K Count

Todd Steverson, the new White Sox hitting coach, wants to cut out on team strikeouts in the same way I’d like to drop a few pounds.  Who would you bet on, a middle-aged man or Adam Dunn?  I don’t mean to brag, but my money’s on me.

Right now, the Sox rank fifth worst in baseball.  They should get better next season because Dunn is in the last year of his contract, and the only way he gets resigned is if the organization has a collective death wish.  But there are some other guys who strike out way too much.

Take Tyler Flowers and Dayan Viciedo (please).  As of today, Flowers has struck out 35 percent of his total at-bats; for Viciedo, it’s 22 percent.  Both figures are up 1-2 percent from last year.  Viciedo has been a starter the past three seasons while this is the second one for Flowers.  Given that Viciedo has a .256 career batting average and Flowers .219, how long do you wait?  And how exactly do you get batters to cut down on strikeouts?

Part of the answer is putting the fear of God in them, as in “keep striking out like that, and you won’t be here for long.”  The problem with Viciedo and Flowers is they’re already here.  The threat should’ve been made a long time ago.  Maybe if they’d seen players who didn’t flail away get promoted ahead of them, the message would’ve sunk in.  Now, it’s probably too late.

I always worried about strikeouts with Clare, who already was a textbook “free swinger” by the time she was nine.  It caught up to her one year in Pony baseball when the coach looked for any excuse not to play a girl:  She’s not making contact, good.  In a way it was because Clare saw the consequence of failure and she adapted.  The girl still struck out more than a leadoff batter, but she learned to combine power with a relatively high batting average, over .400 one year in high school and over .300 one year in college.

All of which brings us to Adam Eaton, the Sox leadoff man with 66 strikeouts.  What are you going to do about that, Mr. Steverson?