This offense is incredibly bad. Pitching has been great. But they need a bat.
I'm not a Kevin Long fan. He gets rave reviews and yet that team, and not just this year, goes through team slumps too often. They are so HR oriented that they are killed by off speed stuff. One reason: They never go the opposite way so are always hitting weak grounders, weak pop ups or striking out. Frankly, I'm not sure outside of a little tinkering what a batting coach does at the major league level, but it doesn't look like it has anything to do with how to approach an at bat. If any of these slumping guys routinely went with the pitch, they would be a whole lot more dangerous. The dumb thing is, almost all of the slumping guys have HR power the other way, so you aren't necessarily always trading singles and doubles (and even a nice Sac Fly) for home runs.
The team is totally jacking it oriented. The only power hitter on the team who often goes with the pitch is Cano. They have been a crappy team in building rallies for more than just this year. Really prone to making off speed pitchers looking like Cy Young. I know guys like Wells, Youk and Hafner are on the downhill side, but not as god awful as they all have looked and throw in Texeira. Long has been the coach through these years of HR dependence.Guys can hit or they can't, it's not on Long.......I mean look at the line up. Nix? Stewart (who's been pretty good) Youk and Wells - done! Gardner - been good lately.........Cano, Tex, Ichiro - what can he do with them?
This is a bad hitting team with too many old dudes period!!
The HR dependence thing is a proven myth. It's like the "too many homers!" crap.
That said, you'd be crazy not to build an offense largely around home runs. When you face good pitching (aka most MLB starters), you aren't getting many hits or runs. A home run allows you to get multiple runs on one of the few hits you're going to get.
One fixable problem they have now is that they aren't seeing nearly enough pitches. Guys are going up there hacking away. Too many first-pitch outs. Way too many. But I think that if you're upset at Kevin Long because Reid Brignac & Jayson Nix are struggling at the plate, you're missing the real problem.
When i see team after team beat them with opposite field singles and doubles, I think there is a whole lot more to an offense than hitting home runs. If you can't see how screwed up the whole team is by off speed stuf which makes them all vulnerable to missing 90 mph fast balls you aren't watching the same game I am. I don't care how old some of these guys are because they aren't that old and most have been very good hitters. It's a team psychology and when trying to jack is giving you 3 weeks if getting about 2 runs a game, there's a fix needed. Whether this is a batting approach issue or a managerial philosophy issue I don't know. But they are doing a great job of wasting some pretty good pitching.