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As most baseball fans know, it’s all about streaks and slumps. You get hot, cool off, get hot again and so on down the line. This dictum applies to all players. Even Ichiro has slumps.
When a whole team is in a slump, sometimes there is a reason. It could be a rash of injuries, the strength of the opposition, or just plain bad luck. Eventually it gets in your head, which only makes it worse. “When you’re in a slump,” Pete Rose once said, “it seems like even the umpires have gloves.”
It can drive you crazy. It can even prompt you to make adjustments even when there is nothing wrong. Say for example, you have hit safely in 13 of 14 games and have hit .386 in that streak. Then you go hitless in three straight games to the tune of 0-13. That can happen, even when you are swinging the bat well. Perhaps you hit the ball hard seven times in the 0-13 slump and have nothing to show for it. Should you change your stance or mental approach after a swoon like this? No. If you have been watching the Astros for a few years, you have probably noticed that Morgan Ensberg changes stances like most people change clothing. You probably also noticed that Jeff Bagwell never changed his stance, no matter how bad things got. He knew that the stance and the mental approach would work eventually. And he was right.
What is not so apparent is that the hot and cold cycles can apply, on a larger scale, to an entire organization. The Astros finished first or second 10 times in the last 11 years. Their farm teams were winning championships too. They were due for a slump, and indeed, they are in one. The triple-A team at Round Rock and double-A team at Corpus Christie are both struggling this year too. The question is what should they do about it? My thought would be to think of Bagwell, not Ensberg. Dance with the one that brung you. Sometimes, when things seem so vexing that you don’t know what to think, it is useful to steal a page from the Yogi Berra quotebook. In this case, Yogi says, “I’m not in a slump. I’m just not hitting.”
The most difficult thing to do when you are failing is to stay the course. Having 10 good seasons out of eleven had to be more than good luck. But two bad seasons out of 12 could be nothing more than bad luck. Certainly, it would be foolish to do absolutely nothing. But changing your whole philosophy is probably a mistake.
The best hitters have long streaks and short slumps. The same principle can apply to an entire organization. Because the abiding strengths of most of those Astros teams were pitching, speed and defense, the return route to excellence will likely cover the same ground. Carlos Lee and Mark Loretta represent a departure from the speed and defense route. They are doing exactly what the Astros hoped they would do. But their hitting hasn’t offset the pitching and fielding problems. It may take some creative thinking to get back on track. The process will be challenging, but could also be interesting.
This slump, like all others, will pass. How long it lasts will likely tell us if the Astros are like Rose, Yogi, Bagwell and Ichiro, or if they are more like Ensberg. |
