Would the Twins Make a Shakeup at Hitting Coach?

[Doctor Wu]

13 hours ago, Whitey333 said:

While I wished they would have hired a more experienced hitting coach, perhaps someone with major league playing experience, I am not in favor of firing the hitting coach.  Most of the overpaid and underperforming star players we have on the team should still be able to hit but they are not.  Put the blame on the players themselves.

Agree with that 100%. I was not that enthused about hiring a younger hitting coach with so little experience, but when you are dealing with so many veteran players, they are the ones that have to answer to the performance issues. I don't think a hitting/batting coach is going to make that much difference with the established players. 

[old nurse]

15 hours ago, Craig Arko said:

TK was pretty young when he became manager. That worked, at least for a while.

Kelly was 35. Gardenhire was 44. Each was successful when they had the players.  Neither was very successful when they did not

[specialiststeve]

To say our hitting coach is over his skii's might be the understatement of the year. That and the continued swing for the fences mentality at all times .... I also hold Baldelli accountable as he is supposedly in charge. 

[Woof Bronzer]

To me the issue is philosophy, so if they let Popkins go they'd just hire someone else to carry out the "grip it and rip it" philosophy.  So I doubt a change would matter.  One of the reasons organizations may hire young inexperienced folks is they're hungry and don't have the built in equity to butt heads with bosses - vs hiring someone who's done it before and is more likely to challenge philosophies and decisions.  Similar to the "if they fire Rocco they'll just hire Rocco 2.0", I'd not bother with a hitting coach change.  

[danielp19653]

Not that I necessarily think they should as it seems like players are high on him, but what about whoever the hitting coach is in AAA? Seems like a lot of players sent down start producing again rather quickly. While a lot of that is easier pitching staffs I have to imagine they have the same scouting reports the MLB teams had and players wouldn't see the uptick they have been as quickly if he didn't give them some piece of advice that was working. Might also help out a lot of the younger guys who are more familiar with him vs Popkins, since he was the person who helped them get into the MLB.

[Aerodeliria]

Unless it's Kirilloff, the Twins won't have a .280 let alone a .300 hitter by season's end, but that's not my biggest complaint. It's the seven games that have been lost or frittered away because of mental mistakes and/or errors. Even in today's 4-3 win over the Padres, Correa made a mental error by watching his fly ball (thinking it was gone) in lieu of hustling out of the box, so he ended up with a double instead of a triple, so he gets thrown out at home on the base hit and Gallo makes a bad throw, which put the Twins in a tough spot. Poor focus is one element that can be addressed. Some of these players could do with a bit of Tom Kelly love, which means you sit at the start of the next game.

[John Belinski]

If the Twins batters keep swinging at pitches well out of the strike zone they will get fewer good pitches to hit.  I am sure every team now knows that the Twins hitters are swinging at pitches well out of strike zone so they will have their pitchers throw fewer strikes.  I think we have already seen that happen in the past few games where below average pitchers have not allowed many hits since the Twins batters were swinging at pitches they could not hit.  The Twins are in for  a long low scoring season if their hitters do not stop swinging at pitches out of the strike zone. Something has to change or the Twins will not be a winning team.  Even good starting pitchers need 3 or 4 runs to win their games.

I just do not think the Twins will make any changes and we will end up with a losing season just like last year. 

[tony&rodney]

I believe a few players (or more) are pressing and trying too hard. Gallo's throw was a little rushed for no good reason, but he has played a good left field. Correa has been great at shortstop but he over estimated the runner and hurried his multiple bounce throw which took a bad last hop or Kirilloff catches it for the out. Correa was barely out at the plate on the hardest throw from the outfiled this season in MLB. Tatis charged the ball and made a fantastic throw. Oh, Correa would likely have been thrown out at third base if he had hustled out of the box. Still the players should run out every play. We saw Polanco nabbed at second base when he thought he had hit a home run. Polanco really hustled on his last double. 

The pitching has been excellent overall and the bats will come around again. Imagine the concerns that San Diego fans have about Soto and then see how he has found something the last couple of days. It is a long season. 

[wombat28]

When Rowson left for Miami is when the Twins hitting started going south. Rowson had Miguel Sano making contact, hitting to the opposite field, hitting for average. Now he's out of MLB.

[jdgoin]

I don't know David Popkins. I do know hitting coaches are usually the easiest to blame for a crappy lineup. This is offensive baseball in the 2020's. Elevated pull-side approach.

[chpettit19]

9 hours ago, wombat28 said:

When Rowson left for Miami is when the Twins hitting started going south. Rowson had Miguel Sano making contact, hitting to the opposite field, hitting for average. Now he's out of MLB.

I think Rowson is an awesome example of how coaches don't really matter that much. They matter, but not nearly as much as people suggest. The idea being that Rowson was the key to the Twins hitting success in the late 20teens. He then went to Miami, and they were the worst offense in baseball before they let him go this offseason. Now he's with Detroit, who's scored the 3rd fewest runs in baseball. Right above the Marlins. MLB coaches are mostly just scapegoats for MLB front offices, but the truth is the talent of the players is all that really matters. If you build a terrible lineup like Miami had while Rowson was there they won't score. If you build a really good lineup like the Twins had while he was here they're going to score.

[Craig Arko]

The guy I’d really like to have is just leaving town, still a player.

Nelson Cruz.

[ashbury]

5 hours ago, jdgoin said:

I don't know David Popkins. I do know hitting coaches are usually the easiest to blame for a crappy lineup. This is offensive baseball in the 2020's. Elevated pull-side approach.

The Twins are at the top of the majors in pull-percentage, though. 

https://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/majors/2023-advanced-batting.shtml

[jdgoin]

41 minutes ago, ashbury said:

The Twins are at the top of the majors in pull-percentage, though. 

https://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/majors/2023-advanced-batting.shtml

That’s exactly their approach, and the game in general. Which is why I feel offense sucks. He’s probably not the issue. Most hitting coaches aren’t. It’s the crappy lineups because nobody can hit.

[ashbury]

23 minutes ago, jdgoin said:

That’s exactly their approach, and the game in general.

The MLB pull-percentage in 1988, the first year I find those numbers on b-r.com, was 31.7% overall.  This year it's at 29.9%.   That's a downward trend, not up.  I would have guessed the opposite, but it is what it is.

And our Twins are at 33.4%.  That would be near the highest even if it were still 1988, and definitely is tops (well, Seattle's a close second, and they are another low-BA team) in 2023.

Last year, if you're worried about small sample size for this young season, was 29.5% for MLB, and 30.2% for the Twins, so they were more in line with the league - closer to the middle than to the top. There's something new going on with our guys, since last year.

The batting average for the Twins is at an extreme this season, too.  Correlation is not causation, but it's still a place to look.

[ashbury]

Pull-percentage.  Because no one asked.... here's more. 

What's different for our Twins this year?  Well, for one thing we added Joey Gallo, and he's kind of off the charts as a pull hitter.  47.8% this year.  That's just kind of how he rolls, but he's above even his lofty career norm of 40.5%.  Of course due to injury he hasn't accounted for that many PA, so he's a factor but it's not like he's pulling the team percentage that far up all by himself.

And then there's Buxton.  He's right behind Gallo in pull-percentage at 43.9%.  Last year he was only at 36% and his career percentage is 33.6%.  He's pulling like crazy this year.

(As an aside, league-wide, among qualifiers for the batting title, Kyle Schwarber leads the way at 48.9% pull.  Kyle is batting a lusty .187 this season.)

Let's see, who else leads the Twins in pull%?  Polanco's at 40.7%, Kepler's at 39.2% (you KNOW he's going to show up as a leader in pulling the ball), and looky here, Nick Gordon is pulling 34.8% of the time (I think of him as a slap hitter - wrongly).

Bringing up the rear in pull% is Michael A Taylor at 19.7.  If Nick Gordon surprised me, at least MAT doesn'.t.

And lest you think I'm saying "go to the opposite field, your batting average is sure to rise," there is Carlos Correa.  He is just above MAT in pull% at 25.5%, pretty close to his career mark, and his batting average sits below .200, which is not his career mark.  Oh well, if there were simple answers, the offense would already be fixed.

One more thing.  What else is different this year is we traded Luis Arraez.  His pull% last year was 26.4%.  He's similar this year for the Marlins.

This is all anecdotal, because I'm not a wizard with spreadsheets so I just look up stuff that's interesting.  And I'm not a batting coach either - maybe for instance pitchers have some say over whether their opponents at bat get the kind of pitches you just have to try and pull and this year they're feeding our Twins a lot of that.  See the ball, pull the ball - it's simple and it gets complicated in a hurry.

Anyway, correlation isn't causation.  Low BA and high pull% just makes me go hmmmm.