John_Havok

LOL, probably more of a "next year hopefully if he's not terrible" kind of thing. The drop in OF defense from literally anyone on the roster except maybe Kirk....to Horwitz would be substantial.

That's actualyl down from the 30% rate he was rocking on May 5th. Here's an updated chart from the one i posted may 5th

Pretty much crap with the bat. Excellent defensively though.

Sure, because that’s what they know the drooling mouth-breather audience wants to hear

Yep.

May 28 Vladdy - 1 Point Bichette - 1 Point -mphenhef Chapman - 2 Points Varsho - 2 Points Springer - 2 Points - Jonn Belt - 3 Points - Spanky Kirk - 4 Points - JaysAllMighty, Dylan Biggio - 5 Points - John_Havok Merrifield - 5 Points Off the bench: 10 Points

Yeah, one consistency with most of their lineup is crushing heart of the plate, and really sucking at the shadow. It’s like if their brain is telling them it’s going to be heart, sell out and yank it. Their pull rate as a team is 41% centre is 36%. Only 23% oppo. Jays as a comparison…38, 36, 26. 3% doesn’t sound like a lot when you’re talking pull rate vs oppo, but when you add that up over even 2 months of a season, that’s quite a few runs., especially hen you add in their 40% fly ball rate vs the Jays 36%. Thing is, people are going to look at these numbers and think the Jays are bad when that’s not the case, they’re well above average in nearly all important hitting numbers that are publicly available..it’s just the Rays are in another universe

It would just be nice to have 1 lefty reliever who can miss bats

Not from me, pitching is the problem overall. Situationally there’s always times where a bat fails, or whatever, but overall issues on the team right now stem from the pitching being wildly inconsistent

Well they’re already slowing down…wrc+ of 148 for April May it’s only 129…

Could be very well versed in pitch tendencies …I dunno. I’m not hearing any trash cans being banged or hitters glancing to the dugouts or 3b coaches for signals. Electronic stealing of pitch comm could be done in theory but you still have to then relay that info to the batter somehow, unless every Tampa batting helmet has a pitch comm receiver in the earpiece thats preset to the opposing teams devices and they can hear every pitch call, but that would be blatantly obvious after a game or two.

Yeah that’s part of the mystery, it could just mean they’re all getting “lucky” with the results all at the same time. Look at Diaz as an example comparing his current 2023 to 2022. Basically the same % of pitches in the heart, basically the same swing/take percentages, he’s just doing way more damage this season. But it does probably speak to the approach to hitting being preached in Tampa by Mottola…wait for the meatballs and let the bat fly. Keeping it simple. That’s not even to say that’s not what is being preached in Toronto either, but clearly not as many players are being successful at it.

GDT was pretty rough today, my ignore list is growing at an alarming rate.

Probably a bit of that yeah. They can keep shutting him down every few weeks if he's not making progress but, if they keep doing that they'll eventually get in trouble.

Okay, so recently in either this thread or another one, someone asked about how it is that Tampa has the most amazing offense in baseball, seemingly out of nowhere. here is your answer: ***disclaimer*** This is high level thing, there's a shitload of nuance to this **end disclaimer** https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/swing-take?year=2023&team=&group=Batter&type=All&sub_type=null&min=q&sort=9&sortDir=desc go there and sort the run values from highest to lowest on the far right, the ALL category. This is the cumulative run values that hitters accumulate in the results of their swing decisions in 4 zones - the Heart, Shadow, Chase and Waste zones. This is what the zones look like for reference along with a bunch of other awesome info for the current MLB leader - Yordan Alvarez: Now, scroll down that list sorted from best to worst and you'll find 10 Rays in the top 100 in all of baseball. That, in itself really isn't all that shocking given that their offense is clicking, a sorted list doesn't explain the "why" they are hitting so well. The "why" is answered by sorting the column for run values over the heart of the plate. Do that and you'll see 3 Rays in the top 7 in all of baseball, 6 in the top 20, 7 in the top 45 and in total all 10 are in the top 117 ***Disclaimer, this list sorts with every game so these rankings will change slightly from game to game, but overall they've remained pretty steady for the past few weeks*** Long story short, The Rays are murdering baseballs in the heart of the plate. They aren't swinging at borderline pitches, they wait for the cookies - and they do damage. ONe thing youll also notice though, is that up and down that list of Rays with all the sexy numbers in the Heart of the plate... their numbers in the Shadow zones are pretty rough with the exception of Arozarena. You'll also notice that Bo Bichette actually leads MLB in runs in the shadow zone - which is cool. Now, this is a leader board of results, not anything that's been normalized to league average or that kind of thing, simply whether the result of the pitch is a ball, strike, foul, HR etc, but when you click on each player, you can see the league average run values in each zone and how each players total runs are split between swinging runs, and runs from taking pitches. THis is pretty intuitive since taking a pitch right down the middle is obviously not a good thing to do, but taking pitches in the chase and waste zones would obviously be a good thing to do. Here's the highest rated Ray at the moment this is being posted... Yandy Diaz Murdering the heart of the plate. Not so good in the shadow zone, where he actually takes pitches at a higher rate than league average. Anyways, click on each one for the Rays and it tells a pretty compelling story. They aren't really seeing any more pitches in the heart of the zone than anyone else, but they do swing at the shadow zone generally less than league average. They simply waiting for a pitch over the heart, and doing damage when they get it. All of them. Now, this doesn't really show if this will continue as this isn't a predictive thing, this is all results. But, you can flip back and forth between each hitter's previous seasons to see if anything has actually changed in their swing/take rates in each zone and make some educated guesses on approach changes, or just better results. Then do the same for most Blue Jays and weep for everyone who isn't Bo or Vlad

I don’t think so, it’s just really weird to this many bench HR picks actually paying out. I think that’s 3 so far, 2 have been on Saturdays and 2 have been injury replacements rather than just a 1 off pinch hitter. Just weird coinincidences.

That’s how I got into the lead too. Double points Saturday bench pick, except it was Jansen that took it out

Again though, this loss isn’t on the offense…pitching gave up 9. Can’t do that

Star..yes. Superstar…nope.

Vlad is obviously not right mechanically. That swing looked like a rusty gate in the wind. No strength behind it at all. Just a long loopy mess.

Tying run at the plate…still in this

f***in Varsho, only hits HR in scrub time. Great rip though

Varsho with a Jack! Me +4

Let’s just assume that’s the case…knowing the Jays luck this season both would get hurt 2 weeks before the deadline.

There will be some moves probably but there’s now way this team is in any kind of fire sale.