Our Batting Coach Gene Tenace

With the early success of our offense this season and with the credit that batting coach Gene Tenace is getting, I thought we could take a look at his playing career. After the Jays started slowly last year a lot was made of Gary Denbo's 'patient' philosophy of hitting. Wait for your pitch, take a walk if it is offered. When things didn't go well for the Jays, Denbo and manager John Gibbons were fired. Cito was brought in to manage and he brought Gene Tenace in to be hitting coach.

The term 'grip it and rip it' has appeared in many stories about the Jays new batting philosophy. We would be aggressive, go up there swinging. Look for a pitch and go after it. But somehow that doesn't jive with the way I remembered Gene Tenace playing career. So I thought we'd take a look at it. 

Here is his career (chart works better if you use 'wide view'):

As you can see, grip it and rip it doesn't apply to him. He was a low average, lots of walks, power hitter. In a full season he'd have more than 100 walks a year with batting averages in the .250 and lower range, he'd have on base averages of .400 or more. Doesn't really sound like 'grip and rip' to me.

But then Saturday against the A's we took 9 walks, Friday we took 6, Thursday 5, Wednesday 5.....it looks to me like we are being patient. Waiting for our pitch (well most of our players), taking a walk if it is offered. You think maybe there is not as big difference in philosophy from Denbo to Tenace.

Anyway, if there had been a Sabermetic movement in baseball back went Tenace played, he would have been the poster boy. 10 straight seasons with OPS+ over 130, while his high batting average over the period was .263. Talk about a Moneyball player, in 1975 he hit 29 homers, walked 106 times, all with a .255 average. The year before he hit 26 homers and had 110 walks with a .211 average. 

And people didn't think he was much of a player. There is a famous story about a SI editor turning down an article written by Bill James because James called Tenace one of the best players in baseball, while the editor 'knew' that wasn't true because he hit in the low .200's. There wasn't even the thought that a player can have value outside of their batting average.

As one of Charlie Finley's Oakland A's he won 3 World Series. He homered in his first two World Series at bats. They were an interesting group, that team. A lot of different personalities held together by a mutual hatred for the owner. Gene was part of the exodus of players that left the A's when free agency came to baseball. Finley was cheap and didn't want to pay his players market value. Tenace won another World Series ring with the St. Louis Cardinals in 1982. He also played for San Diego and Pittsburgh.

As a coach he has coached with the Astros, Blue Jays, Cardinals and now Jays again and has two World Series rings from our wins. As a player, Bill James listed Tenace as the 23rd best catcher ever in his New Historical Baseball Abstract. 

Anyway the point of all this was to suggest that maybe 'grip and rip' isn't really his hitting philosophy at all, maybe it is a little more nuanced than that. I know he preaches that batters have a plan when they go up to bat. They should know what they are looking for and what they want to hit. And I truly don't believe he believes any less in being patient than Denbo did. I just think that maybe the hitters bought into what he was saying better.