{"id":10143,"date":"2012-02-29T00:07:52","date_gmt":"2012-02-29T06:07:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/?p=10143"},"modified":"2012-02-29T22:29:47","modified_gmt":"2012-03-01T04:29:47","slug":"jayhawks-learn-to-beat-the-breaks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/2012\/02\/29\/jayhawks-learn-to-beat-the-breaks\/","title":{"rendered":"Jayhawks Learn To Beat The Breaks"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Blake Schuster<\/strong><\/p>\n

The definition of weakness depends on the perception of the flaw.\"\"<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Take the Kansas baseball team for instance. When senior third baseman Zac Elgie, and senior catcher James Stanfield were asked about their lineup\u2019s struggles with hitting breaking balls, their answers were identical. Both said the season was too young to believe that it was a problem \u2014 they\u2019d come around.<\/p>\n

Ask coach Ritch Price about the same issue, and it would become a weak spot that he\u2019d rather not wait on to heal.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why after repeatedly concentrating on becoming fastball-efficient, Price had shifted the focus of this week\u2019s practices to making sure his batters were prepared to face off-speed pitches.<\/p>\n

\u201cFastball-efficient means that if you\u2019re sitting in that power count, 1-0, 2-0, or 3-1, and you know the pitcher is going to throw a fastball I don\u2019t care if that guy is throwing 94 or 95 mph you should be on time,\u201d Price said. \u201cThe second part of that progression is to identify the breaking ball that\u2019s down in the zone and lay off it.\u201d<\/p>\n

So even while Elgie is batting .333 with two home runs and nine RBIs, and Stanfield is hitting .438 with six RBIs, they\u2019ll both be leading the rest of the team to the batting cages to work on the second phase to become a stronger lineup from top to bottom.<\/p>\n

But the off-speed pitching machines in the batting cages can only help when the batters know that a breaking ball is coming. It doesn\u2019t help teach them how to identify it in live action. Nonetheless, learning how to hit the novelty tosses is integral to being able to smack one once the hitters see it coming.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just a timing thing,\u201d Stanfield said of the off-speed machines. \u201cIt helps out, but when you\u2019re in a live game and you don\u2019t know what\u2019s coming, it\u2019s going to be different, of course.\u201d<\/p>\n

It might seem preposterous that Price is worried about his hitters considering the transformation from last season. By early March of the 2011 campaign, the Jayhawks were collectively hitting .198. Right now, they are hitting .268 with a .388 slugging percentage.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis year, this club we all gel real well,\u201d Stanfield said. \u201cWere definitely off to a ten-times better start.\u201d<\/p>\n

But not even a 5-2 record, a .268 batting average, and Big 12 leading 1.37 ERA is going to satisfy Price yet, and for him, it goes back to beating the fastball and knocking the breaking ball.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have to be able to hit the fastball on every level,\u201d Price said, \u201cThe next step is beating that breaking ball up in the zone.\u201d<\/p>\n

– Edited by C.J. Matson<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Blake Schuster The definition of weakness depends on the perception of the flaw. Take the Kansas baseball team for instance. When senior third baseman Zac Elgie, and senior catcher James Stanfield were asked about their lineup\u2019s struggles with hitting breaking balls, their answers were identical. Both said the season was too young to believe that it was a problem \u2014 they\u2019d come around.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":10144,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/Stanfield_Jamesmug.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10143"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10143\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}