Back to the 80 Pitch Drill

Perhaps an off day would be good for these guys to clear their heads a bit and come back fresh tomorrow. It seems as though their muscles needs a bit of a refresher course, and some time in the cage would be beneficial. Yesterday the Mets left 23 runners on base, half of those in scoring position.

Over the course of Spring Training, Jerry Manuel's exhausting hitting drill was highly publicized. A batter steps into the box and is fired 80 straight pitches over the course of 6 minutes. The overall goal of the exercise was to improve situational hitting by concentrating on using your hands in an at bat. The thought is that you are going to be fatigued at some point in the drill so eventually using your hands to put it to the opposite field would become second nature. I understand that hitters are behind on the ball a bit in Spring so they naturally go the other way, however it appeared to be working.

So far this has not been the case many times this short season. In the Brewers series alone the players had collectively stranded a total of 60 runners on base. Yes there was a bit of bad luck yesterday in the 7th and 8th innings and "it's a game of inches" as Keith Hernandez would say after the game. Regardless, this team needs to capitalize in those situations if it is going to be successful. It might be time to go back to the cage and throw some of these guys in there for, oh I'd say about 6 minutes.

In case you missed it since I couldn't link to it, here is Ben Shipgel's Times article from yesterday on the lack of run support in Santana Starts. Our article from Monday here.