Laika

Randy Choate!!!

Quality of contact stats are dubious. There really isn't much (any?) added information in them. The stringers / video "scouts" at BIS are influenced by results... I think for pitchers something like hard hit % probably ends up being just a proxy for other batted ball profile stats, like GB%. If a guy has a low BABIP and a high GB% like Sanchez does, the stringers are going to tick a lot of soft contact boxes. It doesn't mean he has some causal skill in contact manipulation. The sample size issues are intense too. There isn't really any sample size where you can look at a pitcher's hard/soft% and say, a ha! that's why he has a low BABIP! There's a reason that guys with very high hard hit % can be super good (Tanaka and Corbin are among the leaders since 2010) and guys with low hard hit % can be super bad (the creme de la creme include Jamey Wright, Eric O'Flaherty, Javier Lopez, Jim Johnson, Randy Choate).

Trivia - which MLB pitcher leads baseball in hard hit % since 2010, minimum 200 IP? (leads as in has the lowest). Hint - it's a reliever.

DeRozan hit half with like 4 seconds left. There was never any pass available. All he could really do was charge to bucket. Valiant effort; good defense; call didn't go Toronto's way but honestly it would have been a lame foul. I don't like the argument that past s***** calls means the refs should make future s***** calls to balance things out. Meh. Video --> http://www.nba.com/video/games/raptors/2016/03/15/0021500991-chi-tor-play10.nba/

I dunno, there are probably lots. Carrasco went from 7-9% when he sucked to 14% now.

Yeah the ideal career development path for Aaron Sanchez is something like AJ Burnett. Burnett had massive command issues in the upper minors and in his early MLB years. Tighten up the breaking ball and maybe he could be a young Burnet. Then he can slowly learn the nuances of pitching and bloom into the mid career Burnett. Then he can transform himself again, sign with the Pirates, and be late career Burnett and probably make $200 million.

Edwin is 2 years younger and more or less Jose's offensive talent equal. As far as hitting is concerned, the reasonable expectation is that Jose will decline faster.

No, people are talking like there is not really any good reason to expect his whiff rates to change. They certainly could if he had some sort of skill change (new pitch, new mechanics, etc.). But the general opinion on his ability to get swinging strikes and thus strike outs is not just based on his MLB time. We also have a minor league career that included a poor ability to strikeout hitters in the upper minors, which carries weight in the consideration.

That's an easy no. - wouldn't be stable even if it were the regular season - it's spring training so you should have even less confidence in the numbers

Hmmm. Hunch is to reject the idea, but it's a testable hypothesis. Look at starters with similar fastballs (velocity, movement, use%, etc.) and see how they fare on the TTOP. That would give us a good idea of how learnable his fastball is.

No.... This is a baseless statement.

It's unfair to just look at swstr%. The sinker is a weak contact / groundball pitch, generally. The guys who get lots of fastball whiffs tend to throw four seamers up in the zone, and it's the optical rise in conjunction with the velocity that generates whiffs. For whatever mechanical reason, Sanchez doesn't seem to be physically able to throw a straight four seam fastball. But his fastball is a "big pitch". He can possibly survive in the MLB as a well above average reliever with just the one pitch. It generates lots of weak contact and groundballs even with nothing else in the arsenal. If you look at the weighted (per pitch) outcome based value of all MLB pitches from 2014-2015 (minimum 100 innings per person), Sanchez' fastball is 13th on the list. It's up there with elite relievers like Betances, Kimbrel, Jansen. Close to Chapman, who is 7th. Effectively tied with Kershaw and Arrieta. (side note - Stroman is 9th). Sanchez has a double plus fastball. It is a pretty elite pitch. So it is a "big arm". The issue with him is basically everything else.

It's 10 spring innings against bad lineups. Impossible to say if he's doing anything differently right now. Even if it was the regular season, junk starters are fully capable of stringing together 10 good innings.

fat fingers these days it's nice to know that your posts here are so meaningful

The curve always looked nasty. I doubt it's any different in terms of results (sw str%, etc).

It's crazy how out of touch some of the newspaper guys are these days.

pretty sure he's wrong

I think I'm more upset with Toronto Police for expending resources on that

Topic: Ryan Goins: Leadoff Candidate? My comment: Comment score: minus 2 Top comments:

f*** no possibly the dumbest collection of jays fans on the internet

Yeah Russell is well-rounded but not special

Can I be a GMing dork?

Loup's scary injury has certainly highlighted one current lack of depth.

lol, he was in St. Louis for three full years and only pitched 98.2 innings. That's an easy way to make $7.5M.

10 out of the overall top 100 being 1B would actually be an overrepresentation, arguably. Positional scarcity applied to fantasy baseball too... I mean anyone who drafts Hosmer or Fielder over Tulowitzki or Heyward (which his top 500 will tell you to do) simply doesn't get it and is probably stupid.