We should have an all-purpose fired coach thread.

Phillies fire York County native Greg Gross from the job of hitting coach, along with 1B Sam Perlozzo and Pete Mackanin. "Fire" here meaning "Do not renew contract".

All three are people you basically never heard about in the media. Juan Samuel will be back as 3B coach, Rich Dubee as pitching coach and Mick Billmyer as bullpen coach.

“Our offense was built more around singles and doubles,” Yost said, “but it’s difficult to get three or four singles in a row to score a run. We have to have the ability to open it up a little more, use the power that we have to take advantage of a quick strike.

Seems to me that if your hitting coach had a gameplan and he executed it then the person who needs to get fired is the guy who thought the gameplan was good enough to lead to success.

Update on [1]:
Samuel "demoted" to 1B coach
Sandberg will be 3B coach and take over team when Manual is ejected or sick

Its really weird that the Phillies aren't going to have a bench coach.

Salsa?

Seitzer was fired by the D Backs too. Got a feeling it will be a while if ever before he gets another MLB gig. Must such to be the hitting coach on teams with lousy hitters.

And so, everything was fixed.

All I know about Seitzer as a hitting coach is that Francoeur credited much of his 2011 season to him.

kevin has never been my kind of guy but ned yost buries the needle on not being a wallbangers kind of guy so my inclination is to given seitzer the benefit of the doubt

that being stated the royals were down near the bottom in runs scored and last in the league in home runs and walks drawn. that makes it really tough to score

The Royals say they fired Seitzer because he advocates hitting singles up the middle and supposedly they want more of a walk/power approach. I'll believe it when I see it, the Royals have long been the most anti-sabermetric organization in all of baseball (bunts! productive outs! batting average!).

The Royals say they fired Seitzer because he advocates hitting singles up the middle and supposedly they want more of a walk/power approach.

Well then you need to acquire/develop that kind of hitter, at the MLB level I would think the hitting coach is just tinkering around the edges, working with the guys who are out of synch, not trying to teach a whole new philosophy of hitting

Well then you need to acquire/develop that kind of hitter, at the MLB level I would think the hitting coach is just tinkering around the edges, working with the guys who are out of synch, not trying to teach a whole new philosophy of hitting

I always think its silly to judge an entire team's offensive performance on the hitting coach. He's going to be able to help a handful of guys, the rest are probably going to stick their own philosophy. Same goes for pitching coaches too.

In any case, IIRC, Alex Gordon credits his recent success to Seitzer.

“Our offense was built more around singles and doubles,” Yost said, “but it’s difficult to get three or four singles in a row to score a run. We have to have the ability to open it up a little more, use the power that we have to take advantage of a quick strike.

Seems ludicrous to think that changing hitting coaches could change the ability of established major league players to hit for more power.

Players with such a skill set are highly prized in the minors and on other teams and are hard to find and trade for.Sometimes when you think you have a couple like that you choose to trade one away for dogfood and he wins a batting title (sort of) or you go nuts and sign another one to big money to stay in town like Frenchy and the power fades. Building a team depends on making good decisions and evaluating talent, not on hitting coaches.

#13 And yet, I distinctly recall the As asking Rickey Henderson to try to hit more home runs (before the 1984 season IIRC) and the reason I remember it is because Bill James ridiculed the notion that this was a sensible thing to ask for. (Steve Boros was quoting Boswell's "fact" that the winning team out-homers the losing team by some absurd margin)

Also worth noting that Joe Morgan felt he had to add power when moved to the #3 spot and did so successfully. I'd guess there's more room for style changes with very disciplined hitters.

I don't imagine there are any pith-by-pitch stats for his career, but Williams basic philosophy was to swing as hard as possible until you got two strikes, at which point you should sacrifice power for contact. If Williams coudl do it, anybody could ;-).

Seems ludicrous to think that changing hitting coaches could change the ability of established major league players to hit for more power.

Of course player acquisition and the natural talents of the players on the team are the overwhelmingly important factors. But, I think you guys are underrated the negative effect that a bad hitting coach can have. Established hitters are one thing, but many of the Royals' most important players are very young, and even if you're an anointed prospect or a veteran you're probably nervous about playing well enough to stay in the lineup. If Kevin Seitzer tells you that he wants to see you hit it to the other side, he's your boss, and you're going to try and do what he says.

I remember Keith Hernandez telling a story about how an early MLB coach of his wanted him to go the other way more often - he said that it temporarily messed up his swing and that it introduced bad habits that he felt hampered him for the rest of his career. Something similar happened with David Ortiz on the Twins, when he was told to take a shorter swing and emphasize contact. Ortiz on Tom Kelly: "He made me swing like a little girl."

No, the Royals aren't going to suddenly turn into a homerun machine, but it's entirely possible that Seitzer was slowing the development of some of the good young players by shoehorning them into an inappropriate hitting style.

Seems ludicrous to think that changing hitting coaches could change the ability of established major league players to hit for more power.

It has seemed to work in Toronto.

So the Royals will change their offense from "single, single, bunt, pop-up, ground out" to "single, strikeout, pop-up, deeper pop-up."