Laika

I think it's a fair criticism. J Rod - star France - gooooood Suarez - gooooood Winker - hasn't got it going all year Haniger - hasn't got it going all year Raleigh - okay but a one trick bat Crawford - 100 wRC+, fine I guess Kelenic - hole in swing? really just a lotto ticket at bat Frazier - bad but at least he doesn't strike out much Moore - all over the place, who knows Yeah there is diversity but after the top of the order it's a whole lot of league average. Or players with flaws or going through some s***. Comp to Toronto where they can throw 7 or 8 comfortably above average to very good hitters at you every single night. I think that number is 3 for Seattle. Maybe 4 if you give them Raleigh or Moore but I hesitate to think of them like Matt Chapman or Teoscar, offensively.

Vlad's numbers are a clean illustration of the changing run environment 2019 + 2020: .269/.336/.442 2022: .275/.338/.475 Basically the same, right? Well 2019+2020 was 7% better than league average while 2022 is 30% better. 107 wRC+ vs 130 wRC+. The difference between being a 3 WAR player and a replacement level guy. Sort of. Basically. Main point being don't just look at the slashline and think he has regressed all the way to his pre-2021 talent. He has not slipped that much. It has been closer to a ~50% correction to the downside.

DeGrom vs Fried tonight should be huge Then Scherzer vs Wright Then Bassitt vs Morton feels like a playoff series with these matchups

wouldn't have been me they just have to be in the org

what do you mean

I guess Pearson is done? Pitched one clean inning on the 27th but Buffalo's season is over now. I can't see how they fit him on a playoff roster unless there are a couple of RP injuries in the final week here. He was mediocre/rusty in his September AAA relief journey. 7.2 IP 9 Ks 5 BB So he's probably behind Merryweather. And maybe other AAA scrubs

Really lame way to clinch hahaha we get to cheer for Matt Barnes to close it out in Boston against the Orioles? ahahahahaha grant where are you

Yeah Sosa and McGwire are close enough to fringe hall guys even if they put up their numbers clean. 60 and 66 WAR. Bonds had nearly 50 WAR by 27, before he played a game for the Giants... it's not even the same discussion. He's a 100 WAR player without roids, probably. The steroid argument for keeping Bonds out of the HoF fails the "but for" test.

Ideally home field advantage vs Seattle, of course.

My favourite Barry Bonds thing is that his 73 HR season was not even his best year. The following season was better 32.4% walk rate 7.7% k rate lmaooooooooooooooooo 2398 pitches seen with a 6.3% whiff rate, that's 151 swings and misses he walked 198 times. dude walked more then he came up dry on a swing. that's insane

He's not a disaster. 21 in A+ is good 9.2% BB 19.7% K .156 ISO - these are good enough peripherals 106 wRC+ Could still be on track for an MLB career here.

I bet MLB would do it / pressure the team to do it. Letting anybody who is not a fan keep an important ball would be a bad precedent. From a policy perspective there are no positives to that.

Here is the legal landscape as far as I understand it: - the home team owns the baseballs - the fans who buy tickets have a right to keep balls that enter the stands. this is an implied term of the contract as baseball has operated this way for 100+ years. some teams might even make it explicit in their fine print? So a stadium employee, cop, or team employee who does not relinquish a baseball that the home team wants back is probably s*** out of luck and has no legal legs to stand on.

I think it's just a given that any player or team staff member would give the ball to Judge. I doubt Judge or the Yankees even know or care which person in the bullpen caught the ball. If I got it I would 100% not give it up. Too much money. Would auction it. Although #62 if he hits it will be more valuable for sure.

The one fan on the railing blew it. If he went all out and risked his body he'd have that ball. He played it like a normal regular season home run from some nobody batter. It looks like it was inches from his glove.

I don't think I would call under 50% selective. I think league average swing% is like 46%. Also, there are a bit more below average players in this sample than above average players. Because 1000 PA in 20 years is a really low cutoff.

One more visual This is since 2002 (beginning of swing data) and everyone with 1000+ PA. So this ignores cup of coffee players but catches every regular in the last two decades. n = 1015 Yes, if you ignore the positive outliers in the upper left the visual trend is not very strong. You can still see the slope of the mass though and perhaps better in this one than the previous ones. But we probably should NOT ignore the upper left outliers because that is the hope for Vlad, right? He had a 166 wRC+ last year. He has the talent to have a career wRC+ over 150. It will never happen if he is swinging close to 50% of the time though. In my opinion. In 2021 he was closer to 47%. As he ages, with discipline and practice, he might be able to improve and get to 45% or less? Maybe? I am not trying to prove anything here. This is just a visual. Ignore the trendline, it's just thrown on there. As far as I am aware this relationship (swinging is generally bad) is well documented already. https://blogs.fangraphs.com/maybe-hitters-should-just-stop-swinging/ Note also that zone% has trended down consistently since 2002. This means that swinging TODAY is probably even worse than it was two decades ago. The guys who swung a lot and were still good would perhaps have different careers in this era. Would Vlad Sr. be as good in this age? Maybe the model for Vlad Jr. should be more Manny Ramirez than Miguel Cabrera???

Dunno if anyone has put that stat specifically on an aging curve but I would assume it gets better. BB% gets better with age, we know that... hard to trend up in walks without swinging less.

I redid it going back 5 years, and using all players with 1000+ PA across those 5 years. The effect seems a bit stronger even. And with Vlad of course we are more concerned with the OUTLIERS and that makes it even more obvious that swinging less is great. The truly elite hitters ALL swing seldom. There was only ONE qualified hitter with a wRC+ over 140 who swung 50% or more (Vlad is at like 49% this year and was 47% prior years). Bo Bichette with his 55% swing rate is kind of handicapped. He can be good but not elite.

Yeah Zimmer

It's a very loose fit though

Is the relationship extremely strong? No. It's baseball. There are different ways to be good. You can swing a lot and be very good. You can be passive and be below average at hitting. BUT it is clear that the uber-elite hitters swing less. And it is clear that if you swing a lot it's hard to be an uber-elite hitter. That's because swinging is bad. This is just qualified hitters in 2022 by the way. Feel free to expand the sample.

Light went off in my head last night while thinking of the simplest way to get Vlad to be elite again "swing less" that's all they need to say! simply put he is swinging too much If he swung less, a bunch of positive things would flow out it might not even be about pitch recognition or swing plane or any of that more specific stuff just swing less, bud watch Aaron Judge this year (42.6% swing rate) just never swing swinging is bad just stand there, most of the time

added too much mass lol