AMS528

Little interview with Horwitz on hitting. Always find these interesting to see what different guys focus in on. https://blogs.fangraphs.com/spencer-horwitz-talks-hitting/

Really a huge part of that feeling is that our young players did not turn out as expected. Kirks bat looked great, and now he's a backup at best. Manoah was an *******, but our ******* and he went out there and struck out the side in an All-Star game and suddenly he falls apart. Even when it looked like he could recover a bit, it was done. Vladdy was an MVP world beater for a season and has been disappointing until he turned it around the last couple of months, now there's some hope with him but it's muted by the fact that Bo turned into a pumpkin this year and unlike Vlad doesn't seem to have much interest in staying long term anyways (at least Vlad is perpetually talking about wanted to play with the Jays forever, that's worth something). With Vlad as well now there's ingrained skepticism where instead of being super excited about him, what you're waiting for is for him to turn back to hitting ground balls or long flyouts to CF. There's no fun in that. None of high draft picks have turned into top 10 or even top 20 prospects to dream on. The only one who could like Tiedemann has stalled this year and last because of injuries. No one is getting that excited for Davis Schneider, Barger, Ernie Clement or Leo Jimenez (if Horwitz plays second consistently he could be worth a lot I suppose). Barriera sucks, we traded Hoglund for Chapman, we traded Martin for Berrios. Groshans sucked. None of those guys look like they would have been top prospects either anyways. So then you're left with free agents and guys you trade for who can but don't always create that level of excitement. Springer had too many injuries when he was still really good. Free agents like IKF aren't exactly seat fillers. Gausman has a couple of great seasons but never inspired the confidence of like a Halladay. Even when he was statistically better Manoah was more intimidating out there. Berrios just makes you wonder how he became so much worse while with us.

Vlads an all-star starter again. And this time he absolutely deserves it. Definitely the best AL 1B.

All we've got left to do is get rid of KK and bring up Lukes and that's basically all of the Buffalo guys. It's probably too early to include Tirotta with that group, but with Martinez gone we may as well trade Bo and get him up here as well for the infield.

It's actually kind of impressive how terrible the statscast page is. He doesn't hit the ball hard, he doesn't hit it at the right launch angle, the exit velocity is at the bottom of the entire league he strikes out a lot. The only qualified hitter his expected numbers are better than is Tim Anderson. I think given his expected numbers the last two years before this, it's very reasonable to run on the assumption that he's going to be a below average bat going forward. How far below average is an open question cause he can't be quite as bad as his expected numbers currently I think. It'll be the difference between him being a 2 WAR player and a 3 WAR player.

1.5 games up on the Angels. Couple of bad days and they may manage to be behind the Angels of all teams. Astros and Rays both have looked better. The worse we look the more likely we'll get some actual moves happening so it's for the best that we fall further and further behind. No false hope.

His statcast page was horrifying when his overall numbers were decent. I haven't paid proper attention in a couple of weeks and I see that he has gone 2/36 since then, and now he's overperforming poor hitting numbers. Literally everyone agrees he should just be playing CF (and signing KK was a waste) for the future. It's the only place that bat will play.

I mean regardless he has a 143 wRC+ for the season now so he's been unambiguously a very good hitter. Being back beyond that really means MVP level hitter. For the moment he's been a top 20 hitter and that's nothing to complain about.

He wouldn't even need to be close to that to have huge numbers. Compare him to Soto who has also doesn't have great launch angle numbers. He's at the 48th percentile. If Vladdy was there his numbers would shoot up to a top ten hitter in baseball.

He's tracking for it at this point. And again taking a look here, there's gotta be something to tweak to take his bat from very good, which it is as of right now, and take it to elite. Like you know if he leaves it's going to happen elsewhere (and if it does if Shapiro or Atkins are here they should both be launched into the sun). https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/savant-player/vladimir-guerrero-jr-665489?stats=statcast-r-hitting-mlb

f***ing Marty York. The worst sports writer in Toronto history. And I just learned he apparently became the director of comms for B'Nai Brith, although I don't know if he still is. Should make you skeptical of anything coming out of there.

That's interesting, and I wonder if that would be that the kind of thing a creative hitting coach would consider. Like there's gotta be something that exists to make the power viable, he's already a good hitter. I don't know if you can slow down the bat without making the rest of the mechanics out of whack but again that's what good coaching is for. Bautista needed to make one change to get to fastballs without fouling them off and he became one of the best hitters on the planet for like 6 years from when he was 29-34 and past the usual best hitting years. One change can make it happen and makes the Jays retooling much more viable (while trading Bo since one thing we have is infielders and we could also try to go for Kim in the offseason).

I really would rather not trade Vlad, figure out a mildly reasonable extension and give various new coaches the chance to figure it out because literally nothing would be worse than him figuring it out elsewhere. If Bo is great elsewhere that's fine we saw him do it here as well, if Vlad is great elsewhere kill me cause we mismanaged a potentially elite bat. As a comparison Horwitz's statcast page shows a much lower exit velo, hard hit percentage and he doesn't have elite bat speed but he barrels everything and pairs that with getting everything into the launch angle sweet spot and boom his numbers have been great. He won't maintain them, but it's clear what makes the difference.

There's just been too many other stretches of being hot, months here and there of hitting for power, before reverting back for me to be hopeful about it. I know it's possible, but I've adjusted the likelihood of that happening while he's with the Jays down to a fairly small percentage chance. I think if we don't keep him the odds of him figuring out increase, not even because of the Jays hitting coaches (though I think that's a cause), but because of course he figures it out after leaving.

It's definitely true, and it would not make sense to replace Atkins right before the deadline, but it is incredibly unfortunate that the guy that may certainly be fired at the end of the season is the one who will handle major decisions at the deadline that will have strong role in shaping the teams future. If the Jays manage to win even a couple more games than they lose and are still within spitting distance it is of concern that Atkins may be motivated to save his ass. Even if he's not, the idea here is that he's done a poor enough job that he's going to get canned and nonetheless we're stuck with him making these decisions. Unfortunate for the next GM as well.

Having glanced at Vlad's statcast page every couple of weeks to see how it's going, it's now at maybe it's most ridiculous point. His statcast page says he's really expected to hit as well as Freddie Freeman or Bryce Harper, which we know he is not and his launch angle sweet spot percentage is the likely culprit which we also know. https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/savant-player/vladimir-guerrero-jr-665489?stats=statcast-r-hitting-mlb But it still really is something to look at that page and see all that bright red. Somewhere inside Vladdy is a HOF hitter being wasted because of a single adjustment he can't seem to make. He has to be one of the most anomalous hitters of all time. Honestly his statcast page seems to show that if he was just marginally able to fix the launch angle he'd be Juan Soto who is like Vladdy has great numbers across the board but is middling with the launch angle (whereas Vladdy is in the bottom quarter).

Ok well I think it's possible the ship has sunk now.We may as well move towards salvaging what's possible and getting value for the pieces we have. 35-43 is bad, the run differential they're running backs it up. The starting pitching is worse than last year, the relievers have been even worse than that and we were only going to survive if it those parts had stayed great.

The demise of the Braves offense was a little premature apparently. Riley has bounced back, Albies has as well, Murphy has started to come around. If Schwellenbach is decent, their rotation is still one of the best in the league even without Strider.

Yeah I think you're both right. Maybe I just recall the expectations being stratospheric when he came over and he was really electric his second season. On the whole it's not a career you can be disappointed in when you finish as a Cy Young runner up on more than one occasion.

Darvish is making a rehab start today. Padres definitely need him back to keep up in that 9 team race for two WC spots. Was looking at Darvish's career numbers, and I wonder if you guys would consider his career disappointing relative to his expectations/talent? He has 32 career WAR, which is a very good career, but I think I figured he'd had been elite for longer or more consistently than he wound up being.

Yeah just does not make much too much sense to hate on Atkins FA signings. Really the only one I think everyone can agree on disliking cause it just didn't make any sense is KK. When you luck into a 4 WAR season by a 33 year old, the thing to not do is see if you'll get lucky again. Especially when you already have an elite CF on your roster. That was 10 million that could have been used elsewhere.

Goldschmidt is at 61.8 bWAR, 7 more than his fWAR numbers and I think people tend to grant players after their career whichever number is higher. Once you're in the 60s these days I think you've got a real strong candidacy. He's got 4 GGs and 5 Silver Sluggers along with an MVP and three other top three MVP finishes. 45 bWAR for his 7 year peak, he was not an accumulator he was incredibly elite at peak. So I think he's going to get in eventually. Arenado is more borderline, he needs like two or three more decent seasons to hit 60 WAR. Harper has a surprisingly low peak, because he's had one true peak season two elite seasons, one injury shortened one that could have been great, and outside of that a bunch of very good but not great seasons. This one should add to his peak totals. But he may accumulate enough good seasons to add up. Judge is opposite of Harper, just an incredible peak at this point, it makes no difference how late he started his 7 year peak will better than most HOF players.

That's amazing and just hilariously transparent.

I think I've got a hard time believing that Kasevich who has shown less than 0.100 ISO every single year in the minors succeeding. He doesn't seem to have shown enough speed that he's going to extend singles into doubles either, his walk rate was decent but is lower this year. I don't know if a Nick Madrigal profile is going to make it. Jimenez I can actually see potentially succeeding. Roden has some really strong splits, so he's a platoon guy I think.

The MLB age curve after 32 or so is harsh enough that you really don't know when the bottom is suddenly going to completely drop out for a guys ability to swing the bat. I think maybe a bit less so for pitcher? But you lose your eye at the plate, or your swing speed etc. and suddenly its over. A decent number of guys still managing to hit at those ages, but for sure you don't know when it will crash. Goldschmidt isn't at Abreu levels but he's dropped off entirely now after a huge decline last year. Springer's had the two years of huge declines. Rizzo as well.