The Future Of Howard Johnson, Hitting Coach

The production has been that of an also-ran, but I don’t think that the current line-up’s expected production, at least given their historical numbers, would have been expected to be this bad. I have posted this comment a couple of times, but Reyes, Pagan, Beltran, Wright, Bay isn’t awful, and Ike’s production is about what you’d expect from a rookie slugger who Ks a bit too much, and now Thole looks to get some regular time. Let Hessman and Carter take some at-bats, suffer through more of slappy, and you still think you have a better than average NL offense.

Of course, haven’t had a healthy Reyes and Beltran for the full season, but now that they do and Thole is getting his break, we can count our mixed blessings that the team managed to stay above .500 until Carlos came back. The recent slump is an extreme disappointment, but mostly a coincidence.

That said, the approach has been fairly abysmal, and while I don’t blame Hojo, he doesn’t get credit either.

but THIS is pretty damning to any coach’s teaching ability

LD%: 14th (i.e. they aren’t hitting the ball hard, either)
O-Swing%: 15th (i.e. they’re swinging at a lot of balls outside the strike zone)

I suppose any coach saddled with the hacktastic stylings of Frenchy and Barajas will suffer on o-swing% the same way a team featuring Chris Dudley and Ben Wallace would suffer on FT%.

But still, there is very little patience to be found up and down the lineup and that must be a reflection on HoJo. Either he prefers a “keep choppin’ wood” approach or they’re not listening to whatever else he is selling.

I’m not sure what a coach at the major league level can do to boost LD% other than tinker at the margins. However, in order to even justify having a coach wouldn’t you think a coach has to be able to convince players who aren’t hitting the ball hard to at least be more patient?

apparently they are

1. You’re a lifelong participant of the game, in one form or another, and you witness the coaches ability to handle players, communicate, and teach on a daily basis and judge his ability in those realms to be greater than the average person you’ve witnessed doing the job in the past.

2. Over a significantly significant period of time with and without that coach, and with essentially the same players, we see a clear change in results and/or process. If a group of players were hackers for 2 years before a coach, then become disciplined for 2 years with said coach, then it’s likely the coach had a part in that.

What did these stats look like before this last road trip? I think they were much better (given that we were shut out four times on the trip.) I guess my point is, should HoJo be fired for just one bad road trip? Should he be fired because Jason Bay has really hit much this year? Or because David Wright refuses to get closer to the plate (a psychological sequellae from being beaned?)?

But if the purpose is solely to “shake things up,” then I guess I can see it. The Phillies fired their hitting coach Milt Thomspon notwithstanding all the great hitting years they had with him, so I guess we can fire HoJo.

OPS: 13th
OBP: 14th
AVG: 12th
SLG: 13th
BB: 14th
wOBA: 13th
LD%: 14th (i.e. they aren’t hitting the ball hard, either)
O-Swing%: 15th (i.e. they’re swinging at a lot of balls outside the strike zone)

Hacking at pitches outside of the zone is always going to hurt you (unless your name is Vlad). Not only do the Mets have a couple guys who swing at a lot of junk, their usually patient hitters are swinging at a lot more outside of the zone (Reyes, Wright, Bay, Castillo) compared to their career numbers.

As a reference here are the O-Swing numbers for these guys (2010/Career):

Wright: 30.0/21.2
Reyes: 32.1/25.6
Bay: 27.0/20.0
Castillo: 17.2/12.3

I find it kind of hard to believe that those guys just all happened to start swinging at that many more balls out of the zone. It could be the coaching, or it could be that they are pressing, but one this is for sure; they definitely are swinging at a lot of pitches they shouldn’t be.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/27/sports/baseball/27offense.html

on the brink of some sort of meltdown. They need to do what they should have done after 2007, which is clean house — don’t fire just one coach. Get rid of the entire managerial regime. Kick Omar to scouting. Do it now. Is this a revelatory post? No. But let’s not lose the forest for the trees. Replacing Hojo will do very little, and will probably unsettle the team even more. It’s all cosmetic and probably counterproductive until you shitcan the triumverate of suckitude, Jerry, Jeff and Omar. Stop allowing them to have scapegoats.

and not just the swing %ages.

No one is taking eye poppingly fewer walks than they have in the past, based on BB/162 games, but across the board they’re off by 10-20% (except Pagan, who’s showing improvement). Barajas is the only one who has been freakishly bad, even by his miserable standards. Whatever it is, HoJo is not helping. I agree with a lot of posters who doubt that a hitting coach is going to be able to turn a team around, but if he hasn’t hurt the Mets, Johnson surely has not helped them. It’s time for him to go.

and someone says, hey, lets pop this zit and it’ll help. HoJo isn’t putting out the lineups, trainwrecking the bullpen, and putting people like GMJ, Jacobs and Frankie Cat on the roster. Nor is he virtually nightly managing to give his team the least possible chance to win. Remove the cancer, and if you feel other remedies need to be made once that’s done, fine. But cosmetics aren’t going to help as long as the cancer stays.