'We don't talk about striking out,' says the hitting coach of a team that strikes out very little.
Even before they traded for Luis Arraez, arguably the best pure contact hitter in baseball, the San Diego Padres were conspicuously improving in a key hitting category: putting the ball in play.than all but three major league teams.
Contrast that with 2023, when the team was striking out at a 21.2 percent rate, and the Padres' propensity for putting the ball in play becomes even more noticeable. Teams change personnel every year, which can fuel these kinds of incremental differences. But the biggest difference behind the Padres' improvement in this category might not be a player, but rather a coach.in a recent interview with the San Diego Union-Tribune.
“We don’t talk about striking out,” Rodriguez said. “When you’re not afraid to strike out, you get comfortable. When you’re afraid to strike out, you force yourself, you put pressure on yourself, you get tense. Your natural swing is not there.”focused on. But as long as Rodriguez's philosophy is paying dividends, why change it? Not only are the Padres striking out less, they're walking at a league-best 10.
J.P. Hoornstra writes and edits Major League Baseball content for Halos Today and Inside the Padres, and is the author of 'The 50 Greatest Dodger Games Of All Time.' He once recorded a keyboard solo on the same album as two of the original Doors.
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