If we are to salvage our baseball season
Foxhall must go now.
Whatever he is doing isn't working. Even worse- we have a rash of "minor injuries" right now. Not including Cade Smith getting ill. Can't pin that on Foxhall. But the rest- yeah. We need an interim pitching coach who can hopefully be a new voice for our pitchers.
I'm not in the bullpen or practice but I suspect what is going on is we are overvaluing velocity over command. I get that you have to throw in the 90's to get a look from MLB but the reality also is so many guys throw hard now that if you don't have command and throw 96 you still aren't going to get a look from MLB. In a nutshell- we're trying to strike everyone out. Sometimes it works because yes our strikeout numbers are among the best in the league but unfortunately that also leads to being too fine at times. Which leads to walks. We're going to be better off sometimes throwing 92 for strikes than we are throwing 96 and praying it's in the zone.
What I do/can see from the computer bleachers is this:
1. Foxhall waits too long to visit the mound.
2. And along with that- he waits too long to make a change.
Those two things go hand in hand of course but the damage is it causes things to snowball. Let's say a relief pitcher walks the first two hitters. At that point the pitching coach should go visit the mound. And probably make a change. But since Foxhall doesn't what typically happens is another walk. Still no mound visit. Then bases clearing double. Then the damage goes beyond that one inning because the pitcher then feels awful because they allowed a lot of damage. And with young pitchers that can sometimes carry over to the next appearance. On top of that since Foxhall only brings in the better pitchers because he wants to "save them for when they're needed" when we're ahead he tends to bring in another pitcher who is struggling in a bad spot and then that pitcher who is low on confidence then struggles and then you can see how this would be an issue to say the least. So these pitchers have no success to build off of because they aren't being set up for success by their pitching coach because he sits on his ass hoping they figure it out with his flawed philosophy to start with. And then they're left out to rot. And because he tries to save pitchers sometimes what happens is we never even use the better ones because we're never in position to use them to start with.
On to defense because I don't want to not mention that since it's an issue. I think some of that is because of the pitching. When you have a staff that is walking the house and putting base runners on it makes it more difficult for the defense to focus and the runners can cause pressure in and of themselves. I think some of the loafing may be frustration from the pitching staff. Lemonis should address that by saying if you loaf I'm pulling you out of the game right then and there in the middle of the inning. That's the best way to send a message to a player doing that. The only other thing we can do is rep defense and go full Ron Washington with it.
Firing the pitching coach in and of itself will get the attention of the players. One thing I'm concerned about is if no changes are made you could see a situation where it essentially becomes the pitchers vs the rest of the team. It's frustrating as hell to score 9 runs and lose because your pitchers can't find the zone. And two seasons of that? With super competitive people that hate losing- that can cause finger pointing. Then you get fights in the clubhouse- verbal and sometimes physical. It's not good. None of these players come to MSU to lose and none of them want to be remembered for being on losing teams.
So hopefully Selmon and the cigar boys will meet with Lemonis and do the right thing for MSU.
