November 04, 2003
Don's the Mon
The Yankees have hired Don Mattingly to be their hitting coach (thanks to Shawn Bernard):
Don Mattingly, one of the most beloved Yankees despite captaining the team at a time when it was mired in one of its longest postseason droughts, will be named as the team's new hitting coach at a Tuesday afternoon news conference.
The Yankees will introduce their 2004 coaching staff at the 1 p.m. EST news conference and are expected to announce that third base coach Willie Randolph will replace Don Zimmer as manager Joe Torre's bench coach.
Sounds like they are grooming Randolph for the manager's job.
Mattingly is an example of a successful impatient hitter. For the years STATS kept the stat, 1988-1995, Mattingly saw only 3.34 pitches per plate appearance, a low number (the leaders are usually above four). Since the most important job of the Yankees hitting coach will be to teach Soriano to take a pitch, I'm not sure Don is the right man at the right time.
Mattingly did know how to make contact, however, so if he can get Soriano to cut down on his strikeouts, it should be worth it. Yankees fans, of course, will be happy to see him back in action.
Posted by David Pinto at
03:14 PM
|
Management
|
TrackBack (0)
