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The Cardinals are parting ways with hitting coach Turner Ward, multiple sources tell The Athletic.
Assistant hitting coach Brandon Allen is expected to be retained.
News here: https://t.co/sxqt15YpM6 Turner Ward out as Cardinals hitting coach after struggles in 2024: sources
— Katie Woo (@katiejwoo) October 4, 2024
We will get a chance to see if it’s the chicken or the egg, here. Still, it was apparent that something had to change after the season the bats had this year. Hope Bloom will help find us a good set of eyes and a good leader to get things going again.
That’s just half of the equation. The other half is talent based and that requires an upgrade as well. A coach can only get so much out of the turnip.
I said over and over this past season what about the hitting coach?????
I guess I finally got my answer.
And one of the rumors is that the SF Giants are interested in Goldschmidt. I thought they were interested in winning???
r/Esteemed Rat
Ward deserves to go. Our offense has been atrocious. Supposedly he is big buddies with Goldy so maybe they are a package deal.
As usual, Bill aims too low for his post-mortem purges. This is a gnat on an elephant glute. In the grand scheme of things, the gnats aren’t the problem.
The only thing I can say in defense of Ward is that possibly he was under strict orders from Mo to continue to apply the Jeff Albert approach to hitting.
But there has been too many guys like Gorman and Walker who had early success and faded. In fairness that goes back before his tenure as well. But I would think one of the most important responsibilities is to help the younger players adjust to the inevitable adjustments the opposition will throw at them. Let’s hope that the second season bug doesn’t hit Winn too.
Let’s also hope they don’t just move the assistant up. We need seasoned field management.
When every hitter except Burleson (likely BABiP luck) and Contreras (just slightly better in 2024) performed worse in 2024 vs 2023, it sure looks like bad process. Bad process is the hitting coach. This one seemed like an obvious departure. I’m not including Winn due to limited 2023 at bats and him being a brand new rookie.
I think the poor hitting results were more due to the daily lineup churn than anything else. The hitting coach had nothing to do with that. It is the fault of a system which features mindless devotion to statistically optimum matchups and disregards the human factor wich requires routine, normalcy, consistency, familiarity, etc.
Another factor is young players who come up from the minors with poor pitch recognition, poor zone discipline, poor zone coverage and poor bat control are not going to handle ML pitchers and pitching strategies no matter who the hitting coach is.
And the daily churn extends to the manner in which these players are positioned defensively and even the use of the BP. No one seems to have a reasonbly certain sense of what their roles are to be on this manager’s team and it’s been that way practically from the moment he emerged on the scene. Most days the entire circus act resembles a mixture of a Chinese fire drill and a blind dog in a butcher’s shop.
I think those are bogus excuses. Whether a guy bats 5th or 6th or 7th or whatever doesn’t matter. His job is to get on base. Sure there are situations, but those can occur with any spot in the order because each inning has players come up in a different order. It makes no difference what order the lineup card says. Standing in the batters box, a guy doesn’t think “oh I’m a 5th hitter in the lineup today so I have to do X”. It’s always 1:1 – battle of hitter vs pitcher. And the order changes every inning except for the 1st inning. But that’s just my opinion. I didn’t play a lot of baseball growing up so I may be wrong. But when I did play, I know I was just trying to hit or walk or move the runner over regardless of what place in the order I hit.
An argument can be made for why Carlson or Crawford and later Baker struggled because they didn’t play regularly. But it has nothing to do with their spot in the lineup.
Your spot in the lineup affects the situation in which you are more likely to find yourself when at the plate. The situation determines your objective and also determines how you will be pitched and defensed. Who bats ahead and behind also affects the situations you are more likely to face, your objective and how you will be pitched and defensed. If all that is constantly churned, every PA is an adventure. I think it is especially true for young players.
I’m not saying that a new hitting coach is going to turn us into the ’27 Yankees but when you have one of the worst offenses in the league the hitting coach shouldn’t expect to keep his job. Ward was low hanging fruit (and out of contract) but he deserved to be replaced.
I do not mean to say Ward should have been retained. My sense is he didn’t do the hitters any good. But if the same approach remains in place, the new guy will not be able to overcome the detriment caused. They aren’t playing simulated baseball with simulated players, so the actual effect of optimizing the matchups regardless of churn is not going to be as predicted by the statistical model.
How much impact does hitting coach tinkering have on the offense, you might ask.
Not much, but giving him the boot might persuade a few disgruntled fans you are doing something.
And it doesn’t cost anything.
From what I have read over the years players prefer to have a set lineup spot. Obviously things will evolve, but good teams seem to have reasonable stable lineups. I think part of our situation was in trying to find 5 or 6 guys who could hit consistently. Ollie was moving guys around trying to get a lineup that could do positive things.
Still, I am not a big fan of that nor of his lineup construction.
Seems like there are positive comments about Ryan Ludwick. Maybe he would be a good one to add to the big league coaching staff.
Just a guess…but IMHO, if Goldschmidt and Arenado had hit like they should have, Gorman and Walker would have hit better, too. Ward had nothing to do with Goldschmidt and Arenado turning themselves into average players.
I agree the hitting coach has little to do for the veterans except when they are in a deep slump but as someone pointed out the new guys have a lot to learn at the major league level and there will be adjustments by the opposition. I still maintain that a good hitting coach would have helped Walker and Gorman and maybe even Carlson. And at least he could have told Aranado to stop swinging at so many pitches out of the zone.
And I am a strong believer that players need to have a clear role on the team and just as important they accept the role. How do you think Otani would feel if he was dropped to 5th or 6th in the lineup just because a left handed pitcher was on the mound. Extreme example I know but I doubt that players like to not know where they are going to bat or whether they will even be in the game. Think of Gorman having a decent year and Taylor Motter who had not hit above the Mendoza line in 4 previous major league seasons,
s in his place in the lineup because a left handed pitcher was on the mound.The Brewers changed their lineup daily based on matchups. Their first five was a different order almost daily. They hit pretty darn well. I don’t think Ohtani sticking in the leadoff spot every day is a good example. He hits everything. And he’s fast. And he gets on base. We don’t have Ohtani. Although we did have Motter once.
Many teams play matchups. It’s a reality in today’s game. Right or wrong teams seem convinced it’s the better way to go. Not every team, but many.
Precisely, Jnevel…The instant the Redbirds failed to retain Manny Motter, you just knew they were at the onset of completely dismantling this team and commencing on a long and laborious rebuild. We shoud have seen it coming…
So how do we find a worthwhile hitting coach who will be interested in a one year job? I’m assuming Bloom will replace Marmol after 2025, and the new manager will want a say in who his coaches are.
If the Cardinal bosses can unearth a worthwhile hitting coach, they should probably have him provide his knowledge and coaching skills to the players in Memphis or Springfield so that by the time they reach the Big League team they might have a chance to at least make contact and put the ball in play…
I am taking an optimistic view of this move. I am guessing this firing could be the first step in reconfiguring the approach to hitting within the Cardinal organization. I would expect that Bloom would have a large say in who gets hired at the major league level. You want this individual’s approach to dove tail with the approach of how you plan to develop and promote hitters through the organization. A one year and done hire will not do much for the organization.
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