Can the Chicago Cubs fix Soriano?

Alfonso Soriano bats at Wrigley Field on July 3, 2009 (Jonathan Daniel/Getty)

The Cubs have no choice but to fix Alfonso Soriano.

They’re stuck with their $136 million investment for five more years. Even writing off the final two years as a gross overpayment for Soriano’s loyalty in the 2006 free-agent market, that’s still a long haul to carry deadweight on a roster. He can’t be traded, he can’t be released. So the Cubs might as well make the best of it.

Business cannot be conducted as usual even after Soriano undergoes probable clean-up surgery on a sore left knee.  Flailing helplessly at the plate while stumbling and bumbling in the outfield, Soriano must adjust and adopt a new style if he has any pride and wants the Cubs to win, as he’s always professed.

The quickest way to turn around a broken hitting game — the outfield might be a semi-lost cause anyway — is the proverbial “take two and hit to right,” according to a longtime scout in the know. The strategy of turning a dead pull-hitter into a more versatile batsman who could cover more of the plate has worked before in recent Cubs annals. Does the name Sammy Sosa ring a bell?

“He’s got a couple of things going in his benefit,” said the scout, who shall remain nameless in tried-and-true baseball tradition. For those who are recent arrivals to reading about baseball, scouts are huge traffickers in information and analysis, with the price being anonymity so as to not displease their employers with their candid comments or come off as self-serving.

“The failure he had this year should make him realize (he needs to change),” said the scout.  “I don’t know how bright he is. Get him to the point to convince him he’s healthy and ready to contribute, then you’ve got to take him and from beginning of spring training, work on the things he lacks. It’s difficult to teach an old dog new tricks, but he should know what his problems are.”

It boils down to Soriano’s weakness with breaking pitches that are not mistakes over the plate. A common strategy for pitching the fastball-lovin’ Soriano, deadly effective in the last two postseasons, was to first get the ball over the plate with fastballs up and fastballs in, and then prod the anxious hitter to go fishing with soft stuff away.  “You have to throw him over the plate up in order to make the breaking ball away more effective,” said the scout. “He can hit a breaking ball in the zone. He’s never shown enough plate discipline to lay off (breaking pitches away).”

If the scout was in Cubs general manager Jim Hendry’s shoes, he would mandate an aggressive spring-training program in Mesa starting in February to teach Soriano how to shorten his swing and go to right field more.

“I would want him spend a lot of time in batting practice  hitting to right field, to slow his bat down and take the ball the other way. Hit them to right field, instead of hooking those pitches to left field. The biggest problem is you have a 33-year-older players, and it’s questionable whether you can teach plate discipline that far into his career. You can only hope.”

Any tactic is better than Soriano’s performance in 2009. He has looked helpless at the plate most of the season with a .241 average and .303 on-base percentage. His 20 homers in 477 at-bats seem respectable, but he has had lenghty power droughts. The sore knee has not helped. Yet the Cubs have not gotten anywhere near their money’s worth. They paid for a 40-40 guy. In Soriano’s nearly three seasons in Wrigley Field, he’s barely a 30-15 fellow, and going down fast. Injuries have not helped.

Soriano hasn’t even had his trademark white-hot streaks this season. He carried the Cubs on his back in September 2007 with a team-record 14 homers for the month. In May 2008 he belted seven homers in a six-day span. But even these streaks are endemic of a crucial flaw in Soriano: he is simply not consistent.

If he wants to smooth out his hitting, he should dial down the power and go to all fields. Actually, discounting the role of probable steroid use, Sosa actually boosted his long-ball prowess when he began going up the middle and to right upon the counsel of then-Cubs hitting coach Jeff Pentland in 1998.  And if you listen to Pentland, now a hitting coach with the Dodgers, a conversion to a new style is doable.

“Sammy was different than Soriano,” said Pentland. “Soriano is on the plate, Sammy was off the plate. They’re two different guys. Any hitting coach can teach a guy to hit the other way. Sammy was unique in fact he had a lot of power that way. It’s kind of standard what you do as a hitting coach. In Sammy’s case, when he started to do well, that’s where he directed the ball. But it’s got to be a natural feel to the player.

“No hitting coach promotes pulling the ball. Sammy didn’t really know his natural swing was opposite field. He thought has just had pull power. He was one of those hitters, if he hit the other way, it created a little longer look at the ball. I convinced Sammy, let’s at least try it. You get better plate coverage.”

Soriano may have to switch to a lighter bat than the traditional 35-inch, 33-ounce heavy lumber he wielded. Situations and roles change over the years, and he’s no longer the young colt with the quicksilver wrists.

In the end, the solution rests not with the weight of the bat or how many hits Soriano can punch between first and second. Salvation can be found between his ears. His mental flexibility and courage, to be detailed in the second part of this series, will determine if he plays out the rest of his contract like a pro or like a mercenary, only in it for the megabucks.

“He’s got so much money coming in, you wonder if he’ll go through the motions,” said the scout. “If wants to save his career from an image standpoint, a perception standpoint, he must pay attention. You don’t want a situation where Soriano says why should I change here, I’m paid up for rest of his career.”