Slow News Day

It's the baseball off-season, the Hot Stove!  But not every day is a big news day.  Yet columnists still need stories to write.  Let's file this one under "Interesting Item that will be Quickly Forgotten".  According to Michael Axisa at River Ave Blues, the Yankees are considering hiring Jeff Pentland for their vacant hitting coach position.  Who is Jeff Pentland?  He's a 68-year old veteran who's bounced around the majors for the last couple of decades and presided over some pretty bad teams with mostly lousy hitting.  Here's a look at those teams, their records when Pentland was acting as hitting coach, their league rankings in both Average and OPS, as well as the standout from that season.

TEAM	YEAR	RECORD		Rank AVG	Rank OPS	Team Best
Marlins	1996	80	82	9	10	Sheffield, .314-42-120
Cubs	1997	68	94	5	12	Sosa, .251-36-119
	1998	90	73	5	6	Sosa, .308-66-158
	1999	67	95	14	15	Sosa, .288-63-141
	2000	65	97	13	12	Sosa, .320-50-138
	2001	88	74	8	6	Sosa, .328-64-160
	2002	67	95	15	11	Sosa, .288-49-108
	AVG	74	88	10.00	10.33
Royals	2003	83	79	4	7	Beltran, .307-26-100
	2004	58	104	13	14	Sweeney, .287-22-79
	2005	56	106	10	12	Sweeney, .300-21-83
	AVG	66	96	9	11
Mariners	2005	69	93	14	14	Sexson, .263-39-121
	2006	74	84	10	12	Ibanez, .289-33-123
	2007	88	74	2	6	Ibanez, .291-21-105
	2008	61	101	9	13	Ibanez, .293-23-110
	AVG	73	88	8.75	11.25
Dodgers	2010	80	82	10	12	Ethier, .292-23-82
	2011	82	79	6	10	Kemp, .324-39-126
	AVG	81	81	8	11

For the most part, Pentland's teams were bad, the worst one being the 2005 Royals.  To be fair, Tony Pena walked away from the team in May and the coaches soon followed.  Remarkably, Pentland managed to find work quickly with the Mariners and led their hitters... well, nowhere.  The 2005 Mariners finished dead last in the AL in both average and OPS.  It only got slightly better in 2006.  But in 2007, the Mariners busted out and gave Pentland his best season as a hitting coach.  Led by Ichiro's .351 average and three players with an OPS over .800, the Mariners finished 6th in the AL in OPS.  By the next season, though, the M's OPS dropped to 13th in the league and Pentland was gone again.

Now, I don't know much about Jeff Pentland beyond these numbers.  He was apparently good enough to keep getting hired, in spite of the apparent lack of success he brought to his teams.  But if I'm looking to replace Kevin Long, a hitting coach with a long record of success in New York, Jeff Pentland is not first on my list.  Or second.  Or, well, you get the idea.

I happen to like the idea that was floated a few months ago: bringing back Jason Giambi to coach.  These aren't the Royals or Marlins.  Even an unproven coaching commodity like Giambi makes more sense than a small-town, semi-successful, retread like Pentland.