I thought making contact was desireable...manly double plays are MUCH better than wussie Ks, right?
...the 2-2 to Woodsen and here it comes...and it is swung on and missed! And Tom Browning has pitched a perfect game! Twenty-seven outs in a row, and he is being mobbed by his teammates, just to the thirdbase side of the mound.
redsfandan (05-06-2013)
I think we need to take a step back on Cozart.
Last year and in the minors, he had an uppercut swing and popped up too many balls.
IMO the Reds are coaching him to hit more pitches on the ground. A more balanced hitting approach. So far it hasn't worked out.
Cozart's line drive rate is very low this year. He may also still be hurt from the April 20 bunt attempt, or was hurt for some time thereafter.
Bottom line, I'd give him time. I'd much rather see XMan in the two hole, but I think Cozart will hit better and soon.
...the 2-2 to Woodsen and here it comes...and it is swung on and missed! And Tom Browning has pitched a perfect game! Twenty-seven outs in a row, and he is being mobbed by his teammates, just to the thirdbase side of the mound.
...the 2-2 to Woodsen and here it comes...and it is swung on and missed! And Tom Browning has pitched a perfect game! Twenty-seven outs in a row, and he is being mobbed by his teammates, just to the thirdbase side of the mound.
redsfandan (05-06-2013)
Hoping to change my username to 75769023
RedlegJake (05-05-2013)
reduce strikeouts and increase GIDP with more ground balls. Generally decrease power and also reduce walks. BABIP remains equal so the result would be the same overall numbers or maybe worse if the batter was swinging at strikes out of his best hitting zones(which ML pitchers unfairly try to do) which means a lot of weakly hit balls more than when just striking out which after all may mean BABIP decreases rather than being equal. Of course I keep forgetting if they'd just make contact ... mybe they should all just choke up and go all Wee Willie...it being so easy to hit it where they ain't...
Sometimes strikeouts matter. Man on 3d 1 out a K hurts. 95% of the time they are bad simply because they are outs. No other reason. You'll never convince me otherwise. Cozart is slumping not because of his strikeouts but because his line drive rate is abysmal right now and his gb rate is astronomical when he does make contact. That's the problem, NOT the Ks.
RedlegJake, you need to go to the last page of the Bruce K's thread and look at a series of posts by myself and Atomic someone or other. He posted a chart with run expectations of each possible event that can happen given any of the 24 combinations of baserunners and outs.
Of the 24 possible situations, Ks vs. all other outs were only equal when there were either 2 outs (8 situations) or no runners on base (2 situations). That leaves 14 situations where there are runners on base and less than 2 outs. In 11 of them, balls put in play for outs were overwhelming preferable to Ks.
Well of course nobody on a major league roster is literally a NO-hit player. He has 23 hits in 129 plate appearances for a robust 2.00 runs created per 27 outs. To put this in perspective, of the 184 MLB players who qualify, he's 177th. http://espn.go.com/mlb/stats/batting...pe/sabermetric
Last year, he was 126th out of 143 (3.89 rc/27). In other words, even if he were to double his current output, he would still suck. A lot.
This is a good organization. The Jocketty regime has repeatedly surprised me by making things work that I didn't think would work (Homer Bailey becoming good; Broxton being a plus reliever in last year's stretch drive; Alfredo Simon being useful; Arroyo not being finished a couple years ago). Maybe they have some grand plan for Cozart involving hitting more line drives or whatever.
But let's not kid ourselves. The results so far have been bad. Bad. bad. bad. Put a league average shortstop on this team, and there's a significant chance it's in first place.
Stick to your guns.
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