By Sean Ryan
CollegeBaseballInsider.com Co-Founder
OMAHA, Neb. – Coaches across the country, from Little League to the Majors, preach the importance of a two-strike approach to their hitters. Well, maybe not as much in Major League Baseball these days.
With seven of its 13 hits – including both of its home runs – Saturday night coming with two strikes, Texas A&M surely would credit its approach. Spread out or choke up? Crowd the plate or pre-load the hands? Up in the box or get defensive? Or all of the above?
“Two-strike hitting, we don’t have a two-strike approach,” said Kaeden Kent, who went 3 for 5 with four RBI, including a two-strike, two-run homer in the top of the seventh inning that effectively put Tennessee away in a 9-5 Aggies win to open the Championship Series of the College World Series.
This coming from the son of a Major Leaguer, a Major Leaguer who could (and should) find his way to Cooperstown.
Not that Jeff Kent wasn’t prone to strike out – he struck out about 18% of his at-bats over a brilliant 17-year career. But he, like most Major Leaguers at the time, had a two-strike approach. Back in 1997, just as he was beginning to take his career to another level, Kent told the San Francisco Chronicle about his two-strike approach after a clutch two-strike hit in the eighth inning to beat John Smoltz and the Atlanta Braves: spread out, choke up, try to make contact.
But before you go thinking “the game has changed” and “that’s what’s wrong with baseball,” the Aggies (53-13) do have an approach. It just happens to be the same over the course of the at-bat.
“Our approach the whole time is swing at strikes and take balls, as hard as that is,” Kent said. “That’s what we do. That’s our mantra, that’s what we fall back to.”
Swing at strikes, and take balls. That’s it, whether there’s no strikes or two strikes?
“I’ think there’s different offensive philosophies,” said A&M coach Jim Schlossnagle. “We don’t have any sort of two-strike approach. There’s nothing that we work on. It’s just swing at strikes and take the balls.”
It seems so simple. And it clearly seems to be working as the Aggies swing at enough strikes to rank fifth in the nation in home runs and seventh in runs and take enough balls to lead the nation in walks.
Its counterpart in this three-game showdown between SEC foes for the national title, Tennessee, swings arguably the biggest bats in the land. But these Aggies have picked up the pace since dropping two straight games at the SEC Tournament in Hoover, the second a 7-4 loss to the Volunteers, which marks the last time A&M has lost.
“That’s the first thing we work on the very first day of fall practice,” Schlossnagle said of the swing-at-strikes, take-balls approach. “And a guy can hit a homer with two strikes, just like Kaeden did, just like he can with no strikes. I’m not telling you it’s the right way to do it.”
Schlossnagle did admit that his Aggies strike out a lot, be he added, “We lead the nation in walks for a reason. We know the strike zone.”
Gavin Grahovac ripped an opposite-field homer to right on an 0-2 pitch to lead off the game, his third homer in two games against the Vols and his 23rd homer on the year. Caden Sorrell (2 for 5, 2 RBI) had a two-strike RBI single as part of the five-run third inning that put A&M in control. Four other two-strike hits contributed to clogging the bases, and two two-strike grounders resulted in key Tennessee infield errors.
Schlossnagle and his coaches will say something to their hitters if they take a strike in batting practice. Likewise, they’ll bark a little if they swing at a ball.
“The compounding effect of that over time just leads,” Schlossnagle said before pivoting. “We get in deep counts and hopefully take our walks but can still fight and win with two strikes.”
Fight and win.
One more fight. One more win. And the Aggies’ non-approach approach might just result in the school’s first last-team-standing dogpile.