Yea, I’m saying the same thing as Lars. Walks just aren’t something that are stresed, and we don’t have the people who will teach them patience, and more importantly, the reason why patience can make you a better hitter.

There has to be a reason good hitters don’t come out of this organization.

The large sample size is as close to empirical evidence as we are likely to get.

This orgs motto must be “Swing The Bat, Something Good Will Happen” :-)

anyone have the Pitches per Plate Appearance data for these guys?
Burriss and Schierholtz are who they are, but I think the younger guys might be having trouble with pitch recognition and getting settled into better competition. That’s just a wild guess though.

I’m going for a beggars can’t be choosers sort of thing. Gobbling up Naturals (Angel) and Second to late round draft slots (Nate to AndyD) means not exactly picking according to the drafters complete concerns. Top prospects like Nate, and long term products like Feliz affect our perception. No names like Witters and Richardson are chalked up to exceptions. Lewis is simply a wild man no one is able to control?

All the same, I’d like JT to do more than give 1st base fielding tips. He always struck me as someone that made to most of his limited power by waiting for a pitch to drive. He came in second to Bonds In BBs many years, and may have led many a Bondless team.

I couldn’t pick B, because I believe the Giants lack an organizational hitting philosophy. Drafting, it’s pretty clear they are looking for young arms and they might (big if) have a pitching philosophy. But for position players, they fail to plan…

They draft pitchers early more often than not. Good hitters are gone by the time they get around to drafting them. Thus, they fill out positions in the minors with free agent signees from latin america who don’t have lots of plate discipline.

Carney is supposed to be a patience, work the count type of guy.

How about they task him in the off season with evaluating the hitting instructors at every level, and making determinations whether those folks are teaching that kind of hitting – and if not, spearheading the search for their replacements.

I mean, I know some of our young folks are having a slump, but I think he’s just miles ahead of LeFaaaaay. What do you folks thing about that.

You know what they say—“You don’t walk off the island out of Fresno, you hit your way off out”.

Can someone less lazy than myself provide some comparisons from other non-A’s farm systems re: walks. I say non-A’s because they stress taking pitches and I know they can talk a walk, but I’m more interested if it more the nature of young hitters to want to hit?

The empirical evidence is pretty overwhelming. The Giants love them some free-swingin’ slop-hackers. What I wonder about is this: do they instruct their scouts to look for “aggressive” hitters? Or is this aggressive, free-swinging approach preached throughout the Giants’ farm system? Or both? I think it’s probably both. Then again, how does the occasional Bill Mueller and Fred Lewis make it through? Why wasn’t the Hackalot philosophy beaten into them?

Well, maybe that’s where C and D come in. I just suspect that the Giants don’t have a very well-developed philosophy on what makes a good hitter. So they go with the vague idea that an “aggressive” hitter is a good hitter. He’s gritty! He’s a go-getter! He’s a gamer!

(Sabean to Fred Stanley): “Who is that aggressive, young go-getter hacking away at those low-and-away sliders in the dirt, Stanley?

(Stanley): “Uh, that’s MephistoFeliz, sir. The Prince of Hackness”

(Sabean): “I like the cut of his jib. Get him up to the big club immediately and sign him to a long-term contract!”

I just don’t think there’s a lot of thought or analysis going on with the Giants. That kind of stuff is for sissies and it gives Sabean a headache besides. Sabean knows a good ballplayer when he sees one, by golly, and he likes his scouts and coaches the same way.

Why they should have given Leone and McClain better looks. Seriously. The fact that they haven’t is what tells me this is an organizational philosophy thing.

With all due respect to The Colonel:

SF Giants: “We do pitching right”

Milwaukee Brewers: “We do hitting right”

SF should hire some of the Brewers scouting department.

I don’t know the answer. One thing I wonder is what the team has done to improve its development of hitters. It’s an obvious problem, and Sabean has shaken up other parts of the front office by bringing in some new advisers.

I guess Fred Stanley has a new position, but is he making any changes?

licensing fees for stealing my handle. Just because you made this silly board gives you no right to drag me into one of your posts. For shame.

and has been for years is the number of first-pitch hacks. Particularly leading to double plays. I can’t believe the scouting report for every pitcher the Ginats face says “he always pours a fastball down the pipe on the first pitch, swing away, green light!”

Or maybe they do. Anyway, I think some of the guys this year (Bocock and Velez come to mind) are doing a better job of looking at some pitches.

So I don’t know about the walk/no walk philosophy as expressed in memoranda from Brain S., but everybody in the black hats seem to think first pitches are to be hacked at, almost universally, and it often looks like they should be doing the exact opposite.