xander's fielding and it got progressively better. But the hitting never progressed. But Xander also is at fault too. So in conclusion the hitting coach will be replaced.
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