What’s the matter with Byrnesie?
Matt of Diamondhacks left me this message:
It’s obviously early, but is Byrnsie’s slow start cause for particular concern given his history of hot April & Mays, followed by (sometimes significant) regression?
He’s 32, his swings don’t look real good, and it worries me some, but I was curious what you thought.
My original comment got so detailed that I thought it would be best to make it a full-fledged post. Byrnesie once told me that members of his family read this blog and keep him up to date with it. Perhaps one of them will see this and pass it on to him; when he was live on Live Video on April 2, he told me he still hasn’t gotten the spring training messages I sent him. So here goes:
Actually, his April’s are generally only so-so, May is always his best month. But I have been watching with great concern. The few games in spring training I saw indicated this type of start. Lots of other good hitters in the league including Matt Holiday, Tulo, Russell Martin, etc, have gotten off to slow starts also, so within context he’s not being left behind…yet. But 2-16 is not promising. I hope he gets hotter before he gets to SF. I’m getting terrible flashbacks to those last two months in Baltimore.
What I am seeing is nothing really new. He stands too far from the plate, and pitchers have gone back to pitching him outside. (They didn’t seem to do that quite as much, or at least quite as exaggeratedly, last year). He’s reaching, and he’s off balance, which accounts for the pirouetting across the plate when he misses. (The homer he hit in the first game happened because the pitch caught too much of the plate). And he’s missing more. I think he has lost some bat speed, which accentuates the problem of being too far away; he can’t catch up to those outside pitches. So he has to move in AND make his swing more compact.
His stance announces that he wants to pull and so that is another reason to pitch him outside. His front hip points to the left. He needs a more neutral stance, with the front hip perpendicular to the pitching rubber, so that he can go either way with equal ease. He can’t pull those outside pitches. That only results in grounders to short (force outs at second, DPs and 6-3’s. I saw him hit into 3 DPs in spring and that was an indicator of what this first week has been). He’s got to go to right field or up the middle with the outside pitches.
I am hoping to master a screen capture program so I can give him a DVD of some of these early ABs to show him what I see. Bob Melvin said last year that Byrnesie is always studying the opponent in the video room, and I know players can get their ABs to put on their iPods. But I am wondering now what camera angles they get. They may not get the centerfield camera angle I get for their AB’s that tells a lot (like how the oppo catchers set up on the outside of the plate over 90% of the time on Byrnesie). Of course, maybe he gets those but is just being stubborn.
Goodness knows I’ve been saying for years that he is standing too far from the plate. I’ve put it on the blog and in my letters to him, and he has claimed publicly, (3x now), that I’ve helped him. But this point just doesn’t get through his thick skull (and hair). I wish I could have two hours with him on a ballfield with a BP pitcher to have him try out what I’m saying. (I’d take my tape measure with me to show him how far away from that outside corner he is as opposed to where he should be). Some people learn better through experience than through explanation. I think he’s one of those.
As for his abysmal performance with the bases loaded (twice!) in Game 2, I think that in addition to the physical problems, Byrnesie has a psychological problem with that particular situation. He has never hit a major league grand slam and I have yet to see him even clear the bases with a double. (He may have done so, but I didn’t see it and it had to have been before 2005). He hit a double with the sacks full last year, but the slow runner on first at the time only made it to third. With relatively little success in this situation, he tries too hard and that makes the matter worse.
What do you see?
ByrnesBlogger1
// Click here to read the rest from Down the Left Field Line: Life, Baseball & Eric Byrnes
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Posted by ByrnesBlogger1
Kellia Ramares is a freelance journalist, poet and baseball blogger from Oakland, CA. Kellia writes (and does some audio work) about baseball, especially the Arizona Diamondbacks, on her blog, Down The Left Field Line: Life, Baseball & Eric Byrnes. (http://byrnesblog.azsportshub.com), under the name ByrnesBlogger1. She expects to expand her sports journalism from baseball fandom to stories on social issues in a sports context in a website she is building in the fourth quarter of 2007 to be an annex to the "Byrnesblog".
Contact: ByrnesBlogger1[at]azsportshub.com
http://byrnesblog.azsportshub.com
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