GDT: 4/7/'15 - Atlanta Braves (Wood) @ Miami Marlins (Latos) 7:35PM EST

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ChapelHillMatt said:
Honestly I wouldn't. Those guys are talented enough to hit homers without trying to. You develop bad habits by trying to yank everything. Every great hitter will tell you the homers will come without you trying to hit them, if you muscle up and try to hit a homer you can get yourself into a slump.
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Justin always hit well when he was staying on the ball and driving it up the middle. The HRs would come because he was locked in and confident. Still, he (in 2013, anyway) scarcely hit a HR that was less than 400ft. You don't do that without muscling up to some degree. Chipper had a distinctly different swing when he was trying to go with the pitch and poke a single to the opposite field than when he was trying to drive the ball. It's ok for a power hitter in a hitter's count to take a different approach than he would in a situation where he's protecting the plate or just trying to put the ball in play. There's not a one-size-fits-all solution to hitting.
 
50PoundHead said:
We might squeak one out here and there that we ordinarily wouldn't have with the new approach, but the long run pretty much always rewards power and outside of Freeman, I can't see a lock for double figures in HRs in the line-up. And one would really look good in the middle of the line-up. I don't think it would make us magically into a contender, but to make the next step, we are going to need some middle-of-the-lineup help.

And you're right, if you got a power guy, you don't really care about his contact rate (unless it really stinks). The problem we had last year is that we had a ton of swing-and-miss guys (I think our swing-and-miss rate for pitches in the strike zone was the worst in baseball) and some of those guys weren't true power guys. We couldn't handle the bat that well, so that cut down on the ability to play hit-and-run and we didn't steal a ton of bases. That means we had to dent the fences to win and we didn't do that often enough.
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^^^^^

This 1000X. Last year in a nutshell.
 
Julio3000 said:
Justin always hit well when he was staying on the ball and driving it up the middle. The HRs would come because he was locked in and confident. Still, he (in 2013, anyway) scarcely hit a HR that was less than 400ft. You don't do that without muscling up to some degree. Chipper had a distinctly different swing when he was trying to go with the pitch and poke a single to the opposite field than when he was trying to drive the ball. It's ok for a power hitter in a hitter's count to take a different approach than he would in a situation where he's protecting the plate or just trying to put the ball in play. There's not a one-size-fits-all solution to hitting.
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Good point, I started to add that to my post after rereading what he said.
 
Anyways... good win for the slappies. I would bring up Wood not looking too sharp tonight, but I'd hate to be accused of being mad about Heyward
 
sturg33 said:
Anyways... good win for the slappies. I would bring up Wood not looking too sharp tonight, but I'd hate to be accused of being mad about Heyward
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He wasn't particularly sharp, and seemed like he had too much going on with his delivery, but he made some big pitches when he needed to. If Markakis cuts that ball off, the Marlins don't even score off him.
 
sturg33 said:
Anyways... good win for the slappies. I would bring up Wood not looking too sharp tonight, but I'd hate to be accused of being mad about Heyward
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Haha, yea we're mad about Heyward. :)

Wood said the long first inning waiting like 45 mins after warm-ups made it harder. I think the same happened with Julio after the rain delay too because he looked great before it.
 
50PoundHead said:
We might squeak one out here and there that we ordinarily wouldn't have with the new approach, but the long run pretty much always rewards power and outside of Freeman, I can't see a lock for double figures in HRs in the line-up. And one would really look good in the middle of the line-up. I don't think it would make us magically into a contender, but to make the next step, we are going to need some middle-of-the-lineup help.

And you're right, if you got a power guy, you don't really care about his contact rate (unless it really stinks). The problem we had last year is that we had a ton of swing-and-miss guys (I think our swing-and-miss rate for pitches in the strike zone was the worst in baseball) and some of those guys weren't true power guys. We couldn't handle the bat that well, so that cut down on the ability to play hit-and-run and we didn't steal a ton of bases. That means we had to dent the fences to win and we didn't do that often enough.
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I don't think you'll be finding many that disagree that we need power in the middle of the order. You don't want a whole team full of slap hitters but you don't need a team where everyone swings for the fences either. There is a balance between the two. Not every hitter has to be a power hitter to contribute to a good offensive team. I'm looking forward to getting back to a mixture of different type of hitters. Wren's teams, all the hitters looked alike and we suffered as a result.
 
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