I completely forgot about that. You're absolutely right. I remember Cooper talking about that in a couple of postgames. Everything about Cooper's strategies were overly aggressive and simplistic. I think that every single answer to a question about pitching during his entire tenure involved, "He's gotta keep the ball down." While that's generally a good point, it was how he answered just about every pitching-related question. He had a ton of canned responses.
I also remember reading an analysis from early last season when Pence got off to that torrid start. I can't remember the exact details but I believe it pointed to Pence getting pretty lucky and being bound to come crashing down hard, which is what ultimately happened. I think it was pointing to him being unusually productive in pitcher's counts and that he was getting into 0-2 counts at an extreme level, well above league average, even while putting up huge numbers.
I read that, but he was signed a 2 year deal after the trade. Wasn't a huge deal though. Like you said Josh Andersen is at best a 5th OF used mostly as a pinch runner, and the contract was for less than $3 million over 2 years.
