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August 07, 2007

Long Answer For A-Rod

From Allen Barra - with a hat tip to WasWatching.com reader William:

The most celebrated of Mr. Long's students is Alex Rodriguez, the major league's leader in home runs, runs batted in, runs scored, and slugging percentage, and who on Saturday became the youngest player in baseball history to hit 500 home runs. Mr. Rodriguez, of course, wasn't exactly a slap hitter before he began working with Mr. Long, having led the American League in home runs four times. But many saw a sharp decline in A-Rod's hitting last year, despite a batting average of .290, 35 home runs, and 121 RBIs. Working with Mr. Long this season, as we go to press Mr. Rodriguez has exceeded last year's home-run total, and his slugging percentage is over 100 points higher than in 2006. "He's amazing," the Yankees third baseman and a leading MVP contender says of Mr. Long. "He's a great coach, a great teacher, and a great communicator."

How did Mr. Long work his miracle with A-Rod? "It's no miracle," he says calmly, sipping a bottle of water. "What we're talking here is maybe improving a hitter's success rate by just a tiny fraction -- but in baseball terms, it's a fraction that makes a huge difference. After all, the difference between being a good hitter at, say, .300, and a great hitter at, say, .350, is just five hits out of every hundred at bats. The batter who can make all the little things work better and get those five extra hits is probably going to the Hall of Fame."

The little things that Mr. Long helped Mr. Rodriguez with have restored A-Rod's reputation as the game's greatest slugger. A firm believer in using technology to study hitters, Mr. Long pored over DVDs of Mr. Rodriguez after his prolonged slump last season (during one stretch he struck out 12 times in 17 at bats) and noticed that A-Rod's famous leg kick was too high. "Not only too high, but he was starting it a split-second too late. His knee was at his waist, and there was a 95 mph fastball coming at him. It was tough for Alex to get his leg down and turn his hips in time to hit an inside fastball -- and the result was that's what a lot of pitchers were attacking him with. It was basically a question of getting him into a better position faster. If you have to worry about getting your knee down before you hit the ball, you're giving yourself too much to do. In this instance, it was a case of subtracting in order to gain."

So, it was a mechanical flaw, huh?

Posted by Steve Lombardi at August 7, 2007 10:49 PM

Comments

Posted by: Raf at August 8, 2007 07:18 AM