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Yeah--fire the hitting coach. Big, ballsy move. This is a case where top management (Hendry) is feeling the pressure of an underperforming team--a team he created. So he does something just to be doing something--it won't make a bit of difference. Firing Lou might have made a difference, but not the hitting coach.
I'm 100% fine with this. I'm just glad there's an actual plan in place that isn't, "Let's load up on retreads and hope we get lucky." I'm a little tired of that plan.
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<!--quoteo(post=44145:date=Jun 14 2009, 08:42 PM:name=chitownwinninitall)-->QUOTE (chitownwinninitall @ Jun 14 2009, 08:42 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}><!--quotec-->Just a question, but is there any correlation between a guys playing career and coaching career. Leo Mazzone and Dave Duncan sucked as players but are two of the better pitching coaches in the last decade. I do know I had never heard of guys like Soto, Fox, Hoff, and Scales until they got to AAA and they put up good numbers and got their shot in the bigs, maybe he knows how to show a guy how to hit but can't hit himself, it wouldnt be the first time something like that happened. I say give him a chance, why not?. I think some of these major league coaches really don't do shit for established guys so is this really a big deal?<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
It's a good question, I guess I just assumed that a hitting coach should be somebody who knows about hitting and was proficient at it. Then again I think it was Milwaukee, fired Rod Carew as hitting coach because the players weren't hitting. One would assume Rod Carew would be damn good hitting coach, but alot of it is the ability to communicate. Heck you are probably right, a few of my football teams I coached were really decent but I really and totally sucked as a football player.
The Crabby and Bitchy Old Man of SOI
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<!--quoteo(post=44152:date=Jun 14 2009, 08:02 PM:name=Lance)-->QUOTE (Lance @ Jun 14 2009, 08:02 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}><!--quotec-->Yeah--fire the hitting coach. Big, ballsy move. This is a case where top management (Hendry) is feeling the pressure of an underperforming team--a team he created. So he does something just to be doing something--it won't make a bit of difference. Firing Lou might have made a difference, but not the hitting coach.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Agreed. I'm convinced that Hendry won't do anything to Lou until Ryno is "MLB ready".
I hate my pretentious sounding username too.
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<!--quoteo(post=44153:date=Jun 14 2009, 08:03 PM:name=MALou18)-->QUOTE (MALou18 @ Jun 14 2009, 08:03 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}><!--quotec--><!--quoteo(post=44145:date=Jun 14 2009, 08:42 PM:name=chitownwinninitall)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (chitownwinninitall @ Jun 14 2009, 08:42 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}><!--quotec-->Just a question, but is there any correlation between a guys playing career and coaching career. Leo Mazzone and Dave Duncan sucked as players but are two of the better pitching coaches in the last decade. I do know I had never heard of guys like Soto, Fox, Hoff, and Scales until they got to AAA and they put up good numbers and got their shot in the bigs, maybe he knows how to show a guy how to hit but can't hit himself, it wouldnt be the first time something like that happened. I say give him a chance, why not?. I think some of these major league coaches really don't do shit for established guys so is this really a big deal?<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
It's a good question, I guess I just assumed that a hitting coach should be somebody who knows about hitting and was proficient at it. Then again I think it was Milwaukee, fired Rod Carew as hitting coach because the players weren't hitting. One would assume Rod Carew would be damn good hitting coach, but alot of it is the ability to communicate. Heck you are probably right, a few of my football teams I coached were really decent but I really and totally sucked as a football player.
<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Star players, or great hitters are not usually great coaches because they didn't have to overcome as much struggle as the average ballplayer. Patience is key. A lot of those guys struggle as coaches because they can't relate to the players.
I hate my pretentious sounding username too.
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IMO communication in whatever game you are coaching is the biggest key in coaching players. However if you dont have a clue on how to communicate whatever knowledge you migh...t have you might as well know nothing about the game.
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<!--quoteo(post=44160:date=Jun 14 2009, 08:38 PM:name=stevestonescigar)-->QUOTE (stevestonescigar @ Jun 14 2009, 08:38 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}><!--quotec-->IMO communication in whatever game you are coaching is the biggest key in coaching players. However if you dont have a clue on how to communicate whatever knowledge you migh...t have you might as well know nothing about the game.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Agreed.
I hate my pretentious sounding username too.
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2/3 years Perry was here, our hitting was pretty mediocre. I'm not at all saying it was all on the hitting coach, but it tells you something about how this team is constructed. This organization can never seem to put a consistently good product on the field from year to year. One year the pitching is great, the next not so much. One season the offense is great, the next not so much. It doesn't help that from year to year we end up with 40-50% personnel turnover either, and it's asking a lot from the coaching staff to get results immediately with all these new faces around. I'm not sure what message this decision is going to send to the players, or if they're even receptive to any kind of shakeup or finger pointing. This team seems to be a lifeless bunch of excuse-makers, and if I hear another cliche about how it's still early, or that things always work themselves out, and water finds its own level, blah blah blah, well, maybe this just isn't our year. What ever happened to that sense of urgency to win now? It's like nobody gives a shit, but hey let's blame one man who never swings the bat when 12-13 grown men are underperforming. It's too easy.
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I don't see this as making Perry the scapegoat, or an attempt to be a "ballsy move", or anything like that. I just think when guys are struggling as much as they are, you just need to shake things up and give a different guy a chance to give a different take on how to help.
The thing you need to remember is that all Cardinals fans and all White Sox fans are very bad people. It's a fact that has been scientifically proven beyond a shadow of a doubt. Being a Cubs fan is the only path to rightousness and piousness. Cardinal and White Sox fans exist to be the dark, diabolical forces that oppose us. They are the yin to our yang, the Joker to our Batman, the demon to our angel, the insurgence to our freedom, the oil to our water, the club to our baby seal. Their happiness occurs only in direct conflict with everything that is pure and good in this world.
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<!--quoteo(post=44167:date=Jun 15 2009, 12:18 AM:name=rok)-->QUOTE (rok @ Jun 15 2009, 12:18 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}><!--quotec-->2/3 years Perry was here, our hitting was pretty mediocre. I'm not at all saying it was all on the hitting coach, but it tells you something about how this team is constructed. This organization can never seem to put a consistently good product on the field from year to year. One year the pitching is great, the next not so much. One season the offense is great, the next not so much. It doesn't help that from year to year we end up with 40-50% personnel turnover either, and it's asking a lot from the coaching staff to get results immediately with all these new faces around. I'm not sure what message this decision is going to send to the players, or if they're even receptive to any kind of shakeup or finger pointing. This team seems to be a lifeless bunch of excuse-makers, and if I hear another cliche about how it's still early, or that things always work themselves out, and water finds its own level, blah blah blah, well, maybe this just isn't our year. What ever happened to that sense of urgency to win now? It's like nobody gives a shit, but hey let's blame one man who never swings the bat when 12-13 grown men are underperforming. It's too easy.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This organization has put a consistently good product on the field. I don't know what you expect, 14 straight NL Central titles. That's never going to happen again. I think winning back to back central titles is consistent enough for me.
We didn't have 40% personnel turnover. One everyday player was added and one was taken away. That's not the issue here.
And yes, if you're in charge of making sure guys hit, and they don't hit, you should lose your job. If I'm in charge of 12 salesmen and they don't make a fucking sale, I can't fire all of them. The boss is going to fire me.
Bottom line is we got career years out of almost everyone on the field last year. Those guys aren't hitting the same this year. Is that cause A-Ram's been out? Maybe. I don't know. Maybe it's just that guys like Theriot, FuK, and Font are what we thought they were.
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perry was a scapegoat. to me it's obvious. if anyone thinks it's his fault that hitters aren't hitting, how do you explain last year when they were? hendry can't fire the players, he isn't going to fire lou, and he won't fire himself. someone had to be sacrificed. may as well fire the easiest guy to fire.
Wang.
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<!--quoteo(post=44179:date=Jun 15 2009, 08:42 AM:name=vitaminB)-->QUOTE (vitaminB @ Jun 15 2009, 08:42 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}><!--quotec--><!--quoteo(post=44167:date=Jun 15 2009, 12:18 AM:name=rok)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (rok @ Jun 15 2009, 12:18 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}><!--quotec-->2/3 years Perry was here, our hitting was pretty mediocre. I'm not at all saying it was all on the hitting coach, but it tells you something about how this team is constructed. This organization can never seem to put a consistently good product on the field from year to year. One year the pitching is great, the next not so much. One season the offense is great, the next not so much. It doesn't help that from year to year we end up with 40-50% personnel turnover either, and it's asking a lot from the coaching staff to get results immediately with all these new faces around. I'm not sure what message this decision is going to send to the players, or if they're even receptive to any kind of shakeup or finger pointing. This team seems to be a lifeless bunch of excuse-makers, and if I hear another cliche about how it's still early, or that things always work themselves out, and water finds its own level, blah blah blah, well, maybe this just isn't our year. What ever happened to that sense of urgency to win now? It's like nobody gives a shit, but hey let's blame one man who never swings the bat when 12-13 grown men are underperforming. It's too easy.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This organization has put a consistently good product on the field. I don't know what you expect, 14 straight NL Central titles. That's never going to happen again. I think winning back to back central titles is consistent enough for me.
We didn't have 40% personnel turnover. One everyday player was added and one was taken away. That's not the issue here. And career years from people last season? Who?
And yes, if you're in charge of making sure guys hit, and they don't hit, you should lose your job. If I'm in charge of 12 salesmen and they don't make a fucking sale, I can't fire all of them. The boss is going to fire me.
Bottom line is we got career years out of almost everyone on the field last year. Those guys aren't hitting the same this year. Is that cause A-Ram's been out? Maybe. I don't know. Maybe it's just that guys like Theriot, FuK, and Font are what we thought they were.
<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
So what are you saying, that this is some sort of magic bullet? And I'm sorry, but 2 winning seasons, 2 losing seasons, and 2 winning seasons with varying degrees of effectiveness by our offense year in and year out is not what I consider to be a consistent product. The pitching has been about the only thing that has been semi-reliable over the past 6 years.
And I wasn't aware that we only replaced one player from last season.
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<!--quoteo(post=44179:date=Jun 15 2009, 08:42 AM:name=vitaminB)-->QUOTE (vitaminB @ Jun 15 2009, 08:42 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}><!--quotec--><!--quoteo(post=44167:date=Jun 15 2009, 12:18 AM:name=rok)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (rok @ Jun 15 2009, 12:18 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}><!--quotec-->2/3 years Perry was here, our hitting was pretty mediocre. I'm not at all saying it was all on the hitting coach, but it tells you something about how this team is constructed. This organization can never seem to put a consistently good product on the field from year to year. One year the pitching is great, the next not so much. One season the offense is great, the next not so much. It doesn't help that from year to year we end up with 40-50% personnel turnover either, and it's asking a lot from the coaching staff to get results immediately with all these new faces around. I'm not sure what message this decision is going to send to the players, or if they're even receptive to any kind of shakeup or finger pointing. This team seems to be a lifeless bunch of excuse-makers, and if I hear another cliche about how it's still early, or that things always work themselves out, and water finds its own level, blah blah blah, well, maybe this just isn't our year. What ever happened to that sense of urgency to win now? It's like nobody gives a shit, but hey let's blame one man who never swings the bat when 12-13 grown men are underperforming. It's too easy.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This organization has put a consistently good product on the field. I don't know what you expect, 14 straight NL Central titles. That's never going to happen again. I think winning back to back central titles is consistent enough for me.
We didn't have 40% personnel turnover. One everyday player was added and one was taken away. That's not the issue here.
And yes, if you're in charge of making sure guys hit, and they don't hit, you should lose your job. If I'm in charge of 12 salesmen and they don't make a fucking sale, I can't fire all of them. The boss is going to fire me.
Bottom line is we got career years out of almost everyone on the field last year. Those guys aren't hitting the same this year. Is that cause A-Ram's been out? Maybe. I don't know. Maybe it's just that guys like Theriot, FuK, and Font are what we thought they were.
<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
So what are you saying, that this is some sort of magic bullet? And I'm sorry, but have 2 winning seasons, 2 losing seasons, and 2 winning seasons with varying degrees of effectiveness by our offense year in and year out is not what I consider to be a consistent product. 14 straight titles? How about finishing .500 or better year in and year out. We've never done that in my lifetime. The pitching has been about the only thing that has been semi-reliable over the past 6+ years.
And career years from almost everyone last seasosn? Like who?
And I wasn't aware that we only replaced one player from last season.
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Isn't Von Johua the guy Frank Thomas credits his success to?
I think that was poor sentence structure, but I don't care.
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<!--quoteo(post=44194:date=Jun 15 2009, 09:41 AM:name=The Dude)-->QUOTE (The Dude @ Jun 15 2009, 09:41 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}><!--quotec-->Isn't Von Johua the guy Frank Thomas credits his success to?
I think that was poor sentence structure, but I don't care.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I think so. Here's a little something on him.
<!--quoteo-->QUOTE <!--quotec-->Who is Von Joshua?
The Von Joshua mini-bio from the Iowa page at milb.com starts:
Hitting Coach Von Joshua
Ten-year major league veteran Von Joshua enters his fourth season as the Iowa Cubs’ hitting coach. Joshua is in his 26th season as a hitting coach in professional baseball. Before coming to Iowa, Joshua spent three seasons as the hitting coach at AA West Tennessee.
Prior to joining the Cubs organization, he was a hitting coach or instructor in the Los Angeles Dodgers’ system (1984-1992), the Chicago White Sox system (1993-2001) and was the Toronto Blue Jays’ minor league hitting instructor in 2002. Joshua was a career .273 hitter over 10 big league seasons…
During Joshua’s tenure in the Dodgers minors, the big-league team didn’t use a lot of young players, so it’s hard to tell if he had any impact at all in the early years. But Mike Piazza did go from a .277 hitter in the California League (the best league in baseball for hitting, though at the time, the PCL might have been just as easy) in 1991 to hitting a combined .350/.412/.587 in AA/AAA in 1992, before winning the Rookie of the Year in 1993. And, Dodgers-system hitters won the R.O.Y. each year from 1992 through 1994.
With the White Sox, he’d known Magglio Ordonez since he was a kid, and was the roving minor-league instructor during the formative years of him, Mike Cameron (if you want to see a player who really “developed”, look at Cammy’s minor-league track record), Ray Durham, and Carlos Lee. He then became the White Sox hitting coach, where import Paul Konerko exceeded most statistically-based projections. As is typical for hitting coaches, the nearly 1000-run pace established in 2000 set up Joshua to get the axe in May, 2001, when the bats started slowly. The move may or may not have helped the White Sox, but the typically cool-demeanored Joshua was clearly getting more stressed, as this post-game quote after a 10-run game indicates:
“I didn’t chew them out, but yeah, I was mad,” Joshua said. “I let it go a little. But these are grown men, and you can’t always tell them what to do, outside of getting a gun and putting it to their head.”
The White Sox loss is the Cubs gain, though. By 2003, he was entrenched in the Cubs minors. Notably, since 2006, the Iowa Cubs have seemingly transformed several moderately-regarded prospects into good or better major-leaguers.
Many would think first of the most-recent prized Cubs prospects, Felix Pie and Eric Patterson, and think that they wouldn’t want Von anywhere near their prospects. And it’s hard to determine whether his impact on them was positive, negative, or neutral. Pie and Joshua were together at West Tennessee in 2005, and at Iowa from 2006-2008. In that time, Pie hit every year in the minors at a level which kept his prospect status high. His “peak” was clearly a .362/.410/.563 injury-marred partial season in 2007. Still, more was expected from Pie, who has struggled in limited trials in the majors. The Cubs used him as part of a 2-trade combination to acquire setup man Aaron Heilman.
Eric Patterson has always been a little old for his minor-league levels, but he’s done well, and skipped high-A ball, making the very difficult transition from the Midwest League to AA. In 2007 with Joshua at Iowa, he hit .297/.362/.455, and improved that to .320/.358/.517 in 2008 before becoming part of the package the Cubs used to acquire Rich Harden from Oakland. Given that he’s only had 157 PA in the bigs due to defensive questions, the jury is still out on him.
Now, on to the guys who Von Joshua has helped immensely…
Consider these ratings from the 2005 BA Prospect Book (following 2004 season):
* Geovanny Soto – Rated #14 in Cubs system, behind notables such as Richard Lewis and Jason Dubois.
* Koyie Hill – Rated #12 in the Diamondbacks system.
* Mike Fontenot – Rated #21 in Cubs system.
* Ryan Theriot – Not included among 63 names on the Cubs depth chart.
* Micah Hoffpauir – Not top-30, but shown as the 4th 1b on the depth chart.
* Jake Fox – Not top-30, but shown as 3rd catcher on the depth chart.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Read the rest here
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So what are you saying, that this is some sort of magic bullet? And I\'m sorry, but have 2 winning seasons, 2 losing seasons, and 2 winning seasons with varying degrees of effectiveness by our offense year in and year out is not what I consider to be a consistent product. 14 straight titles? How about finishing .500 or better year in and year out. We\'ve never done that in my lifetime. The pitching has been about the only thing that has been semi-reliable over the past 6+ years.
Well we'd never been to the playoffs in back to back years in my lifetime. But guess what, now we have. I think you forget just how bad this team always was before Hendry came along.
And career years from almost everyone last seasosn? Like who? Font, TheRiot, Soto, DeRosa, etc...
And I wasn't aware that we only replaced one player from last season. Yep, one everyday starter. Lost one: DeRosa. Added one: Bradley.
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