The most radical transformation Don Baylor has overseen as a hitting coach came in 1992, as Andres Galarraga's career careened toward oblivion.

"It was either get it fixed or he was going home," Baylor recalled the other day, standing on an Arizona morning in a Rockies uniform both new and very familiar.

"My philosophy is, I don't like to go in and try to change guys unless they're really just desperate. Galarraga was a desperate measure."

The Big Cat had been an All-Star for Montreal in 1988, hitting .302 with 29 home runs and 92 RBI, but just as he entered what should have been the prime of his career, his numbers headed south. When his average fell to .219 in 1991, the Expos gave up and shipped him to St. Louis, where Baylor had just been appointed the hitting coach.

"There was one night in Shea Stadium, they brought in John Franco to pitch to him," Baylor recounted. "Bases loaded. He gets a jam shot inside. He rolls the ball back to the pitcher. Double-play ball, game's over.

"We go back home to St. Louis right after that. Joe Torre pinch hit for him. He'd never been pinch hit for before. This is all within a 48-hour period. I go inside, he's got a cup of water, he's shaking so bad he's got half of it on the floor. He don't know what to do.

"I say, 'Well, we've got to come out tomorrow.' I had no idea how we were going to start. But during the night, I got to thinking of different ways I could get his front side clear, where he could see the ball on the inside part of the plate.

"I told him, 'I don't know if it's going to work, but we've got to try something.' As a coach, you kind of sense a guy's going to get released."

Baylor opened Galarraga's stance until he was astride the width, rather than the length, of the batter's box. Before that, perhaps the only modern player to hit from such an open stance was Dick McAuliffe, the Tigers infielder of the '60s and '70s.

"We started playing around with it, and we discovered that his dominant eye was not his front eye, it was his right eye. So when I turned him, a whole new world opened up to him. And about $75 million later . . ."

Baylor smiled with the pride of a teacher. The following year, when he took over as manager of the expansion Rockies, he recommended that general manager Bob Gebhard sign Galarraga as a free agent. In his first season, the Big Cat hit .370, beginning a remarkable run through his mid-30s in which he was an All-Star four times.

All these years later, Baylor returns to Colorado to solve a problem nearly as perplexing as Galarraga's - how a team full of good young hitters can fail to hit when it matters as much as the Rockies did last year.

In an off year for most of their hitters, the Rocks batted .263 as a team, good for sixth in the National League, after leading the league at .280 the year before.

The numbers with runners in scoring position were even worse, falling 20 points from .276 in '07. With runners in scoring position and two out, they batted an anemic .231. Garrett Atkins was the poster boy, hitting .286 overall but .225 with runners in scoring position.

"That's one of my biggest peeves," Baylor said. "You've got to get a good ball to hit. And I think a lot of young guys, they're so impatient, they swing at the first thing they see. They all have the same charts that they look at: 'Early in the count, this is what the guy throws.' And they just panic when they get men in scoring position.

"I always thought I was in the driver's seat. It takes time and it takes confidence to hit with men in scoring position. Guys feel like they're in a hurry. But the pitcher, he's distracted twice. He has to deliver a pitch, and there's runners on. It's not like he has one thing to concentrate on. He's got guys on base. He knows he can't make a mistake. So I'd rather for him to be distracted with men on base. Now I've got to look for a ball that I can just drive somewhere, hit somewhere hard.

"Most guys, they look for, it's not guessing, it's looking for a pitch in a certain zone, especially early in the count. You don't have to chase that split(-finger) in the dirt. I believe enough guys don't hit off the fastball and make adjustments to the other pitches.

"I'm not going to be beat with a fastball, especially with a man in scoring position, because I don't want to go back to the bench second-guessing myself, beating my helmet up and throwing bats up the runway because I missed a freaking fastball."

For the first time since 2001, the Rockies have a hitting coach the players have heard of. No offense intended toward Duane Espy or Alan Cockrell, but I never understood the Rockies' fondness for hitting coaches who were not successful hitters themselves at the major league level.

Credibility with big-league hitters, especially those who have had some success, is hard to come by. A less-accomplished hitter than Atkins, Todd Helton and Brad Hawpe is going to have trouble convincing them to follow his advice. That's just human nature.

Baylor brings more credibility to the job than any hitting coach in Rockies history. He has more career home runs and more MVP awards than anyone on the roster.

"For the needs of this ballclub, offensively, I just think he's the right man at the right time for the right reasons," said manager Clint Hurdle, who flips roles with Baylor from 1997, when Baylor hired him as hitting coach.

If the Rocks' hitters can't get it together under Baylor's guidance, it will be on them.

Back to Top