Bradford: Red Sox hire Chili Davis as hitting coach
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Great, fantastic, beautiful.
His time in Pawtucket won't be of much use, since he likely didn't coach any current Sox players during that time. Did a good job in Oakland, far as I can tell. Hopefully he's a good culture fit and he'll help along the younger/inexperienced hitters. But, I don't see any reason to be overly thrilled or disappointed.
Edit: Nava, Lavarnway, and WMB were on the 2011 roster.
His time in Pawtucket won't be of much use, since he likely didn't coach any current Sox players during that time. Did a good job in Oakland, far as I can tell. Hopefully he's a good culture fit and he'll help along the younger/inexperienced hitters. But, I don't see any reason to be overly thrilled or disappointed.
Edit: Nava, Lavarnway, and WMB were on the 2011 roster.
This makes me happy because 1) it seems like we got one of the best guys available and 2) this post from the other thread
canyoubelieveit said:
Kevin Long might have been better but his philosophies might not have matched or his interest in going to Boston could have been limited.Al Zarilla said:
That said, Chili is a good hire.
Too late. If he'd joined the Sox in the early 80s they could have rolled out a formidable middle of the line up, with Chili con Carney and Rice.
Why do we believe this is a good hire?
(Honestly asking)
He's had a good reputation, but the A's faded badly. How do we reconcile this?
(It may well be that Hitting Coaches are fungible, as long as it's a "new voice" aligned with the organizational desire of lots of pitches seen and high OBP.)
(Honestly asking)
He's had a good reputation, but the A's faded badly. How do we reconcile this?
(It may well be that Hitting Coaches are fungible, as long as it's a "new voice" aligned with the organizational desire of lots of pitches seen and high OBP.)
I know Moss faded down the stretch (particularly post-Cespedes trade), but look at his overall production in Oakland. If Davis factored into that, I'm pretty excited to see what work he could do with some of our guys.Dick Pole Upside said:
Dick Pole Upside said:
Well, for starters, he was a part of the consistently good 2012 and 2013 A's. Some pretty good offensive performances on those teams, and from a pretty good mixture of youngsters (Reddick, Norris, C. Carter, Cespedes), post-hype guys (Donaldson, Moss, Lowrie), and veterans (Crisp). Not that I think the equation is as simple as "good offensive performance = good hitting coach," but it's something. On the surface, at least, he seems comfortable working with younger players who are transitioning to the Majors, which was my biggest concern about Colbrunn/Rodriguez.
Many teams these days have a hitting coach as well as an assistant hitting coach, as you can read about here.
I wonder if the Red Sox will consider this. It seems that with a lot of young guys an extra set of eyes and ears would be a good idea. Not to mention the return on investment might be worth it for a team without budgetary issues.
I wonder if the Red Sox will consider this. It seems that with a lot of young guys an extra set of eyes and ears would be a good idea. Not to mention the return on investment might be worth it for a team without budgetary issues.
It seems like that will be a yesManramsclan said:
http://fullcount.weei.com/sports/boston/baseball/red-sox/2014/10/19/source-red-sox-hire-chili-davis-to-become-hitting-coach/
I'd forgotten what an impressive career Davis had. Not Hall of Fame material but solid Hall of Very Good. 350 homers, 424 doubles, almost 1200 walks, 121 career OPS+.
He is also one of those unusual guys who hit better in his 30s than his 20s, with a 114 OPS+ between 22 and 30 and a 128 between 31 and 39. That strikes me as relevant in the sense that any hitter who gets better after 30 seems likely to have been a dedicated (and successful) student of his craft. Of course being a good student doesn't automatically make you a good teacher, but it's a good start.
He is also one of those unusual guys who hit better in his 30s than his 20s, with a 114 OPS+ between 22 and 30 and a 128 between 31 and 39. That strikes me as relevant in the sense that any hitter who gets better after 30 seems likely to have been a dedicated (and successful) student of his craft. Of course being a good student doesn't automatically make you a good teacher, but it's a good start.
Eh, Cespedes and Rusney are the only question marks, really. And that's more of a cultural Cuban thing -- the lack of OBP.koufax32 said:
OBP is still the keystone to a good offense and the 2013 team had the highest OBP in the AL. Even with a wild OBP regression in 2014, they ranked 3rd in total BB.
Cuban Yasiel Puig has a .382 OBP this year. Jose Abreu had 51 walks this season (.383 OBP). Yuni Escobar has an OK walk rate (8.1%), Yasmani Grandal has a lifetime .350 OBP, 58 BB in 377 ABs this year. In SSS, I thought Rusney didn't chase much for not having played for a year and a half.Curll said:
The latest Cuban defector 2B Jose Fernandez struck out TEN TIMES in 314 trips to the plate this year. 10. He hit .326/.482/.456 last year.
Is your Cuban cultural thing based on any kind of study or stat analysis you would like to reference? It smells of the same BS that got a San Francisco sports talk guy fired when he called the Giants' Dominican players "Brain-dead Carribbean hitters" because he said they didn't walk enough. It turns out, they had better walk rates and stuck out less than the American players on the team.
So please back up your comment with some sort of analysis or study that shows Cuban players are more apt to have worse OBP than other groups of nationalities, because from what I've seen, it's just as varied as American players. You know who led the AL in strikeouts this year?
MIKE TROUT.
9 of the top 10 strikeout leaders were American. Pablo Ozuna (DR) was #10. Who were the only 2 batters that had more than 100 walks? Two Dominicans. BTW, Abreu and Puig were #10-11 in OBP in MLB. Both Cubans and not that many are in the league at this time (17 Cuban bats currently in the league).
I wish we could stop conflating plate discipline, contact, and OBP. A high K rate does not mean that a player lacks plate discipline, nor that he will necessarily have a low OBP. Conversely, a high BB rate does not mean that a player will have good contact skills or a high OBP. They are three distinct things. They are related, but not in a simple way.
Good point. I would add to that an example we should all be familiar with, Mark Bellhorn. He struck out all the time but it was certainly not for lack of patience.Savin Hillbilly said:
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Leskanic's_Thread said:
Anyone who could put the ball in play on Pedro that day, nevermind do what Davis did, must know a goddamn lot about hitting.
MentalDisabldLst said:
I don't care if it's true or not... I will always believe that he had his eyes shut (and was praying) for that HR:
http://www.boston.com/sports/touching_all_the_bases/2012/03/jason_varitek_pedro_martinez.html
It is more than only Cespedes and Rusney. There is WMB who has received chance after chance after chance as well as the AJ signing. There has been maybe not a change but certainly a shift in the organizational philosophy over the past several years.Curll said:
I wonder if the back of his away uniform will just read "Chili" like his one in San Francisco once did?
Then the next overdone Fenway retirement ceremony could feature Michael Redd, Kevin Love, Chili Davis, and Julius Peppers in uniform.John Marzano Olympic Hero said:
3 year deal is what kept him from NYY
http://www.bostonglobe.com/sports/2014/10/23/chili-davis-contract-with-red-sox-longer-than-john-farrell/ZbqFtSNDfyK6z7VD9PnBbM/story.html?event=event25
Hee Sox Choi said:
Yes.
http://www.baseball-reference.com/bio/Cuba_born.shtml
http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/h/hechaad01.shtml
http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/i/iglesjo01.shtml
http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/u/urruthe01.shtml
http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/v/vicieda01.shtml
http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/p/penabr01.shtml
But, feel free to continue to conflate recognizing different cultures, different play styles as veiled racism. That's always fun.
The real beauty is that the data to show poor plate discipline by Cubans in the first link included Luis Tiant's 570 career PA, Mike Cueller's 716, and Diego Segui's 422.JohntheBaptist said:
Good job, Good effort.
Curll said:
He asked for "a study or stat analysis."
A better answer may have been, "yeah, I got nothin, I take it back."
HomeRunBaker said:
I took that list and took just the players who began their MLB careers in the past 20 years, because offense has changed and I think comparisons over very long periods wouldn't be helpful for this purpose.
I then removed the pitchers.
I then compared BB rates to all MLB non-pitchers from 1995 through 2014, and, well, Curll isn't making it up. Cuban non-pitchers >1995 (30 of them) have a collective BB rate of 6.3. For all non-pitchers in that period, it's 8.7. I don't know if 30 players is a large enough group to make the difference significant, but it's not a particularly small difference. Whether it's "cultural" or not, I have no idea and not much interest. But it doesn't seem to be imaginary.
And there's that old "You can't Walk off the Island" thing .. Which was originally supposedly applied to Dominican players.
I think there is some kind of reality behind some of what we might call "baseball ethnicity." Different styles of play have emerged in different leagues. Who isn't watching Norichika Aoki's crazy swing in the playoffs, where he seems to commit his body forward before his bat is in the hitting zone, and thinking about the comparison to Ichiro Suzuki?
Japanese baseball is a different evolutionary branch, and different approaches and techniques and pitches (the shuuto!) have taken root there that are different, but that still might work.
Hell, we recognize different styles of play between the National and American Leagues, such that you could say, for instance, that Ned Yost has a more typical National League style than Bruce Bochy does. (Giants' non-pitchers sacrificed the fewest times of any NL club, I read.) We can all tell the difference between baseball as she was played in 1910, 1927, 1968, 1981 or 1999.
Surely the Cuban Serie Nacional is more sharply separated than the NL and AL, obviously, and more even than Japan or Korea or Venezuela or the Dominican. American players go play in Japan, Korea and various Caribbean Winter Leagues, where they presumably have some kind of impact on local baseball thinking, and the recruiting desires of American clubs have a huge influence on the style of play, at least in the non-Cuban Caribbean.
I think the "not walking off the island" thing has changed as the attributes understood to be marketable to MLB scouts have shifted. Maybe a Dominican guy like Starling Marte has an aggressive approach by MLB standards, swinging at about 50% of pitches rather than the league norm of 47%: but his numbers are not in Vlad Guerrero territory (58-60%).
All of these factors are reduced in Cuba. Players aren't coached to be attractive to American teams, and American players aren't coming to play in the SN.
tl;dr: I think there's a non-essentialist account for the origins of a perceived difference of style. That's not to say that these kinds of comments aren't often made in weirdly racist ways...
Japanese baseball is a different evolutionary branch, and different approaches and techniques and pitches (the shuuto!) have taken root there that are different, but that still might work.
Hell, we recognize different styles of play between the National and American Leagues, such that you could say, for instance, that Ned Yost has a more typical National League style than Bruce Bochy does. (Giants' non-pitchers sacrificed the fewest times of any NL club, I read.) We can all tell the difference between baseball as she was played in 1910, 1927, 1968, 1981 or 1999.
Surely the Cuban Serie Nacional is more sharply separated than the NL and AL, obviously, and more even than Japan or Korea or Venezuela or the Dominican. American players go play in Japan, Korea and various Caribbean Winter Leagues, where they presumably have some kind of impact on local baseball thinking, and the recruiting desires of American clubs have a huge influence on the style of play, at least in the non-Cuban Caribbean.
I think the "not walking off the island" thing has changed as the attributes understood to be marketable to MLB scouts have shifted. Maybe a Dominican guy like Starling Marte has an aggressive approach by MLB standards, swinging at about 50% of pitches rather than the league norm of 47%: but his numbers are not in Vlad Guerrero territory (58-60%).
All of these factors are reduced in Cuba. Players aren't coached to be attractive to American teams, and American players aren't coming to play in the SN.
tl;dr: I think there's a non-essentialist account for the origins of a perceived difference of style. That's not to say that these kinds of comments aren't often made in weirdly racist ways...
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MentalDisabldLst
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soxhop411 said:
"We understand that Brian Cashman must be embarrassed, frustrated and disappointed by his failure in this transaction," Cherington said. "Unlike the Red Sox, he chose not to go the extra mile for his fans in New York. It is understandable, but wrong that he would try to deflect the accountability for his mistakes onto others, and ignore the fact that he could easily afford the extra commitments to a hitting coach who doesn't even count towards the luxury-tax limit. It is time to get on with life and try to build a roster that isn't eligible for AARP."
BCsMightyJoeYoung said:
Incidentally, did anyone else catch Harold Reynolds on last night's broadcast referring to Venezuela as an island?
Pretty interesting write up by Alex Speer on the impact that Davis might have had on the Athletics and the potential for the Sox here: http://m.weei.com/sports/boston/baseball/red-sox/alex-speier/2014/10/20/chili-ng-effect-taking-stock-new-red-sox-hitti
“@Buster_ESPN: In going from Oakland to the Red Sox as hitting coach, Chili Davis nearly tripled his salary, going from $155,000 to over $400,000.”
https://twitter.com/Buster_ESPN/status/525428533284585472
https://twitter.com/Buster_ESPN/status/525428533284585472
link to tweet
https://twitter.com/Buster_ESPN/status/525428533284585472
https://twitter.com/Buster_ESPN/status/525428533284585472
link to tweet
I missed that but that's hilarious. I know he's an idiot but I really rather like him. He seems like such an enthusiastic and genial guy. Which explains his presence in the booth .. They have Verducci (?) to be the brains of the outfit. Harold is the class clown.BroodsSexton said:
Hmm .. I'm sure it's a semantics difference but Sox hitters have been the most disciplined in the league. Maybe he thinks they are just free swinging hackers?soxhop411 said:
The A's had two batters in the top 40 for most Ks (Moss ranked 15, with 153 strikeouts. Donaldson at 40, with 130). Dunn is there as well but he played little over there (they did trade for him).
Boston had two as well (Bogaerts and Napoli).
Who was top three? Trout, who K'd 184 times, for third worst in the league, 6 behind Ryan Howard (worst).
Boston had two as well (Bogaerts and Napoli).
Who was top three? Trout, who K'd 184 times, for third worst in the league, 6 behind Ryan Howard (worst).
The thing is highly disciplined hitters and high strikeout hitters are often one and the same. Striking out a lot is often the result when you take a lot of pitches.Darnell said:
Which is why I think he is talking about something else when he says he want to see a disciplined approach.
It's certainly the low end compared to the 3/$2.5m the Cubs gave their hitting coach a couple years ago. How did that work out for Theo?Rudy Pemberton said:
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