There was a week remaining in the last Braves’ season when hitting coach Greg Walker, worn down by too many strikeouts and hard-headed players, phoned team executive John Hart to announce his exit.
“He called me and said, ‘Uncle,’” Hart said. “He had done a good job here. I wanted him back, and I ended up bringing him back later as an adviser. But he said, ‘John, I’m done.’”
We’ll never know if Hart, now the Braves’ president of baseball operations, really intended to keep Walker as hitting coach, given that the club ranked 26th in the majors in batting average, 24th in on-base percentage, 29th in runs scored and fourth in strikeouts.
But Walker’s exit reaffirmed his former job can crush a man’s will, fry his brains and lead them to run screaming into the night, like the health inspector at a nuclear-waste repository.
Welcome, Kevin Seitzer.
Will you be staying long?
“Hitting coach and pitching coach are two of the toughest jobs in baseball,” said Seitzer, the team’s new psychotherapist and bat-on-ball instructor. “This is my fourth organization as hitting coach and I’ve been fired twice, but I just left the last one. You try to get to a place that’s a good fit.”
Seitzer is more than qualified to be the Braves’ hitting coach. But then so was Terry Pendleton, a former MVP who spent nine years in the job before inexplicably being moved to first base coach following the 2010 season. Why? Because the organization felt it could do better, so it hired Larry Parrish. He was fired after one season. Walker lasted three, giving him relative tenure.
Walker shouldn’t be blamed for the ills of B.J. Upton, Jason Heyward or any other player. As Freddie Freeman, one of the club’s few returning veterans, said Tuesday, “It seems no one wants to blame the players as much as the hitting coach. I mean, it wasn’t Walker’s fault. We had the same hitting coaches in 2013 and absolutely killed it. We did strike out a lot, but in 2014 we weren’t hitting the home runs that we were in 2013, so the strikeouts were magnified.”
With a shortage of power hitters, or just proven hitters at all, the Braves will need to win games with “small ball.” They’ll need to excel at making contact and advancing runners, generating offense with speed and contact.
Seitzer’s philosophy: Approach each at-bat thinking fastball down the middle, driving it back toward the middle, which keeps the front shoulder from flying out. He also wants hitters to be aggressive. With the Braves suffering from strikeouts and poor situational hitting, one would think the approach should be more deliberate, less aggressive.
Seitzer’s counterpoint: “If you take a hitter’s aggressiveness away, you might as well shoot them in the head. They’re going to be late. They’re going to be fooled. They’re going to be in two-strike counts.
“Teams say: ‘We strike out a lot. We don’t have a high on-base percentage. How are you going to get them more disciplined?’ I tell them I’m going to get them as aggressive as I can, looking for a fastball down the middle. You can’t worry about being fooled. If you end up reacting to fastballs or making sure the pitch is a strike, you’re late. I’d rather have them be fooled on a breaking ball than a fastball.”
Seitzer played 12 years in the majors, hitting .295, including .314, .311 and .326 in three of his last four seasons. His teammates included two of baseball’s greatest hitters: George Brett in Kansas City and Paul Molitor in Milwaukee.
He finished his career in Cleveland, where Hart, then the Indians’ general manager, traded for him, believing Seitzer was the missing piece to winning a World Series. He was close: The Indians lost in seven games to Florida in 1997.
Seitzer went on to become a hitting coach — one year in Arizona, four years in Kansas City and one in Toronto. The Blue Jays wanted him back — they ranked among leaders in most key statistical categories, including sixth in on-base percentage and fifth in runs scored — but Seitzer didn’t like their contract offer. Then he heard the Braves’ job had opened up.
“I called and said, I don’t know where you are in the process, but I’d like to throw my hat in the ring.”
He had two strong connections: Hart and John Schuerholz, who was in Kansas City when Seitzer was drafted. The deal was done in a few days.
Hart likes Seitzer in the same way the Braves like pitching coach Roger McDowell: His ability to communicate with players and get his ideas through. “He’s going to establish relationships with players,” Hart said. “His personality is a huge piece of his skill set.”
That’s really what this is allow about. The new hitting coach often isn’t any smarter than the previous one.
“In the case of hitting coaches and pitching coaches, people connect performance with instruction,” Hart said. “Sometimes that’s just not the case. Sometimes guys just don’t listen. So you’re forced to re-bake the cake.”
Next question: What can Seitzer accomplish with these ingredients?
