I've been wavering on Hyde. I've come to the conclusion that their regular season batting successes indicate the problem isn't hitting coaches or probably even the manager himself, it's likely something for the sports psychologists.
You don't bring in a new manager to maybe make the playoffs again and then somehow magically get them to hit in the postseason the way they did for most of the regular season. That's something separate.
Generally agree. One can quibble with a few of Hyde's in-game tactical moves, but even the best managers ever have made major mistakes on that front in their careers. Hindsight is always 20/20.
My personal feeling is this: The organization has designed a strategy for their hitters to accept increased strikeouts in favor of maximum damage when swinging, emphasizing launch angle and speed off the bat for the home run potential. Players are taught to focus on the pitches they can do the most damage on. But with good opposing pitching - which the Royals had in spades - those 'vulnerable' pitches can be few and far between. They need to be more adaptable to using a 'small ball' approach that may be necessary in certain games/situations.
When they had the bases loaded with no outs last night, each of Santander, Cowser and Rutschman were trying to hit the ball out for the grand slam, instead of (to use the old phrasing) "shortening up on the bat" and just trying to make what I'll term 50th percentile contact instead 90% percentile.
The one thing I'll criticize Hyde for last night is leaving Cowser in in that situation instead of pinch hitting for him. Cowser is terrible against lefties, he's well below average offensively against them. When he was coming up I told my friends that was a mistake to let him hit and it panned out that way. He looked like a fool in that at bat.
They are paying for the Angelos family being cheap and getting no pitching last year. The starters were ruined.
To be fair, their starters (and bullpen for that matter) weren't the problem the last 2 days. Only giving up 3 runs over 2 games is pretty damn good, it should have been good enough to win both.
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