I wonder just how successful MLB coaches have been at teaching EXISTING MLB types to change their approach at the plate. You know, changing the first ball-fast ball approach to a C the Z one.
I don't think it is as easy as we might assume it to be.
Batters bring an approach to the plate that is, in many ways, part and parcel of them; it is in their baseball DNA, so to speak. It is no easy thing to ask them to significantly change the very make-up that got them here in the first place, the make-up they've used for 20 years.
Leonys Martin has walked* 53, 51 and 45 pts in the bigs. He's at 73 pts this year, with a whole 3 BB's in 42 PA's. Can he sustain a 1/14 BB/PA rate after having after running a 1/17 rate his entire career? Maybe, but improving from a 6% walk rate to a 7% walk rate might just be margin of error noise, as well.
Cano is walking a bit more than his career suggests, but Lind hasn't had a BB yet this season. Aoki has had just one.
I know we're dealing with very SSS, but i would not jump to the conclusion that you can easily change one well-ingrained part of a batting approach. At least not without potentially impacting other areas as well. Being behind 0-1 in the count is certainly much worse than going after that first pitch strike.
John Olerud was born to control the zone, you probably couldn't have changed that if you tried. He walked 103 pts for his career; he walked 99 pts as a rookie. It was part of his baseball DNA. Edgar walked 111 pts at age 21 in A Ball, his first full professional season. He and Lady Gaga were born this way.
But asking Ichiro to hit that way would have been silly.
Changing folks spots is a hard thing to do. Arnold Palmer was a born swashbuckling attack-mode golfer. I'm not sure you could get him to change that and have the result as an overall positive.
You get my drift.
Controlling the zone is more about getting guys who do that, rather than changing guys who don't. Get a guy as a 20 year old and you might have some impact, but I'm not sure your success rate is great even then. Genetic modification works great with corn, I'm not sure it works that great (in this sense) with baseball players.
Moe
* including HBP's.