There's a hilarious video clip of Aaron Rowand, um, settling into his batting stance over on fangraphs.com in their Notgraphs section, that is if you don't mind a bit of risque humor. What's not so funny is Aaron Rowand still fooling around with that silly stance long after it was obvious to everyone but, apparently, him that it's NOT WORKING! It's like my daugher said at the game on yesterday, "nobody else is doing it, and he's a terrible hitter!" Yo Gamer! Do you think maybe there's a reason why NOBODY ELSE is copying your batting stance? Now, we had been led to believe that Gamer had, among other things, reworked his batting stance over the winter. It was supposedly more upright, less squatty. Well, we saw his stance on Sunday and if anything it's MORE squatty and, well, you can go look up the video on fangraphs to fill in the rest. It's just a ridiculous batting stance that long since became a parody of itself.
I believe the stance and swing itself is a big part of Aaron Rowand's struggles at the plate. What it is, essentially, is a timing mechanism. The mechanism is so long and has so many moving parts, it has two major effects: 1. It makes it easy for pitchers to disrupt that timing by forcing him to commit too early in the pitch. 2. It makes it difficult to maintain consistent mechanics from pitch to pitch. I think he does it in part to generate more power in his swing, but that power is seldom delivered exactly to the right place on the ball when his timing and balance are always off.
The big problem for the Giants is that Rowand is owed $24 million over the next 2 years. Grant, over on mccoveychronicles.com has a good discussion about the concept of sunk cost, so I won't repeat it here. I'll just say that if I had a choice between keeping Rowand or Darren Ford on the 25 man roster for equal cost, I'd keep Ford who I think could win the Giants several games by just pinch running and subbing in on defense. Since Darren Ford's chances of making the 25 man roster are a lot closer to the none side of slim to none, that tells you all you need to know about what I think the Giants need to do with Rowand and his contract.
The Giants might go with 11 pitchers to start the season, there are a lot of off days in April. They might choose to trade or waive Travis Ishikawa who hasn't played a lot this spring while Brandon Belt has established himself as the Giants first baseman of the future. Ultimately, sooner or later, the Giants will have to make a choice between releasing Rowand and hurting the team. There is one reason why I think they just might be willing to release him. He was signed before Bill Neukom took over as Managing Partner. Neukom can sign off on the release and not have to explain to the other partners why he allowed the signing in the first place. Last year, the Giants, for the first time in my memory, were willing to throw the big contract guys under the bus for the sake of winning. That had to start at the very top of the organization.
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After seeing Joe Morgan with his chicken flap routine, while I would never recommend anyone copy Rowand's stance, if it works, it works.
ReplyDeleteNow, I know your point is that it doesn't work, but from my memory, it works fine when he's healthy, but the main problem the way I see it is that he is like the position player version of Armando Benitez, he's probably played more games with us hindered by an injury than actually healthy.
To me, the plan of action is pretty clear: the Giants need to work to clear out both Rowand and Ishikawa from the roster. Basically one will go to bring the team to a 12-man pitching staff, and the other to bring up Belt.
I like Ishikawa but with Belt clearly the 1B of the future, and Huff and DeRosa capable of playing 1B adequately, the Giants don't really need Ishikawa. Had they not brought him up so early that first year of his options, perhaps he might have one more option to use, like they could have done to Pablo, but that's spilled milk. Because they probably could use him next season, in 2012, as a nice bat off the bench, once free agents clear out some of the roster.
Rowand is clearly not needed. Because of the contract, it would be stupid not to keep him around because Torres is still a big question mark given his age, injury history, and has never played a full season before, but I think most people would be OK with Ross in CF if necessary, then Schierholtz in RF.
I don't think that he's going to get the chance to show that he can hit playing just CF, hence the move to play him in LF, so the best the Giants can hope to get from another team is maybe they pay $2-4M of his contract each year while the Giants pay the rest. Kind of like the flier the Giants took on Huff last season.
Excellent point about Neukom in your last paragraph, I would also note that those moves by Bochy to do that is what sold me that he could possibly lead the team to a World Series championship.
if they are gonna cut ti...do it now, so he gets a shot at getting on another team...cutting him in a week or two would be unfair
ReplyDeleteim still hoping that there is a trade in the works....package rowand, ti and maybe hinshaw for a couple of minor league prospects
i love alex...but maybe he has finally hit that proverbial wall with this org...and there are tons of teams that need arms
i believe that rowand got his batting stance while watching that little mexican kid in bad news bears (the original)
While I totally agree that Rowand's batting stance is ridiculous, I think his biggest problem is discipline at the plate. His patience at the plate has gotten worse every year.
ReplyDeleteRowand has forgotten that baseball is a game of adjustments, and clearly the pitchers have adjusted to him after his big year with the phillies, but Rowand is just to stubborn to change anything about his approach at the plate.
Nice piece here. Allowing Ishikawa to go though would take a left handed bat to leave. He is the only left hander on the bench. I do think that Rowand's days are numbered, and I am happy for that. Just DFA him!
ReplyDeleteAnon,
ReplyDeleteI agree about the plate discipline, but I think the lack of discipline is a byproduct of Rowand's batting stance. The timing mechanism is must too long and there are too many moving parts which causes him to commit too early.
Kenny,
I would much rather keep Ishikawa than Rowand. I was just reviewing the possible scenarios.
I hear ya. I want Rowand gone in a bad way!!!
ReplyDelete