Olerud363

On a serious note a quick glance at fan graphs indicates Tatis and Guerrero are neck in neck in batted ball and surprisingly close in defense. The fact that Tatis is hitting .330 and Guerrero .255 is basically luck (5 singles fall in for Tatis, and 5 hit a glove for Vlad). As much as I complain about Vlad it's not like Tatis is doing anything that much better just (as far as I can tell) seems to have had better batted ball luck. In fact the defense between the two is surprisingly close (Vlad -1, Tatis +1 on fangraphs). This is actually important if this trend holds. While Vlad has made some silly errors, and a couple of mental lapses, he seems to be surprisingly athletic and has made some tough plays. He doesn't have to be a star on defense to provide huge value. Guys like Cabrerra and Prince Fielder have huge negative defensive value. Like -10 to -20 on fangraphs, which takes a win or two of their WAR. If Vlad can break even on defense (as an average 3rd basemen, or perhaps a ++ first basemen) that would add a win or two to his totals.

(fake) Keith Law update When I told you Fernando Tatis JR. was the top prospect in baseball did you believe me?? Do you believe me now?? People call me arrogant, but that's ridiculous. The fact that anybody had Vladimir Guerrero ahead of Tatis was sheer stupidity on their part. If people don't have common sense they deserve to be called out. On one hand you had a fat, out of shape, man-child, and on the other hand a professional athlete. They've both played about 40 games in the majors now, and it has unfolded exactly as I told you it would. Tatis already has 2 fWAR, while Guerrero is struggling to break even. Tatis is a guy who will routinely challenge 10 WAR moving forward, while Guerrero will struggle to hit 5. Beyond defense and baserunning anybody should of been able to see Tatis was the better hitter despite the minor league numbers. People focused too much on Tatis' strikeouts. May I remind you that Mike Trout struck out 180+ times his first MVP year. Like Trout, Tatis has +++ bat speed, Guerrero is a notch below that. In the majors that becomes obvious as Guerrero is struggling to pull the ball with authority (6/7 homeruns are to center, while it's all grounders on the pull side), while Tatis is aiming for light towers down the left field line. It floors me that the industry did not see the obvious. That's their blind spot. Not mine. Am I special for making the right call?? No. I just did my job while others were out to lunch. As I mentioned before switch the fathers and you get an idea of what the sons will do. Not to say Vlad will have a Tatis SR. career. If healthy he'll have Tatis' best year several times. He'll be a top 5 first basemen. Tatis JR wil have Vlad SR stats and top flight defense at short. He'll be a top 5 overall.

Admittedly the Vlad Hype, combined with Soto and Acuno coming up at 19/20 and being instantly polished hitters got the expectations too high. For better or worse Cito Gaston shaped my impression of hitting coach's. Cito was always taking credit for hitter's accomplishments (but rarely taking blame for their failures) and gave the impression that with the right hitting advice, a hitter can turn around their career. _________________________________________________________ 4. 2008: Bautista works with Cito Gaston and Dwayne Murphy Months after John Gibbons was fired as Blue Jays manager and Cito Gaston was re-hired, Bautista teamed up with the former two-time World Series champion. A former hitting coach himself, Gaston was revered for his ability to get the most out of hitters. It also happened that Bautista started working with first base coach and soon-to-be hitting coach Dwayne Murphy. The trio together helped fix Bautista's timing issues at the plate and they introduced his now-famous leg kick. _____________________________________________________________________ Murph and Gaston claimed they fixed Bautista. This kind of thing sometimes makes me think that the right coach's can identify hitter's flaws and get them on the right track. Thus my frustrations with the current coaching staff. Ironically I blamed Murph and Gaston for ruining other hitters like Snider and Olerud. That being said I always figured that if you get the right coach's that can work with each hitter's strengths and weaknesses it can make a big difference. Maybe that's just ********... for the most part hitters do what they are going to do, Major league coach's are all pretty much top notch, all hitters are getting good advice and it's up to the hitters to implement the advice they are getting.

If you look into the numbers and just watch the games it's obvious that this is a problem. He's swinging too much at marginal pitches. pulling too many groundballs, and not pulling line drives and fly balls. So his hard contact is to center, and he's pulling ground balls, which means they can shift on him, and he will underperform his hard contact rates. There is no reason this trend should continue, as others (like Blue Rocky) have pointed out he pulled a lot of hard contact in the minors, and hopefully eventually he'll realize it's no fun to keep pulling low and away sinkers into the infield shift, and just wait for pitch's he can drive.

I didn't say Vlad wasn't. Just said Alvarez is the better performer as of now, with the obvious caveat that it's only been 8 games, he's almost 2 years older, and his past minor league numbers are worse than Vlad's. So logic will dictate that Vlad will be better. My own feeling is Vlad will be better when he stops swinging so much at marginal pitch's both outside the zone, and on the corners. Ground ball rate is a bit high because he is swinging at to many sinkers on the corners.

Dude is having a better year in the minors than Vlad last year and carried it over for his first week in the majors. He has 27 homeruns between the majors and the minors. He might be leading all of baseball in homers. There is the cavaet that he is a year and a half older than Vlad, and it's only been a week in the majors... but he's the real deal.

Plate discipline is also phenomenal. I am guessing he is up there in out of zone swing rate.

Also I will take the opportunity to once again laugh at the "protection" theory. The pitchers have figured out that Vlad swings at low and away stuff and grounds it to short. This pattern makes him a .260 .325 .460 hitter. They know he has tremendous natural ability and that if they gave him more to hit he would hit .300 .350 .500. Jays get Mike Trout and hit him third behind little Vladdy. a) the pitcher's goal is to keep Vlad off base. the low and outside the zone pattern makes Vlad a .260 .325 .460 hitter. c) the in the zone pattern makes him a .300 .350 .500 hitter. Why would the pitchers change their pattern and give Vlad more to hit if doing this increases his on base percentage?? The opposite of their goal to keep him off base?? Protection is such ********. People like Buck and Pat believe it and that concerns me, because what if, along side their new love of bunting, Montoyo and the coaches believe it?? Probably not, but the best way to help Vlad is to recognize he is being pitched really tough, and to get more pitches to hit he needs to lay off out of zone stuff... Hope they are trying to get that message through. I know he is only 20, and it's harder then it looks.

The issue I have is more the approach compared to Biggio, or Juan Soto. He seems to be swinging at too much low breaking stuff, just off the outside corner. Take a look at the fan graphs plate discipline statistics. If I understand correctly O-swing is out of zone swing rate, while Zone % is the percentage of pitches in the zone. Vlad O-swing 29%, Zone % 36% Soto O-swing 21%, Zone % 38% Biggio O-swing 13.4% Zone % 48% Trout O-swing 19%, Zone % 39% Bellinger O-swing 25%, Zone % 39% Drury O-swing 34% Zone 41% (I put Drury in there just to get a feel for what a terrible guy's plate discipline is like) Vlad is being pitched tough because he swings at a lot of pitches out of the zone (relatively speaking). He probably has one of the lowest zone % in the game. In my opinion he won't start getting more pitches to hit, and reaching his potential until he takes more close pitches. Especially breaking stuff low and away, which is just a ground ball if you swing at it. Wow. Biggio's plate discipline is amazing so far. His walk rate is twice as much as Vlad, despite his Zone % being way higher.

I don't know if it's just fluke or a mechanical thing but he only seems to hit the ball hard to center. Almost everything he pulls is on the ground. Also he seems to swing at more bad pitches then I thought he would. Watching Biggio it's like night and day. Biggio takes everything close, and that's what I thought we were going to get in Vlad. He just swings way more than I thought he would. I know the original comment was he should cream first pitch meat balls... that too. The expection was he was a generational hitter who would cream meatballs and take the close pitches... A long ways to go, but he has a lot to learn. Miguel Cabrera had a similar first year.

Yeah... I don't believe there is any magical "aaaa" players. Brito has a .338 career MILB on base percentage. If you translate that to MLB it's .310 or something. You give him 100 at bats and it could be anything. I remember Bill James simulated thousands of seasons and pointed out that even Wade Boggs could hit .250 in a season just by luck... and then a couple of years later he really did. So Brito can hit probably hit anywhere between .030 and .400 in 40 at bats. It would probably normalize to .240 or something if you gave him an infiinite number of chances. Though Teoscar, or Alford, or Hansen, or MckKinney, or 20 other guys will be the one to be hot (for them) through 300 at bats and get the job as 3.5th outfielder and Brito will probably never get the chance to reach his replacement level potential.

Guy hits ball hard. Guy doesn't walk. Guy bad in minors with low sample size. Guy hit .275 .315 .490 or so in major, same basic profile as in minors but a bit better... guy hit ball hard. Hit's some homeruns. Strikes out a lot but not a ridiculous amount for 2019... guy hits some home runs. Will he keep hitting homeruns?? Will he keep hitting ball hard?? Where did the batting average in play thing come from?? It's like he's fluking out a .320 average overall with a .400 babip... his numbers look perfectly ordinary for a guy with a bit of pop and not great plate discipline.

I thought a contusion = bruise (well I just read that in his link). I'm no x-player but as far as I know players don't usually miss much time with contusions, maybe 2-5 days, if any time. Bones I usually 3-6 weeks.

Big Papi Hitman - 7800 bonus X - Player - ? Bonus "Almost Drafted" = 0 bonus Inter county league = ? bonus

We should be careful not to confuse lack of talent with under-performance. We have both with catastrophic results. We have a lot of guys that might be reasonable projected to hit .245 .310 .430 or so, the classic replacement player line.. The greatest prospect ever is the only one hitting the classic replacement line... the rest of them are underperforming their mediocre replacement potential by a great deal.

I honestly thought he was Rob Ducey/Rob Butler level. I imagine there are lots of guys on this board in the "almost drafted", "inter county" level... at least that's the impression I get.

x-Player is much more positive than Tercet. A lot of his comments are more like "If this guy wants to succeed he needs to improve this", Tercet's comments are like "I saw this guy swing at a bad pitch and it revealed a flaw and he will never succeed ever, not a chance, and if he does seem to be succeeding it's a random fluke which will end soon, and when he slumps remember I told you so"

People shouldn't be disrespectful or make light of the situation, especially as news first reports first broke and his condition was uncertain. Otherwise it's fair game to talk about what the motive may have been. Probably 95% of what is posted here isn't fact and is speculation. Trade speculation, performance speculation. Does anybody know why Vlad was benched yesterday??? Regular maintenance or because he didn't hustle on a couple of plays?? No one knows for sure, but we can discuss. Same with the Ortiz situation, as long as it doesn't venture into bad taste.

Looking at the data he is pulling the ball a lot on the ground, and hitting hard in the air to center. https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/savant-player/vladimir-guerrero-jr-665489?stats=career-r-visuals-mlb If true that would probably lead to him under performing hit batted ball velocities by quite a bit. a) the grounders to the pull side may be true. It is for a lot of hitters. the hard hit line drives and fly balls all to center may not be true. Not sure if there is a reason a player would hit all his fly balls to center. Seems that will even out with some pulled and some op-o and that will help.

I understand what you are saying but this isn't regression, it's just a bizarre team wide under performance. Everybody is underperforming like crazy. Regression would be if say Jansen hit .350 for a month, then was headed back to .250 where (at least before this season) we thought his true talent was. Every body is underperforming. Even Biggio and Vlad (I emphasize I'm not worried about those two and Biggio's sample size is low). It's weird. Everyone still has the basic characteristics we expect from them, Vlad hits the ball hard, Biggio walks, Dury gets some extra base hits, Randal is a low walk, low average guy with dingers, except everyone is just 30% worse than the projections indicated.

Just to make sure I understand this a) Make an advanced AI system that predicts players performance in Majors based on low a data. Make an advanced AI system that predicts players performance in Majors based on low a data except for walks (and any data that would be a proxy for walks like games played, plate appearances, and at bats (from which walks could be deduced)). They know that a) and perform the same?? (you could use at bats, but just not at bats and plate appearances, or at bats and games, or anything that would give a clue to the number of walks).

Try it in reverse. If Jays were contending would you do Vlad for Brandon Belt, Baumgardner and Smith??

There has been a lot of talk that walk rates in the low minors don't matter. That seems so anti-intuitive. I can understand that the 4th year college player who hits .240 with 3 homers and 80 walks isn't going to do that in the majors, but I can't imagine that Moreno and Kirk's minor league walk rates don't have predictive value on their future. I wonder if this claim (walk rates in the low minors don't matter) is biased by the fact that a lot of guys with high walk rates, aren't good enough to ever reach the majors (the guy hitting .240 with 80 walks, would hit .200 with 60 walks if given a full season in the majors, but that will never happen because .200 with 60 walks isn't worth anything). What if you went backwards and took major league players, with high and low walk rates and looked at the correlation with their low minor league stats??

Their reported weights are 160 and 220. I'd have to guess they are both really 20 lbs heavier. Still on very different ends of the obesity scale.

I disagree. 72 wins and the 10th pick, Hansen called up RED HOT. Maile unbelievable. Burrito stellar... Richards and Buckholtz (post trade deadline) terrific. Luck Stellar. No young players will do anything of course. Orioles second in a row 1st round pick, both fly through minors and are the two legends that the next Orioles dynasty is built around. 2020 Orioles start to fly, 2021 they are there. jays stuck in 72 win hell with no meaning or joy. Orioles fans cheer, and laugh, and dance as their generational legends bring joy to their fan base. Draft 2020 Orioles first overall pick from 2019 is almost ready. Unbelievable. Orioles are starting to fly, and have another 1st overall legend to join the cause!! Jays (despite having less WAR then the Orioles in 2019) pick 10th. A joyless, souless, pick.