This post described Frenchy’s ’08 season where he had like the third or fourth most at bats with runners in scoring position. His at bats are illogical.

Sorry for the lack of conxtext. I know it seemed kind of random. This kind of spilled over from the Ludwick discussion. I guess my point is that the Braves had too many table setters and not enough boppers last year. Frenchy was neither.

 I observed the same,being a Braves fan that dates back to the Murphy days(i am 36 yrs old),there has always been a “BIG BAT”.When Texteria left so did the bat,injury issues with the pitchers was a big problem with our run production also.When your down 5-1 for example ;the other teams pitcher can pitch a different game.I still play baseball in an adult league locally and coach my sons baseball team ,and power mosly wins the games.Power pitching and hitting.

Unfortunately, niekromurphy, your argument is a little too incoherent for me to respond to fully. Your Hitter A vs. Hitter B scenario is totally fallacious, because you don’t build a team only so it can score with runners on first and third with one out. You go ahead and assume that non-power hitter A is going to ground into a double play ALL THE TIME, when in fact about 30% of groundballs become hits anyway.

You assume that power hitter B is going to hit a flyball every time, instead of, say grounding into the teeth of a shift, and you assume that he’s going to hit a homer every four at-bats (three K’s and a homer). If you can find a power hitter that homers every four at-bats, you let Frank Wren know ASAP. So that’s just not worth discussing. You want a team that can score runs, period, and looking at a certain specific situation doesn’t help you see that.

Then you complain about being a station-to-station team. Well, most power hitting teams tend to be station-to-station teams because they have more power and LESS speed, and they are more concerned with the long-ball than taking the extra base. Not that that’s a bad strategy, but you’re clearly getting confused with what it is that you actually don’t like about last year’s Braves team.

Then, you talk about a guy who “might get a walk or might get a single,” as though we’re talking about having a lineup full of Luis Castillos. You make it sound like these “non-power hitters” are feeble little guys who’ll be lucky to get the ball out of the infield. In that Ludwick thread, I’m talking about guys with gap-to-gap, 20-25 HR power. Take Nick Swisher for instance. The man averages 60 extra-base hits per 162 games! That’s pretty good power. No Ryan Howard, but still solid.

So really what you’re looking at in my view is a lineup full of guys with very good extra-base power, but no moonshot home-run power. You’re not talking about a lineup of weaklings, you’re talking about a lineup of guys who get on base all the time, in a whole dynamic variety of ways. They take walks, they make pitchers work. And they STILL have enough power up and down to drive in those base runners. Instead of concentrating all your power in the 3-4-5 holes, you’re going to have probably SIX guys that could bop 20-25 homers. That means from the #2 hitter to the #8 hitter, you have guys who are threats to put the ball over the fence.

It’s not the only way to win, but the idea that the Braves MUST get a bona fide 40-home run hitter is totally off-base. Besides the fact that it’s questionable at best whether Ludwick is even a 40-homer guy anyway.

One thing that I should have brought into the conversation is the idea of situational hitting. The Angels are one team that stress this concept. Baseball is a game of pitchers versus hitters. In the 1st and 3rd scenario I was talking about, a bright and skilled pitcher will be using pitch selection to try to coax a grounder out of hitters. Some hitters make adjustments while others refuse to alter their approach and end up giving the pitcher exactly what he wants. 6-4-3 out of the inning. I think some guys take the approach of altering their swing to hit the ball in the air in that situation. They may swing and miss. They may pop up. But they are unlikely to ground into a double play.

I think you misunderstood my point about being a station to station team. Last year we were station to station without boppers (bad). Whitey Herzog’s Cardinal teams were exceptions to the rule. They didn’t need boppers because they could hit singles and run like the wind.

I actually agree with yourpoint about the “doubles guys” for lack of a better word.The problem is that these guys (KJ, Escobar, Kotchman) didn’t seem to progress as much as I had hoped. I think that it is a very reasonable argument to expect them to do better next year. I believe that KJ ended last year on a hot streak. Escobar should have recovered from his shoulder injury. Franceour can’t do worse. They could all step up and then we might have a very interesting offense.

And for the record, I don’t know that Ludwick is the answer either.

See, I don’t really believe in “situational hitting.” Except for very special instances, I think you just let your hitters HIT. I don’t think you have them worry about groundballs or flyballs or any kind of balls…just leave their approach alone and have confidence in their ability. I’m not going to send any of my hitters to the plate TRYING to upper-cut the ball. I know they can hit, and I have confidence they are good enough to get hits even if the pitcher is trying to “coax” a ground ball. In fact, if you look at the stats, big sluggers like Ryan Howard tend to hit into tons of double plays because they swing for the fences and if they miss, they get little dribblers into the teeth of a shift, and they are slow runners and thus easy pickings for would-be double play combos.

My view is “let the hitter hit,” which means that if they don’t generally ground into lots of double plays, they aren’t any more or less likely to do so in a key scoring situation. And all the guys I’m talking about (Swisher et al) are line-drive hitters with good-if-not-great speed, and that leans away from DP tendencies. They’ll hit into their share, to be sure, but on the whole, they’ll hit into twin killings less than their bopping counterparts. Now of course the Ryan Howards of the world will make up for that by producing runs with the longball, but my point is not that the power approach doesn’t work. My point is that BOTH approaches work well. Either way, it can work.

SO…rather than overpaying for a power hitter like an aging Jermaine Dye or a potentially fluky Ryan Ludwick, if it’s easier and cheaper to get more modest power threats like Swisher, they should jump on it, and spend the difference on pitching. Even without heavy hitters, we won’t be a station-to-station team again, because with all the line drives and lots of walks, the bases won’t get clogged.

As for the guys who didn’t improve as much as you thought, Johnson is a lock for an .800 OPS. Kotchman also will bounce back to slug in the .450s somewhere. Escobar I hope will be a Padre, so he’s less relevant. But again, with 5-6 guys capable of 20+ homers and 5-6 guys posting OBPs of .360 or better, your lineup will be plenty capable. Keep in mind that I’m not pigeonholing WHICH guys will do that, but among the collection of talent that we will have, it’s not hard to imagine that being the case.

Of course, I’m a huge Adam Dunn fan too, and would love to have his big stick in the lineup. I’m just saying that I don’t see it as an absolute must-get, sell-the-farm need to get a 35-HR bat in the lineup, especially because I don’t think guys like Dye or Ludwick are 35-HR guys.