A Surprise Pitching Coach Option

He seems to be an easy going and easy to talk to guy, that is results oriented. He works hands on with the pitchers, trying to tweak their mechanics, instead of preaching some philosophy.

Which is kind of why Rick Knapp is gone. He preached about throwing strikes, and he wasn’t getting results. You really can’t tell guys to throw strikes if they don’t have good stuff that day. They’ll get pounded if they do, especially with our defense.

Dave Duncan’s pitch to contact philosophy probably won’t work here either. We’d have to improve our defense 1st.

Case in point, Rick Porcello. With our poor infield defense, he gets beaten to death by ground balls. With Cabrera, Raburn/Santi, Peralta, Betemit/Inge in our infield, he needed to become more of a fly ball pitcher, develop a strikeout pitch, or work on his deception. Given the short leash and pitch count he was on, he really couldn’t afford do any experimenting during the season. In the off-season, Spring Training, or in the minors is where he needs to learn to do that stuff. I just hope Jeff Jones has a plan to tweak Kid Rick’s delivery. I think he needs to either smooth out the shake in his leg kick or be more eccentric with it, kind of like Aurelio Lopez.

Kenny Rogers, is much like Jeff Jones. He’s more about figuring out the best way to make it through each game. He knows what to do when he doesn’t have his pitches working. He’ll grind it out, get the innings in, then let the bullpen do their job. I don’t think Rogers would want to be a pitching coach though. I think he’s probably happy to be retired and out of the game. I could be wrong though.