RUDY RUDY!!! UPDATE: Mets Say Nah, We Love Hojo
Posted by metro on 8:00am, Thursday October 15th 2009
Not only is “Rudy” one of my top 10 favorite movies ever but that also is the first name of the man regarded as probably the best hitting coach in baseball former Texas Rangers hitting coach Rudy Jaramillo. As many people may recall Omar Minaya interviewed Jaramillo for the Mets managerial position before hiring Willie Randolph. Many felt as if Omar only interviewed him in an attempt to try and steal him away from the Rangers and make him the Mets hitting coach. That being said it is clear that Omar through his ties with the Rangers (as well as Sandy Johnson’s) likes Rudy.
There are certainly arguments against bringing Jaramillo in. The first being HoJo. Johnson is one of my favorite Mets ever and did a reasonable enough job with what he had (he is garnering huge praise for his work with Frenchy) . That said, his star pupil David Wright had his worst season ever by a good margin and the Mets “concept” of settling for 100% small ball certainly did not help the offense score runs. Personally I would be for bringing in Jaramillo (he too has worked with Frenchy, who praised him greatly but said he didn’t to work with him every day to reap the benefits) because I would be excited to see what he could do with Reyes and Wright as well as guys like Fernando Martinez.
The other “downside” to Jaramillo is Jerry Manuel. Why you ask? Well Manuel as many of us realize is on thin ice and because of this bringing in a guy like Jaramillo adds yet another person looking over his shoulder and potentially taking his job.
Has Johnson “earned” the right to come back? I don’t feel strongly either way but it’s not as if he would be such a hot commodity that we would have to worry about losing him. The Mets could make HoJo the bench coach or even send him to AAA as either the hitting coach or bench coach. Jaramillo’s track record is very strong and while hitting coaches may in fact be “overrated” I would leave no stone unturned in improving this squad.
Thoughts?
Update: According to David Lennon: Mets don’t have plans to speak to Jaramillo
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The prospect of bringing him on board def crosse my mind yesterday, but as you say, there really doesn’t appear to be any room for him considering Alomar Jr. is expected to take over the first base coaching job which would be the likely spot for Hojo. So, currently, the only available coaching spot is third base and I don’t see Hojo over there. Add to the fact that it would probably put Jerry in a very precarious situation and I think it’s unlikely.
I don’t agree. Hojo, although liked, or Manuel although unliked, are NOT reasons to let a great hitting coach pass by.
This would be like saying, we have a chance to get AGonz but we can’t because Murphy is at 1st and we like Murphy. We can make room for Murphy elsewhere. You don’t pass up a chance to upgrade.
Jarmillio is EXACTLY what this group needs. A guy who is known for taking struggling hitters and undeveloped hitters and turning them around.
Let Hojo be the 3B coach, I am sure he could be successful at it. Let Jarmillo be the bench coach… I say this, Jarmillo will be somewhere next year and we will be very upset if it is with another team.
Jaramillo said he wants to be the hitting coach of his next team with no interest in being bench coach.
Can you throw that link to me? I can’t find that anywhere. Only that he wanted security. Of course at one time he said he never wanted to be a manager and then wanted to be a manager and then was given the opprotunity to be manager and turned it down. So who the hell knows WHAT he wants?
Bart Hubbuch via Twitter- “The word out of Texas is that Rudy Jaramillo wants to be a hitting coach, not a bench coach.”
If a team offered him a 3 year contract I think he would change his mind. He has plenty of times before.
How could a bench coach be offered a longer term than the current manager or GM has?
I don’t disagree. I think that he would in fact be an upgrade, but I’m not sure your Agonz/Murphy anology works. I mean we are talking about coaches, not players.
I just feel like if they really wanted to go in a different direction, they would have re-assigned or fired Hojo at the end of the season. Same goes for Jerry. As far as Jerry looking over his shoulder, I have laways felt that that should be a consideration. I don’t think people work effetively with their replacement looming over their shoulders, and since they decided not to make a change, then i think you have to put him in a position to suceed. If you are going to hamstring the guy, then you should have just canned him.
But for all known intentions he does not want to be a manager. Why would Manuel feel any MORE pressure? He already knows if we don’t win he’s fired.
I mean hypothetically “who doesn’t want to manage?” so it’s hard to trust a guy you may think is next in line.
But like I said, in Jerry’s case it’s simple. They win, he stays. They struggle he goes. It does not matter who is behind you. Same with Omar.
I mean youa re right, but I also think that is too simplistic a view TRS. Like I said, I don’t care who you are or what line of work you are in, no one likes to have someone looking over their shoulder while they try and do their job. Like if someone was looking over my shoulder right now I wouldn’t be able to be on the site!
Well thats what the rumors were with willie. They(mets front office) has already hinted that we will have “manuel gate” next season and “all of a sudden” the bench coach has been “reassigned”…. They are looking for manuels replacement imo in the event the mets get off to a slow start, karmas a b*** lol
Having Jaramillo working with the hitters under the guise of being the bench coach is kind of like hiring an assistant principal to teach TRS’s class from noon until 3 pm and if the students don’t learn, the teacher — not the assistant principal — will be the one fired.
that’s actaully a great idea. It will give him more time to post in the early afternoon.
Agreed, I have not had a computer in my room this week.
It’s all moot, Met’s have no plans to speak to Jaramillo
http://www.newsday.com/sports/baseball/mets/mets-don-t-have-plans-to-speak-to-jaramillo-1.1524107
Of course not, Hojo is a former Met. We have to keep those guys.
There is a rule “ex-Mets stay, and go after old Yankees and Red Sox when they are over the hill” thus Varitek and Matsui already being tied to us.
Varitek and Matsui aren’t tied to us by anything but utterly meaningless internet blather.
There is NO WAY we would bring either of these guys in.
Santos’ offensive stats are almost as good as Varitek’s!
Hojo’s staying, doesn’t matter who’s available.
I believe that that statement is your understanding of the Mets logic as opposed to your stance on the topic, and my response to that is: why?
I loved Hojo the player. But I don’t understand the weird idea that “well he played for us when we were good so, he stays.” There need to be more qualifications for continuing employment than just that.
My stance is unimportant if I know that the Mets are thinking another way. At this point, we know who they’re sticking with in terms of the coaching staff.
I’m not a complete a-hole - I’m fine if the rest of you want to debate that, and discuss who’s available…but to me it’s pointless. I’d rather focus on free agency and trades, where most options are still on the table.
And I do think this is a fine post. Even if we’re not getting him, it’s important to know who’s available (just in case).
Well thank you, unless I’m grossly misinterpreting you did confirm for me that it was NOT your stance but rather your feeling of how the organization will proceed.
This is soooo rediculous. You have one of the BEST, more highly regarded hitting coaches on the market and your passing that up for a co-conspiritor to the “hotfoot”. ARE you kidding me?! This is why the mets will NEVER be taken seriously. They dont bring in serious guys who know how to do a job and do it well. Whats wrong with making jaramillo the bench coach if they have such a thing for hojo. At least he is within the organization and he can…wait for it…HELP!!! After a season that we all endured i think they need to do whatever they can to help this team and bringing in one of the best hitting coaches will do just that. Unbelievable…..
With Gammons implying that Jeff Wilpon is now in charge I wouldn’t expect many positive moves going forward lol
great…..lol
This is no surprise…this is why i feel Duquette gets an unfair wrap with fans over the Kazmir trade. It was all Wilpon.
Why not make Hojo the 3rd base coach and Rudy the hitting coach. What other duties does the 3rd base coach have? So he could not work with Wright on his hitting too?
Agreed, this is even more disappointing than Manuel coming back.
thats what im sayin man…i mean if the yankees had hitting problems, what do you think the steinbrenners would do…GET THE BEST GUY ON THE MARKET TO FIX THE PROBLEM!!! This is a NO brainer…
If they like hojo that much as a hitting coach, make him the hitting coach for AAA..lord knows they need it. Give me rudy anyday, he fixed andrew jones…nuff said.
He didn’t exactly “fix” Andruw Jones 214/323/459, but I agree with your points.
well he didnt play a full season either but lets look at andrew jones 2008 (LAD)
G 75/.158 avg/3 hrs/14 rbi/.256 obp/.249 slg
and andrew jones 2009 (TEX)
G 82/.214 avg/17 hrs/43 rbi/.323 obp/.459 slg
Of course those arent his career numbers with the braves but he played what 7 more games with the rangers and ended up with that kind of disparity(in a positive way)…
Thats the kind of advantage a guy like rudy can bring and im very disappointed the mets dont see this and take this opportunity to capitolize and get him!
I hope there’s a better case study than that.
well i dont have all the time in the world to build a more comprehensive one for ya wanny..i have to work but for immediate purposes i think that says alot.
from wiki
Prior to the 1995 season, Jaramillo was named as the Texas Rangers’ major league hitting coach. From 1996 through the end of the 2004 season, the Texas Rangers ranked in the top five in the American League in team batting average, runs scored, slugging percentage, home runs, and hits. In 1999, the Texas Rangers led all of Major League Baseball in hits, slugging percentage, and team batting average(.293 for the season). In 2005, the Rangers hit 260 home runs: the second-highest total in Major League history. In 2008, the Rangers were first in both runs scored (901), hits (1619), and home runs (194). During his time with Texas, his hitters have won 16 Silver Slugger Awards, four MVP Awards, three home run titles, two RBI championships and a batting title.
Those things don’t mean much in evaluating a hitting coach. First of all, Texas is a hitter’s haven — they can’t even sign a legitimate free agent pitcher. Secondly, for many of those years he had players who hardly needed his coaching expertise, i.e. Juan Gonzalez, I-Rod and Palmeiro who all fared awfully well with and without Rudy.
So enlighten us…how would the great wanny evaluate a hitting coach…
No need to be snide because I disagree with you.
I’d probably take a more individual approach, focusing more on younger players. I might try to find some players who did not have success before or after the hitting coach. As I said, I think the hitting coach’s influence is a little overstated and many players/broadcasters have indicated that the hitting coach has even less influence on veteran players.
All that said, I still don’t see what anyone’s beef is with Hojo.
I dont believe im being snide, i was generally curious. I dont mind your disagreement with my opinion. I still dont think hojo is a good fit for this team and i never did. I agree the hitting coach probably doesnt have that much of an effect as most people believe they do but the position does exist, so there must be some use for it. I just dont see what hojo has done that has been positive for this team. We came within one game of the world series when rick downs was the hitting coach. Since then we have not made the playoffs. Granted the argument for 08/09 will be the injuries, but the HR’s have decreased EVERY year since downs left and the average has went up and down by 4-9 points.
I think like tony larussa said that they need a new voice, i think the mets need one to. I think hojo is a waste of space and i would feel ALOT more confortable with soemone like rudy who has experiance with several great players and they have all creditied rudy for their development.
Andruw Jones in 2007:
.222 .311 .413
So the hitting coach is credited for reverting him back into the same type of crappy player he was in 2007?
in 2007 he played in 154 games
you see 2008 stats he played in 75 games
in 2009 he played in 82 games
so in a little over half the games he played in 2007, rudy brought him back within the realm of his stats for that year. We will never know how he would have done over the course of the same amount of games he played in 2007 but to me thats pretty impressive since everyone just about gave up on the guy.
The “realm” you discuss was horrible and resulted in him being allowed to walk out of a town that he was a hero in. I wouldn’t want my players being brought back to Andruw’s 2007 realm.
Last year’s stats show, by the way, that the more Andruw played the worse he got.
April: 344 .523 .781
May: 245 .339 .434
June: .170 .224 .415
July: 209 .338 .627
August: .167 .259 .208
September: .179 .273 .250
Again, not the best case study. I’m sure Rudy has helped plenty of hitters. But not this one so much.
take a look at how many ab’s he had as the year went on…he recieved fewer and fewer ab’s. I dont know if that was a precaution for injury but a small sample size makes stats a little misleading…I think in sept he only had what 18 ab’s.
Maybe andrew, like you said is not the best case study but he still finished with a better avarage than the year before when he played a similar amount of games. To me that is an improvement.
You can’t just put someone out at third base if they haven’t done it before.
I don’t see what the big fuss is about.
And I don’t see what anyone’s beef with Hojo is.
I also think the hitting coach’s role is being a tad bit overrated. Texas plays in a hitter friendly park and Jaramillo has had the luxury of working with great hitters — who were great both before and after being with him (I-Rod, Juan Gone, Palmeiro, etc.). Players seem to like him, yes. But players also seem to like Hojo and he is, at least, familiar with the players here. I don’t recall the Texas hitting coach generating a whole lot of success in the standings.
There are several problems with Jaramillo as a bench coach. First, who knows if he is the type of strategist that job requires? He’s been interviewed for managerial jobs and has not received one. (this assumes he would even be interested in such which hasn’t been revealed by anything other than speculation)
If the purpose is to have a second hitting coach then that is not a good idea either. Imagine someone was brought in to do your job for you, was paid more money for it and ultimately would not receive the blame for poor results because his job title did not correspond to the work he was doing. You’d have tension among your coaching staff. Not good.
This is a big non-issue to me, whether they hired him and fired Hojo or retained Hojo and hired Jaramillo.
Well imo i would rather have a guy with a better pedigree. I agree, maybe a bench coach is not the best idea but i think a guy like rudy is highly regarded for this ability as a hitting coach. I think a guy like that is what this team needs with both the players we have and the ones coming up.
forget rudy for a second, I think we can all agree that they should can warthen and go after duncan!
And just about anybody is a better candidate for bench coach than Razor based on the judgment he exhibited as 3B coach.
i may have missed it…but is razor going to be the bench coach?
Was the rumor in one of the articles this morning. Forget which…
I saw that Gammons piece about Jeffy being the “real” GM. MC also dredged up a link to an interview with Doubleday from back in 2003 basically saying the same things about Jeffy wanting to be “‘da man”.
what was even more depressing? A comment that not only wouldn’t they spend the $$ for Rudy (with Omar wanting him, jeff not), but that they were cutting the pro scouting budget.
Not that really sounds short sighted.
Regardless of the payroll, and of course I don’t really know what is true, but if they can’t (or won’t) spend money on the draft, IFAs, scouting, or the best coaches, it does not bode well for the future.
Gotta chime in that we may be dramatically overrating Jaramillo.
Texas has NEVER won a postseason series—only MLB team to achieve this I think.
And in addition to having a hitter’s park, Texas has clearly been a hotbed of serious PED use. Sosa, ARod, Canseco, Palmeiro, and very possibly guys like Juan Gonzalez, IRod, Palmer and others who had career best years there.
I hear you and I largely agree with you (and Wanny who brought up the park above) but my beef is more general. I just don’t understand why a team that has had such problems with, for lack of a better word, underachieving for 3 years now would be so certain in retaining so many coaches? Fire only 2, the 2 who arguably were the best at their jobs? Seems ludicrous.
I liked the quote from some Yankee (unfortunately) front office employee after the Mets fired Sandy Alomar Sr. “He (Sandy) has more baseball knowledge than everybody else over there (Mets coaching staff) combined.”
Having said that, I am actually relieved to read the report that the Mets will NOT be going after Jaramillo. I am growing weary of the Mets going after players and coaches 5 years after they should have got them. Kudos to them for not doing so here.
I completely agree…I wrote a piece basically begging for Jerry to be gone, and if LaRussa was available, I still hold out hope.
I also think Warthen has not shown anything whatsoever.
I also think firing the first base coach when we led the league in steals is perhaps the highest comedic moment of them all, regarding the firing/non-firing.
Since the Mets seem so high on having/adding former Mets to their coaching staff, perhaps they should consider bringing back John “The Monster Is Out Of The Cage” Stearns to coach 3B. According to Adam Rubin he is not being brought back as the manager of the Nats AA team.
Teufel is expected to move to AA as manager, Sandy Jr. is our new 1b coach, Shines to bench coach. Backman expected to manage one of the A-ball teams (I’ll guess BK), Mookie and Stearns both are expected back as well this all according to Rubin.
I’m not sure what in Tim Teufel’s track record as a manager has earned him a promotion.
Wally is probably the most qualified managerial candidate in the organization.
Well I feel the need to ask this follow-up: Are you suggesting that Wally is supremely qualified to manage a ballclub, or that the other guys in the organization are not supremely qualified, or some combination of the two, or something entirely different?
The reason I ask is because when I think of Wally Backman, manager, I think of a guy who is absolutely capable of leading a group of ballplayers to winning more games than they lose, but I also think of someone who is completely incapable of basic social functions and who is a ticking time bomb who at any moment will blow up all the positives he might bring due to his inability to control himself, and I have to wonder if NYC is the place for someone like that.
In that regard, perhaps installing him in Brooklyn is the best possible test case because if he’s going to implode in NYC, better to do it in Brooklyn than in Queens.
I think Wally has had the most demonstrable success managing baseball teams. Ken Oberkfell is most likely competent in terms of having adequate experience but has not, to my knowledge, had the success Wally has had.
I’m not so sure Wally is a ticking time bomb anyway. His “infractions” are a DUI (Larussa), a domestic violence allegation (Bobby Cox) and bankruptcy (which shouldn’t be much of a consideration in terms of his social capabilities). I suppose the combination of his DWI and DV allegation is concerning but neither appears to be recurring — and last I knew, drinking has always been an accepted product of MLB culture.
All fair points, perhaps “ticking time bomb” was an overstatement on my part.
Maybe a fairer way to put it would be to say that he has given major league baseball reason to be wary of him, and I include in my critique of him the interesting incident in which he resigned from his managing job of the South Georgia Peanuts due to a dispute with league officials, then returned 3 days later. That sort of thing might fly in the South Coast League but I don’t think it will go over well in the NYPL and certainly not in MLB.
Yes other currently employed and successful managers are not saints, and maybe it’s simply due to the fact that he doesn’t have the ML resume of LaRussa & Cox, but there is some reason why he has been persona non grata in MLB for the last 5 years and only able to find work in independent leagues.
I also understand that perhaps his most recent team’s 24-42 record which lead to his firing may have been due to a lack of talent on the roster and not in the manager’s office but it’s not exactly a ringing endorsement either.
There is no easy answer IMO. Maybe exactly what the Mets need is a bold move such as the hiring of Wally Backman would be. But I fear that with the poor won-loss records of the Mets and so many of their affiliates this year that the Mets are hardly in a strong position to take on such a wildcard. To me hiring him now is like a gambler on a losing streak making a wildly big bet in hopes of winning it all back. Will it work, or will the organization fall farther back?
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting he manage the Mets this year. But I think it is a good move to have him back in the system to see if he could thrive in what is likely his last chance to reach MLB.
If he makes it through the season unscathed and effective he could be an option next season; or for at least a promotion.
He’ll definitely have to prove himself sane and capable before he has a chance to run the Mets’ ship.
sane is debateable, but since when has “capable” been a requirement for getting the Mets manager job?