Okay, the Cubs are gonna announce today that Rudy Jaramillo is coming aboard as the highest-paid hitting coach in the game. North Siders are now forming lines in front of the Wrigley box office for their 2010 World Series tix.
As I’ve indicated before, Hungry Jim Hendry loves — loves — big names. In the tight little world of hitting coaches there is no bigger name than Jaramillo’s. Will his hiring mean a goddamn thing in the standings?
Jaramillo has been the batting pedagogue at Texas since the early 90s. His charges have won 17 Silver Slugger awards and four MVPs. Bruce Levine credits Jaramillo with jump-starting the careers of Sammy Sosa, Mark DeRosa, Gary Mathews Jr., and Milton Bradley although, if memory serves me correctly, Sosa had a fair season or two with the Cubs before he closed out his career with the Rangers.
And therein lies my point. When you traffic in Big Names, the hyperbole has to match — even if it’s utter bullshit. The truth is, no one has any idea what effect Jaramillo has on hitters other than to make sure they don’t lose their way from the dugout to home plate.
What I do know is that the Ballpark in Arlington (could they possibly have come up with a more generic name?) is one of the top hitters’ havens in the bigs. According to ESPN’s 2009 MLB Ballpark Factors study, the BinA ranked in the upper quarter of parks in terms of increasing run scoring. And it ranked third only to Angels Stadium and that new telephone booth in the Bronx in home runs.
In addition, three of those four aforementioned MVP plaques were copped by Alex Rodriguez and Juan Gonzalez, neither of whom, I’d wager, was in dire need of a hitting coach.
So methinks the beckoning fences of the Arlington playlot and the innate abilities of his pupils had as much or more to do with the Rangers’ bat-swinging success than the soothing encomiums of one Rudy Jaramillo.
I also suspect that if the Cubs score one run more in 2010 than they did in 2009, Jaramillo will be hailed as the second coming of James Clerk Maxwell. Such are the rewards of possessing a Big Name.
