Philadelphia Phillies Hitters Work On Not Being Overly Aggressive in Their Approach
A number of reasons can be pointed to as why the Philadelphia Phillies stumbled in the final two games of the National League Championship Series.
Instead of advancing to their second consecutive World Series, the Phillies were ousted by the upstart Arizona Diamondbacks in Games 6 and 7.
Was it poor execution by the bullpen?
Was it the starting pitching?
Or was it the offense?
Yes, the offense played a large role. More specifically, the hitters being too aggressive.
For Philadelphia to make another deep postseason run, the Phillies must be disciplined at the plate and not chase pitches out of the strike zone.
Easy to say, hard to do.
"It's more of taking the borderline ones," second baseman Bryson Stott told Corey Seidman of NBC Sports Philadelphia. "I know I can hit them and put them in play. (Hitting coach) Kevin Long was like now's the time to do it, if you go down looking, you go down looking, it's spring training. Now's the time to work on it. Some of those borderline pitches I've been taking have been called balls and some have been called strikes. It's focusing on that even more and realizing which one was a strike and which was a ball, obviously I'll get some balls that are called strikes."
"Just being more selective on the borderline ones that could go either way is a thing I've been doing in spring. Obviously if I'm punching out every at-bat, I'm going to scrap that and move on. But I think my chase rate has been good."
Seidman tracked the overaggressiveness at the plate and reported that Nick Castellanos swung at 20 pitches in the final five games. He swung through 13, fouled off three and hit into four outs.
"The biggest thing for me is just getting back to a relaxed place in the box,” Castellanos told Seidman. "It doesn't matter how good your swing is, if you're not getting anything to hit, you're not going to hit the ball hard. Being able to get in good counts, swinging at the pitches I want to swing at and taking first when they give it to me is everything that I'm focused on."
There's a fine line between being patient and being aggressive.
Players shouldn't become passive.
Philadelphia reached the postseason again with an aggressive style at the plate. But if they can learn to scratch runs across when the bats aren't all in sync, it will make them even stronger.
