MILWAUKEE _ Clint Hurdle picked up a copy of the Malcolm Gladwell book "Blink" shortly after it came out in 2005. The book's introduction tells the story of a Greek statue known as a kouros, which was offered to the J. Paul Getty Museum in California in 1983.
A 14-month investigation into the statue's authenticity, including examinations with a stereomicroscope, X-ray diffraction and an electron microprobe, satisfied the museum, which agreed to purchase it. Not long after, though, three art experts who examined the statue knew within seconds that something was wrong with it. No tests, no paperwork, just well-trained eyes seeing different things that didn't look right.
That idea helped inspire the way Hurdle examines players who are having trouble at the plate, or more precisely, whom he enlists to help.
"Every once in a while I'll bring in somebody else in to look, fresh eyes," Hurdle said. "'Look at this.' I may not tell him what I'm seeing. 'Look at this, give me some checkpoints, see what you see,' just to freshen things up a little bit. Because I know there's times, man, I've had somebody come in and go, 'Here's what I got.' I'll be like, 'Wow, I've been watching him for two weeks, I couldn't even get there,' because every day you get caught in that vacuum."
Diagnosing what is wrong with a struggling player in the Statcast era blends art and science. When Andrew McCutchen's production plummeted in August, Hurdle and his staff examined McCutchen's spray charts. They did not see the pull-side dominance that sometimes hinders him. They looked at his rate of hard contact on pitches inside, on the middle of the plate and away. They compared where the catcher set up with both where the pitch was thrown and where McCutchen hit the ball.
Statcast data increased the precision of the diagnoses, but the basics have been around for a while.
"You had no numbers for hard contact," Hurdle said. "You had no Statcast opportunities. But you had spray charts. And you had video, where you could actually watch where the pitch ended up at the point of contact _ whether the ball's in and he's pulling it, whether the ball's in and he's hitting it back up the middle, whether the ball's away and he's hooking it."
Pitchers' deliveries and hitters' swings unfurl in fractions of a second. Pirates coaches say they have seen enough swings and pitches during their decades in the game to detect even the slightest errors, but they also have a set of checkpoints to track.
"You just constantly watch what position they're in when they're able to impact the ball best," hitting coach Jeff Branson said. "Sometimes you may have to go back and watch footage, footage, footage to see where each guy's at. But obviously the biggest thing is making sure ... when the foot gets down, where are the hands at?"
To help batters retain this information, Branson will have the hitter take an imaginary stance and stride, then attempt to fire their hands into a swing while Branson holds them to offer resistance.
"So if they feel like they're strong and I can get some resistance from them when they fire, it's like, OK," he said.
Live looks at a swing in turmoil lead to between-inning stops in the video room, where he and the player will slow down his most recent at-bat. That wasn't an option when Hurdle played.
"You talk to somebody," Hurdle said. "You trust your teammate. You trust your hitting coach a little bit more. 'What'd you see? Here's what I felt, what'd you see?' "
Pitching coach Ray Searage only needs a bullpen session or two, and maybe one start, before locking up the cues he needs for that pitcher.
"It just comes to my head," Searage said. "And I'm like, 'Oh, no, wait a minute. You're slamming your foot down. You've got to land softer. You're tilting, make a turn.' "
Searage tracks how often a pitcher hits his cues _ hand on top of the ball, elbow position relative to the shoulder when the foot hits the ground _ and also gets a good result. Then he tries to help them repeat it.
"They're not going to be perfect," he said. "They want to strive for perfection but they have to realize that they're never going to achieve it."
