Uggla-How Long a Leash?

zitothebrave said:
http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/dan-uggla-on-hitting-and-not-hitting/
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Excellent interview, Zito. Thanks. I wonder why Bowman and DOB can't do a deep dive once in a while.

We acquired Dan because we had no RH power. We were vulnerable to JSantana, Lee, Hamels. Now we've got Oso and the good Upton, and secondarily, CJ, Simba, and the bad Upton. That's a lot of RH hitting.

If Dan got close to maximum Dan, he's still overkill. We don't need another 25-35 HR guy, we need a tablesetter with a .370 OBP.

I remember reading an interview with Wade Boggs a bit later in his career. Boggs hit .360 for the first half of his career and .300 for the second half. He was lamenting that he'd lost the inside-out stroke where he could hit the top half of the ball through the 5.5 hole. He never did get it back. He was (more or less) just a guy from then on.

Dan is lamenting the loss of the ability to hit the ball hard where it's pitched (and he should be - it's killing him) and trying to stop himself from trying to jerk everything he sees into the LF bleachers. I see improvement, but I'd say there's maybe a 5-10% chance of him getting back where he was.

Meanwhile, the club has changed. The club needs a guy who can impact a lot of games incrementally, rather than an occasional game in a big way.

Dan doesn't fit the club anymore.
 
Dan, you are old and your bat has slowed down. That's the issue......

Also, LOL off driving in 60 runs.
 
I agree with most of your post. I disagree that we wouldn't need maximum Uggla. Because Uggla at his best was a fantastic player who hit like a 1B but played a defensive premium posiiton. Like Andruw Jones in 05 without that defense baggage. But there's no way he hits close to that level again. I was hoping he'd rebuild some value but that doesn't seem to be happening.

Uggla was solid his first 2 years here. But since then things haven't gone so well. Culminating in the tragedy of last year tha tseems to be continuing to this year.

The one thing I give Uggla credit for is he never stops trying. It's not like he's Garrett Anderson. And his defense has improved. He's still not very good. But at least he's no longer the worst defender in baseball.
 
KeithLockhart said:
At least Uggs believes in obp and walks
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He actually had a pretty logical explanation as to why his walks are down this year.

He's making more contact on pitches in the zone, so there's less opportunities for walks. Last year, he would swing and miss, and eventually draw a walk in the at bat. This year, he just pops out.
 
The interview shows Uggla is pretty aware of what needs to be done turn things around. He does look more confident and comfortable at the plate. It could be he has just declined too much in terms of his ability to react to various pitches. But I find it encouraging that he has done a good job figuring out what kind of adjustments he needs to make. The only jarring part of the interview was lumping himself and Russell Branyan into the same category. Yikes!
 
sturg33 said:
He actually had a pretty logical explanation as to why his walks are down this year.

He's making more contact on pitches in the zone, so there's less opportunities for walks. Last year, he would swing and miss, and eventually draw a walk in the at bat. This year, he just pops out.
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He isn't popping out much this year. What is up are the groundballs. Its harder to interpret whether that's good or not. It does appear that he is no longer trying to hit a home run every time he swings, which was something I hated about his approach last year.
 
sturg33 said:
He actually had a pretty logical explanation as to why his walks are down this year.

He's making more contact on pitches in the zone, so there's less opportunities for walks. Last year, he would swing and miss, and eventually draw a walk in the at bat. This year, he just pops out.
Click to expand...

Well, then, he needs to make less contact.

He should be able to handle that.
 
nsacpi said:
The interview shows Uggla is pretty aware of what needs to be done turn things around. He does look more confident and comfortable at the plate. It could be he has just declined too much in terms of his ability to react to various pitches. But I find it encouraging that he has done a good job figuring out what kind of adjustments he needs to make. The only jarring part of the interview was lumping himself and Russell Branyan into the same category. Yikes!
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You are encouraged it took him 3 years to figure it out?

Players that decline like Uggs have to find something to blame their lack of success. It's usually something like "my swing was out of wack." They can't ever accept that it's because their bat has slowed down. Has a major leaguer ever said "I suck because my bat is slow?"

After hearing for about 6 years various instances where BeeeJ has figured his swing out, at some point you are just what you are. (BeeeJ, Uggs)
 
Uggla is completely done. Last year, it was his eyes' fault. This year, it's another self-diagnosed "problem." The problem is he sucks. That's not reversible at this point. Just get him out of the lineup.
 
I remember when Zito would defend Uggs by saying he figures out how to play defense when he moved to Atlanta. Those were the days.
 
50PoundHead said:
Thanks for posting. I don't know who is more delusional: Uggla or writers like this who still somehow try to defend him.

Bat speed is probably a big part of it. I think the most telling stat is that he hasn't walked as much this season, which kind of tells me pitchers aren't afraid to challenge him anymore.
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Yeah. They are throwing him more strikes this year than before.
 
GovClintonTyree said:
Excellent interview, Zito. Thanks. I wonder why Bowman and DOB can't do a deep dive once in a while.

We acquired Dan because we had no RH power. We were vulnerable to JSantana, Lee, Hamels. Now we've got Oso and the good Upton, and secondarily, CJ, Simba, and the bad Upton. That's a lot of RH hitting.

If Dan got close to maximum Dan, he's still overkill. We don't need another 25-35 HR guy, we need a tablesetter with a .370 OBP.

I remember reading an interview with Wade Boggs a bit later in his career. Boggs hit .360 for the first half of his career and .300 for the second half. He was lamenting that he'd lost the inside-out stroke where he could hit the top half of the ball through the 5.5 hole. He never did get it back. He was (more or less) just a guy from then on.

Dan is lamenting the loss of the ability to hit the ball hard where it's pitched (and he should be - it's killing him) and trying to stop himself from trying to jerk everything he sees into the LF bleachers. I see improvement, but I'd say there's maybe a 5-10% chance of him getting back where he was.

Meanwhile, the club has changed. The club needs a guy who can impact a lot of games incrementally, rather than an occasional game in a big way.

Dan doesn't fit the club anymore.
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As much as I hate to say it, I agree.

If the organization wants to keep Pena in a utility role and has decided that Pastornicky just isn't an everyday guy either, it's time to give La Stella his shot - regardless of the reasons (more contact, whatever) he's become the same black hole in the lineup that Frenchy was. Fredi keeps hitting Simba behind him in the hope that he'll get to see some pitches he can drive, but it's simply not working and it's killing any offensive contribution Andrelton makes because there's no one on in front of him.

As mentioned above, we've suddenly become entirely too right-handed - particularly the lower half of the lineup. That crowd always seems to have one hot guy and a couple automatic outs. If Gattis gets hot, you stop pitching to him and take your chances with CJ and Uggla - often the best case scenario is you have two outs and the opportunity to pitch around Simmons as well, not to mention you don't have to go deep into your pen...one RHP will suffice.

I love Dan's hustle and commitment, and it's obvious that he's a big part of the clubhouse. Unfortunately he's hurting the team too much to keep around. Someone's going to have to sit down with him (even if Fredi won't) and make him understand that we'd love to have him as part of the postseason roster - you can never have enough bats that can end a game in the blink of an eye in October - but he's just going to have to go to Gwinnett and show continued success and improvement before we can count on him for that. He's going to have to show those guys in that clubhouse that he's as willing to put the team before himself as they think he is. He's going to get every dime - now he needs to earn some of it.

Just imagine how much deeper the lineup would be with a left-handed bat that reaches base 35% of the time (adjusting Tommy's numbers down for the elevated competition) between Gattis and Johnson - if you flip-flopped CJ and Simba, you'd almost be back to being balanced given Johnson's typical reverse-splits.

Again, if the organization's convinced that Pastornicky's NOT an everyday guy, the time to showcase La Stella is definitely now because Peraza's breathing down every one of their necks.

Heyward, B. J., Freeman, J-Up, Gattis, La Stella, CJ/Simba, Simba/CJ would be so much better than what we're running out there every night right now that it's scary.
 
nsacpi said:
He isn't popping out much this year. What is up are the groundballs. Its harder to interpret whether that's good or not. It does appear that he is no longer trying to hit a home run every time he swings, which was something I hated about his approach last year.
Click to expand...

Is there a spray chart available to see where he has been hitting the ball. I've wondered if he's trying to go the other way more and while that's a concept I can support, some guys simply can't do that with much success. He could be hitting a lot of dribblers to second if he tries to shorten up and shoot the ball into RF.
 
Career:

plot_hc_spray.php
 
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