Last week, stories inside and outside Brewers Nation reminded us that the effect coaches and managers have on the game is hard to figure. (Does anyone actually say Brewers Nation?) News that longtime Tampa Bay Rays manager Joe Maddon chose to opt out of his contract surprised most MLB observers. Closer to home, the Brewers announced they hired a new hitting coach – Darnell Coles, who was most recently the assistant hitting coach of the Detroit Tigers.
I don’t know much about Coles, but he must be doing something right if he’s had an instructional career this long. Could he have done anything to stop the Brewers’ 2014 meltdown? Can he teach better plate discipline to young hitters like Scooter Gennett and Khris Davis? Is there anyone who can stop Carlos Gomez from swinging out of his helmet? Hope springs eternal, but as someone who has never played baseball above the backyard/alley level, the impact of the hitting coach has never been clear to me.
As for Maddon, the initial frenzy seemed a bit gratuitous. Maybe it’s just the way our social media culture operates these days. Maybe we’re all so wound up about Ebola we’re anxious to overreact to something frivolous.
Maddon leaving the Rays was certainly unexpected, and he has had a lot of success in Tampa Bay. It just might be a little silly to think any underperforming MLB team should rush to fire their manager to make way for Maddon. Only the Twins are without a manager under contract at this time. I’m sure there are more than a handful of Brewers fans who would be happy to show Ron Roenicke the door and give Maddon a shot (a few coworkers in my immediate vicinity were willing to make that move as soon as the Maddon news broke). I assume the average Milwaukee sports talk radio caller who always wants to fire someone was ready to jump on the Maddon bandwagon.
Could Maddon turn around the Brewers or another team that didn’t meet expectations? Even with Maddon’s good track record, we can’t assume he’s a miracle worker. He did well in Tampa Bay – four playoff appearances including a World Series, and a string of six straight winning seasons – but it takes more than a manager to make a contending MLB team. Craig Calcaterra nicely summarizes why even a great manager isn’t the be-all-end-all:
Maddon is not some messiah. He lost 101 games his first year with the Rays and 96 his second. Why? Because the Rays stunk. As the team got better he won more, as they got hurt or lost key players, he lost more. Such is the way of the world. A manager can mess up a game or two here or there but, for the most part, a really good one or a really bad one is only worth a handful of wins one way or another. The players matter way, way more.
If a manager has relatively little impact on a team, how much can a hitting coach have? All MLB teams having hitting coaches, so one would think having one is better than having none. Coles used to manage in the Brewers’ farm system, which might give him an edge in terms of communicating with players he has history with. Other than that, there’s no reason to think he’s a magician.
As far as I can tell (based on links like this and this), hitting coaches primarily collect information, data, video, etc. on opposing teams’ pitchers. They tell players what they can expect from this bullpen or that starter. They can’t make Gomez look like less of a goofball when he whiffs on a pitch me might have put in play if he shortened his swing.
When you read things like this, it seems like everyone’s pretending the hitting coach does more than he possible could:
“It’s a smooth transition,” Coles said. “I know them, they know me. There’s high expectations. It’s a great hitting team, so you’re not trying to reinvent the wheel, but you try to put every hitter in the best possible position to be successful.”
Coles didn’t have to do an overhaul with the Tigers, given the talent in their lineup. What he brought, however, was a boundless amount of positive energy and a steady source of constructive critiques in support of primary hitting coach Wally Joyner.
“Great energy and detail-oriented,” [Tigers manager Brad] Ausmus said of Coles.
“Overhaul?” “Reinvent the wheel?” What does that even mean? If a hitting coach basically puts together scouting reports, obviously you wouldn’t need to reinvent the wheel. I suppose you could show players video on a Kindle Fire instead of an iPad. Maybe you could fine Gomez every time his helmet hits the ground while he’s still in the batter’s box. But if one of Coles’ main selling points is his boundless energy, that tells us all we need to know about what to expect from a hitting coach.
That said, Coles sounds a swell guy and I have no reason to believe he won’t competently assemble information and present it to players in a comprehensible format. I just think we shouldn’t kid ourselves about how much impact coaches or managers have on the game. Although…the more I think about it, the idea of fining Gomez for losing his helmet might not be so bad in terms of discouraging a bad habit. Not exactly reinventing the wheel, but maybe it wouldn’t be a bad way to make the most out of negligible impact.
(Image: Benny Sieu/USA TODAY Sports)
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