SIOUX CITY, Iowa — I was invited into the lab. It was about 2:30 on a Saturday afternoon, most of the rest of the Sioux City Explorers were in the clubhouse watching college football. The game was several hours away.
Two of the Explorers, first-year outfielder Zac Vooletich (batting .245) and 10th-year vet John Nogowski Jr. (currently hitting .347) decided that their swings weren’t where they wanted them to be. A few hours before continuing the final series of the 2024 season, they asked Explorers hitting coach Joshua Hinz to set up the pitching machine to tune up their swings. The machine was set to throw sliders somewhere in the high-to-mid 80’s. And Dad, for the first time in a long time, got the invite to stand by the cage and watch, up close and personal.
“My barrel was dragging a bit,” Nogowski explained after his 317th at bat of the season the night before (he had just hit one 104 off the left field fence). “I missed a couple heaters. The sliders will make you stay on the ball longer. So I wanted a little extra hitting.”
John is in his 10th professional season of baseball with 4,254 official at bats, a lifetime overall average over .280, a proven hitter. He collected his 1,000th professional hit earlier this year and is zeroing in on 100 career HRs. (He was at 96 going into Monday afternoon’s game).
To most everyone else — including American Association pitchers — Nogo was swinging great. But his daily diagnosis of his swing needed work. Even though he was hitting .347, near the top of the American Association at the time, he wasn’t where he wanted it to be.
The pitching machine is a mechanical gizmo that resembles a metal praying mantis with rubber wheels that launches baseball with the requisite spin to resemble the sharp, quick break of a slider. One advantage, of course, is it never gets tired unless you unplug it. One disadvantage is, you’re not seeing a human hand delivering the pitch. But for professional hitters, even this far into their season, it’s great for a quick tune-up. Especially when you’re hitting on the actual field. You can see how the ball carries, where your drives actually land. And you can swing as much as you want — or need.
Every ball hit in this sequence of swings left the yard. Nothing to it…
Though it would literally be impossible to estimate the number of pitches and hours John and I have spent either in the batting cage, discussing the batting cage, filming him in the cage over the years, an invitation at this late stage of his career was rare. And, of course, welcome. It was as if the student wanted to show the teacher what he’d learned over the years.
Ted Williams wrote a book called “The Science Of Hitting,” a book John devoured as a young player. While to the neophyte baseball fan, it might seem that for a big strong guy like John, simply taking a few swipes with that piece of ash hoping to run into a pitch is all there is to it. It’s so much more intricate — and difficult — than that.
For one thing, pitching strategy has shifted. In Ted’s day, for example, pitchers generally threw fastballs and curveballs and changeups. When the count was 2-0, you could pretty much count on a fastball. If the count was 0-2, you could expect maybe a breaking pitch or a waste pitch to see if you’d chase it. That was pitching orthodoxy, how the game was played then.
The slider came in towards the end of Ted’s career — a shorter, quicker break than a curveball — and now, many pitchers have also developed, thanks in large part to the dominance of Yankees’ reliever Mariano Rivera, a cutter, which is a hard-thrown breaking pitch that moves laterally away from the hitter instead of a typically down-breaking slider. What has also changed is pitchers now can — and do — throw any pitch on any count. A 2-0 fastball now is a rarity.
The recent predominance of the cutter or its latest offshoot, the sweeper, has become just another way to torment those men who bravely stand in the batter’s box while baseballs traveling over 90 MPH are hurled in their direction — sometimes in anger.
One Friday night a couple weeks ago, John came up the 8th, his team way ahead. He was hit once already, thrown at in every at bat. And here came one at 94 aimed at his ear. He just got out of the way. He hit the next pitch he saw — also headed inside — out of the park.
As for batting practice, the old idea of someone lobbing a few straight ones in so you can launch them is passe. Seeing the ball break is the key now. Because of the quick break of the slider, a hitter has to time his swing just so in order to get the barrel to connect with maximum impact. A bit late and it’s a foul. A bit early and it’s a popup. So tuning the pitching machine to throw something with a break, well, that’s what you want to swing at. That’s what John was working on Saturday afternoon.
Now, in the swings depicted above, every single ball left the yard. Looks effortless, doesn’t it?
SEASON FINALE: SUNDAY AFTERNOON
The Explorers have qualified for the playoffs — barely, the final spot. Their Sunday opponent is the Cleburne Railroaders, the top-ranked team in the American Association.
It’s an absolutely glorious day in the American midwest. Sunny, with a gentle cooling breeze, a perfect afternoon to watch — or maybe even to play — baseball.
John’s first at bat is against a former teammate, Kade Mechals, a promising righthander, with one out in the first. Mechals gets a call on Strike Two, a high breaking ball, then tries a couple fastballs that get fouled off, including one long gone down the left field line. He comes back with a changeup — and John sees it coming. BANG!
No. 1
Ahead in the count, Mechals tries a change=up — John sees that one coming…
While his two-run homer in the first had given the Explorers a 2-0 lead, as has often happened this season, Sioux City’s lead had disappeared. When he came up again in the third, Cleburne now led 3-2.
Mechals again got a call on a high strike to go up 0-1, then missed out and up, he got another call on a fastball out. The batter was clearly displeased, again. With two strikes on him — knowing John had clobbered the changeup for a HR and had just missed hitting his fastball out (it was a long foul)— Mechals tried a cutter. John saw it out of his hand. BANG!
No. 2
Since John hit his changeup out, just missed a homer on the fastball, Mechals tries a cutter…
When John came up for the fourth time — he popped up his third at bat: “It was the best pitch I saw all day!” — his team was comfortably (for the Explorers) ahead 7-3. He was facing former Texas Ranger farmhand Joe Corbett, who started his at bat with a 94-MPH fastball inside off the plate.
After misses away and up, the count went to 3-0. A fastball away, the “gentleman’s strike” made it 3-1. Then Corbett, following up on his first pitch, tried the fastball inside once more. BANG!
No. 3
John’s three HR game left him just three points shy of Chicago’s Jacob Teter for the American Association batting title. But a look at the league’s top HR hitters, only AA HR leader Ryan Hernandez of Lake Country managed a 3-HR game this season, also against Cleburne on July 3. What a finish!
It was a wonderful capper to an exceptional season — .346, 15 HRs, 76 RBI, 29 doubles, 71 walks, 30 strikeouts, a 1.014 OPS (On base + slugging), a .461 OBP (On base percentage) - which means he was on base 46 percent of his plate appearances. Ted Williams’ OBP was best of all time at .482. So John was in fast company. One of the greatest of all Sioux City Explorers, Nate Samson, texted John afterwards. “Nothing like putting the team on your back.”
Saturday’s on-field batting demonstration showed, too, that being a successful professional hitter (71 walks to 30 strikeouts — the reverse of most hitters these days) takes hard work, smarts and discipline. He might have been hitting .347 but it wasn’t .400. (Which is what John was hitting at Sioux City some years ago when the St. Louis Cardinals grabbed him and he was in the major two seasons later.)
To put on a 3-HR display in the regular-season finale with Mom and Dad waving from the stands, well, we all live for moments like these, don’t we? Just unforgettable. As was the wave to Mom and Dad after touching home.
Speaking as a teacher, coach, Dad — in reverse order of importance — well, it sure is exciting to see these darn kids learn.