Commish’s Offerings 3-12-2023
Rick Hummel is presented by:
Fast Eddie’s Bon Air
in Alton, Illinois
Conversation with Whitey
JUPITER, Fla.--Hall of Fame manager Whitey Herzog likes this Cardinals team but he has some suggestions to make it better.
Herzog loves what infielder Tommy Edman brings to the defense and offense but thinks that Edman could maximize his base running and base stealing acumen.
"“Edman very rarely runs real early in the count,” said Herzog from St. Louis.
''He's not like (Tyler) O'Neill. If O'Neill could get on more, right away he's on second.”
If Edman would be hitting at the top of the order or even second, Paul Goldschmidt and Nolan Arenado, the top two Cardinals sluggers, would be behind him.
“Now if you get a 2-1 count on Goldy and 2-1 on Arenado, it's pretty tough to take the bat out of their hands by stealing a base,” said Herzog, who had some pretty fair base stealing teams in the 1980s in St. Louis. “If you're going to steal, you're almost going to have to steal early in the count.
“Edman is a good runner who could steal 50 or 60 bases because of his speed and quickness. He reads pitches and pitchers all right when he does decide to go but I'm just saying he's got to learn to run earlier in the count because of the people that hit behind him.”
In general, Herzog, still sharp at age 91 as the second oldest living Hall of Famer (Willie Mays is a few months older), said base stealers should benefit from the new legislation on throws to first base.
“The two times off the rubber and the two throws to first base are going to make a big change,” Herzog said. “Pitchers are going to throw one time to first. I don't think they'll throw a second time.”
“Look at how many times they used to throw over on us. Fifteen throws to first base a game. What about that time in Montreal when the guy threw over 19 times trying to get Vince Coleman, never delivered a pitch, they pitched out. . . and he stole second?”
Herzog said he understood the need to shave 15 or 20 minutes off the game with the new pitch clock rule.
But, as for the shift?
“I think that's a bunch of bull,” said Herzog. “And the reason I'm saying that is they're trying to help raise the batting averages. The rules state clearly that the catcher is in foul territory and the pitcher has to be on the rubber, but the other seven players can play wherever the manager wants them to play. That's it. Period.”
“It is up to the hitter. Wherever they play him, it's up to him to beat wherever they play him. Some of them do. Some of them don't—they're hard-headed. Why don't they hit ground balls to the right side? Or why don't they learn to keep the balls out of the air. But you've got to work on it. You can't go out there and be hard-headed and hit a line drive at somebody's 100 feet out on the grass.
"(Matt) Carpenter was the worst of the bunch. He kept hitting line drives until it finally ate him up. He couldn't handle the fastball away and he was hard-headed about it.”
Herzog also has a way to fix right-hander Dakota Hudson. “Dakota has got to have a changeup,” said Herzog. “The bad thing is that his plane is not really low enough to really take advantage of his sinker ball. Most of the time, he's up with it.
"I'd get (former Cardinal) Dave LaPoint to come to camp and make him teach Dakota that changeup he had.
"LaPoint didn't have a major league fastball and didn't have a good curveball but he used to throw his changeup 70 times a game and he won 10 games. Why wouldn't they want to take advantage of a guy like that? He wouldn't be trying to do something to hurt the pitching coach—don't get me wrong—but I would think it would be something the organization would consider with Dakota.”
And, finally, Herzog has a dose of realism for teams that delude themselves into thinking they are contenders if they could just cut in half the number of one-run games they “unluckily” lost the year before.
“The reason you lost 35 one-run games,” said Herzog, “is that you were lousy.”
