Bob McClure won’t be returning as Kansas City’s pitching coach next year, but that’s not for a lack of experience. The 59-year-old former southpaw reliever has plenty of that, having taken the mound in 707 games before joining the coaching ranks. He also doesn’t lack for good stories — nor is he shy about sharing his opinions on the strike zone or why pitchers do, and don’t, succeed. As for his appreciation of parables, that’s to be expected when you count Ted Simmons among your mentors and when you spend quality time with Brian Bannister.

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David Laurila: You pitched in the big leagues for 19 seasons. What type of pitcher were you?

Bob McClure: When I was brought up to the big leagues [by the Royals] they needed a left-hander out of the bullpen, so I did that for three or four years. After about 200 games as a reliever, I became a starter. That was in the early 1980s, with Milwaukee, and I did that for three years before going back to the bullpen. Around that time, my velocity dropped, which meant my location had to be better and I had to start pitching a little differently.

DL: Why did your velocity drop?
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When it comes to hitting approach, Jackie Bradley, Jr. fits the Red Sox blueprint. A common catchphrase within the organization is “selectively aggressive,” and that’s exactly the mindset the 21-year-old outfielder brought with him from the University of South Carolina.

Bradley was an on-base machine in his freshman and sophomore seasons with the Gamecocks, reaching safely at better than a .450 clip. A wrist injury hampered his junior campaign, but Boston saw enough promise in his sweet left-handed swing to take him 40th overall in this year’s draft.

Signed at the August deadline, Bradley got his feet wet at the professional level with six games in short-season Lowell and four more in low-A Greenville. He shared his thoughts on hitting during his short stint in the New York-Penn League.

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David Laurila: Is hitting simple, or is it complicated?
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Zach Britton’s rookie season was both predictable and surprising. The 23-year-old left-hander went 11-11 and 4.61, in 28 starts — numbers that could reasonably be expected from a highly regarded first-year hurler competing in baseball’s toughest division. How he arrived at them was the unexpected part.

Britton went into the year rated as the Orioles’ top pitching prospect, thanks in part to a power sinker that was lauded as “the best in the minor leagues” and a slider that graded out as plus. His 2.8 GB/FB rate in 2010 complemented his scouting report, and his 2.43 K/BB was rock solid.

In his first season in Baltimore, Britton wasn’t nearly the same pitcher. He more than held his own against big-league hitters, but in a different way. In the future, that’s probably a good thing — but only if he can recapture the worm-killing magic that led to the hype.

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David Laurila: How would you describe your rookie season?

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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?

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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?

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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 »