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Cajuns rejuvenate fortunes with new hitting approach
By Tim Buckley
tbuckley@theadvertiser.com
May 22, 2013
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It was 2007, and the UL baseball team was playing in an NCAA Regional in College Station, Texas.
The Ragin' Cajuns were the home team for a game, assigned to Texas A&M's usual dugout and lockerroom.
It was there that UL coach Tony Robichaux got his first inside exposure to the hitting system of then-Aggies assistant Matt Deggs, now an assistant coach for the 38-17 Cajuns as they prepare to play in the five-day, eight-team, double-elimination Sun Belt Conference Tournament that opens today as M.L. "Tigue" Moore Field.
"On every hitter's locker was a thing that was hanging," Robichaux said, "and it had the hitters broken down in four columns: Hitters, Runners, Bombers and Ballplayers."
The labels are the same now that Deggs is in his first full season as UL's hitting and third-base coach.
The result: a Cajun club that leads the nation in home runs with 66, is second in slugging percentage at .507 and has the country's fifth-best batting average at .321.
Three Cajuns - Caleb Adams, Tyler Girouard and Dylan Butler - have a slugging percentage of .631, tied for 31st-best among national leaders.
Seven UL starters have 32 or more RBIs.
Six have at least seven home runs, including a team-high 13 for Adams, and the 66 total homers is just four shy of the 70 the Cajuns produced with more powerfully constructed bats back in that '07 season.
And it's largely because of the system installed last August by Deggs, who was hired in March 2012, well into a season in which UL managed just 18 homers, went 23-30, were the Sun Belt's worst-hitting team and didn't even qualify for the conference tourney.
"He knows his stuff," Butler said of Deggs, an ex-Texarkana College head coach who also had stints as an assistant at Northwestern State (1996-97), hitting coach at Arkansas (2003-05) and associate head coach at Texas A&M (2006-11).
"You've got guys that are hitting so well that's somebody's trying to catch 'him,' and somebody's trying to outdo 'him.' ... And once you get going, hitting's contagious," added Robichaux, whose third-seeded Cajuns open tourney play tonight vs. Florida International. "I just think our approach as been so good. Coach Deggs has a great approach with them. It started Day 1, and we never, never strayed from that approach."
Part of Deggs' system is in the head, a pack-mentality approach.
"It's really just a mindset - knowing you're gonna get a job done, knowing if you don't get a job done someone's gonna be behind you to pick you up," Girouard said.
"It's not just a hitting approach," Robichaux added. "It's really an offensive-mindset approach, where their goal is take something away from the pitcher."
If a hitter falls behind in the count, even if down 0-2, Deggs demands a few foul-offs.
"The odds are you might not reach base now because it's 0-2," Robichaux, "but take something from him (so) hopefully now we've worn him out by the middle of the game with his pitch count."
Part of the system - though not the biggest - focuses on fundamentals.
"Really and truly," Deggs said, "it's not so much about the swing as it is competing. ... Competing, in everything we do."
But a good setup and smart approach at the plate helps.
"When you can do those things, and you hunt the fastball with bat speed to the big part of the park, and you're hungry and aggressive," Deggs said, "good things are gonna happen."
Cajun hitters clearly understand.
"Our crosshairs are on the right-center gap - get a pitch, and drive it," Adams said. "The other thing is 'just compete.' He always preaches 'just compete in the box' all the time."
"My big thing is ... seeing the offspeed, and just being able to drive it the other way," added Butler, who is identifying pitches better this year. "The key is approach - handling the fastball, staying the other way and driving the ball to the big part of the field. And just extending your hands. He wants us always to extend - basically, like a whip whenever you release the bat head."
Perhaps the most-important part of the system, though, is the tagging.
Runners have more speed and perhaps less strength, but a good combination.
"Ballplayers are gonna be the backbone of any program," Deggs said. "They're the hard-nosed, overachieving type that is usually very adept defensively and can handle the bat. Maybe they're not the biggest or strongest or the fastest, but they have a place."
Bombers? Self-explanatory.
Then there are the Hitters. It's the hardest category to play from, because of expectations for being a little of all of the other three.
Deggs considers Adams a prototypical Hitter.
"Hitters are generally some of the most dynamic guys you have," he said. "They bring the best blend of speed and strength. It just so happens Caleb (Adams) is having a bomber-type season, but he's doing it inside of being a Hitter."
It's usually easy for Deggs to identify a player.
But some can move from one label to another within a career, and sometimes even within a season.
Girouard, for instance, started as a Ballplayer.
"He (Deggs) gives you a realization of what realistically you should be doing, what you can visualize at the plate," Girouard said. "I'm a Ballplayer. That's just getting the job done. Coach Deggs calls it 'cannon fodder.' Just being the first line, making a distraction, getting on base so the Bombers and Hitters can come up and drive you in."
Lately, though, Girouard is on the fast path to Hitter.
"Shugg's become stronger," Deggs said of the one-time walk-on. "He's become faster. And he's driving the baseball."
Deggs relies on the tags when recruiting. He uses them to group hitters in batting practice. And he insists on everyone remembering what they are.
"Staying within your capabilities is big," Adams said.
"At the beginning of the year, he labeled us. Me, (catcher Michael) Strentz were Bombers. (Shortstop Blake) Trahan and (utilityman Ryan Leonards), they're Hitters," Butler added. "For me, if I swing and miss trying to hit one out of the park - that's my job. For Blake and Leno (Leonards), they're driving the ball to gaps, hitting for average. We all have our special roles. We stay within our approach, we know our ability, and it's working."
Deggs suggested former New York Yaknees manager Joe Torre and a certain Yankees shortstop inspired his philosophy.
"He (Torre) said, 'When Derek Jeter learned his limits, he became limitless,' " Deggs said.
"These guys (the Cajuns) know where they fit, and what their job, their function, is," he added. "The guys know who they are, they know their limitations, and they know what's expected of them coming in."
Robichaux loved the system instantly.
"I like it because you don't have a home-run hitter trying to bunt, you don't have a bunter trying to become a home-run hitter," he said. "Each one of them knows what their role is within the confines of what they're trying to do, and it's an aggressive-approach offense that tries to build every inning."
Robichaux senses a difference in his Cajuns.
He evidently isn't the only Sun Belt coach who does.
"(Arkansas State's Tommy Raffo) told me before the game that last year we were so much in and then out of the strike zone as hitters, but now our plate coverage is so good," Robichaux said after a recent series.
"I found out this fall it's hard to pitch to a team that's not spinning, and (instead) hitting the ball up the middle of the field and back the other way. That's the thing I think we've done a great job of - we've covered up the plate this year, and it's become hard for pitchers to pitch to us."
Robichaux, however, suggests the system was met with a pinch of initial resistance.
Not every Cajun immediately embraced the new approach. There were bad habits to break.
"There's been a lot of guys that have power, but can't hit," Robichaux said.
There even was a brief period in which some had to accept, and understand, that their power numbers might initially take a dent, but their average should soar and they'd ultimately emerge as a true hitter.
"You did have a few guys that wanted to protect one little area," Robichaux said. "(But) you have to sell out for it to work. You can't just tip your toe in the water. You have to jump in."
The Cajuns quickly took the plunge, one and seemingly all.
"The way Coach Deggs teaches his hitting, it kind of just clicked for me," third baseman Girouard said. "It worked for me. And a lot of other guys, it's working for them too."
Girouard hit .298 in 2012 but now has a .376 average that's second among UL leaders behind only the .377 of leadoff hitter Dex Kjerstad.
Left-fielder Butler had eight home runs last season, but he hit only .249. He has eight again this season, but is hitting .319.
Strentz, who hit .216 with three homers in 2011 and .167 in a 2012 season shortened to eight games by Tommy John surgery, is now hitting .307 with seven homers.
UL's team average is up 58 points from its .263 of a season ago.
Beyond the numbers, one-time spinners no longer spin - a bad thing in baseball parlance. Certain Cajuns are hitting to spots they never have before. They're easy outs no longer.
"The Butlers and the Strentzes ... they're hitting change-ups off the right-centerfield wall," Robichaux said. "When they do that, that pitcher panics - because he thought the chart showed 'two spinners, I can get out of here on one ground ball double play when he pulls it to the shortstop.' "
Now, the Cajuns are hitting throughout the order - a big change.
"Last year, it was 3-4-5, and that's all we had, really," Butler said. "This year, me and Strentz are hitting 7 and 8 hole. That's stupid."
Not stupid-dumb.
Stupid-crazy, as in hard to fathom.
"When we put nine guys doing it all together," Robichaux said, "it became that much more of a weapon.
"That's what the Omaha team did so good to people. They might not have (gotten) you the first or second inning, but they just wore you down - because there were no holes."
The Cajun coach, whose 2013 club is positioned for its first NCAA Regional berth since 2010, was referring to his 2000 team, the last one he took to the College World Series.
"This is a team where 1 through 9, anyone at anytime can up with a big hit, drive it out of the ballpark," Adams said. "So it definitely takes a lot of pressure of the other 'big' guys."
Deggs references the board game Monopoly: If somebody doesn't get you, somebody else is bound to.
"When you're running out of money, and somebody has a house on every property, it's just a roll of the dice," he said. "I look at our lineup that way sometimes. We have a whole 'nother lineup at the bottom that's waiting for you."
The result is a team against which opposing pitchers have a collective 6.58 ERA - 2.23 higher than UL's staff ERA.
"If I was a pitcher, (throwing to Cajun hitters) is about the last thing I'd want to do," Adams said. "You've just to got to pick your poison all the way through."
Suggesting UL's power this season stems significantly from the system seems inarguable.
It's an assertion bolstered by the fact the Cajuns are the top long-ball hitters among all 296 NCAA Division I programs despite playing in what it not at all considered a home-run park at The Tigue.
Even Deggs himself admits to some surprised.
"You never set out to 'lead the nation,' " he said. "I knew we could drop the ball out of the ballpark. Did I know it was gonna be this consistent, and up and down the lineup? No."
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