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Old 05-11-2010, 03:21 PM
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Default Our Client Hermida Kicking all the ass!

Hermida getting hits that matter

01:00 AM EDT on Tuesday, May 11, 2010

By BRIAN MacPHERSON

Journal Sports writer

BOSTON — The Red Sox hoped to catch lightning in a bottle when they acquired Jeremy Hermida at a bargain-basement price last winter. Lightning in a bottle is exactly what they’ve caught.

The 26-year-old outfielder is tied for the American League lead with 15 two-out RBI so far this season, despite hitting only .243 entering play Monday. His three-run double in the eighth inning last Tuesday snapped a tie in a game the Red Sox won, and his two-out single two days later plated the go-ahead run in a game in which the Red Sox defeated the Angels. Both he and his team still were angling on Monday for the official scorer to reverse a decision from Sunday’s game that cost him a double and another two-out RBI.

He wouldn’t even be playing that much if not for the injuries to Mike Cameron and Jacoby Ellsbury. Instead, he has more than 75 plate appearances and has driven in more runs this season than Victor Martinez and Kevin Youkilis.

“He’s saved our butt on a few occasions with those two-out hits,” Red Sox hitting coach Dave Magadan said. “As far as having good at-bats in crucial situations, he’s been as good as anybody.”

“It’s the luck of the draw sometimes, being up in key situations,” Hermida said. “Fortunately, I’ve been able to get a couple to fall in in big situations.”

Hermida appealed to the Red Sox because he’d shown a the disciplined plate approach they cherish. He’d gotten away from that approach when he broke into the majors with the Florida Marlins, but both his walk rate and his strikeout rate were better last season than they had been at any point of his major-league career.

But his approach hasn’t been quite what the Red Sox expected. His walk rate and his strikeout rate have gone back the other direction. His run of success with two outs, actually, might be something of a function of luck.

“This game is cyclical,” Red Sox manager Terry Francona said. “He’s gotten a lot of big two-out hits for us. I hope that continues because that bodes well for us, but those things can be a little bit cyclical.”

Per the numbers at FanGraphs.com, compared to last season, Hermida has actually swung at fewer pitches in the strike zone and swung more at pitches out of the strike zone. At no point in his career has he swung at so many pitches out of the strike zone (28 percent) and so few pitches in the strike zone (55 percent) as he has this season.

Hermida’s walk rate is down from 11.4 percent last season to 7.4 percent this season, and his strikeout rate is up from 23.5 percent to 30 percent. It’s not a stretch to connect all of that with the .243 batting average and .303 on-base percentage he carried into Monday’s game.

The longer he hits in a lineup with Youkilis and Dustin Pedroia, though, the more he expects his plate approach to catch up. Talking about working counts is one thing, but seeing the hitters in the heart of the lineup work counts is something else entirely.

The Red Sox led the major leagues last season in not swinging at pitches out of the strike zone, and only the Arizona Diamondbacks are ahead of them so far this season.

“It makes my job a lot easier when your marquee players are guys that aren’t afraid to get to two strikes, aren’t afraid to get to that pitch they can drive,” Magadan said.

Watching good hitters can help more than one might think. When Youkilis came up through the Red Sox system, he already had a solid plate approach but paid special attention to the way hitters like Manny Ramirez, David Ortiz and even Bill Mueller approached their at-bats.

The way Ramirez kept his hands inside the ball to drive pitches on the inside half of the plate, Youkilis said, is something he eventually incorporated into his own swing.

“I watched when they were going good, when they were going bad, what they were doing wrong, what they were doing right, how they did certain things better than others,” Youkilis said. “I just tried to learn from that and put it into how I went up to bat and hit.”

Hermida is a year younger now than Youkilis was when the first baseman played his first full season with the Red Sox. There’s plenty of learning left for him to do.

“This environment around here, the quality of hitters they have breeds hitting,” he said. “To watch Pedey and watch [Marco Scutaro] and Youk have their quality at-bats every day, hopefully that can rub off.”

In the meantime, there are plenty of two-out RBI for him to collect.
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