06-15-2009, 10:46 AM
<!--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
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