Posted on Sunday 5 June 2005 by JEC @ 1:19 am
I guess someone had to take the heat for this mess. The Indians, who rank last in the American League in average, on-base percentage and runs scored, have fired hitting coach Eddie Murray. Manager Eric Wedge and general manager Mark Shapiro announced the firing after Saturday’s loss to the White Sox, naming minor league hitting coordinator Derek Shelton as Murray’s replacement until season’s end.
“We obviously have a tremendous amount of respect for what Eddie has accomplished in the game,” Wedge said, “but from an operations standpoint, we just felt like this was the best for our ballclub.”
It’s nice to finally see a little accountability from this team, but when are guys like Aaron Boone and Casey Blake going to have to take some responsibility for their pathetic numbers? It’s easy to throw Murray out there as the sacrificial lamb when the entire team is struggling, saying that he’s a poor communicator and that he’s “standoffish,” but nobody was complaining about him last season when the Indians owned the fifth-best offense in baseball. Eddie Murray is not the only reason this team continues to struggle, though as the hitting coach he certainly deserves some of the blame. Still, fingers should also be pointed at Eric Wedge, who writes Boone’s and Blake’s names on the line-up card almost every day, and Shapiro, who refuses to send Boone down despite his .160 average.
I really liked Murray’s philosphy about hitting, which stressed contact, moving runners, driving in runs and going the opposite way. This was a big chance from the swing-for-the-fences approach of Charlie Manual and it seemed to fit the Tribe well last year. The 1 through 9 approach seemed to be working. I guess things just started to break down when the hitters got off to a rough start without verterans like Vizquel and Lawton who sparked them last season. Murray is not the most jovial or upbeat guy in the world, so maybe a change was in order.
That said, Boone and the others need to wake up. We’re finally seeing Victor break out of it, but he has much more ability at the plate than Boone and Blake.
It would be interesting to hear whether Jody Gerut’s resurgence had anything to do with this. He developed bad habits last year like a hitch in his swing and Murray was not able to get through to him. After his injury and a stint in the minors, he seems to be back to his 2003 form. Maybe the minor league coaches did their job better than Murray.