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Felipe Alou: Is He Afraid of the Walk?
November 14, 2002 - Philippe
It's Frank Robinson who issued all those bunts and got all those caught stealings this year. He was very much a "small ball" manager the first half of the season, but dropped a lot of those strategies as the season advanced. It's probably a result of not having managed for a decade.
Alou never did make any outlandish "walks are for sissies" statements during his tenure, but he did praise contact hitters often. He was also instrumental in developing the young hitters he took over in Montreal in 1992 (he had managed in the Expos' system for years), and they were generally aggressive contact hitters, except for DeShields. But Tango's study shows that DeShields became more aggressive under Alou, and I'm almost sure that it's a result of his direction. The other hitters developed in the organization had very low walk rates to begin with, and any movement up or down is quite marginal.
Alou's year-by-year walk totals are quite telling. Also telling is that he would use low-obp hitters in the leadoff slot (Roberto Kelly, Terry Jones, Mark Grudzielanek, Milton Bradley...) and never had any inclination to give more patient hitters like Seguignol or Andy Tracy any regular playing time. It would have been interesting to see how he handled Brad Wilkerson, the antithesis of a Alou hitter.
That being said, Alou is very sharp when it comes to in-game strategy and uses his pitching staff well. And when he had the horses in Montreal, he was very successful and extremely popular with the media and fans. The Giants could have done a whole lot worse.
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