Delgado, slap hitter?
Okay, so that's never going to happen. Still, I was talking about Delgado's woes the other day and wondered a few things, had a few ideas. Delgado's basically a pull hitter who's getting old. My thoughts were basically this:
In order for pull hitting to work, you have to guess early and meet the ball over the plate, swinging through it. This essentially requires the ability to apply a lot of bat speed over a very short time, which in turn requires a lot of physical strength. As players age, their strength ebbs, and their ability to get their bat through the zone quickly declines--Delgado can't catch up to the fastball anymore.
One problem with this is that in order to catch up, he has to guess earlier, which leads to poorer guesses and more strikeouts or foul balls. The other problem is that even when he does guess right, he's just not as strong as he used to be, and so the ball just isn't going to go as far.
There's nothing he can really do about the strength--maybe work out, but even then, strength just declines with age. One thing he can do, though, is wait slightly longer on pitches.
Doing so will mean he gets less power on the ball when he makes good contact, but that he'll make good contact more often, and so more efficiently transfer power to the ball more often. He'd morph into more of a singles-doubles-and walks hitter, and so clog up the bases, but he'd be able to beat the shift more often and get on base more frequently.
Questions:
Is this totally obvious? My guess is yes, but it felt original when it occurred to me.
Do pull hitters tend to have steeper drop-offs than other players?
Does anyone know of other pull hitters that have transformed their approach as they aged?
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My view...
Delgado needs to alter his approach to what the defense is giving him. If he shows that he’s willing and able to wait on the ball and take singles and doubles to the opposite field if teams are leaving that open against him, teams will have to respect that by not over-shifting so much. Once that’s the case, then he can pull the ball more effectively.
As I’ve mentioned, the problem is that Dr. Teeth has had himself a nice little career (closing in on 450 homers, career OPS+ of 138) by being almost exclusively a pull hitter, and it’s got to be as much of a mental adjustment (and a swallowing of pride) as much as it is a physical adjustment, and I can see why he’s being stubborn about it.
by JoshNY on Apr 28, 2008 3:34 PM EDT 0 recs














