Phil Watch: Hitting Coach? Really?

Let's get right to it.

The Cubs have run-scoring issues. They can not simply throw money at the problem, at least not in the usual ways. This does not mean they don't have options, however.

That seems right. The Cubs will have to get creative this off-season to fix a putrid offense. They're old, expensive and have nothing in the system right now. I'm with you, kind sir. What's an option?

One of them may be to fill their vacancy for a hitting coach with the best guy in that position, Rudy Jaramillo. If the Rangers allow him to become a free agent when his contract ends at the end of the month, as it appears they might, the Cubs should go above the usual hitting coach pay scale to bring him to Wrigley Field.

A hitting coach? Really. That's an answer?

Fine. I'll bite. Why is Rudy Jaramillo such a good hitting coach - please tell me because I'm dyyyyiiiinnnnngggg to know?

Jaramillo is the absolute perfect man for the Cubs' situation.

I think a Red Rider BB gun is the perfect Christmas present. I don't think a football is a very good Christmas present.

He has worked successfully in the past with both Alfonso Soriano and Milton Bradley...

Soriano's average for the three-year period before Texas in New York: .287/.326/.506 for an OPS + of 116 in a less hitter-friendly park than Arlington.

Soriano's averages in Texas: .274/.316/.498 for an OPS + of 105 during his prime hitting ages of 28 and 29.

Year after leaving Texas for Washington: .277/.351/.560 for an OPS + of 135.

Just saying. Jaramillo's probably a good hitting coach - if that matters to you - but Phil's gonna have to tell me why first.

...the latter of whom is no guarantee to be eliminated over the offseason (unless general manager Jim Hendry releases him at a cost of $21 million). And he is well acquainted with manager Lou Piniella from the years Piniella spent in Seattle and Tampa.

BULLSHIT! Milton will not be a Cub next year and I'll bet a box of Pudding Pops on that. If you know me, I'm sure you gasped...because that's like promising my first-born child.

This marriage should be a slam dunk, even if the Cubs offend other teams by paying Jaramillo at a premium.

Why is it a slam dunk? Because he coached Soriano and Pinella was in the opposing dugout a few times a year?

The Rangers have paid heavily in the past for coaches, digging deep to keep Jaramillo when his last contract expired and then reportedly giving Mike Maddux an extra $100,000 to convince him to leave the Brewers last winter. If you don't think coaches can make a difference, then you didn't notice how much the Rangers' pitching improved this season while the Brewers' declined.

WHHAAAA???

Maddux had Sabathia and a healthy Ben Sheets in 2008! This year, the Brewers had Gallardo and four Price Is Right contestants. Yes. Allllll Maddux. Cripes! You wrote an entire column talking about this very fact just three months ago!

Jaramillo is the same kind of difference-maker. He has spent 19 seasons as a major league hitting coach with the Rangers and Astros, and his teams always have been near the top in run production. As a minor league hitting coach, he worked with players such as Sammy Sosa, Juan Gonzalez and Ivan Rodriguez, and he was an influence on Craig Biggio and Jeff Bagwell in Houston.

Sosa - juiced

Gonzalez - juiced

Rodriguez - juiced

Biggio - not juiced

Bagwell - juiced

4 for 5! He is a good hitting coach!

Phil on Sosa after the shocking steroid revelation:

Phil Rogers: NO Flip flop. Flop flip. Sosa would have gotten a qualified vote from me before the report of his positive steroid test in 2003. But the voting today is no way, no how. Sosa's Hall of Fame qualifications were all about his power. Don't vote for Mark McGwire; won't vote for Sosa

Why include this? Steroids were rampant on the Texas Rangers for years. Heck, Canseco's book focused extensively on his time in Texas. I'm not blaming Jaramillo but sounds like a lot of people turned a blind eye down there and Jaramillo, being a hitting coach, pretty much was one of them.

He helped Mark Teixeira establish himself as a presence in Texas...

What the hell does that mean? And Teixeira was a sure thing right out of college.

played a role in Josh Hamilton's late-arriving success...

Played a role? Huh? He was Cincinnati's reclamation project in so many ways. His numbers in Cincy extrapolated out to a full season are identical to his numbers in Texas last year.

...and made Ian Kinsler and Michael Young better hitters.

How? Tell. Me. How!

Under Jaramillo, Rangers players have won 16 Silver Slugger awards and four MVPs.

Six Silver Slugger Awards were from Ivan Rodriguez at the notoriously hitter-challenged position of catcher...and a juicer. Five were from Juan Gonzalez...also a juicer.

I can keep going.

Four MVPs? Two from Juan Gonzalez and one each from Ivan and Alex Rodriguez.

All together now!! J-U-I-C-E-R-S!

"Rudy is unbelievably good," Alex Rodriguez said. "He understands hitting, how to work with all kinds of hitters, and he busts his butt to get the best from hitters. He helped me get better when I was in Texas, sometimes making me work when I wouldn't have if he hadn't been on me. I've seen him do it with other guys too."

Ya know.

Can the Cubs get Jaramillo? Not if he decides he's too comfortable in Texas. If he decides to leave, the primitive work conditions at Wrigley could become an issue. So, too, could the question of what happens if Piniella leaves after 2010 and the next manager wants to bring in his own guy.

Mets and Astros are reportedly in on Jaramillo. He's coached in Houston, lives three hours away from Houston right now, Pinella IS leaving after 2010 meaning his future could be entirely up in the air after one only year and the Cubs just fired two hitting coaches in one season so we know what heads roll when the heat is on over at Addison and Clark. Shitty working conditions are the icing. Have you heard the stories about the batting cages under the stands at Wrigley? Rats as big as a pick!

Sounds like the absolute perfect fit to me!

But Hendry should do everything he can to answer any questions Jaramillo has. He would be the best thing to happen to the Cubs since the Derrek Lee trade.

If hiring a hitting coach would be the best thing to happen in six years for any team (and I'm including the Pirates here), your team has bigger issues than I initially thought.

Phil Watch: Making Up For My Own Laziness

'Spose I should get this done. It's been in reserve for a couple weeks now.

We here at Phil Watch have Phil's end of the year and postseason crap to get it to so let's clear some stuff off the docket.

And don't forget the Phil Rogers All-Star team, coming soon to Phil Watch.

Ryne Sandberg has added to his managerial portfolio by guiding Double-A Tennessee into the Southern League playoffs. He's making a compelling case for himself as the eventual replacement for Lou Piniella. ...

(loooong sigh) Even if minor league managerial records mattered, which they don't, but let's say they do (even when they don't). Tennessee didn't exactly light the league on fire with their well-managed baseball goodness.

They played Huntsville in the first round of the playoffs, a team that won the first half, and then destroyed all comers in the second half with an impressive 25-44 record. And then Tennessee lost in the Championship 3-1.

But hey, it wasn't against right-handed starters. That's new in Cubbie world.

Sandberg may one day be a good Major League manager. How 'about letting him, you know, at least be in the same universe as Major League players and get some experience at least near locations where Major League games are played before we anoint him Cubbie Savior. Say like a manager's position at the Banana Republic next to AT & T Park.

In the end, though, using minor league baseball records as an indicator? Really? That's your thesis statement?

Hanley Ramirez's stroll to a batting title is overshadowing his improved fielding. The Marlins shortstop entered the weekend with eight errors after committing 26 as a rookie in 2006. National League managers ranked the Phillies' Jimmy Rollins, the Rockies' Troy Tulowitzki and Ramirez as the best defensive shortstops in a survey by Baseball America. ...

I posit something. I'm just going to pull this out of my ass. I doubt anyone has ever thought of this...you know...ever. I warn you, this is deep thinking that will probably be understood by maybe three human beings currently alive today. Something akin to a quantum physics of quantum physics.

Brace yourself. What if a guy commits eight errors on the season? But along with that, he doesn't get to 25-30 other balls on the season that an average major league shortstop does get to? Why if?

Same result for the most part, right? Guy hits a groundball, Hanley boots it, he's on first. Guy hits a groundball that Hanley can't get to but Johnny Average does, he's on first. Same thing.

Mind. Blown!!!! Right?

Hanley essentially had one bad year in the field in 2007. That year, he had a hamstring injury that limited his mobility and it lingered. Every statistical category that monitors fielding shows Ramirez has pretty much been the same fielder since he arrived in the league and he's Johnny Average. This year, he was exactly Johnny Average with a 0.0 UZR/150. Heck, every other one of Hanley's fielding metrics were actually down a bit over last year except for Error Runs.

Errors are a pretty useless way to compare shortstops. But let's posit something that's not completely out of my ass. 8-10 errors a year could be attributed to a bad first baseman for a shortstop. Not completely out of the question. One every three weeks seems at least in the ballpark. Hanley's first basemen this year were Cantu, Gload and Johnson, all played just above average defense at first. In 2007, Hanley's first basemen were Jacobs and Boone. Both played pretty woeful defense at first. Throw in a dash of luck with the scorekeeper for 3-4 more, maybe some pitching tendencies that emphasized pitching inside more, thereby jamming more righties and you see a possible anomaly.

Even if judging a fielder on number of errors is stupid in the first, second and third place, we would need another year or two to see if Hanley's taking care of the ball more. And then we could make yet another stupid argument based on errors, but at least it would be a stupid based on more solid ground.

Which is entirely better than what this was.

And there was this taken from a column telling us the Rangers are a dangerous playoff team:

The teams that are the toughest to beat in October are ones with balance, especially when any imbalance is tilted toward pitching and defense. They are also teams that have played their best later in the season, not the ones holding on after fast starts.

Um, this is what Phil said about the Diamondbacks on May 1 of last year:

It's over

The remaining five months of baseball will be played, but Arizona's 20-8 April took any suspense out of what figured to be a very good race in the National League West

Just wanted to remind everyone.

And we can't forget that Phil along passed the buck on that one. It wasn't his fault even though it was in his column with his name attached. It was "The Tribune."

Those premises identify the Rockies and Cardinals, respectively, as the National League teams best set for the postseason, not the Phillies and Dodgers.

Bah! How'd that work out?

They point to the Yankees and Rangers -- yes, the Rangers -- as the AL teams capable of having the longest runs.

1-4.

When the regular season ends, we will seed the playoff teams 1 through 8, using a system devised in 2007. It quantifies teams' run production and run prevention abilities, with extra weight given to clubs that pitch and defend and have done their best work after the All-Star break.

Phil's so proprietary. It's the KFC recipe under lock and key with armed guards. Just vague references. I want the formula!

That formula revealed the Rockies as the best NL team in 2007 before they even had beaten the Padres in a one-game playoff for the wild-card spot. It correctly predicted the outcome of six of seven playoff series. The results didn't hold up quite as well in 2008, but the system did identify the Rays as the second-strongest AL playoff team, a tick behind the Red Sox (whom the Rays beat in a seven-game ALCS).

So. Good one year and bad the next in a two-year sample. Flawless!

BTW, Cubs were #1 last year, Red Sox #2.

1. Why do White Sox fans always blame the players who leave Chicago instead of the management that picks and chooses who stays and who goes?

Oh, boy. Here we go. More ex-Chicago player All-Star team nonsense. It's been running rampant in Chicago lately. David Haugh did it the best. He made an offensive list of Ex-Bears which is positively teeming with shitty players and then bitched about all the Ex-Bear talk the VERY NEXT DAY! We had Morrissey following Orton during the bye week, a check in on Cedric Bensen and piece on Khabibulin.

Why? I can't even begin to psychoanalyze that.

They loved Magglio Ordonez but considered him a bum as soon as he was in Detroit. Same thing with Joe Crede -- lesser degree, maybe -- when he went to Minnesota. The numbers of the veterans that the White Sox discarded after winning the AL Central in 2008 --

Javier Vazquez -- 12-9, 3.06 in 28 starts for Atlanta.

Good pitcher. Has always pitched below his peripherals but good pitcher. Economy crapped out and he had $23 million remaining over two years on his deal. Had the best year of his career but he moved to the National League. Rewrite that. Because of his move to the NL, Vazquez had the best year of his career.

Vazquez had 32 starts this year, 17 were against the bottom half of the majors in terms of runs.

Did that figure in? Me thinks so.

Nick Swisher -- .254-26-77 with 87 walks and an .884 OPS in 131 games for the Yankees, including 111 in right field (OK, he didn't have a position in Chicago, not with Jermaine Dye in right, Carlos Quentin in left and Paul Konerko at first base).

Answered your own question, Phil.

Juan Uribe -- .281-12-40 with an .812 OPS in 100 games as a utility infielder for the Giants.

Where's Uribe playing for the Sox this year? And every Sox fan I know still likes Uribe.

Orlando Cabrera -- .274-5-56 in 135 games between Oakland and Minnesota (OK, his OPS is an underwhelming .671, and his departure opened a hole for Chris Getz, who is fun to watch).

Jesus! Did you stop and think this list is getting kinda stupid?

You think Alexei was brutal this year in the field, Cabrera was the worst shortstop in baseball this year. Yuniesky Betancourt doesn't count because he wins the Worst Shortstop In The History Of Man award, thereby disqualifying him from year-to-year tributes.

Bad hitting + bad fielding = bad player in my world. Yours?

If these guys were ex-Cubs, the bitterness would flow. Somehow it doesn't on the South Side. If Kenny Williams and Ozzie Guillen decide they don't want a guy, their fans don't, either. Innaresting phenomenon, as Neil Young would say.

What? No Crede numbers, something you wrote 85 columns on? I'll do it.

2009 Crede: .225/.289 (!)/.414 for a .703 OPS. Played great defense as usual, threw out his back three different times and only played 84 games. Sound familiar?

MLB's allowing TV to dictate its post-season schedule hits a new all-time low this year. The World Series will end in November this season, with Game 7 set for Nov. 5. It will be later if weather is an issue, as it almost certainly will be if it's anything except a Dodgers-Angels World Series.

The schedule was pushed back one week to accommodate the World Baseball Classic...

We can stop right there. WBC fucked this up. Not what Phil's about to say.

...and MLB snuck extra off days into the post-season format in 2007. It said it was being done because FOX wanted fewer weekend games, presenting the new schedule as a one-year thing. But it bypasses chances to eliminate days off, which means that its TV partners like the new format.

And why? Because FOX is posting ratings numbers through the roof for the NFL. The first three weeks saw a 11.2 rating and a 24 share, up 23% from last year. Remember, this is for regular season games.

The World Series, by contrast, saw ratings of 11.1, 10.1, 10.6 and 8.4 over the last four years for FOX, they never approached a 24 share and the key demographics compared to the NFL have been positively geriatric. And this is for the best games of the year for the sport! The same number of people watched Criminal Minds last night that watched the World Series on average last year. And that's a really crappy show, people.

It's a money loser. Far be it for me to defend FOX but you find a way to go with your NFL cash cow.

The current format extends 32 days past the end of the regular season. It could be wrapped up in 27.

Or ended on the same date without the WBC. Just a thought.