Laika

He's a much worse hitter than Chat Mappman But he might be less annoying to watch hit.

Only way it's not ominous is if the team sees it as a mental health break

tbh I do not think Biggio has been having good plate appearances he has not been walking a lot or putting good swings on the ball or making good swing decisions. He has taken strikes down the dick way too often. If you remove his good game #1 where he walked twice and homered, he is hitting .231/.310/.308 with just a 6.9% walk rate his only barrel so far was that home run which barely got out BIG MEH STRONGLY PREFER ERNEST "ROBERTO" CLEMENT(e)

The fun thing about tonight is that George Kirby and Chris Bassitt have the same mechanics And exactly the same body And they are both deep arsenal guys who can throw anything Bassitt is just the earth 2099 version of George Kirby. He lost his 4 seamer mid-career and became an old two-seamer. That's the difference.

Damn those kids are still pretty young. 20 and 19. At least they are millionaires.

Bro the Red Sox have lost Pivetta, Giolito, and Story for the full year. And they are throwing $50M+ extensions at Bello and Raffaela??? Bad times in Boston. Stinky summer. Also, the return for Sale isn't even playing yet.

yeah incredible almost like the old video is missing frames haha https://www.drivelinebaseball.com/2020/06/rotational-acceleration-sequencing-and-the-swing/

White Sox are such a dumpster fire. They suck and are wasting playing time on: Robbie Grossman, Kevin Pillar, Martin Maldonado, Paul DeJong, Tim Hill, Dominic Leone, Bryan Shaw. These guys suck and are all 30+. Some of them are 36+. What is the point of rostering them? You might win one more game and be 70-92 rather than 69-93? They could have replaced all of them with younger waiver claim players and it would make more sense for their organization. Could have made max # of Rule5 selections and any Rule5 player would make more sense then Kevin Pillar lmao. They should have traded Robert this offseason. It's a clear rebuild and he was a star with huge value and an injury history. Dumb hold.

So here is one thing to watch for I have heard people say that "trunk rotation speed" for hitters is a rough equivalent for pitcher velocity. It's the core thing that dictates swing speed, reaction time, adjustment time in the swing. Hitters need to be able to rotate and adjust powerfully and quickly. I bet we see hitters train for high performance "trunk rotation" more and more aggressively over time. And I bet we see more and more oblique injuries and rotation injuries as a result.

Yeah most attendees in those zones use the seats for corporate networking. It's sad as a fan but they often don't care much about the game. Same thing happens in Yankee Stadium and has been for years, you will see a lot of the good seats empty at certain points of certain games. The team is maximizing revenue though. They jack the prices and still sell all the tickets so.

Some of that is hitter approaches changing but I think most of it is just pitchers having nastier stuff. If you want to make a ton of contact in MLB, you either need generational talent or you need to sacrifice virtually all power. The whole hitter launch angle revolution is sort of a response to pitchers being tougher to hit, you know. Kind of like saying "well if I can't shoot the gaps and hit .280 with 15 homers anymore, I might as well become a .240 hitter with 20+ homers"

I wonder if there is a club level they are entitled to retreat to. I think those tickets come with lots of perks now. Service and stuff. They are all sold to corporate season ticket holders.

I don't really think it's secret sauce as much as just having a preference for or targeting guys who don't rely on extreme stuff or max velocity and then executing that preference successfully. Many of their free agent signings or trade acquisitions fit this description. Bassitt is a junker, Berrios is smooth and doesn't overthrow. Kikuchi and Gausman have more extreme stuff but I don't think they are like max effort guys or anything. Stripling, even Ryu who did get hurt. Robbie Ray is one exception and they decided not to lock into him long term and look what happened. The player they kind of let Marcus Stroman become is a more injury-free pitch to contact guy and not the strikeout artist he COULD have been. It's interesting because it is a strength at the MLB level over time. Your pitchers stay healthy and you have an edge on a certain kind of pitching. But on the development side, it could explain why Toronto has not been as good at developing pitchers; the kinds of SP they like at the MLB level are not exactly congruent with what modern baseball science chases in pitching prospects! They are good at recognizing the long-term value of Jose Berrios but it's much harder to make your own Jose Berrios because you are kind of swimming against the currents of modern baseball science. Most teams are trying to give pitchers nasty stuff, a guy like Berrios is more of a total package product with average stuff across the board. So you get these big stuff guys like Aaron Sanchez, Nate Pearson, maybe even Ricky Tiedemann (gulp) and they are an awkward fit for the organization on the developmental side of things? Possibly? I dunno, just some stray thinking.

Also, people ALWAYS get spooked by the rush of pitcher injuries in March and April and then it smooths out. Most of these guys going down have been hurt since last year and it either finally snapped when they ramped back up or the pain they have sort of been dealing with since the end of 2023 has just failed to go away.

There are stray anecdotes or opinions for stuff like this but not any real support from research. Not necessarily disproven either, just not studied enough. The link between injuries and: 1. velocity, generally 2. velocity, at the upper end of your personal abilities Is well known and established as far as I understand.

Was nice to see consistent good PAs against Castillo. Only hitter who looked bad was Springer. I think he's feeling too much pressure. Berrios is good

but why

4-6 is a miracle they could be 2-8 easily 5 losses with no shot to win 1 loss with a late run, but it was almost a blowout before 1 win they stole 1 win that Kikuchi and the pen get sole credit for 2 outright wins

It's all so complicated. They could deaden the ball more. This would in theory make pitching to contact more viable. However, fans like home runs! And overall offense is not at an extreme level or anything. They could tweak roster/promotion rules so that teams have a harder time legally cycling through so many pitchers. In theory, this means more durable P need to be rostered. However, this would inherently put more strain on pitchers so if a team does NOT properly adjust the league has just legislated more injury risk! They could incentivize keeping pitchers healthy with bonus picks, or taxes for offending teams, etc. Think, something like a comp round for teams that have the fewest pitcher injury days through their entire organization. Or taxes (money or picks) if you burn through too many pitchers. But again, s***** teams might abuse the system. Wonder if there is a way to do it with the DH slot as a carrot/stick. Something like, if you pull your SP before 5 IP or 100 pitches and he is not legitimately hurt you lose the DH rest of the game.

No, because we are going on two decades of this. People have been chasing velocity for that long and injuries keep rising. Fringe pitchers don't even mind getting hurt while on the MLB roster. Some of them celebrate it. That's a year of MLB pay. And if they don't chase velo and extreme stuff, they just won't make the majors.

He's a douche but I don't why anyone would wish this upon him. I don't remember him doing anything objectively bad or awful - just some arrogant commentary here and there. He "deserved" to regress to an SP4/5 and settle in as a fringe-average MLB starter. What has happened to him is kind of sad at this point.

It was middle-in He doesn't throw his fastball high enough sometimes tbh

Yeah I would give Francis more rope. He looked really good tonight... until that inning.

I guess it's always possible when you sit like 93mph Fastball can go from fringe average to batting practice pretty quickly

No haha