Adam Dunn can’t figure out what’s wrong [UPDATE]

Schouwen @ CST:

Dunn said he has watched video and studied what his swing looked like when he played with the Nationals and Reds. Hitting coach Greg Walker has talked to former hitting coaches of Dunn on numerous occasions.”I’ve done all that,” Dunn said. “I”ll let you see it and you tell me if you see anything. I can’t find anything. It’s baseball, I don’t know how else to put it. I feel like I’m fouling off the good ones and putting myself in a bind and swinging at the bad ones. It’s not a very good combinations.”"I’m getting pitches like I do normally. It seems like when I get a pitch to hit, I foul it off. I’ve never fouled off this many balls in a year, let alone two months. It seems like every swing I take, I foul it off. I don’t know what it is. If I’m too late or what not. I don’t know. We’ll just keep grinding. It will come.”

“I feel timing wise I’m fine. I always look at stuff if getting deep on counts, I’m seeing it and on time. I’m not swinging at bad pitches. But the day before and it’s like I don’t know what happens. I wish I had the answer for you.”

UPDATE: A quick look at Dunn’s plate discipline numbers shows a few things:

• His F-Strike% (First pitch strike percentage) is 4 percentage points above his career average
• His Z-Contact% (Percentage of times a batter makes contact with the ball when swinging at pitches thrown inside the strike zone) is 3 percentage points below his career average.
• His O-Contact% (Percentage of times a batter makes contact with the ball when swinging at pitches thrown outside the strike zone) is 18 percentage points above his career average.
• His overall Contact% [Total percentage of contact made when swinging at all pitches] is half a percentage point above his career average.

A look at Dunn’s Pitch-F/X numbers follows

How Gordon got his groove back

Gregor:

“I think it’s coincidence, but after I was done sitting I got a feel for my swing that I haven’t had all year,” Beckham said. “So that was what helped. It wasn’t necessarily sitting on the bench that helped. But definitely working in the cage, I got a feel with (hitting coach) Greg (Walker) and Gelly (assistant Mike Gellinger), and from them I’ve been able to repeat a swing – and a good swing.”

Paul Konerko interview

BP:

Q: How similar are Jim Thome and Frank Thomas as hitters?

A: With the end result, they’re very similar, because they’re both very dangerous guys that can carry a ballclub. They do kind of go about it a little differently. Frank was obviously a right-handed hitter, and his numbers simply don’t lie. And he had really good at-bats. But, you know, that’s a tough question. Their numbers are very similar. They both walk a lot and hit a lot of homers, so… you know, now that I think about it, I guess they’re pretty damn similar. I’ll say this: hitting aside, both of them, with their preparation and how they got ready to play each night, you can see why they’re both future Hall of Famers. They’re people who have done so much in their careers, but even though they’ve hit 500 home runs, and won MVP Awards, and played in All-Star Games, they still approached every game as if they hadn’t done anything. That’s another way in which they’re similar. There was never any complacency. Every time they took the field, they’d get after it as if they were hungry to do more, and that gets you a lot of respect. With what they’ve done in their careers, it would be easy not to do that.

Paul Konerko on his hitting approach

Paulie says he doesn’t go to the plate looking to go deep:

“You’ve got to watch out because if you try to get too greedy up there, this game has a way of coming back at you and flipping you over and turning around on you,” Konerko said. “I think I had a good approach last night, which was not to try to hit homers and just keep doing that. “Homers come and go. They come in bunches. They’re like bananas. That’s how you’ve got to treat them. It’s frustrating when you’re not getting them, but just to be productive and get on base, drive in a run here in there, score a run here and there, that’s the goal.” … “Walk (hitting coach Greg Walker) and Gelly (assistant hitting coach Mike Gellinger) really stay on top of us to hit the ball hard and to use right center and right field, because when this field is playing well and jumping, you can hit balls out to right field as easy as to left,” Konerko said. “If you keep that approach, usually you wind up hitting some to left, so I think that’s the way to go.”