Olerud363

Yeah. So right now Bo is a guy that made a lot of errors early, has also made some nice plays, and isn't a complete disaster. Organization had no desire to move him this year even though they had Semien, so I assume he'll be there next year too, maybe if he has a bad year in 2022 they look at a defense first short stop as a potential means to eke out another win or two.

I mostly only look at the fangraphs numbers and Bo has been hovering around 0 there. At least according to fangraphs Tatis is worse. If I remember accurately most of his errors were on routine plays. So it's not like he's making errors because he is stretched at short stop.

Charlie, Wilner no one seems to care. Maybe it was just random.... Part of me wishes they'd all go bat-s*** crazy 'it's a f***in' conspiracy' just in case it was to let them know we are on to them and gonna call the feds and the fbi and it will be a big scandal. We'll see what happens tomorrow.

lol. Remember the Brett Gardner "walk" that preceded the Aaron Judge homerun a week ago against the twins.

the fact that they are under-performing the Pythagorean record record by so much in a weird way make this less important. At first glance they are losing 14 WAR between Semien and Ray. However that is going to be 14 WAR off of an ~100 win projected team not a 90 win team They will gain projected WAR from Biggio, Pearson, maybe the catchers if Kirk get's 400 plate appearance, Springer if healthy. Then they will replace Semien and Ray with someone, even if they don't resign them. Those someone's won't be projected 14 WAR, but Semien and Ray won't be either, It will be interesting to see how it all works out, but there should be a few paths to creating another 90 win projected team.

Tipping pitches? Twins have a "system"? Probably not, when he hangs curve balls in the middle of the plate it looks that way, but probably not.

I'm not super-convinced Vlad is going to be great 'value' on a long term mega contract. However it would be great for the franchise to have Vlad be a career Jay. If you tell me Vlad is going to sign for 10 years 300 million (or more) and Charlie for 10 years 22 million, I'll take it.

it sounds like common sense but is it? I've never seen a team pull guys early when they are going good, but leave guys in when they are going bad, as to not waste relievers. Haven't watched the Rays enough to know if this is a regular thing.

Haven't heard anything. That sucks. Hopefully he gets 25 in the AZ fall league, and maybe the Jays run some sim-games or something after that to catch these guys up a bit? Do they do that?

I wasn't pointing out these examples as 'missteps' but as cool moves. Pulling a guy pitching a shut out at 52 pitches? Then letting a guy go 90 pitches the next day after giving up runs early? It's actually kind of interesting. Part of it is that Wacha is a long time starter so is allowed to go further, but it seems they allocate the bullpen innings with game probabilities. If the win probability is still around 40 to 60 they might go to the relievers early to try and nail the win, if the win probability is low or high they might let the starter go deeper as to not waste the bullpen. Fascinating that in some cases they let a struggling starter go further.

Also does Charlie get any credit for how he handled Guerrero? There were for sure a couple of low points where maybe others would of sent him down. That's more of an organization thing. I guess I tend to give him 'credit' for quarterbacking the coaching staff and helping develop talent. Maybe that's not the way it really works, but I mean there are two hitting coaches, who decides when someone needs to work with Bichette instead of Martinez? Who decides when it's time for Pete Walker to change someones mechanics and when to leave them alone? An organization thing I am sure, but if Charlie is working well in that system that's important.

It's weird how everyone except Hurl thinks Charlie is costing the Jays big time. One of the hard things in baseball is sorting through the mid to late 20s guys trying to find who is going to be the next EE/Bautista. Charlie did a great job of sorting through Gurriel/Teoscar/MckKinney/Drury/Fisher and giving all a chance to win a job which Gurriel and Teoscar did. Was it obvious in early 2019 that Gurriel and Teoscar would be the guys? Most dissed Drury I think, but I remember people also dissing Gurriel for babip, dissing Teoscar, thinking McKinney was the next Justin Upton. The wrong manager could of just platooned Mckinney and Fisher with Gurriel and Hernandez and been stubborn about it and allocated the lefties too much playing time, or fell in love with Drury.

He pulled Rasmussen early too. Not exactly the same as Snell. However Rasmussen has gone as high as 74 pitches but was pulled at 52 while "dominating". Then he let Wacha go 90+ after getting hit around. I guess he didn't want to waste relievers when there was a lower probability of a win.

lol. Did you really have to merge the 'cruise missile' thread to Blue Jays general discussion. Unreal. The cruise missile comment was pretty benign. It was also as good a place as any to continue talking about the effect of 'direction' of hits. It was actual very interesting that Vlad's Monday homerun was viewed as 'historic', when in fact he hit 4 almost identical line drives in the series. Anyway I am sure everyone's life is better now that they don't have to look at multiple thread titles. That is a real pain. It's much easier to go to the "Around Baseball", or "General Blue Jays" thread and search through the last 10 pages to find the topic one is interested in.

Funny thing is he hit 4 balls with almost the same exit velocity, launch angle and distance. The stats-cast system gives them a expected batting average of something like .750 to .800. And in a small sample size of 4 that is what happened. Homerun down the left field line. Out to center. Double to left. Double to left center. EVs were 113, 113, 106, and 116. LA 15, 15, 16 and 14. Distances something like 350, 360, 360 and 350. Not sure the 106 was right (that was the double over the left fielders head yesterday). Looked like it was also a rocket that surprised Arozarena.

Scary thing is he still has a 50%+ ground ball rate. His raw power is elite (as seen in home run contest and his hardest hit homeruns) but as of now his ground ball rate is high, and his hard hit stats are something like top 20, but not top 5. His plate discipline is way off the charts though. What if he improves his ground ball rate? Who will have a better career Vlad or Soto?

Wacha sucks I think, but that doesn't matter, all that matters is whether the pitch sequencing they give to Wacha today works or not, Wacha is just the means the Rays analytics crew will do their bidding this afternoon.

Haven't looked closely at the data, other than glancing at Semien's spray charts. And Semien fits that pattern.

Absolutely. The old joke in the 'pull dat ball' Cito/Murph years was... Pitch 1. Foul line drive almost kills the third base coach Pitch 2. Foul homerun in the 5th deck Pitch 3. Double play grounder to the third basemen Cito and Murph - that's good hittin'!

Vlad's homerun Monday and line drive out last night were about the same exit velocity, distance and launch angle, both had an xBA of about .760. One was an historic homer which people compared to a cruise missile launch, the other was a hard hit, but routine line out. xBA on balls to center is obviously lower than reported. This would be even more so for hard hit but non-missile fly balls. 380 foot fly balls have an xba of around .500. But that is obviously very different for a ball hit down the line or opposite field compared to center. Are the Rays able to use pitching patterns that keep the ball 'in the big part of the ball park'. I don't know. Probably not. If they could it would work though. Not that they could control whether a guy hit's it right at the center fielder, but on hard hit but non-missile fly balls, any thing gap to gap could be caught, especially if the outfielders are bunched a bit, down the line it's 100% a homerun. Maybe the Rays are bunching their outfielders? Doubles seem to down. How do Vlad and Bo only have 21 and 25 doubles each given their hard hit rates and launch angles?

Manoah's start was better. Best start this year by a Jay... best start by a Jays rookie. One of the best starts in franchise history (Morrow, Stieb, Halladay). I think he should of got the jacket.

Serious question. Did Manoah get the jacket? If not, why not? Didn't Ray get the jacket. In fact didn't Manoah give Ray the jacket. Why didn't Ray or someone else give Manoah the jacket last night? Or did they and I missed it?

Mike Wilner explained it. For every 10 teams that look like they have 90% odds of making the playoffs one of them collapses. For every 10 teams, 5 or 6 games out late August with playoff odds of 10% one of them goes on a crazy run and makes it. How can anyone take these playoff odds seriously?

Probably one of my stupider posts and that is saying something. Lots of money and time in MLB and some dumb owner I am sure already said "Hey, if we could stop the guys from pulling the ground balls, it would be super-money ball', and they can't stop the guys from pulling the ground balls, without making something else worse, or they would of already done it. Though, even Buck and Tabby think they don't have to pull the ground balls. Buck - 'All he has to do is hit a little ground ball the other way and he's got a base hit' Pat - 'I can tell you if I was still playing I'd have loved it if they gave me a free hit. I didn't get very many you know' Buck - 'Except with the bases loaded.' Pat - (Laughing)

Do any of these stats assume the direction of the ball may not be random. A guy who pulls ground balls but evenly distributes fly balls may not be as good as a guy who evenly distributes ground balls but pulls fly balls. They shift on the former guy and catch his fly balls to center. If I owned a team I'd put a few hundred grand into a hitting lab and their only job would be to figure out if there is a hitting approach that is unshiftable... maybe they wouldn't come up with anything or maybe it's just obvious that over 100 years they've already optimized hitting approach, but man... all the ground balls are pulled. You look at any guy and the pull ground ball rate is way higher.