The O'Finky Factor

Rays Diary 6/7/14 - 6/8/14

Congratulations to the Rays on a one game winning streak.  As predicted, with a coach and manager both too lazy to do the hard work of baseball, Rays hitting continues to deteriorate.  As usual, no in-game adjustments are ever made by Rays field managing.  Worse yet, after the game, the “manager,” somehow totally lacking in the ability to enforce discipline, will claim that it was not his own failure to go to the mound and instruct his psychologically inept closer to throw fastballs to the opposition’s bumbling eighth and ninth hitters.  No, it was not the obviously horrible pitch selection, it was (ala the Tony Dungy same “obsessive compulsion” offensive “philosophy”) the horrible execution of the horrible pitch selection that buried the Rays today (6/8).

The real question seems to be: how long will the Rays front office pretend that their manager, no matter how much intelligence, grace and yes, potential he may possess, is actually managing?  Consider his personal choice as lazy amateur coach of the year, Derek Shelton.  Too lazy to take on the tedious job of watching film of game after game, he seems to rely, instead, on magic potions and old wives’ tales.  Take the case of the young strapping “utility” player who, in 2009, hit .297 with 27 homeruns and 91 RBI’s in a breakout year, the next season, pitchers obviously pitching him differently.  Two thirds of first pitches are on now hittable fastballs on the outside part of the plate, but he is told not to swing at them because they cannot be hit for homeruns, this despite his natural inclination to hit the ball to the opposite field for a single.  According to his batting coach, at number five in the lineup at that time, hitting .300 with only a few homeruns was simply not acceptable in the game of “obsessive compulsion!”  Second pitches are usually inside pitches which he begins to swing at in frustration, trying to unleash his powerful swing.  Instead of enduring the drudgery of reviewing how differently the pitchers are treating the young player, his lazy and extremely ignorant batting coach tells him that he needs to use his hands more, the exact opposite of what he should be told. The only time one has to use his hands is if he is trying to drive a pitch that is too far inside. Use of the hands, of course, in both baseball and golf should not come into play until after the ball is struck, as virtually all slow motion videos will show!   Employing the hands too early in the swing (almost impossible to avoid when one swings too hard) results in tremendous loss of power and enormous increase in ground balls “rolled over” into double plays.  Besides this, according to Ted Williams, Stan Musial, Joe Morgan and other hitters apparently not to be believed, if you start hitting the outside pitch consistently, pitchers will start coming in over the plate much more often than they would like, giving the hitter a better chance to drive the ball!

As a result of his faith in an “obsessive compulsion” coach instead of a real coach, however, the strapping player has developed a silly looking “handsy pandsy” hitting technique, managing to decrease his batting average by 20 to 30 points, his RBI’s by 20 and his homerun output by at least 50%.  His pseudo-coach’s advice?  “Make your handsy pandsy swing more handsy.”  At this rate, sooner or later the rest of the team is sure to follow.