Moises Alou called them “baby steps,” but the Cubs’ outfielder believes he is making progress after belting his third home run of the season Sunday against Houston.
“I have been feeling a lot better at the plate. I’m not quite there yet, but I’m a lot better than I was before,” said Alou, the team’s major free-agent signee last off-season.
Alou, who walloped his first home run in a month, has hit safely in nine of his last 11 games, raising his batting average to .197.
“It’s going to take me I don’t know how long, but I’m going to get better,” said Alou, who has been working with hitting coach Jeff Pentland. “I’m trusting my hands and seeing the ball. At the same time, I’m not losing my aggressiveness.”
Alou entered his 12th major-league season as a .306 career hitter with 202 home runs.
“Hitting can be so simple and sometimes so difficult,” he said. “It has been difficult for me the first couple of months of the year. But I finally have the right idea. Confidence-wise I’ve been feeling pretty good.”
Me generation: Manager Don Baylor concedes that players today generally tend to be more selfish about their individual statistics and less concerned about their team’s welfare because of the huge salaries available to them.
“It has just been the evolution of the game itself,” said Baylor. “Where guys before would choke up, go to right, put the ball in play … you don’t find too many guys choking up and trying to hit the ball the other way anymore. Or advancing the runners on their own, without being told to.
“Playing the game is a little bit different [nowadays]. I imagine if you were a player going into arbitration or something and you got the runner over 15 times or whatever … you take that [stat] to arbitration and they would probably laugh at you. So the economics sometimes change how you play the game.”
Numbers game: While several key Cubs hitters are having down years with regard to batting average and home runs, Baylor would like to see an increased emphasis on offensive categories such as runs scored, on-base percentage and two-out RBIs.
“If you’re a run producer, driving in runs, you always want to be able to score runs too,” said Baylor. “When you see seven, eight, nine pitches per at-bat, then maybe you can find your swing in a live environment. When you’re struggling, you watch guys, they swing at the first pitch a lot. They never really get a good pitch to hit. That’s what you try to emphasize. When guys get behind in the count, the only thing they think about is not striking out.”
Struggling: Baylor did not start shortstop Alex Gonzalez, who is 4-for-32 in eight games since coming off the disabled list.
“Talk about frustrations. He has had seven strikeouts the last two games,” said Baylor. “He had four at-bats [Saturday] and 13 pitches. I believe it’s his third time this year he has struck out four times. It’s a mystery.”
Gonzalez was inserted as a defensive replacement for Mark Bellhorn in the eighth inning Sunday.
“I’ve had some good days and some bad days,” said Gonzalez. “In the field I’ve been feeling pretty good. I don’t think mechanically anything is different [at the plate]. I’ve been staying with the same approach. Sometimes my timing has been off a little bit. I’m just trying to keep going at it.”
Help wanted: The Cubs have scored three or fewer runs in 28 of their 55 games. They have been held to six or fewer hits in 21 contests.
“When you’re hitting .233 as a team, it’s desperation every day,” said Baylor. “This has been a tough one, it really has. We’ve had extra [batting practice] a lot, probably too much.
“We’ve tried to analyze every swing over the last two months. It has been unique, let’s put it that way.
“The guys are probably stressing because they’ve never struggled for as long.”
