Justin Morneau was in the middle of his season-ending 7-for-70 slump on Sept. 9, when he hit a go-ahead home run off Roy Halladay in Toronto, breaking an eighth-inning tie. It was Morneau’s final shining moment of 2009, giving him 30 home runs and 100 RBI.

At the time, there was hope Morneau’s big hit was a sign he was going to break out of his doldrums. But he knew better. His lower back was already killing him, compromising his swing. So how’d he do it?

“Luck,” he said Tuesday. “That’s pretty much it.”

I interviewed Morneau and hitting coach Joe Vavra for a piece looking at Morneau’s late-season struggles the past three years, trying to see what lessons can be learned moving forward. There was some good insight into what happened to Morneau’s swing during the slump. Here are a few quotes that didn’t make it into the story:

“His at-bats weren’t all that bad,” Vavra said. “He’d have a good swing or two in each at-bat. He was just missing pitches and pulling off. He said the start of the swing didn’t bother him as much as getting through the swing. When you’re getting through the swing and you say, ‘Ouch,’ then you’re trying to compensate.”

Vavra added, “He didn’t have the same feel for the outside corner, which maybe resulted from that back issue. When he has a good feel for the outside corner, there’s really nobody who can get him out — in his mind and our mind. And he kind of lost that, and maybe he started cheating a little more [starting his swing early] to pull the ball inside.”

At full strength, Morneau not only covers the outside corner better than most power hitters, he also knows he’s quick enough to pulverize inside pitches. Pitchers are careful not to make mistakes inside, and when they do, Morneau is dangerous.

“Normally I’m fast enough to get to the inside pitch,” Morneau said. “But then you have to cheat to get there — I was getting jammed on balls that weren’t even in, balls I shouldn’t have been missing. I had three hits on the road trip, and they were all pulled. That [opposite-field approach] is the way I have to swing to be successful. I was missing a lot of pitches I should have hit. And I was chasing a lot of pitches.”

But when I asked Morneau point-blank if the back was to blame for the slump, he said, “It’s impossible to say if I would have hit better if my body felt better. Who knows? I know I wasn’t doing any good to help the team. Sometimes being in the lineup helps the guys around you, but when you look over, and you don’t feel like there’s any fear to pitch around Joe [Mauer] to come after me, that’s when you realize you’re not doing anything to help the team.”

Note: The Twins, somehow 8-2 without Morneau in the lineup this season, go for a sweep over Cleveland on Wednesday, with the first pitch at 12:10 p.m. Check back here in the morning for the starting lineups.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 15th, 2009 at 11:33 pm and is filed under Twins thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.