A lot of people (myself included) think that at the major league level a hitting coach doesn't have a huge impact on a team. Matt Stairs would seem to disagree, and was very critical of the Blue Jays' recently fired hitting coach Gary Denbo, as reported in the the National Post yesterday. Some key quotes:

"I honestly think that this team has forgotten how to pull baseballs," Stairs said Sunday. "That's why our home runs are down. You get into batting practice and you're hitting balls to right-centre, left-centre, instead of working on the proper way of pulling baseballs, and elevating baseballs."

"I'm a pull hitter," said Stairs, who leads the club with a mere eight homers. "I always will be. But right now, I don't know how to pull the ball."

"As soon as Alex learns how to pull the ball again properly, he'll be on fire," Stairs said. "He's got that swing now to hit the ball to right field and that's not him. He should be a pull hitter. What was wrong with the year he had last year? Not a thing. So why change and make him go to right-centre? That's just the way I see it."

I find this all rather amusing because last year supposedly the problem with Mickey Brantley was that he was too "pull happy". At the end of the season Gibbons mentioned that the team needed to use the field more, and Brantley's flaw was seen by many as the main reason he was released, and as much of a factor in the Jays offensive decline as the "injury excuse".

And for Stairs specifically, every time he goes the other way the Jays' announcers soil themselves over his opposite field power and "unselfish" tendency to hit the ball where it's pitched.Anyway, Matt might be on to something. Sure you can't pull every pitch, but hitters hit for much better power and average when they do manage to pull the ball. And that's just not happening for the Jays this season as compared to last:

Season	OPS - Pulled	OPS - Middle	OPS - Opposite Field
Matt Stairs - 2007	1.635	.839	.839
Matt Stairs - 2008	1.220	.729	.747
Alex Rios - 2007	1.476	.788	.718
Alex Rios - 2008	.963	.818	.714
Blue Jays - 2007	1.320	.692	.590
Blue Jays - 2008	.951	.667	.627
League Average - 2008	1.153	.708	.783

While this could be a result of not getting on balls due to mechanical or pitch selection problems, it's interesting that especially in Rios' case, he's actually improved at hitting balls up the middle (Denbo's bread and butter), but his power when pulling the ball has totally disintegrated to way below league average. It's true for the team as a whole as well - the Jays ridiculous power outage this season has come almost completely from an inability to pull the ball.