Crash Course
11-20-2004, 10:55 PM
In a recent New York Times article (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/21/sports/baseball/21chass.html?pagewanted=2&ei=5040&en=8d453587543e31e0&ex=1101618000&partner=MOREOVER) Barry Bonds said:
In accepting walks and not swinging at pitches close to the strike zone, Bonds has demonstrated remarkable discipline.
"I've been that way my whole life, even when I was a younger player," he said. "I've always been a disciplined hitter, since I've been in college. I learned that with Jeff Pentland in college, and I learned that from my father, who struck out a lot. I wanted to be a contact hitter, unlike my father. I didn't want to strike out a lot."
For those not aware of Pentland's role in Bonds' college days, I share this bio found off a site on the 'net that appears to be untouched since 2001 (http://www.hittingacademy.com/visitor/vbiojpentland.cfm):
Jeff received both his bachelor’s and master’s degree from Arizona State University. At ASU, his degrees consisted of a concentration in “biomechanics” which contributed to his background knowledge of the “physics side” of hitting. After spending the 1973-74 school year as an assistant athletic director at Wichita State University, he served as assistant baseball coach at University of California-Riverside for 9 years, where they won 2 national championships while he was there. Jeff returned to ASU to become hitting coach in 1983, where he helped develop major league hitters, Barry Bonds, Mike Devereaux, Pat Listach, Fernando Vina, and Ken Landreaux.
Many know Pentland as being the coach who turned Sammy Sosa into a superstar hitter. In August of 2001, Rob Neyer of ESPN.com wrote in a column:
Well, in midseason 1997 Jeff Pentland joined the Cubs as hitting coach. As Pentland says in Sosa's book, "The two things that really stood out were [Sosa's] attitude and his aggressiveness. He is about as aggressive a person as I've ever been around. I've always felt as a coach that the more more aggressive the player is, the better, because it's your job as a teacher to harness that aggression to where it's productive. At that point Sammy was aggressive, but he was wildly aggressive.
And there was no direction or control of that aggression. His holes in his swing were off the plate -- you could get him to chase balls. In other words, he was lacking in his ability to read pitches, which I think is critical. Obviously, the guys who do it best are the best hitters in the game: Barry Bonds, Gary Sheffield, and Jeff Bagwell. Those guys have tremendous ability to identify pitches when they are batting.
My memory of Sammy Sosa from all those pre-1998 seasons boils down to one thing: Sosa striking out upon taking a mighty cut at a slider a foot outside and bouncing in the dirt. Now, it's one thing for a hitting coach to recognize a hitter's deficiencies; it's a far rarer thing for a hitter himself to recognize his deficiencies, and possess both the desire and ability to significantly improve.
But at the close of the 1997 season, Sosa had just signed a fat new contract and he had suffered through a sub-par (for him) season, and the combination just might have been exactly what he needed. Well, that and Jeff Pentland, who says, "The important thing about hitting is that it's like opening up a flower. When it's there and the petals are all folded in, you don't know how beautiful it might be. What I made Sammy aware of was that there was a lot of finesse and softness in hitting."
But again, Sosa himself had to want to change, and by all accounts he did. "In spring training of that year," Sosa remembered, "when Jeff Pentland and I would meet daily to discuss hitting, we set out many goals because we thought it could be a special season. So we talked a lot about me taking more walks. We talked about me hitting the ball to the opposite field. ... We talked technique. We talked game strategies and identifying the pitches. We talked about my footwork, where I held the bat, how I held the bat, how I swung the bat. ... But going into that season, Jeff and I never -- ever -- talked about home runs. ... Home runs were the furthest thing from my mind."
Specifically, Pentland reconstructed Sosa's swing. Sosa dropped his arms, and changed his footwork to include a revised "tap step," and the result was, as Pentland says, "that Sammy would begin to use his legs better than anybody in the big leagues. ... Sammy was learning that power was actually more coordination and timing than brute strength."
It's probably safe to say that Pentland knows a thing or two about hitting and how to help hitters.
At the end of last season, there was a small write-up in the K.C. Star that said (http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/sports/baseball/mlb/kansas_city_royals/9810310.htm):
There's another young player the Royals are pretty giddy about, and that's catcher John Buck.
The Royals already know that Buck can develop into one of the best defensive catchers in the game. And now they're seeing strides that he can make an impact offensively, too.
His 12 homers in just more than a third of the season translate into 30 to 35 for a full year.
“Jeff Pentland has really been working with him and feeding him a lot of information over the last month,” Peña said. “You can see it all start to sink in. It takes a while to process all that information, and you could see that in Buck lately. He's been hesitant because he's thinking about all this stuff.
“But we can see it sink in, and we see a better hitter. He's starting to drive the ball the other way, and he's strong enough to do some damage that way. I can't wait to see what he'll be like next year.”
Put me down as someone else looking forward to see what Buck will be like in 2005. I think the Royals just may have themselves an All-Star backstop next year.
In accepting walks and not swinging at pitches close to the strike zone, Bonds has demonstrated remarkable discipline.
"I've been that way my whole life, even when I was a younger player," he said. "I've always been a disciplined hitter, since I've been in college. I learned that with Jeff Pentland in college, and I learned that from my father, who struck out a lot. I wanted to be a contact hitter, unlike my father. I didn't want to strike out a lot."
For those not aware of Pentland's role in Bonds' college days, I share this bio found off a site on the 'net that appears to be untouched since 2001 (http://www.hittingacademy.com/visitor/vbiojpentland.cfm):
Jeff received both his bachelor’s and master’s degree from Arizona State University. At ASU, his degrees consisted of a concentration in “biomechanics” which contributed to his background knowledge of the “physics side” of hitting. After spending the 1973-74 school year as an assistant athletic director at Wichita State University, he served as assistant baseball coach at University of California-Riverside for 9 years, where they won 2 national championships while he was there. Jeff returned to ASU to become hitting coach in 1983, where he helped develop major league hitters, Barry Bonds, Mike Devereaux, Pat Listach, Fernando Vina, and Ken Landreaux.
Many know Pentland as being the coach who turned Sammy Sosa into a superstar hitter. In August of 2001, Rob Neyer of ESPN.com wrote in a column:
Well, in midseason 1997 Jeff Pentland joined the Cubs as hitting coach. As Pentland says in Sosa's book, "The two things that really stood out were [Sosa's] attitude and his aggressiveness. He is about as aggressive a person as I've ever been around. I've always felt as a coach that the more more aggressive the player is, the better, because it's your job as a teacher to harness that aggression to where it's productive. At that point Sammy was aggressive, but he was wildly aggressive.
And there was no direction or control of that aggression. His holes in his swing were off the plate -- you could get him to chase balls. In other words, he was lacking in his ability to read pitches, which I think is critical. Obviously, the guys who do it best are the best hitters in the game: Barry Bonds, Gary Sheffield, and Jeff Bagwell. Those guys have tremendous ability to identify pitches when they are batting.
My memory of Sammy Sosa from all those pre-1998 seasons boils down to one thing: Sosa striking out upon taking a mighty cut at a slider a foot outside and bouncing in the dirt. Now, it's one thing for a hitting coach to recognize a hitter's deficiencies; it's a far rarer thing for a hitter himself to recognize his deficiencies, and possess both the desire and ability to significantly improve.
But at the close of the 1997 season, Sosa had just signed a fat new contract and he had suffered through a sub-par (for him) season, and the combination just might have been exactly what he needed. Well, that and Jeff Pentland, who says, "The important thing about hitting is that it's like opening up a flower. When it's there and the petals are all folded in, you don't know how beautiful it might be. What I made Sammy aware of was that there was a lot of finesse and softness in hitting."
But again, Sosa himself had to want to change, and by all accounts he did. "In spring training of that year," Sosa remembered, "when Jeff Pentland and I would meet daily to discuss hitting, we set out many goals because we thought it could be a special season. So we talked a lot about me taking more walks. We talked about me hitting the ball to the opposite field. ... We talked technique. We talked game strategies and identifying the pitches. We talked about my footwork, where I held the bat, how I held the bat, how I swung the bat. ... But going into that season, Jeff and I never -- ever -- talked about home runs. ... Home runs were the furthest thing from my mind."
Specifically, Pentland reconstructed Sosa's swing. Sosa dropped his arms, and changed his footwork to include a revised "tap step," and the result was, as Pentland says, "that Sammy would begin to use his legs better than anybody in the big leagues. ... Sammy was learning that power was actually more coordination and timing than brute strength."
It's probably safe to say that Pentland knows a thing or two about hitting and how to help hitters.
At the end of last season, there was a small write-up in the K.C. Star that said (http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/sports/baseball/mlb/kansas_city_royals/9810310.htm):
There's another young player the Royals are pretty giddy about, and that's catcher John Buck.
The Royals already know that Buck can develop into one of the best defensive catchers in the game. And now they're seeing strides that he can make an impact offensively, too.
His 12 homers in just more than a third of the season translate into 30 to 35 for a full year.
“Jeff Pentland has really been working with him and feeding him a lot of information over the last month,” Peña said. “You can see it all start to sink in. It takes a while to process all that information, and you could see that in Buck lately. He's been hesitant because he's thinking about all this stuff.
“But we can see it sink in, and we see a better hitter. He's starting to drive the ball the other way, and he's strong enough to do some damage that way. I can't wait to see what he'll be like next year.”
Put me down as someone else looking forward to see what Buck will be like in 2005. I think the Royals just may have themselves an All-Star backstop next year.