Roch: Hitting Coach Terry Crowley is coming back

[ledzepp8]

What are you basing this on? Do you have a source for this? And don't give me the Nick is sometimes a little too patient BS.

I think it was because he once said that the batter should look for their pitch to hit and hit it. Somehow that got purple monkey dishwashered into "the batter should swing at the first pitch no matter what".

[SteveA]

What are you basing this on? Do you have a source for this? And don't give me the Nick is sometimes a little too patient BS.

Hardball Times (http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/the-terry-crowley-effect/):

His philosophy is to swing at the first good pitch you get to hit because you probably won't get a better pitch one later in the at-bat. It's not go up there and start hacking at whatever it is the pitcher throws at you. It's wait for your pitch and when you get it, don't miss it. It's a philosophy that doesn't make pitchers work. It's a philosophy that is not conducive to getting on base consistently unless the team is hitting for average at the time. It's a philosophy that can be a symptom of a team in a prolonged slump with the bat.

Rob Neyer, ESPN:

Philosophically, the Orioles need to catch up to the top teams in their division in this category. They need to stress seeing pitches and taking walks. In Jones’ case, it is past time for long-tenured hitting coach Terry Crowley to teach the young man that skill. Crowley has deep roots in the Orioles organization but if he can’t adapt his teaching methods to meet that challenge, it might be time for the team to find someone who can.

[El Gordo]

I think it was because he once said that the batter should look for their pitch to hit and hit it. Somehow that got purple monkey dishwashered into "the batter should swing at the first pitch no matter what".

I remember an interview with Buck Martinez on XM several years ago where he talked about Crowley's hitting philosophy. He called it selective aggressiveness(that dirty word again). He said it meant having a plan when you went to the plate based on how you thought the pitcher was going to pitch you and what you thought would be the best pitch you were likely to get, whether it be a pitch in a zone or a type of pitch. Look for that pitch and if/when you get it, put the best swing you can on it, until you get to 2 strikes. Then you protect the plate and try to get the count back into your favor and look for the pitch you think you can hit again. Sounds pretty reasonable to me.

[Stotle]

I remember an interview with Buck Martinez on XM several years ago where he talked about Crowley's hitting philosophy. He called it selective aggressiveness(that dirty word again). He said it meant having a plan when you went to the plate based on how you thought the pitcher was going to pitch you and what you thought would be the best pitch you were likely to get, whether it be a pitch in a zone or a type of pitch. Look for that pitch and if/when you get it, put the best swing you can on it, until you get to 2 strikes. Then you protect the plate and try to get the count back into your favor and look for the pitch you think you can hit again. Sounds pretty reasonable to me.

You describe what most good teaches preach to hitters. If this is his message it's a good one. Unfortunately, I have no idea who to believe there has been so much contradicting info regarding Crowley's philosophies. Further, the message certainly doesn't fit the results (though older player tendencies of course weigh into that).

[El Gordo]

You describe what most good teaches preach to hitters. If this is his message it's a good one. Unfortunately, I have no idea who to believe there has been so much contradicting info regarding Crowley's philosophies. Further, the message certainly doesn't fit the results (though older player tendencies of course weigh into that).

As bad an announcer as Buck Martinez is, he most likely is a decent baseball guy, as a catcher and a former manager, so I would tend to accept his description of Crowley. As to the results, I would say they are largely dependent on the player's willingness to follow it and their abilities to recognize pitches. As I have said elsewhere I think it is unrealistic to expect major adjustments in hitting fundamentals, at a ML level. Certainly things like Cano's power improvement can happen when you have a talented fundamental hitter. It has often been noted that BA in the ML is a good predicter of future development. When you have a good fundamental hitter, things can be tweeked at a ML level, but when you have players with huge flaws, you shouldn't expect too much at that level, regardless who is the coach.

[El Gordo]

Hardball Times (http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/the-terry-crowley-effect/):

Rob Neyer, ESPN:

This is nutty to me. How many PA has Rob Neyer had? If you are looking fastball in, and you get one, why would you take it for a strike, hoping you can run the count up? The idea is to get a hit isn't it?

[24fps]

Guys like Mazzone and Duncan have turned mediocre pitchers into good ones.

Is it not fair to expect a hitting coach to do the same?

Mazzone and Duncan have turned some underperforming pitchers into more fully realized and consistent talents. Virtually all of their success has taken place within extraordinarily stable organizations recognized for superior leadership.

I think it's reasonable to expect a hitting coach with Crowley's tenure to have a couple of clearly identifiable success stories to point to. I can't think of any off the top of my head, but regardless, you still have to address the question of what is the job description of a hitting coach anyway?

Optimizing and maintaining a hitter's swing over the course of a long season is challenging enough for a hitting coach without expecting him to also turn lead into gold on a regular basis. The more I follow this argument, the more I tend to side with those who place the blame for the offensive woes of this team on the overall level of talent this club has been burdened with for the last decade plus.

I would still not renew Crowley's contract, but for entirely different reasons.

[Hallas]

This is nutty to me. How many PA has Rob Neyer had? If you are looking fastball in, and you get one, why would you take it for a strike, hoping you can run the count up? The idea is to get a hit isn't it?

Besides, we're not b****ing at Jones swinging at the inside FB, we're b****ing at him swinging at the curve or slider in the dirt, or at the chin-high FB.

[SteveA]

This is nutty to me. How many PA has Rob Neyer had? If you are looking fastball in, and you get one, why would you take it for a strike, hoping you can run the count up? The idea is to get a hit isn't it?

Watch the Yankees and Red Sox work counts. They get on base more than we do, even if they give up that hit you are talking about once in a while. They make pitchers throw more pitches, thus getting into the other team's bullpen in the 5th or 6th more often instead of the 7th or 8th, allowing them to see more mediocre relievers. They take their walk rather than swing at ball four, or they foul off pithces that they can hit somewhere rather than try to drive a pitch somewhere that is outside the zone and difficult ot hit.

The approach is obvious when you watch their games, and their success is also obvious. Are you telling me that you think that the approach that works for them is "nutty"?

[KAZ97]

1) Find the results of the Frobby study - do the historical PECOTA comps, and see how his players have done compared to what they "should" have done. Won't be perfect, but better than the complete absence of data we have now.

But barring that, we don't have anything. So we can't have an independent judgment that's based on anything besides subjective evidence. In some sense we are rubes - we don't know, we can't know without somebody doing some work. And even then we'll only kind of know.

I have to keep stressing - bad data is often worse than none at all.

It's not using historical PECTOA comps, but that doesn't mean we don't have any data regarding Terry Crowley's performance. Here is some empirical evidence of the job Crowley has done. I posted this earlier in the thread, then realized I left the pitchers plate appearances in. I took them out, and here is a comparison of Terry Crowley vs other hitting coaches.

Again, this is using data from the 2006-2009 seasons. I took all the hitters who played under Terry Crowley who also played under another hitting coach during that same time frame. Some played on other teams before their time with Terry Crowley, some after and some both.

Under Terry Crowley: .266/.326/.415 in 14,770 PAs

Under other coaches: .257/.315/.389 in 14,825 PAs

[Frobby]

Watch the Yankees and Red Sox work counts. They get on base more than we do, even if they give up that hit you are talking about once in a while. They make pitchers throw more pitches, thus getting into the other team's bullpen in the 5th or 6th more often instead of the 7th or 8th, allowing them to see more mediocre relievers. They take their walk rather than swing at ball four, or they foul off pithces that they can hit somewhere rather than try to drive a pitch somewhere that is outside the zone and difficult ot hit.

The approach is obvious when you watch their games, and their success is also obvious. Are you telling me that you think that the approach that works for them is "nutty"?

There is a difference between not swinging at pitches that are either balls or pitchers' pitches early in the count, and not swinging at a good pitch to hit early in the count. Obviously, nobody wants a hitter to do the former. The idea of taking a pitch that is a good pitch to hit, just to drive up a pitch count, would probably be disputed by just about any hitting coach. Really, I think the issue is at the margins, and being damned sure that the pitch you are swinging at early in the count is, in fact, a good pitch to hit. It's one thing to say it, it's another thing to be able to act on it properly.

The Orioles had 731 at bats resolved on the first pitch, hitting .365/.366/.523 in those at bats. That's pretty good. The Yankees had 656 first pitch AB, hitting .320/.331/.505. The Red Sox had 527 first pitch AB, hitting .343/.356/.624. The Rays had 675 first pitch AB and hit .344/.350/.530. So, obviously we were more aggressive than the Yankees, Sox or Rays on 0-0 counts, but we had a lot of success doing it. We were less aggressive than the Blue Jays (846 AB, .313/.323/.557). So, we had the best BA and OBP in the AL East when hitting the first pitch, and all three figures were way better than the team's overall numbers. Frankly, I will take that tradeoff.

By the way, in 2009 the O's had fewer one-pitch at bats, and were far worse at it (.307/.310/.483).

Of course, there's also the issue of how often we are either swinging and missing at the first pitch, or fouling it off. Here is how often our at bats were resolved in various counts, vs. our opponents:

0-0: 731-672

0-1: 585-553

0-2: 512-412

1-0: 438-485

1-1: 578-526

1-2: 874-834

2-0: 123-181

2-1: 320-364

2-2: 746-847

3-0: 103-153

3-1: 268-280

3-2: 705-795

[Bradysburns]

I'm not pro TC or anti TC...as I stated before, I'm about 50-50.

And I'm not sure how to do it, I never claimed to have the answers...but what I do know is that taking the statistical rankings since he's been here when we've had notoriously poor talent and holding it up as some sort of evidence that he needs to go isn't exactly fair.

Well, it might not be fair - but to me it's the only thing I, as a fan, really have to go on. I choose not to care much about people sayign they "like" this or that guy in public. Everyone liked Trembley, but apparently there was a respect gap there, for some reason. Not saying the same is true with TC, but I don't put a lot of stock in public statements of "like."

[Bradysburns]

Mazzilli clearly inherited Crowley and was not permitted to name his own guy. Both Perlozzo and Trembley were allowed to name their own coaching staffs after the season in which they became interim manager, and made multiple changes. I've never read one thing to suggest they were told they had to keep Crowley.

True, I haven't read anything that explicitly stated they were forced to keep him either. It just so happens that these were very low-profile manager candidates who were "just happy to be here" and who inherited TC from the prior regime. So I am making a leap here based on circumstantial evidence.

To play Devil's Advocate against myself for a moment... When Shanahan came in with the Redskins, he cleaned house, mostly. But he did keep Danny Smith, the special teams coordinator, who has survived multiple HC's and GMs. I guess I can just hold my nose and go with the "whatever Buck wants" crowd for now... TC isn't the biggest problem, to be sure. To me, however, he just represents a holdover from the LOST DECADE.

[Frobby]

It's not using historical PECTOA comps, but that doesn't mean we don't have any data regarding Terry Crowley's performance. Here is some empirical evidence of the job Crowley has done. I posted this earlier in the thread, then realized I left the pitchers plate appearances in. I took them out, and here is a comparison of Terry Crowley vs other hitting coaches.

Again, this is using data from the 2006-2009 seasons. I took all the hitters who played under Terry Crowley who also played under another hitting coach during that same time frame. Some played on other teams before their time with Terry Crowley, some after and some both.

Under Terry Crowley: .266/.326/.415 in 14,770 PAs

Under other coaches: .257/.315/.389 in 14,825 PAs

This is pretty interesting. I find it particularly interesting that these players' OBP and walk rate were higher under Crowley. Another observation: it's a pretty crappy group of players, regardless of where they were. So this pretty much supports the thesis that Crowley's not the problem, it's what he's had to work with that's the problem.

[Bradysburns]

There's no "point" at which meaningless results start to matter just because there are a lot of them. It's like firing a manager for bad seasons. It's a stupid, knee-jerk reaction and it's scapegoating. A manager can only do so much with the teams he's given, and a hitting coach can only do so much with the hitters he's given. If we had A-Rod and Teixeira for the last 13 years, our offense would have been much much better, and nobody would be calling for Crowley's head for reasons entirely out of his control.

The end.

Wow, if that's the case, sign me up to be a hitting coach on a crummy team! Job security for life, baby! "Hey, sure he hit .240 with a .250 OBP. Were it not for ME, he would have literally had no hits this year. Yep... Uh, where's the pay window? And please, let's go ahead and pick up Atkins for the four-hole." (Literally, this was apparently a thought AM had when signing Atkins... that he could be a middle-of-the-order bat.)