How Baseball Outsiders Became The Game's Biggest Swing Influencers

[Parker Hageman]

There are not too many books that inspire me to purchase them months in advance but when word of Jared Diamond’s forthcoming Swing Kings set a late March release date, I swung by Amazon and reserved my copy.

 

Player development, to say the least, is my jam. Any written word on the industry is an open invitation to take my money.

 

The previous year it was Ben Lindbergh and Travis Sawchik’s very worthy MVP Machine, a dive into the changes in the player development side of the game that made me get off my wallet and wait patiently for the pile of dead trees to arrive.While the Lindbergh-Sawchik number dropped in June 2019, I’ve found that the months leading up to and into the season are a perfect time to consume baseball content, particularly in Minnesota, where the ground is still rock hard and covered in ice. In 2018, I took in Russell Carleton’s The Shift (released in April 2018) and Tom Verducci’s The Yankee Years (a nice pick-up at Half Price Books for cheap). Through his use of “gory math”, Carleton’s book (a 4 out of 5 on my #SickReadingBrag scale) challenged me to think differently about the structure of the game while Verducci’s 10-year-old book (a 3 on my scale) was a solid visit through Joe Torre’s Yankees teams. It was a nice balance between deep thinking and a stroll down memory lane.

 

So Diamond’s story -- which as the subtitle suggests, promised to provide the inside story of baseball’s home run revolution -- should be an excellent kickstarter to the 2020 season.

 

Alas.

 

The book opens with a recap of the J.D. Martinez career reclamation project -- a story that was previously told in Lindbergh and Sawchik’s MVP Machine (as well as Ben Leiter’s Astroball and Alex Speier’s Homegrown, for that matter). Diamond details Martinez’s struggles once he reached the Astros and his subsequent eureka moment watching Jason Castro’s swing, one that prompted him to seek out Castro’s no-name independent hitting coach that worked out of a small facility in Santa Clarita. The chapter weaves in the plight of Justin Turner and Marlon Byrd, and how those two hitters reached a point of desperation in their respective careers as well.

 

This springboards Diamond into the burgeoning industry outside of the game. If you have been paying attention to the game’s subculture over the last six or seven years, all of the characters should be familiar. If not, you will meet coaches like Craig Wallenbrock, the Oracle of Santa Clarita, who, from the fringes of Los Angeles among the dusty industrial warehouses, quietly impacted the game. There’s Doug Latta, Wallenbrock’s protege, who worked with Byrd and later, Turner. There’s a historical look at why the game was so resistant to change and how Ted Williams’ preaching of hitting the ball in the air took over 30 years to be embraced. You will be introduced to the abrasive (online) personality of Richard Schneck -- who goes by the moniker Teacherman on Twitter and combats any and all who question his methods -- who was propelled into the mainstream based on his work with Aaron Judge. Twins fans might find the chapter on Chris Colabello, Josh Donaldson, and their swing coach, Bobby Tewksbary, to be interesting, to say the least (according to Diamond, Tewksbary scoffs at the Twins’ prior practices).

 

It’s a wonderful introduction to the collection of baseball misfits who, never truly experiencing any success within the game only to gain notoriety by helping others.

 

If there was one element of the book I didn’t enjoy, it was the George Plimpton-Paper Lion-esque style of writers injecting themselves into the game or practice to show how difficult or challenging it is. In MVP Machine, Lindbergh documents his experience working with Latta and how he could make swing changes. Similarly, Diamond writes about being on a video call with Latta and going over dry swing drills in preparation for the New York-Boston annual media game. On one hand it gives the story some personality, or relatability to the author, but to me, it was a weird disruption of flow. It often comes across as a strange brag* (Diamond talked about making a play at first base in the media game) or forced self-deprecation (he got blisters on his hands because this isn’t his craft). Books don’t always need to be written from the perspective of the omnipresent observer but in this case, it came across more like a disruption than an addition.

 

Within the game itself, we still hear former players on broadcasts saying things like the “launch angle swing” which leads to the assumption that all players are just dropping their back shoulders and trying to hit the ball into the sun. First, as Tewksbary points out on his personal website, there is no such thing as a launch angle swing. All swings, when contact happens, have a launch angle. It’s like saying a velocity pitch. When pressed, these pundits describe a one-dimensional, uppercut swing that is designed to do nothing but lift the ball in the air. What the story of Swing Kings drives at is that baseball has been insular when it comes to hitting development, while outside of the game as people like Wallenbrock, Latta and Tewksbary and others eschewed convention and created ways to optimize players’ swings -- all of whom reached the same conclusion that hitting the ball in the air provides the best value. In fact, Diamond quotes former Twins catcher Jason Castro who summarized the movement thusly: “Saying guys are trying to hit the ball in the air is wrong. That’s looking at the outcome instead of the beginning. It’s looking at it backwards.”

 

There’s a larger theme in play than just putting the spotlight on the guys who worked for years in the dark. If you participate in Twitter or spend any time in forums that discuss the state of baseball, then you’ll undoubtedly encounter debates about new school versus old school approaches, each one of them often digging in to protect their side. As detailed by Diamond, the old school followers -- at least those embedded in the game -- dismissed the outsider ideas that grew in the private cages and backwater colleges on the sport’s periphery. They kept those people and ideas at a distance. Now those forward-thinkers have penetrated the game in coaching and front office roles bringing with them their new methods. What it all boils down to is that the real antagonist is the closed-minded. And, to be clear, the closed-minded can lurk in either of the new school or old school camps.

 

Overall, it’s a good read. A quick read and one that satiated my baseball thirst, especially in a time when the whole world is on pause. If you are unfamiliar with the trend, I recommend this book as a primer. On my personal #SickReadingBrag scale, I gave it three out of five stars. Diamond, Wall Street Journal’s national baseball reporter, does a good job of presenting these different story lines into one narrative, however, most of the stories are well-worn and have been circulating for a while. The story behind the home run revolution just wasn’t that revolutionary for me.

 

*Not to be confused with my “I read books” brag.

 

Download attachment: Swing Kings Review.png

 

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[Doctor Gast]

Like you I admire those who are passionate for the game always hungry on honing their skills. At the same I`m happy on the approach of our hitting coaches who are willing to help each hitter to customize their swing not pushing a set philosophy. I`m intrigued by Donaldson`s drive to fine turn his swing 

[Minny505]

Funny how different readers are. My absolute favorite section of The MVP Machine was Lindbergh describing his coaching session.

I'm not sure if it's because I have played amateur ball for years, and still do in my late 30's, but I get goosebumps reading about an amateur, who has no idea how to properly swing a bat, find incredible success in a brief session with a modern professional.

I was once just like that until I worked with THE guy here in Albuquerque, New Mexico who tutored Bregman, Garver, and almost every other pro player from the area. 

The elation of crushing pitch after pitch with true consistency after just 30 minutes with a coach like that is something every baseball fan should experience once in their life.

[Parker Hageman]

Funny how different readers are. My absolute favorite section of The MVP Machine was Lindbergh describing his coaching session.

 

 

I'll start this by saying that, obviously, to each their own. I can only speak from my experience. 

 

I definitely think there is much to be said about detailing what that learning experience is like, being trained or going through that process. And you can absolutely do so without needing to put yourself in the story. I will say that the MVP chapter with Lindbergh and Latta was better. In this case, it felt needlessly divergent for the book (especially after Lindbergh had just published that a year prior). 

 

I hope you get the chance to read this one and let me know what you thought.