sliderguy35

all good, I see where the misunderstanding was now. although it looks like i was gassing up kyle freeland in that post so maybe I should have tried to pass that one off as AI.... (i lowkey still believe, just get him out of colorado)

i've never used AI to generate anything i've posted and certainly didn't make a post stating anything like that i'd hope you're just mistaking me for someone else, otherwise that's super weird & lame to just lie about someone else for something that's so easily disproven

AL: Division Winners - TOR / KCR / SEA Wild Cards - TEX / NYY / BAL NL: Division Winners - NYM / CHC / LAD Wild Cards - MIL / MIA / SDP AL MVP: Bobby Witt - (Dark Horse: Corey Seager) NL MVP: Shohei Ohtani - (Dark Horse: Corbin Carroll) AL CY: Cole Ragans - (Dark Horse: Kyle Bradish) NL CY: Jesus Luzardo - (Dark Horse: Eury Perez) AL ROY: Kazuma Okamoto (Dark Horse: Colt Emerson) NL ROY: Owen Caissie (Dark Horse: Ryan Waldschmidt)

the IVB comes from the axis the ball is spinning on. All these guys are carry fastball types who are used to keeping their hand behind the ball and spinning it efficiently on an axis between 12:00 and 1:00 on a clock face, so they end up doing the same thing with their changeups. in order to create depth on a changeup, you need to have the ball spinning somewhat sideways at an axis of 2:00 or below on a clock face. there are 3 ways to achieve this: the old fashioned way of pronating through it. if you take your right hand, face your palm down, and then try turning your hand to point your thumb down, that's pronating through the baseball. by getting to the "inside" of it, you're brute forcing the side-spin (see: devin williams, logan henderson or ryan pepiot). it used to be the only way the changeup was taught, but now it's a lot more rare since we know that some guys just cant get their hand into that position and also throw hard. based on cease's high arm slot and spin efficiencies, he's not really a candidate for this. use seam shifted wake to get the air pressure around the ball to shift the axis of the ball down mid-flight. by positioning the seams of the ball correctly when you release, the ball's axis naturally gets pushed down past that 2:00 range, giving it late movement (this is what skubal's changeup does). caveat here being that you need to spin the ball with a certain level of efficiency (usually 70-85%) or else the air pressure won't catch properly and you'll have a floating duck of a changeup. cease and skubal are actually nearly identical in terms of release height / arm angle / spin efficiencies, so I was hoping this was the route they would try to implement. use your fingers to manually kick the axis down past 2:00. this is the "kick-change" that everyone is picking up recently. by spiking the middle finger, it forces the axis of the ball down at release to the correct range to get depth. it's an awkward grip to hold but it doesn't really require any additional finger / wrist dexterity at release to do and can be used at basically any arm slot, which is why it's caught on like wildfire. ultimately i figured this would be where the jays landed since it's the new / trendy way to go about teaching a changeup. instead it doesn't look like cease's changeup is trying to do any of the 3 things above, he's pretty clearly holding some kind of stock changeup grip & spinning it on the same axis as his fastball, which is why it's carrying so much. maybe he couldn't really get the feel of seam shifting it & the kick grip was really uncomfortable in his hand? or maybe the jays really do like this carry changeup shape for some reason & think it's good enough as a 5-10% usage pitch as is.

i kinda don't know what to make of the changeup. high vert changeups like that used to be much more common but stuff models hate them because of a lack of separation from the fastball so they're slowly being phased out. 4% of changeups had 15+ inches of IVB in 2021, that was down to 1% in 2025. but, when i pulled the performance of these high vert changeups (also with the caveat of filtering for 75+ mph to filter out any position players pitching) over the last 5 years, their effectiveness has skyrocketed over the last 2 years. run value & whiff rate are up, barrels are down. (see below) this could just be survivorship bias as the ineffective vert-y changeups get filtered out of the game & only the guys who succeeded with it in the minors are left. or the jays think that there's something to this pitch shape that stuff models aren't capturing? i'm not sure, but it'll be interesting to follow moving forward

all good big dog, i was just messing with you a bit hahaha

his K% in the spring is 24% which is above average for a starter (league average last year for starters was just below 22%) and his overall swinging strike rate is 13.6% which is about 2% higher than the league average starter last year. K/9 is a pretty flawed stat & isn't a great measure of performance. since you're taking strikeouts as a % of outs instead of a % of batters faced, it ignores any hits or walks that are given up. that leads to weird situations like cristopher sanchez & charlie morton having identical K/9s last year, despite the fact that sanchez had a K% that was 4% higher. there isn't really a reason to use K/9 over K% unless you're specifically trying to figure out what % of outs made were strikeouts.

my gut tells me they'll try and sneak bastardo on as the last bullpen guy for the requisite 90 days (because they stashed him last year, it's only 90 days this year) if they can. he hasn't really shown a feel for location but he's younger & the stuff is good enough to play at least. miles' stuff isn't as good and they'd have to hold him for the whole year to keep him, IMO there's no way he sticks. arden's tweet about them wanting a guy who can fill multiple innings for the last slot in the pen makes me think that they're going with seabold for one of the spots & then deciding whether its worth it to consume fisher's last option to keep nance. seabold's been a bulk guy who's started games in the minors the last few years & he's looked legitimately good this spring

not only that, a navy seal who: his entire grift is telling people that he was the one who killed bin laden (despite the fact that nobody in the military is willing to confirm it) has a DUI and an assault conviction told a bunch of kamala voters online that "if there was no social media, they would be his concubines" not a great look for ol' DeRo

lukes has an option, sanchez doesn't. it's almost a guarantee that lukes will start the season in buffalo. otherwise it looks right to me

"Ryan Braun is a f---ing steroid user. He gets a standing ovation on Opening Day in Milwaukee. How do you explain that to your kid after throwing people under the bus and lying through his f---ing teeth?"

also: buy any and all connor seabold stock available right now. this spring, he is currently: throwing all his pitches 2-3 ticks harder throwing his fastball with nearly 4 additional inches of vertical movement from a below average release height adding velocity usually lowers vertical break, so gaining both is fantastic his changeup is averaging 17 inches of vertical break separation from his fastball (he averaged 20 today) 10 inches of separation is considered good striking out close to 40% of hitters with a swinging strike rate over 20% his swinging strike rate is 7th among all pitchers who've thrown at least 100 pitches this spring the command looks a bit rocky but he'd be a legit bullpen arm with even a below average walk rate. a really great find for the org.

fun brendon little stat: last year he had a walk rate of 12.9% after starting the count 0-1. Out of the 1424 pitchers with at least 30 IP over the last 5 seasons, that is the highest walk rate on record, and what's crazier is that none of the other 1423 is even above 12% last year, 87% of ALL SWINGS against Little ended in a whiff, a foul ball, or an in-play ground ball. hitters realized by mid-season that swinging was just a -EV option against him so they adapted and basically gave up on swinging altogether. from july 1 onwards, he had the lowest swing rate in MLB by more than 2% and he just couldn't adapt. he also had the lowest zone rate in baseball by almost 5%(!) it didn't really matter what pitch he came to camp with this year, he just needed something he could zone consistently enough to punish hitters from being /too/ passive. when he was awesome in the 1st half last year, he was still in the bottom 10 in swing rate, it's always going to be a part of his profile. he just needs to be able to entice hitters enough to up their swing rate to reasonable levels again. the 4 seam makes the most sense to accomplish that goal, even if it's below average shape wise b/c it's usually the easiest pitch for guys to zone consistently. the added velocity is nice since gives him a bit of margin for error in the zone, but ultimately it doesn't really change anything if he can't prove that he can zone it half the time.

whether you think batting average is king or are building a machine learning model to calculate swing acceleration at the point of contact at the end of the day, were all just emotional, delusional sports fans

what a dick punch that game was gave it away with the toro error and utter incompetence with RISP the DR better wax these losers

eric lauer DFA'd by the all-star break connor seabold will be this year's braydon fisher, throwing high leverage relief innings by midseason vlad will walk more than he strikes out & steal at least 10 bases max scherzer hits all of his contract incentives (throws at least 155 innings) nathan lukes: san diego padre the tigers don't trade skubal, but still miss the playoffs AL: Division Winners - TOR / KCR / SEA Wild Cards - TEX / NYY / BAL NL: Division Winners - NYM / CHC / LAD Wild Cards - MIL / MIA / SDP i wanted to be more in on the dbacks or the braves but they just seem like they cannot pitch

have another drink lahey

gah if the jays go into this season with ponce throwing 40%+ fastball, im going to lose my mind. they either need to move it to an even usage split with the cutter or just add some kind of sinker (that every right handed pitcher in baseball seems to be adding this off-season), or his fastball is going to get rocked around the yard. all of his other pitches are complimented by his release height and velocity, they shouldn't be throwing the clear worst pitch he has more than twice as often as the others!!!

the babip gods decide to favour soroka as retribution for the aftermath of the olympic gold medal game. logan webb for his career is significantly worse against lefties on the road mark derosa managerial f***-up 2.0? idk it's looking bleak fellas

despite the best efforts of ernie whitt, WERE HEADED TO THE QUARTERS BABY

this is the worst f***in baseball game ive ever seen in my life, i love it

fangraphs has had him as a 55FV guy for the last little while, even though he's probably not going to come over to MLB. from the report, he's not going to overwhelm them stuff wise, but is a ++ command guy. we'll see how it goes

1st from pool B would play 2nd from pool A and vice versa. so the winner and loser of Mexico/Italy tonight would play either PR / Canada / Cuba, not exactly a murderer's row. Personally, I don't really see an incentive to finish first or second in their pool unless they really like their matchup vs PR and hate it against canada / cuba for whatever reason

anyone else remember when the mets and braves played a double header on the last day of the season a few years ago? game 1 was one of the most insane baseball games i've ever watched, and then the mets phoned it in in game 2 since they had already clinched and the d-backs got eliminated because of it. i know that italy technically hasn't clinched yet, but hoping for a similar performance tonight from their group to get those team usa losers outta here

pedro garcia, you are a friend and hero to canadians everywhere