Don Long’s Hitting Philosophy

As I mentioned in a post or two yesterday, the Bucs officially announced their new Hitting Coach, Don Long, late of the Phillies minor league system. Here is a bit of Long’s hitting philosophy:

“The thing I’m interested in is connecting with each player and not just go with a blanket technique,” Long said. “That’s a little bit cliched, I know, but you really have to get to know the player. You have to get them to trust what you’re telling them.”

OK, know your player’s weaknesses and strengths and then coach accordingly. Sounds good so far.

“The type of hitter we’re going to try to create is an aggressive but under control hitter,” he (Long) said. “When he steps up to home plate, he’s ready to hit every pitch until his eyes tell him no. He has to see the ball and recognize where it’s going before he actually goes after it. . . . A lot of people are promoting walks in the game, and I believe this philosophy leads to that.”

Interesting since this is a very aggressive hitting team made up of a lot of free swingers. They drew the fewest number of walks last year and I don’t know if things can change all that much with just a new hitting coach. It’s always been my theory that the hitting coach doesn’t really make that big of a difference because the players just go according to their natural tendencies.

I would love to be proven wrong with this theory and I hope that Long can do just that.

Spring Training Schedule Released

Spring gets a step closer with this news.

It’s official – Long is new hitting coach

The news article from pirates.com. Not a lot of new information in the article though. This does lead me to a question that I have, but I don’t know the answer. Is Russell being able to hire his “own” people or is he just providing some input here and there?

New Hitting Coach

It looks like Don Long will be the new hitting coach for the Pirates. Long has worked with Russell the past two years while they were both with the Phillies organization.

No Surgery Needed

Grabow, Bay, LaRoche and Nady all are recovering from their injuries and won’t have to go under the knife according to the Post-Gazette. Let’s hope that this bodes well for their ‘08 seasons.

Can Attitude Alone change a team?

Well, Bob Smizik has an article in today’s Post-Gazette and he brings up an interesting thesis, but not one that I necessarily agree with. his basic theory is that it doesn’t matter what type of culture the Pirates what to change, what really matters are the players and the players alone. Let’s take a look at some of what he as to say:

When hired in September, president Frank Coonelly said there was a need to “change the entire culture” of the Pirates.

Earlier this month, when introduced as manager, John Russell said, “It is my responsibility to restore the culture of pride and passion in the clubhouse.”

Oh, that that culture were so important or that it were so easily changed.

Jim Tracy made almost exactly the same point when he took over as manager in 2005. He thought his techniques, and those of his coaches, would have the kind of impact that turns a loser into a winner. Tracy was fired after extending the Pirates’ consecutive losing streak to 15 seasons.

You don’t change culture with talk.

I have to admit that Smizik does have a point, I think that every manager or coach that takes over a loosing program or franchise says the same things. However, I think that is where the comparison between Tracy and Russell ends. Tracy talked a good game but he was not abl to back it not. Moreover, the president or the general manager of the team didn’t talk about how the culture should change. He is also correct that you don’t change the culture with just talk, nor do I think talking is all that is going to be done. I think that there is going to be a level of accountability that will be running up and down the organization. That will start with the President of the team and trickle down all the way to the players by way of the manager. Let’s take another section of Smizik’s column shall we?

The players on the field mean almost everything.

The notion that a change in attitude will make a startling difference is a ruse, the only one left for the Pirates to keep the fans who value good baseball interested. If anything, it will be more difficult to change the culture in the clubhouse because the Pirates will have pretty much the same cast of players next season as last. These guys have been beaten down by the losing to the point it will be difficult for them to embrace any new program, no matter how convincing Russell might be.

A couple of things here, first see my comment about accountability because I think that will help things along. Another thing is that of course players matter and we have a real dearth of talent and the way to get better talent and continue to change the attitude is to stock the minors with quality players, which I think is the goal of things going forward for this team.

Pirates Interested in Clement

First of all, I hope all of you had a great Thanksgiving and hopefully you had a good 4 days off. Secondly,  it looks lik Dejan Kovacevic is back on the Bucco beat (back from his vacation) and it’s good to have him back.  I have always enjoyed his writing. In his first report back, Dejan reports that the Bucs have some interest in acquiring the services of Matt Clement. Although he does say that it’s unknown if they are a serious player, I think that this is a bad idea.

The reason is that Clement is coming off a year where he had surgery on his shoulder. No matter how medicine improves it wil always take a while for someone to recover from the surgery, and the Pirates can’t afford to have a player, that is a free agent no less, that will be doing his on the field rehab  while with the team. This is the kind of move that our previous General Manager would attempt and then hope that he would be able to trade him in the middle of the year for some meaningless talent.

But on the plus side, it looks like teams like the Blue Jays have set their sights on Clement so there is a strong chance they the Pirates won’t be involved in the bidding.

Andrews’ first goal – Fix Duke

Interesting things came out from yesterday’s press conference with Jeff Andrews. One of the things that he wants to do is get Zach Duke straightened out. From the mouth of Mr. Andrews:

“He can pitch,” said Andrews, announced by the Pirates as their pitching coach yesterday. “I think he’s going to come out of it.”

It seems that Zach has some mechanics problems and reading between the lines these mechanics issues seem to have been brought about by the tinkering that Colburn did to him over the past two years. Quoteth Jeff:

“Mechanics isn’t a real fun issue to talk about,” Andrews said, “but we need him to become consistent. I think it’s going to work. I think he’s going to believe in it. It’s pretty basic stuff — but he’s a pretty basic pitcher.

“The big goal is to get it worked out in spring training, so he will be able to go full throttle into the season.”

I’ll admit it, I had thought that it was more of an issue of Duke not readjusting to the adjustments the hitters made against him.

Meet the new pitching coach

Well, my prediction about no more announcements until after Thanksgiving was way off base. The Pirates announced their new pitching coach this afternoon and his name is Jeff Andrews, he was from within the organization as the Pitching coach at AAA for the last two years and the pitching coach at AA Altoona for 3 years before that.

It’s interesting though what this means for our young pitchers, and this was being discussed on the Pirates mailing list. I feel as do others that this is good for our staff and Wilbur Miller (and a lot of his work can be found at onlybucs.net) pointed out that a majority of the staff was throwing harder under Andrews in the minors then they were under Colburn when they got to the majors.

Another concern that I had was that there have been a good number of arm injuries of Pirate prospects in the past few years and I wondered, what accountability does Andrews have for these injuries? Wilbur again gave a very rational explanation about how he can’t be accountable for those injuries:

Some of the victims in the team’s long line of 1st round casualties didn’t pitch for him. Bobby Bradley didn’t, or at least not until after his problems were well underway. Brad Lincoln never pitched for him. Burnett, JVB and Bullington all did, but none for more than a year through the time of their injuries. Burnett by the time he pitched under Andrews was in his 4th year in the system. JVB, who was with Andrews only half a season, was in his 3rd. Bullington was in his second.

40 Man roster is set

The Pirates formalized their 40 man roster last night (as every team did) but putting on right-handers Olivo Astacio and Ronald Belisario and shortstop Brian Bixler and picking up right-hander Jimmy Barthmaier via waivers from the Astros.

To make room for those players the Bucs had to drop some people as well and they are Josh Sharpless, Shane Youman and first baseman Josh Phelps. All three were designated for assignment.

I hope that nobody picks up Phelps since I think that he is able to bring some offense to the table on a team that is starved for some. But I think that these were good moves because they are protecting the younger players and not only the young pitchers.

For the full 40 man roster, visit pirates.com