Brewers name Darnell Coles hitting coach

[vegasbrewcrew1993]

 

you're kind of proving my point. braun knew he was hurt, yet he didn't change his approach. he was still swinging away like a maniac. if he's still hurt, wouldn't it make sense adopt a more patient walk first approach? braun's greedy. always has been and most likely always will be. he got away with it before because he was healthy. now that he's hurt his greedy mentality is hurting the team. he's stubborn too. if he didn't want to change his approach then he should have gotten the surgery. if he didn't want the surgery then he should have taken the time to change his game. i'm giving scooter a longer leash because at least he hit for a decent average. it's still a pathetic situation though. even during our super fun heydays the offense still was overly reliant on the long ball. the brewers have tried this approach for years and it hasn't worked. you can't win relying on the long ball. at some point you're going to need guys that consistently hit singles and doubles. again i hate having to saying this, but we need to copy the cardinals approach. they usually have several guys that come through in the clutch. look at matt carpenter. the guy has no power, but he gets on base often. we've seen him drive in runs against our brewers often. jon jay this year went off. idk if it's the players or the coaching, but they have the right mentality there.

 

The Brewers even with the massive hitting struggles late in the year finished with a team batting average of .250, while the Cardinals who you keep bringing up just barely finished higher at .253, both being middle of the pack in the NL. As for supposedly needing to hit more doubles which you also say, the Brewers had the 3rd most doubles in the NL, only 10 fewer than the league leading Rockies. When it comes to hitting with RISP, the Brewers finished 5th best in the NL, not near the bottom and again higher than the Cardinals.

 

What happened last year is mainly that the team simply went into a terrible team wide slump at a really bad time and overall they have to draw more walks. To draw more walks, probably going to need some different players. Clearly need a big upgrade at firstbase. Lastly, the surgery on Braun has to to help him to back to being at least close to his former self.

 

You are overstating the home run or nothing angle as many others have.

 

Last year was an aberration. Even then they still made it to the NLCS. Most of the time they post good averages.

You are overstating the home run or nothing angle as many others have. Am I really though? Why are things the same year after year? Even when they were beasts they still kind of sucked at getting the clutch hit.

[vegasbrewcrew1993]

Danzig is spot on. I always hate when people point to failures in sports being "simply mental". As if, "If he just wanted to walk, he would walk" It doesn't work like that.

 

The approach is fine. Colorado, Toronto, Minnesota were 4-6th in OBP last season. Walking more is overstated. Score more runs than your opponents on more nights. Whether that be by pitching dominance, or home runs, or small ball doesn't matter to me.

I didn't say it was simply mental. Baseball for the most part IS mind games though. A guy that walks up to the plate with a HR or die mentality more likely to swing away instead of wait. A guy with a walk first mentality is more likely to wait on a low breaking ball near the edge than an overaggressive hitter like Gomez or Braun. It's not just walking though. It's walks, averages, everything. The Brewers have a bad approach. They often swing at bad pitches. More patience could result in higher averages since pitchers might start to freak out that the hitters aren't swinging at his junk.

[igor67]

In modern baseball a guy watching a breaking ball on the lower edge of the strikezone is mostly likely to get called out on strikes. The surest way to mess up a teams offense is to try and make everyone have the same approach, guys have different strengths and weaknesses and need to strategize accordingly. This is often why HoFers make terrible hitting coaches they don't understand how others need to approach the game. In this case the walk more strategy is even more suspect because it flies directly in the face of the league wide trends. By most measures offense is the lowest it has been in 30 years, and if the trend continues much more we are going to be competing with the Year of the Pitcher for levels of offense.

[danzig6767]

 

The Brewers even with the massive hitting struggles late in the year finished with a team batting average of .250, while the Cardinals who you keep bringing up just barely finished higher at .253, both being middle of the pack in the NL. As for supposedly needing to hit more doubles which you also say, the Brewers had the 3rd most doubles in the NL, only 10 fewer than the league leading Rockies. When it comes to hitting with RISP, the Brewers finished 5th best in the NL, not near the bottom and again higher than the Cardinals.

 

What happened last year is mainly that the team simply went into a terrible team wide slump at a really bad time and overall they have to draw more walks. To draw more walks, probably going to need some different players. Clearly need a big upgrade at firstbase. Lastly, the surgery on Braun has to to help him to back to being at least close to his former self.

You are overstating the home run or nothing angle as many others have.

 

Last year was an aberration. Even then they still made it to the NLCS. Most of the time they post good averages.

You are overstating the home run or nothing angle as many others have. Am I really though? Why are things the same year after year? Even when they were beasts they still kind of sucked at getting the clutch hit.

They were 5th in the NL hitting with RISP, even with an overall team wide batting slump the last month and slightly higher than the Cardinals finished. That's a fact, not an assumption. In 2012 when the team made it to the NLCS, they finished 6th in batting with RISP at .257, nearly the exact same average as their team .259 batting average. In fact, last year their overall team batting average was .250, but they hit seven points higher with RISP.

 

What killed the Brewers in that collapse wasn't just failing to get enough "clutch" hits in however you choose to define that, instead it was that they simply failed to hit period over that stretch be it in early innings, getting on base enough, hitting home runs, "clutch" hits, etc etc. Nearly everyone on the roster went into a slump at the same time and thus the offense collapsed. Hard for any team to score runs when few are getting on base consistently and on top of that, home runs aren't happening either.

[dlk9s]

you're kind of proving my point. braun knew he was hurt, yet he didn't change his approach. he was still swinging away like a maniac. if he's still hurt, wouldn't it make sense adopt a more patient walk first approach? braun's greedy. always has been and most likely always will be. he got away with it before because he was healthy. now that he's hurt his greedy mentality is hurting the team. he's stubborn too. if he didn't want to change his approach then he should have gotten the surgery. if he didn't want the surgery then he should have taken the time to change his game.

You are so hilariously wrong on most, if not everything, you have said.

[lcbj68c]

Is it too late to change our minds?

[Bombers]

Is it too late to change our minds?

No kidding

[DHonks]

every game I'm amazed at how bad Braun's pitch judgement has been. In a key spot the other day, Braun got out on a 9-pitch at bat. He saw one in the strike zone, but most were clearly out. Yet Ryan only took 1 ball. Today he had a 6 pitch strikeout with 2-pitches in the zone. In general, the pitching is coming around, but we need the hitters to relax.

[brewmann04]

What bothers me is their hitter don't take enough pitches but i know it up to the hitters but i have to think Coles is going to be made the first scapegoat very soon.

[DocLuna7]

I highly doubt that Darnell Coles in the problem. He is the same Darnell Coles that had success with Detroit last season and this is the same Brewers offense that sputtered through several months of 2014 under a different hitting coach. The problem is deeper and more systemic than anything else imho.

[brewmann04]

Coles had better players with DET