GREG WALKER: “We’re going to get better, there’s no doubt in my mind. We’ve pitched good enough to keep us in the fight. We’re not bad; we’re in first place. You’ve got to tip your cap to the way we’ve pitched, and we (hitters) have got get better. And we have a chance to get better. The same guys, basically… If you look at our misses, we’re getting impatient and swinging at balls out of the zone. Which doesn’t work….
“We’ve had some games where we were bad. Really bad. Some guys have been frustrated and swing at balls out of the zone. We’re giving away way too many at-bats. I think we’re good, but we’re not good enough to do that (swing at pitches out of zone). Got to get the ball in the zone, and got to take our walks. We’re going to hit the ball hard, and we’re going to strike out. So what are the variables? The variables are (getting strikes, letting bad pitches go). We’ve got to trust the guy behind you….
“We’ve got to get better, and we will. I really believe we will.”…
Madison Bumgarner gave up four runs and seven hits in five innings Wednesday and praised the adjustments made by Braves hitters.
“I think (the poor results with runners in scoring position) has been a little bit flukey. You look at hard-hit balls with runners in scoring position, we’ve hit as many of the balls hard as any other team. Some of it’s just been bad luck. And that’s an excuse, and hitting coaches don’t talk about bad luck, because you start feeling sorry for yourself. We can’t feel sorry for ourself. Got to keep fighting. We’ve got a lot of swing-and-miss streaky guys, and as a hitting coach you always look to get better. How can you get better? And that’s why we’re so dynamic when we get two or three guys going. We get two or three guys going, I mean, we play slow-pitch softball (big power). We get everybody going, it’s unbelievable. But how do you create consistency? Take our walks, use our athleticism, run on guys you can run on. Win games. When you’re not going good as a team, if you can find a way to win a game….
“This guy today (Bumgarner) is tough, but we know going in if we get two or three runs early we’ve got a pretty good chance to win because our guy (Teheran) is really good. And as bad as it seems, we’ve scored more than the other team, what, 22 times? That’s a good thing. And as bad as we’ve been – and we’ve been bad – we find a way to win some games. Mainly because of pitching.
“We haven’t been absolutely zero; sometimes it hasn’t been as bad as the numbers look. I think we’re all disappointed in how many at-bats we’ve given away this year. That’s the thing I look at. I’m talking about non-competitive pitches. When you’re swinging at pitches … pitching today is as good as it’s ever been. Everybody’s scuffling (offensively). I mean, at one time or another almost every team in baseball has scuffled in the first six weeks. We’re kind of the poster child for it, because we’ve done it more than anybody. But we’re going to get better, and there’s no doubt about it. And we’ve set ourself up. As bad as we’ve been, we’ve been good enough to be in first place. And hopefully we get better.
“We’re one of the youngest teams in baseball. We’ve faced a tough of right-handed pitching with a ton of right-handed at-bats against right-handed pitchers. And we’ve been challenged with – pitchers don’t want to throw us strikes, and we’ve allowed them to get away with that. They don’t want to throw us strikes, because we’re dangerous. We’ve got a lot of dangerous guys. They don’t want to throw us strikes and we’ve allowed them to get away with it. We’ve got to get better at getting the ball in the zone. That’s the one thing that sticks out to me. You always look at deception – he swung at a slider in the dirt. OK, that (pitcher) is good. That’s deceptive. It looked like a strike and turned into a ball. But we’ve swung at way too many non-competitive pitches this year. And when I see that I say, OK, that’s probably a frustrated hitter. He’s pre-determining swings: ‘OK, he’s going to throw me a strike here.’ The pitching coach is now – they’ve got his game plan. ‘OK, I’m going to pitch backwards, I don’t have to throw this guy a strike.’ And I don’t care what kind of swing you’ve got, I don’t care what kind of talent you’ve got, it’s impossible to hit a non-competitive pitch; you’ve got to take it. And we’ve not done a good job with that. Coaching or watching the other team, I’ve never seen a team swing at so many non-competitive pitches.
“A lot of it’s out of frustration. ‘He’s going to throw me a heater here, I’m going to cheat and I’m going to get to it.’ And they’re smart enough to know that. And we’ve fell into the trap. We’re swinging at balls that are, out of the hand, they’re balls. That’s when you’ve got to look in the mirror and say we’ve got a wrong mindset. As a hitting coach I’m not smart enough to think along with pitchers. But I am smart enough to know that if I go up there and I fight through my at-bat, if I go up there with the mindset — this guy is not going to get me out, I’m going to put a professional at-bat on this guy, I’m going to swing at strikes, I’m going to be ready to hit, but if he doesn’t throw me a strike I’m going to trust my brother behind me – I believe that takes care of all this numbers stuff that everybody worries about. But when you just start giving away at-bats by just predetermining swings, well guess what, they’ve got too much info. They go in with a gameplan, and we fall into the trap of let them beat us without throwing strikes.
“I’ve coached teams that were bad and had bad streaks, but most of the time it was because we were hurt or just weren’t that good. But our guys are healthy. There’s no excuse for being as bad as we’ve been. But the good news is, we’re healthy. We’ve got a chance of getting a lot better. If I looked at us every day and said, ‘we’re not very good,’ I’d be real worried. But we’re not this bad. We’re not this bad. The pitching’s giving us a chance. If we get in the fight, we’ll get better.”
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