First-year Braves hitting coach Kevin Seitzer didn’t blow into town and start trying to turn every hitter into his vision of a perfect swing. An accomplished former hitter himself, Seitzer knew better. Hitters come in all shapes and sizes, as do stances, and a modern hitting coach’s job isn’t to demand a cookie-cutter, textbook swing.
“I think it’s pretty common in the big leagues now — there’s more than one way to skin a cat, that kind of thing,” said veteran left fielder Jonny Gomes, in his first season with the Braves, his sixth big-league team in 13 seasons. “When you’ve got high elbow, low elbow, knee kick, no knee kick. You’ve got guys that are inside, shoot the ball the other way, and guys that get around it and hook it.
“(Seitzer) has done a real good job of finding an individual player’s strength and just bottling that up and running with, like, this can happen, that can happen, but this has to happen.”
Seitzer’s priority has been mindset instead of hitting mechanics. He might suggest a tweak to a swing or setup, but for the most part he’s focused on getting hitters to embrace principles: make contact, drive the ball up the middle, know the situation — Two strikes? Runners on base? Two outs? — and adjust accordingly.
It’s spring training, and anyone who’s been around baseball knows not to make too much of statistics, particularly early on when backups, roster hopefuls and plenty of pitchers who’ll never make it to the big leagues are getting lots of innings. But with less than two weeks until opening day, the Braves are seeing some good signs.
In Monday’s 14-10 win against the Astros, Braves hitters feasted against mediocre or inexperienced pitchers, but this was still worth noting: 19 hits, including 11-for-20 with runners in scoring position. Oh, and this: One strikeout. The past couple of seasons, the Braves had five strikeouts before getting off the bus.
“That was crazy,” infielder Phil Gosselin said of Monday’s game. “Their pitchers were leaving some balls up, and we were hitting those mistakes, ready for them. Guys put some really good swings on balls. It’s contagious. Start off with a couple of hits and then it just keeps going, snowballing in the right direction for us.
“Guys are starting to get it. It takes a little time. We only have 30 or 40 at-bats (apiece), but it’s getting there.”
In a 5-3 win Sunday against the Tigers, the Braves had 11 hits, five strikeouts and two sacrifice flies. The Braves also got a strong pitching performance from Shelby Miller, not that Seitzer necessarily noticed.
“He’s a hitting coach, and the good ones are passionate about their hitting,” Braves manager Fredi Gonzalez said. “He’s in there every at-bat with the guys. I like it. But you ask him, hey, what did you think about Shelby Miller’s performance?, and he’s like, ‘What?’ He doesn’t even know anybody pitched for us that day. He’s locked in on his guys. Which is good.”
A week earlier, Seitzer was asked about how Braves hitters were responding.
“They’ve done great,” he said. “They’re making good adjustments, working hard, and they’ve got tremendous attitudes. Open to things I’m asking them to try, and everything seems to be going really good. We just need to translate it to the game where we get into some rolls. But we’ve still got a little bit of time.”
Before Wednesday, their only scheduled day off during spring training, the Braves ranked tied for second in the majors with 10 sacrifice flies in 24 games, and their 144 strikeouts were fewest among eight teams that played at least 23 games. The Braves were 21st overall in strikeouts, and seven of nine teams with fewer K’s had played 21 or fewer games.
In 2014, the Braves not only ranked last in the majors in sacrifice flies, with 27, they had 20.6 percent fewer than the next-lowest total, Seattle’s 34. Eighteen teams had 40 or more.
Strikeouts have been the most consistent feature of recent Braves team: They ranked fourth in the majors with 1,369 in 2014, third with a franchise-record 1,384 in 2013, seventh with 1,289 in 2012 and sixth with 1,260 in 2011.
The Braves also ranked fourth in the majors in stolen bases (19) before Wednesday and tied for sixth in walks (73). They were expected to struggle to score runs again this season and have so far this spring: They were tied for 16th in runs (91), tied with the Marlins for last in homers (nine) and 28th in OPS (.681).
But after adding many prospects who won’t be ready until 2016 or 2017, they wanted to begin a transition to an offense built around getting on base, utilizing speed, and manufacturing runs by advancing runners.
From the first day of spring training, the Braves have followed Seitzer’s situational batting-practice regimen, which isn’t common at the big-league level. One minute he’s telling hitters to drive the ball off a screen the coach throwing batting practice stands behind, the next he’s having them hit as though an infield is playing in.
“Same thing in BP every day — second round is move him over, hit-and-run, get him in, all that kind of stuff,” Gosselin said. “So when you mentally prepare for that before the game, and it happens in the game, you feel like, I’ve done this before and I’m just going to take care of my business.”
Braves veteran Kelly Johnson said this form of batting practice could benefit a team like this.
“I think a good habit for young guys is that in their head they’ve got a routine, they’re doing the same thing every day, and they’re really good at challenging themselves in that, they have a purpose,” Johnson said. “He challenges you to have that. We do situational rounds. We did that in the minor leagues all the time.”
With runners in scoring position, the Braves ranked 28th in the majors with a .236 average in 2014. The last time they finished in the top half of the majors in that category was 2010, when they tied for 12th. The last time they ranked in the top half of the majors in sac flies was 2012, the year before they went all-in on the power-trumps-strikeout mantra.
They’re trying something new now, perhaps long overdue.
“The way the team’s constructed we’re going to have work the opposite field, put the ball in play, get some walks, that kind of stuff,” Gosselin said. “We’re not a big home-run team as we’ve been in the past. So I think it’s come at a real good time, a guy like (Seitzer) that that’s going to help us score some runs, manufacture runs, to help support our pitchers.”