November 23, 2002
Alou:
Felipe, that is. John Perricone has a long article about Alou over at Only Baseball Matters. I found these paragraphs interesting:
I don't know what type of manger he was, in terms of strategy or philosophy or whatever. I'd say that the way the Expos were run during his tenure would suggest that maybe no one does. How could you? How could you know that he is a swing away manager? His son Moises is one of the top OBP guys in the league, so was Larry Walker. Vidro is pretty good at getting on base. Guerrero doesn't walk a lot, but he's a hacker, and he can hit anything. Most of the players who you could categorize as free swingers are also exceedingly young, some as young as 21 or 22. Aren't most young players free swingers? In 1994, when he had a few guys with some experience, his starters did OK in OBP, and his first four guys off the bench all clocked in above .350. In 1993, his guys did even better than that. He had Deshields at .389, Walker at .371, Alou at .340, Grissom at .351, Berry at .348, Vanderwal off the bench at .372.
Looking at the team's statistics, it appears (to me, at least), that it was only after the team started watching all of the experienced, top-level talent leave that the hitters devolved into free swingers, and that's why he started to develop a reputation as a manager who ignored the benefits of a high on base approach.
Alou didn't develop Walker and Moises. He did develop Guerrero, and Vlad's walks went up significantly (from 60 to 84) under a manager whose approach was be selective. If you take Alou from 1995 through 2000, the time period where he was developing young players, the Expos were last in the majors in walks! (Not counting the 1998 expansion teams.)
I don't think Alou is going to screw up any veterans, but he's not the man I'd want teaching the importance of getting to my players.
Posted by David Pinto at
08:27 AM
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Baseball
