By Michael Bradley
Michael Bradley is a Philadelphia-based freelancer who frequently contributes to Coaching Management.
Coaching Management, 9.1, February 2001, http://www.momentummedia.com/articles/cm/cm0901/rightmove.htm
Not long after Andy Lopez led Pepperdine University to the 1992 NCAA baseball title, he was approached about writing a book—joining the ranks of other winning coaches who have been asked to jot down their formula for success. While the book, Coaching Baseball Successfully, didn’t top any best-seller lists, it did give Lopez a chance to assess his ideas about coaching the sport and create a finished product that represented his takes on strategy, preparation, and how to handle the various situations that crop up during the course of games and practices.
“It made me organize myself and put down all my thoughts on paper concisely,” says Lopez, who is now in his seventh year directing the University of Florida’s program. “But I don’t have a ‘book’ on how I coach, per se. This is the closest I get.”
Indeed, Lopez’s remark indicates that when it comes to going “by the book,” most baseball coaches don’t take it literally. They don’t keep a book velcroed to their uniforms that tells them what to do in every situation.
So, how do coaches decide what their strategies will be during a game? How do they effectively use the percentages they have learned throughout the years? And how do they know when not to go with a high-percentage move, and instead, follow their gut instinct?
A General Philosophy
When it comes to putting together your own “book,” a good starting point is to have a basic coaching philosophy from which to draw upon. For East Carolina University Head Coach Keith LeClair, that means developing a theory that can be applied consistently from year to year.
“If you look at any program that has enjoyed continued success, they do the same things, and they do them well,” LeClair says. “And that’s significant because you can get carried away trying to do too many things and instead become average at everything, rather than great at a few.”
In addition, LeClair believes that baseball is a reactionary sport, and no matter how much a head coach tries to orchestrate things, success is a result of how well players are prepared to handle a catalog of game situations. That’s why the Pirates will practice their bunt rotations, first-and-third plays, and other sets repeatedly—to better prepare the team to perform without thinking during crucial moments in games. Although he doesn’t have all that much written down, his style is evident in what he does. LeClair isn’t above “borrowing” some tactics from opponents he feels are successful, but it is his experience as a player and coach that has formed the foundation of how the Pirates play and practice every day.
In contrast, University of Texas Head Coach Augie Garrido, who starts his fifth year with the Longhorns but is best known for winning three national titles while at Cal State-Fullerton is a student of minutiae. He believes there is no detail too small when teaching baseball. For him, the game is bigger than those playing it, so it’s up to him and his staff to make sure Texas is prepared for as much as possible.
“Baseball is a game you can’t conquer,” Garrido says. “You participate in it. It’s like golf. One of the primary responsibilities for those who participate is to overcome adversity.”
Garrido believes in helping his players learn the easiest, highest-percentage methods of succeeding. If a runner has to be brought in from third base, he wants to make sure the hitter knows how to do it best. He doesn’t write every specific thing down, but he does keep outlines for how and when UT will play on offense and in the field.
By the time a player spends four years in Garrido’s program, he will understand that the game is to be played—at least according to Garrido—in a deliberate manner, with emphasis placed on every pitch and every possible situation. That’s how the Longhorns practice, focusing on the little things in drills that are repeated every day.
“Our players learn to play the game pitch-to-pitch here,” Garrido says. “Teams play nine innings on offense and nine innings on defense. We play them one at a time. It’s a battle to get every base on offense and every out on defense. That’s the essence of the game.”
At the University of Delaware, Head Coach Jim Sherman, who takes over the Blue Hens’ program this season after six years as an assistant, prefers to play for the big inning. While he tries to pass on some of his beliefs to his players, he is careful not to interfere with their hitting by inundating them with theory. And he needs them to hit. In fact, Sherman concentrates on teaching them how to hit for power to offset the depth and talent of larger programs.
“It’s not the old Earl Weaver theory of playing for the three-run homer, but we like our players to attack breaking balls that are up in the strike zone and try to drive the ball into the gaps,” Sherman says. Sure, that means players will be chasing some pitches out of the strike zone, but it will also lead to some big innings and plenty of runs.
Whatever your coaching philosophy, the important ingredient for success is making sure everyone—players and assistant coaches—is on the same page when it comes to your personal book. That way, your philosophy will be evident during every play, and you won’t have to take suggestions about dozens of options every pitch.
Playing the Numbers
Once you’ve crystallized your general coaching philosophy, it helps to have numbers to back it up. But you have to make sure you don’t bog your players down in statistics. The use of video, computer-generated statistics and other high-tech aids can make a team more effective. It can also paralyze players with too much information. “Technology can be an ally when handled right,” say Garrido. “Knowledge is a pretty powerful tool, but it needs to be used properly. If you get raw data or statistics from a scouting report about how to pitch certain hitters, you must keep it in simple form when giving it to the players. There must be a good translation for them.”
Sherman relies on a study conducted from the late 1970s to the early 1980s, in which Delaware coaches analyzed how the team’s hitters performed over that lengthy period. Specifically, they looked at “fastball” counts; that is, counts where the opposing pitcher was likely to hurl a fastball: 0 balls, 0 strikes; 2-0; 3-0; and 3-1. The coaches found that the batting average on those counts was .401, whereas other counts resulted in a .274 batting average. Two-strike counts produced a .236 average.
Studies like this show a team can make optimal use of statistics in their approaches to the game. They allows the coaches to find ways to maximize situations and make “gambles” less risky.
For example, the Delaware study provides Sherman and his players valuable insight when at the plate. It may seem odd to some to have a player hitting away on a 2-0 count when a pitcher has been wild all day, but if the numbers back it up, Sherman wants to see some swinging.
“As much as we might believe that the game has changed and that more pitchers are pitching ‘backwards’ by throwing curves or change-ups on those fastball counts, the numbers don’t bear that out,” he says. “The fastball is still the prevalent pitch. It’s no secret that our team is looking to swing at the fastball—there are just not enough pitchers across the board who can pitch backwards, so the percentages will eventually win out.”
The same thing goes for letting pitches go in certain situations. “Even if it’s on the black and called a strike, it’s best to let it go, if a hitter does poorly in that situation,” Sherman says. “Wait for a mistake.”
Going for It
If there’s one thing St. Joseph’s University Head Coach Jim Ertel can’t stand, it’s coaches who adhere to baseball’s percentages just to avoid criticism. “I dislike greatly the people who do it by the book just so they can’t be second-guessed,” Ertel says. “That way they can say, ‘I did it the right way.’”
You won’t see Ertel at the annual World Series of Poker competition in Vegas, but he isn’t above taking a few gambles. Part of coaching—in any sport—is the ability to defy convention at times. Football coaches will go for it on fourth down in their own territory. Hoops bosses will ride a hot hand, even if the big scorer is a defensive liability. And baseball coaches, of course, will put in a southpaw against a lefty hitter even though “the book” says not to.
But there is no actual guide to let coaches know when the best time to gamble is. A lot of it comes down to knowing personnel. Gary Gilmore, who has directed Coastal Carolina’s program for five years, realizes that playing the percentages can backfire, if those being asked to execute can’t perform. “We’ve had some perfect bunt situations, but I know the kid up can’t even bunt in practice,” Gilmore says. “I’d be setting him up for failure if I called for the bunt. And I can see it in his eyes when he looks down for the sign. It’s as if he’s saying, ‘Call anything but the bunt.’ That’s just knowing your players.”
Ertel agrees, noting, “The type of players a coach gets will dictate whether he’ll go by the book or won’t go by the book.”
A player may be in a slump, but the coach who knows him best will have a feeling when the break-out at-bat will be. “A lot of times, you’ll get a gut feeling,” Ertel says. “And if a batter is struggling, do we do what we ‘should’ do and pinch-hit for him, or do we let him hit?”
Lopez lives by an interesting maxim when it comes to deviating from the norm. “It’s never a gamble—if you can execute,” he says. That means if a team can make a hit-and-run with the bases loaded work, then it wasn’t really taking a big chance in the first place.
According to Lopez, it comes down to preparation. Teams that spend time getting ready for every situation can then be more creative in their approach to the game, because they’ll feel comfortable doing anything, any time. What may look risky to a fan could actually be something a team has practiced many times.
“We want our guys involved in every pitch, because you never know when we’re going to run something that nobody expects,” Lopez says.
Still a Game of Chance
Despite coaches’ best efforts to analyze every possible situation before it takes place on the field, there are still some things that just can’t be accounted for. Lopez loves to tell the story about when he was head coach at Cal State-Dominguez Hills, a Division II school. By the fifth inning of a tournament game, he and his staff had stolen the opponent’s signs. In the 12th inning, he saw that the other team was going to run the suicide squeeze. Lopez quickly called time, gathered his infield on the mound and explained what he wanted done.
Instead of the pitcher firing a high, inside pitch—the usual strategy in squeeze situations—Lopez told the hurler to put the ball on the outside corner, where the hitter couldn’t reach it. The runner would then be a dead out. Everybody returned to their positions. The batter squared. The runner took off from third. And the pitcher fired it ... high and inside. The hitter got the bunt down, and Cal State-Dominguez Hills lost.
“We knew the squeeze was coming and still lost,” Lopez says with a laugh. “It still comes down to the human element.”
No matter how good the book is.
Sidebar: Learning By Doing
Most coaches spend years developing their special philosophies on how the game is to be played. Their combined experiences on and off the field, together with influences of mentors and other authority figures, shape their perspectives and form the foundation for how they will operate day to day.
Not all coaches have the chance to learn from a more experienced hand, though. Take University of Florida Head Coach Andy Lopez, for example. In 1976, one year out of college ball, he was named an assistant at Los Angeles Harbor Junior College. Two short years later, he was named head coach at Mira Costa High School in Manhattan Beach, Calif.—at age 23. So much for learning at the feet of masters. He has been a head coach ever since.
“Although I had tried to be a good student of the game while I was playing, most of the time, I was just trying to stay in the lineup,” Lopez says. “Once I was on the other side of the fence, I wasn’t just worried about my at bat or my performance in the field, I was worried about every at bat and every performance in the field.”
Because Lopez didn’t have the opportunity to spend a long period as an apprentice before becoming boss, he had to learn on the fly. He developed his style through considerable trial and error and a large amount of piracy. When they say coaches are the biggest copycats in the world, they might just have been talking about Lopez. It’s something for which he doesn’t apologize.
“I was never involved in learning by the book,” he says. “I never had a mentor. I’ve taken things from everybody I’ve coached against. I’ve seen things my opponents have done and said, ‘I like that. Let’s do it.’”