Kelly Johnson may or may not be a Toronto Blue Jay next season, but wherever he ends up, he promises to have a better year with the bat — regardless of how many times he strikes out. The free-agent-to-be second baseman hit a respectable .270/.364/.417 after coming over from the Diamondbacks in a late-August trade — but his overall campaign was a huge disappointment. Fresh off a season in which he hit 284/.370/.496, he saw his numbers plummet to .222/.304/.413. He went deep 21 times — his second consecutive year with 20-plus — but he struck out a whopping 163 times.

During a late-season visit to Fenway Park, Johnson talked about his approach to hitting, including his K rate, his extensive use of video and how Toronto compares to Atlanta and Arizona.

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David Laurila: What type of season have you had?

Kelly Johnson: One of those learning seasons that you kind of wish you were over. It’s been up and down — mostly down. At my age [29], you feel like you should have ironed out some of the ups and downs and be a bit more consistent. It’s not been the year I wanted.

DL: Why has it been such a down year?

KJ: I don’t know. It’s just been an inconsistent year, feeling for my swing. More times than not, I’ve been 0-2 and feeling like I’m in an uphill battle. It’s been a struggle to find something that’s clicked — that’s worked — and I’ve been coming here thinking more about my swing than just playing the game of baseball.

DL: Is there anything about your hitting style that makes you prone to inconsistency? Read the rest of this entry »

I like to go outside the box from time to time, and that includes asking my interview subjects to give their interpretations of quotable quotes. I did so last year with Chris Davis — then a Ranger, now an Oriole — and given the quality of his responses, a return engagement seemed in order when his new team visited Fenway Park in September. The jury remains out on the 25-year-old slugger fulfilling his potential with the bat, but when it comes to knocking questions out of the park, he’s proven he can go deep with the best of them.

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David Laurila: Ty Cobb once said, “Baseball is a red-blooded sport for red-blooded men. It’s no pink tea, and mollycoddles had better stay out.”

Chris Davis: There are a lot of ways you can go with that, but I think he probably meant that it’s a man’s game. It’s definitely not for the emotionally weak. You play six months out of the year and some of the games can leave you an emotional train wreck if you let them. Frankly, I don’t know how more baseball players aren’t, for lack of a better term, wusses.

DL: According to Sandy Koufax, “Pitching is the art of instilling fear.” Read the rest of this entry »

Matt Moore is the game’s top pitching prospect and he just dominated a potent lineup, in his second big league start, in a post-season contest. Of course, you already knew that. Given the plethora of articles lauding and analyzing the 22-year-old lefthander, it is likely you know plenty more. With that in mind, what better way to delve even deeper than by discussing the art of pitching with the man himself?

Moore sat down to talk about his overpowering repertoire, and his approach on the mound, when the Rays visited Fenway Park late in the regular season.

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David Laurila: Do you identify yourself as a power pitcher?

Matt Moore: I sit 93 to 95, and I’m a starter, so I guess that fits into the classification of a power pitcher. I throw a hard breaking ball, around 82-84, and my changeup is around the same, about 81-83. I don’t have a mentality of, “Okay, I’m going to blow this by somebody,” but I do like to challenge guys with my best fastball. I have a good fastball — it’s my strength — so I’m going to challenge guys.

DL: Do individual hitters influence what you do on the mound?

Read the rest of this entry »

For players and fans alike, it is all a matter of perspective. If your team is beginning post-season action today or tomorrow — or if you’re the Braves or Red Sox — you probably can’t be blamed for looking at these inevitably tense battles as life and death. But they really aren’t. As seriously as we take the game of baseball, that is exactly what it is — a game.

John Jaso understands this. The Rays catcher wants to win as badly as anyone, but he also sees the bigger picture. His team is in the midst of a Cinderella story, but winning or losing the World Series won‘t define him as person, nor change the world. It will simply make a number of people very happy, and others very disappointed. Life will go on.

Jaso shared his thoughts when the Rays — at the time still chasing the Red Sox in the standings — visited Fenway Park earlier this month.

[Editor’s note: The following are Jaso’s words, excerpted from a conversation that took place on September 16.]

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“Winning a championship is very rewarding and something we all strive for. The funnest days of my life [have been] winning a championship. In Double-A it was amazing. In Triple-A it was amazing. And in 2008, being up here with the team and going to the World Series, was unbelievable. Even last year, coming out on top in the American League East — and it came down to the last game of the season, really — was huge. Those were big moments in my life. Read the rest of this entry »

James Shields has had a career year, and at least some of the credit goes to Jim Hickey. The Rays pitching coach has played a hands-on role in the right-hander’s success, which has been fueled, in part, by adjustments to his pitch selection. Hickey sat down to discuss those changes, as well as Shields’ BABiP and complete games, earlier this month.

Rays manager Joe Maddon also weighed in on Shields. His comments follow the interview with Hickey.

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David Laurila: Much of the attention James Shields has received this year has come as a result of his complete games. Are other, equally important, things being overlooked?

Jim Hickey: I’m not sure if they are or not, but he certainly deserves credit for a lot of other things. The complete games are kind of sexy and are calling a lot of attention to him, but he’s been an extremely solid, and productive, Major League starter since the beginning of the 2007 season. He takes the ball every fifth day and he pitches 215-220 innings every year. He gives you a chance to win the ballgame virtually every time out, and that’s really all that we can ask.

I was looking at his stats the other day and what stunned me was that James has allowed 50 fewer hits than innings pitched this year. It is about 170 compared to 220. That’s really something. He’s always been a guy who has allowed hits, and home runs, because he’s always in the strike zone and his stuff isn’t overpowering. I would say that he had 35 more hits than innings pitched last year, or maybe a little bit more, and to have an 80-hit swing is really impressive.

DL: I want to get back to his hits allowed, but first, you just referred to complete games as a “sexy” statistic. Has the game involved to a point where that‘s a fitting description?

Read the rest of this entry »

Joe Savery might be the best story of the 2011 season. The 25-year-old Phillies left-hander saw his pitching career bottom out last year — his record in Triple-A Lehigh Valley was a dismal 1-12 — and when this season began he’d been converted to a position player. By mid-year it looked like a successful transition, as the former collegiate two-way player was hitting .307/.368/.410 with high-A Clearwater, Fla. But earlier this week he made his big-league debut — as a pitcher.

The Rice University product went 5-0, with a 1.50 ERA, in 25 appearances in the minors after being moved back to the mound this season — a year in which the former first-round pick planned to give up his major-league dream so he could return to college this fall. He talked about his circuitous journey in an interview during the final weekend of the Triple-A season.

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David Laurila: How would you describe your 2011 season?

Joe Savery: It’s been interesting. It’s also been a good year. I enjoyed being a hitter again — as well as playing the field, running the bases and sliding, all of the things I hadn’t done in awhile. It has also been very humbling, and exciting, that my arm has come back the way that it has.

DL: What is the story behind your position changes? Read the rest of this entry »

John Gordon will call his final game one week from today — an event that will mark the end of a broadcasting legacy in Minnesota.

The venerable play-by-play man has been the radio voice of the Twins for each of the past 25 years, and few have done the job with as much grace and class. The 70-year-old Gordon has never been flashy — save for an occasionally over-exuberant “Touch-’em-all” home run call — but he has always been entertaining and informative. He also has been extremely popular — both with fans and with the many friends he has made in the game.

Earlier this season, Gordon shared his thoughts on broadcasting, baseball in Minnesota and several other topics — including the steroid era.

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David Laurila: How different is the game that you broadcast from the one that you grew up with?

John Gordon: Well, certainly the talent aspect is a lot different. I think that there is much more athleticism in the game now. Growing up in Detroit, I would watch Major League Baseball. Not that Mickey Mantle and Harvey Kuehn, and some of the other players I followed closely, weren’t great athletes, but I don’t think they had the athleticism that the players have today.

DL: Was the broadcasting different? Read the rest of this entry »

Orlando Hudson has been outspoken — at times, controversial — when it comes to African-Americans in baseball. The San Diego Padres second baseman cares deeply about the subject, and his knowledge of the game spans from the Negro Leagues to the present day. Perhaps most important to him, though, is the game’s future.

The numbers are sadly staggering: In 1975, African-Americans populated more than a quarter of major-league rosters. By 1996, when Hudson signed his first professional contract, the figure was 17%. Today, only 8.5% of this season’s Opening Day big-leaguers were African-American. The downward trend is one that Hudson would like to see reversed.

The four-time Gold Glove winner addressed the subject when the Padres visited Fenway Park earlier this summer.

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Hudson, on the man who preceded Jackie Robinson: “Fleetwood Walker was the first African-American to play in the big leagues. People say that Jackie broke the barrier, but Fleetwood broke in back in [1884]. He had a couple of years in before they said, ‘We don’t want blacks in baseball.’ He was a light-skinned brother. He was the first one and then — 60 years later — Jackie came along, in 1947. It was like, ‘OK, I’m here to stay.’ He played nine or 10 years in the big leagues. Then it was [Don] Newcombe and [Larry] Doby, and so forth.

On the players who followed Robinson: “They aren’t [as well known] because they were there at the same time as Jackie. Here’s a prime example: At one time you had Jeter, A-Rod, Tejada, Nomar and Vizquel. Wow. All right, out of that bunch you have four who are still playing. Nomar is out, so nobody talks about him anymore. Everyone forgets that Nomar was one of the best in the game. They mostly talk about Jeter and A-Rod. That’s why I think that Doby and those guys aren‘t talked about. Jackie got all the limelight. Branch Rickey was like, ’OK, this is the first guy, right here, Jackie Robinson.’ People just gravitated to him.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Ken Singleton is among the most underrated players of his era. The former Expo and Oriole finished in the top 10 in OBP nine times from 1973 to 1983 — topping the .400 mark four times, and seven seasons receiving MVP votes. In the words of Bill James, “He drew so many walks and hit so many homers he would produce runs if he hit .220, but he didn’t hit .220; he hit .300.”

The switch-hitting outfielder finished his 15-year big-league career with an OPS-plus of 132 and a slash line of .282/.388/.436. In 17 postseason games — Singleton has a World Series ring with the 1983 Orioles — his line was .333/.391/.421. Despite his career numbers, he didn’t get one vote in 1990 when he became eligible for the Hall of Fame.

More than two decades since his playing days ended, Singleton now is as an analyst for the Yankees on the YES Network.

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David Laurila: Why were you such a good hitter?

Ken Singleton: I was disciplined. My first year of pro ball was in the Florida State League and I led the league in bases on balls. I walked 87 times. I maintained that — the ability to recognize balls and strikes — throughout my career. It’s hard enough to hit strikes, so why would you want to swing at something that’s a little tougher to hit? My thing was that if the ball was somewhere I couldn’t reach, it probably wasn’t a strike and I wasn’t going to swing at it.

You’re normally going to get something to hit in an at bat. I can remember walking back to the bench after being called out on three straight pitches. The pitcher was a left-handed reliever named Bob Lacey — his nickname was Spacey Lacey — and all three were perfect, knee high on the outside corner. That’s the only time I can recall that happening, and I probably had 8,000 to 9,000 plate appearances. Usually you get at least one pitch that you should be able to hit. Whether you hit it or not is another story. You might swing and miss, or foul it off and not get another one. But 999 times out of 1,000, you’re going to get at least one.

DL: I have to believe that you were pitched around more than once? Read the rest of this entry »

Mike Easler was known as “The Hit Man” for a reason. In a career that spanned from 1973-1987, Easler displayed a sweet left-handed stroke that produced a slash line of .293/.349/.454. His best years came with the Pirates and Red Sox — he also played with the Angels, Astros, Phillies and Yankees — and along the way he shared a clubhouse with some of the game‘s most-accomplished hitters. Easler — currently the hitting coach for the Triple-A Buffalo Bisons — talks about several of his notable teammates in this interview.

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David Laurila: Who is the best hitter you played with?

Mike Easler: Overall, the best hitter I played with was Don Mattingly. I played two years with him and I’ve never seen a guy that could hit for power and hit for average like [he did]. He was a clutch hitter. He could get a single when you needed one, and he could turn on one and burn on one, in Yankee Stadium, and go deep when he had to. He could hit lefties, he could hit righties. He was the best hitter that I played with.

DL: From a hitting coach‘s perspective, why was Mattingly so good?

Read the rest of this entry »