Everybody Hits… or Nobody Hits

I've been watching baseball for 60 years. I have never seen anything quite like this lineup.

When two guys see it, four guys see it. When two go cold, the whole order goes cold. There is no middle gear. Either we score nine, or we score one — and the dividing line is the third inning of every series, when the lineup either decides it has its timing or it doesn't.

I don't have a coaching cure for this. I don't think there is one. You can't manufacture group rhythm. But you can — and we are not — diversify the lineup so that one cold streak doesn't sink three games. We need a contact hitter at the bottom of the order. Not a slap hitter. A contact hitter with bat-to-ball and a willingness to go the other way. Otherwise we are going to keep losing one-run games on getaway days.