It’s reasonably accepted in baseball circles that good pitching tends to beat good hitting. It’s why general managers build teams from the pitching mound out. But following the Cleveland Indians this season, particularly in the last seven days, what we’ve learned is that it’s equally true that bad pitching also beats bad hitting.
Around the fringes, people keep talking about the Indians’ offensive woes like it is the economy. Management, in the form of manager Eric Wedge and general manager Mark Shapiro, is reluctant to admit the recession that’s evident to everyone else, but it is now willing to at least concede that there has been some sort of slowdown. Well, recognition that a problem exists is always helpful, but Shapiro isn’t going to be able to paper over it by mailing out refund checks to the hapless that paid good money to watch bad baseball this past week and then skip town.
In a historical context, the Indians haven’t suddenly rediscovered the 1970s. But if you want to use history as a teacher, then just know that the last time the Indians went through a stretch like this they fired the hitting coach. Which raises the question, is current hitting coach Derek Shelton in trouble?
Following Sunday’s shut out to the terminally futile Kansas City Royals, Wedge said that everything was open for evaluation. Most of the ensuing discussion focused on the players, the lineups and darn near everything else but Shelton. If the team is really going to do something more than the usual gestures like changing the lineup and calling up a player or two, then Shelton is fair game. And if Shelton is fair game, then he has reason to be worried, for about 62 million more reasons than you think.
It was just under three years ago when Shelton replaced Eddie Murray under nearly identical circumstances, at least on the surface. It was early June and the Indians were hitting .243 as a team, a figure which is actually one point better than the Indians current team batting average. When Wedge fired Murray, he said “it's not just about right now, it's just about what we feel is best for our ballclub today, the future and long term. From an offensive standpoint, I feel we can do better. But it's not just about Eddie Murray. I just felt that we needed to make a change and I felt this was best for our ballclub.”
That move by Wedge was still one of the best managerial moves he’s made. Being freed from the shadowy grip of the moody Murray, Indians hitters across the board responded. By season’s end, the team’s average was .271, nearly 30 points higher. They were also fourth in the league in runs scored and third in on-base percentage. It was an onslaught that continued throughout 2006 as well. But as 2007 wore on and now nearly a quarter of the 2008 season in the books, the drop in production has been dramatic.
Clearly Indians hitters were more welcoming to Shelton, at least at the onset. But at this point, it’s almost as if you could simply substitute Sheton’s name in Wedge’s quote about Murray and make it fit equally as well. That doesn’t mean that Shelton is entirely to blame for the current woes, but it’s undeniable that the team has been in a hitting tailspin for most of the last 200 games.
The real onus for the offensive struggles appears to be focused far more intently on Travis Hafner, but that doesn’t take the heat off of Shelton. If anything, it increases it. Enough has already been said about Hafner’s struggles to fill the library in his hometown of Jamestown, North Dakota, which may not be saying much actually. And ignoring the roadside psychology of those who are prone to diagnose a problem they couldn’t be more ill-equipped to evaluate, the larger truth is that the correlation between Hafner’s so-called slump and the Indians overall offense is nearly perfect.
Certainly, Hafner’s personal lack of production accounts for a big part of the team’s dip. But it’s not just the lack of hitting. The real problem is the stench that Hafner’s struggles create on the rest of the lineup. There are such things as team slumps, but when the one guy more than any other in the lineup that’s paid to hit no longer can, all it’s done is increase the pressure on every one else. Other than catcher Victor Martinez, who is a hitting savant like Manny Ramierez but without similar power, you can literally see every other player in the lineup trying to do too much, time and time again..
If Ryan Garko, for example, swings any harder, his large intestine is going to pop out of its casing. Casey Blake seems to walk to the plate feeling like he has to defy his career stats and hit .350 and 40 home runs when the Indians would be far better off if he’d just get to those career averages. Asdrubal Cabrera just seems lost. Jhonny Peralta appears bored.
This is where guys like Shelton are really supposed to earn their keep. Wedge continues to bemoan not just the lack of hitting but the inability of his hitters to put themselves into good hitters counts. He’s been critical, too, of the lack of adjustments that his players are making from at bat to at bat and from game to game. The simple question is whose fault is that? Not to carry the analogy too far, but Shelton is somewhat akin to a football team’s offensive coordinator. If a team supposedly has the right players—and Indians management has made it clear that it believes it has the right players—then blaming the players only gets you so far. Time to turn to the one calling the plays.
But if you’re Shelton, where do you start given that there’s only 24 hours in a day? You could attack the symptoms, like Garko, Blake, and the dynamic duo of Jason Michaels and David Dellucci. You can try and straighten out Cabrera before he loses confidence. You can even given Peralta an extra can of Mountain Dew with his pre-game meal. But first and foremost, if Shelton is astute at all, his energy will be expended in figuring out if Hafner is salvageable. Right now the Indians have about $62 million committed to Hafner through 2013 and if he continues to hit like Bob Uecker then his deal will be a bigger albatross around the Indians neck than Barry Zito’s contract will be with the San Francisco Giants. If Hafner isn’t going to make it, the impact on the team and ownership won’t stop reverberating for the next decade.
Given the size of that investment, the Indians will dump Shelton long before they change course on Hafner, even as he’s become baseball’s equivalent of golf’s David Duval, a major winner who now can’t break 80. If Shelton doesn’t understand this calculus and find a way to right the biggest ship of all soon, then his inevitable firing in early June will actually be well deserved. The only problem, though, is unlike in 2005, an immediate resurgence doesn’t appear nearly as likely.
Showing posts with label Ryan Garko. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ryan Garko. Show all posts
Monday, May 05, 2008
Wednesday, August 01, 2007
The Waiting Game
It’s such a fine line between a slump and a trend that sometimes it’s hard to tell which is which. But anyone watching the Cleveland Indians sleepwalk their way through the current homestand probably doesn’t care which it is. They just want it to change.
The questions, as always, are how and how soon. As it stands, the Indians made no moves at the trade deadline, so we now know that any change will come from within, barring some sort of waiver wire deal between now and the end of August. What remains is the more problematic question of how soon.
The failure to make a trade has likely unglued many of the faithful most of who see the Indians failures, particularly of late, as more indicative of a trend and not a slump, meaning that left undisturbed, things aren’t likely to magically turn for the better. For those in that camp, there is plenty of ammunition.
For example, it might be useful to update the numbers from the analysis provided a few weeks ago (see article here) detailing the offensive problems of this team, despite its overall run total and record. On the other hand, that update isn’t really needed. There is nothing that’s occurred in the last 10 days that suggests any improvement. If anything, the numbers are worse, meaning that the Indians of the last 10 days are hitting worse in every key situation—runners in scoring position, runners in scoring position and two outs, bases loaded, etc.
Anyone who watched the Indians play the Texas Rangers on Tuesday night knows this is true. Travis Hafner was 0-4, again, and looked bad doing it. His off-balance whiff at a high fastball for the third strike in his first at bat was typical, just as was the two pop outs that followed. Yet manager Eric Wedge keeps putting Hafner in the fourth spot in the order hoping, against hope, that things will change. They haven’t for awhile.
But Hafner was hardly alone in making Brandon McCarthy look nothing like the pitcher who, until tuesday, had failed to make it to the seventh inning in any start this season. The Indians had four hits and looked completely disinterested and uninspired, despite having had the previous day off. For fans in the camp of change is needed, nothing provides greater fuel for that argument than a team seemingly stuck in neutral.
For those who don’t necessarily think the Indians needed to make a move, there is plenty of ammunition for them as well. For example, it is true that even the best teams are flawed in some respect and thus can always use reinforcements. But having failed to obtain those reinforcements need not be fatal to the Tribe, particularly this year as pretty much every top tier team is flawed as well. Moreover, none of the contenders in the AL Central made a move either so in that regard, the Indians stand no differently vis-à-vis the competition today than they did, say, last Wednesday.
There also is the fact that despite how much he is hurting the team presently, Hafner’s career stats are still more suggestive of a prolonged slump than anything else. His lack of production this season in every key category is so far below where he has been historically that more patience seems a reasonable approach for even minimal improvement now is likely to make a noticeable difference in the offensive direction of the club.
But whatever camp you may be in as a fan, it’s pretty clear where Shapiro clearly stands. Believing that the price to be paid for reinforcements was too great, by default he put himself in the category of believing that internal adjustments are likely to yield sufficient results. We’ll see. So far the minor adjustments that have been made have been inconclusive, to say the least.
The trade for Kenny Lofton last week ultimately is of minor significance but the thinking behind the acquisition is still puzzling. For one thing, Lofton, at his age, is no longer an everyday player and if this team has anything in spades, it’s platoon players. Second, he’s a classic leadoff hitter, a role being ably filled by Grady Sizemore. Going into Wednesday’s game, Lofton has had a total of 7,979 at bats during his 17-year career. Of that, 6,926 have been as a leadoff hitter. He’s had 776 at-bats from the second slot in the order and a smattering of at-bats elsewhere in the lineup, but clearly Lofton’s career has been built on batting leadoff.
No question that the Indians need an impact hitter, but it’s hard to figure Lofton for that role since he’s never really played it at any point in his career and he isn’t likely to begin playing that now.
The other adjustments Shapiro has made, sending struggling Cliff Lee to Buffalo and the outrighting of Fernando Cabrera after Tuesday night’s game to allow for the return of Aaron Fultz are simply too new to have had any impact.
But standing back and allowing more time to assess what’s been done so far isn’t the answer, either. Adjustments need to be made, now. For example, given a piece he didn’t necessarily need, Wedge now needs to rethink his decision on where to bat Lofton. It’s somewhat easy to understand why Wedge bats Lofton second, but in doing so it takes Lofton out of his comfort zone and, incidentally, has negatively impacted Casey Blake. Blake’s current batting average of .268 is nine points higher than his career average. But interestingly, most of that uptick happened when Wedge moved Blake to second in the order. Since the acquisition of Lofton and the subsequent dropping of Blake to the bottom of the order, Blake is hitting only .190.
This isn’t to suggest that Lofton move to the leadoff spot, either. Nothing that disruptive needs to be done. Instead, a potentially better move might actually be to have Lofton bat ninth. This would allow Wedge to bat Josh Barfield eighth and move Blake back to the number two spot. This also would put the Indians in the position of having three hitters with good speed in succession for most of the game batting in front of hitters like Blake, Victor Martinez, Hafner and Ryan Garko, all of whom can drive the ball. As it stands, with Blake batting eighth, the Indians lineup lacks a theme and is out of sync.
Wedge also needs to rethink Hafner’s spot in the lineup. At a minimum, he needs to switch Garko and Hafner. Though Garko of late is struggling like the rest of his teammates, he did hit .369 in the last month. Of his 24 hits during that stretch, half were for extra bases (7 doubles, 5 home runs). By comparison, Martinez is hitting .241 during that stretch with 8 doubles and 3 home runs. Hafner is hitting .250 with 3 doubles and 4 home runs.
Following Tuesday night’s loss, Wedge told the media that his offense needs to put better at bats together, be tougher outs. He challenged each of his hitters to step up and make a difference. All true, but that same advice applies to Wedge as well. Right now, he has to put the offense in a position to get better, something he hasn’t done yet. The lineup needs to be shaken up and now. With the most critical part of the season upon them simply waiting for better results isn’t the answer.
The questions, as always, are how and how soon. As it stands, the Indians made no moves at the trade deadline, so we now know that any change will come from within, barring some sort of waiver wire deal between now and the end of August. What remains is the more problematic question of how soon.
The failure to make a trade has likely unglued many of the faithful most of who see the Indians failures, particularly of late, as more indicative of a trend and not a slump, meaning that left undisturbed, things aren’t likely to magically turn for the better. For those in that camp, there is plenty of ammunition.
For example, it might be useful to update the numbers from the analysis provided a few weeks ago (see article here) detailing the offensive problems of this team, despite its overall run total and record. On the other hand, that update isn’t really needed. There is nothing that’s occurred in the last 10 days that suggests any improvement. If anything, the numbers are worse, meaning that the Indians of the last 10 days are hitting worse in every key situation—runners in scoring position, runners in scoring position and two outs, bases loaded, etc.
Anyone who watched the Indians play the Texas Rangers on Tuesday night knows this is true. Travis Hafner was 0-4, again, and looked bad doing it. His off-balance whiff at a high fastball for the third strike in his first at bat was typical, just as was the two pop outs that followed. Yet manager Eric Wedge keeps putting Hafner in the fourth spot in the order hoping, against hope, that things will change. They haven’t for awhile.
But Hafner was hardly alone in making Brandon McCarthy look nothing like the pitcher who, until tuesday, had failed to make it to the seventh inning in any start this season. The Indians had four hits and looked completely disinterested and uninspired, despite having had the previous day off. For fans in the camp of change is needed, nothing provides greater fuel for that argument than a team seemingly stuck in neutral.
For those who don’t necessarily think the Indians needed to make a move, there is plenty of ammunition for them as well. For example, it is true that even the best teams are flawed in some respect and thus can always use reinforcements. But having failed to obtain those reinforcements need not be fatal to the Tribe, particularly this year as pretty much every top tier team is flawed as well. Moreover, none of the contenders in the AL Central made a move either so in that regard, the Indians stand no differently vis-à-vis the competition today than they did, say, last Wednesday.
There also is the fact that despite how much he is hurting the team presently, Hafner’s career stats are still more suggestive of a prolonged slump than anything else. His lack of production this season in every key category is so far below where he has been historically that more patience seems a reasonable approach for even minimal improvement now is likely to make a noticeable difference in the offensive direction of the club.
But whatever camp you may be in as a fan, it’s pretty clear where Shapiro clearly stands. Believing that the price to be paid for reinforcements was too great, by default he put himself in the category of believing that internal adjustments are likely to yield sufficient results. We’ll see. So far the minor adjustments that have been made have been inconclusive, to say the least.
The trade for Kenny Lofton last week ultimately is of minor significance but the thinking behind the acquisition is still puzzling. For one thing, Lofton, at his age, is no longer an everyday player and if this team has anything in spades, it’s platoon players. Second, he’s a classic leadoff hitter, a role being ably filled by Grady Sizemore. Going into Wednesday’s game, Lofton has had a total of 7,979 at bats during his 17-year career. Of that, 6,926 have been as a leadoff hitter. He’s had 776 at-bats from the second slot in the order and a smattering of at-bats elsewhere in the lineup, but clearly Lofton’s career has been built on batting leadoff.
No question that the Indians need an impact hitter, but it’s hard to figure Lofton for that role since he’s never really played it at any point in his career and he isn’t likely to begin playing that now.
The other adjustments Shapiro has made, sending struggling Cliff Lee to Buffalo and the outrighting of Fernando Cabrera after Tuesday night’s game to allow for the return of Aaron Fultz are simply too new to have had any impact.
But standing back and allowing more time to assess what’s been done so far isn’t the answer, either. Adjustments need to be made, now. For example, given a piece he didn’t necessarily need, Wedge now needs to rethink his decision on where to bat Lofton. It’s somewhat easy to understand why Wedge bats Lofton second, but in doing so it takes Lofton out of his comfort zone and, incidentally, has negatively impacted Casey Blake. Blake’s current batting average of .268 is nine points higher than his career average. But interestingly, most of that uptick happened when Wedge moved Blake to second in the order. Since the acquisition of Lofton and the subsequent dropping of Blake to the bottom of the order, Blake is hitting only .190.
This isn’t to suggest that Lofton move to the leadoff spot, either. Nothing that disruptive needs to be done. Instead, a potentially better move might actually be to have Lofton bat ninth. This would allow Wedge to bat Josh Barfield eighth and move Blake back to the number two spot. This also would put the Indians in the position of having three hitters with good speed in succession for most of the game batting in front of hitters like Blake, Victor Martinez, Hafner and Ryan Garko, all of whom can drive the ball. As it stands, with Blake batting eighth, the Indians lineup lacks a theme and is out of sync.
Wedge also needs to rethink Hafner’s spot in the lineup. At a minimum, he needs to switch Garko and Hafner. Though Garko of late is struggling like the rest of his teammates, he did hit .369 in the last month. Of his 24 hits during that stretch, half were for extra bases (7 doubles, 5 home runs). By comparison, Martinez is hitting .241 during that stretch with 8 doubles and 3 home runs. Hafner is hitting .250 with 3 doubles and 4 home runs.
Following Tuesday night’s loss, Wedge told the media that his offense needs to put better at bats together, be tougher outs. He challenged each of his hitters to step up and make a difference. All true, but that same advice applies to Wedge as well. Right now, he has to put the offense in a position to get better, something he hasn’t done yet. The lineup needs to be shaken up and now. With the most critical part of the season upon them simply waiting for better results isn’t the answer.
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