| 8:46 |
: be here in 15
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| 9:00 |
: Super upbeat lyrics of the day! Because… Rankings week.
Feel it come, I don’t know how long Everyday, back and forth, what’s it for? |
| 9:00 |
ghost Eno returns |
| 9:00 |
Think I got a problem down here… |
| 9:00 |
Cathartic experience of the day: Dropping B.J. Upton. I feel like I did when I dropped CJ Wilson last year. |
| 9:00 |
: strange interlude.
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Knuckleballers aren’t like other pitchers, or so the saying goes. Their pitches flutter like butterflies, they pitch at less than max effort, they don’t depend on velocity, and they can pitch into their fifties. All of these things seem true, and yet the more we know about knuckleballers the more they might actually be more like all the other pitchers out there. So when 38-year-old R.A. Dickey has lost some oomph on his seminal pitch, maybe it means something, just like it usually does for other pitchers.
Andrelton Simmons is solid with the glove. He makes all the plays he should. Andrelton Simmons is spectacular. You should see his arm. Really, though, Andrelton Simmons is spectacularly solid.
| 8:46 |
: 15 minutes!
|
| 9:00 |
: lyrics of the day are FRESH (at least for this old man)
Out of control but you’re playing a role Do you think you can go til the 18th hole Or will you flip-flop the day of the championship? Try to go it alone on your own for a bit |
| 9:00 |
Am I in the right place? This is where we talk about baseball and other things, right? |
| 9:00 |
: Sure. Or whatever.
|
| 9:01 |
What does a full season of Prime Anthony Rizzo look like? |
| 9:01 |
: I’d hate to get all gushy about him, but I think he could have more than one .290+/40+ season on his ledger.
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A.J. Ellis wasn’t supposed to make it. At least not according to the A.J. Ellis whom the Los Angeles Dodgers took in the 18th round of the 2003 draft. That Ellis wasn’t planning on a career the major leagues. And yet, here he is, 10 years later with at least one facet of his game considered to be elite, and a regular job on a good team in the big leagues. How he got here — and who helped him along the way — best describes the sort of a player and the man he’s become.
Jed Lowrie has played for three organizations already, despite having accrued little more than two full seasons worth of Major League plate appearances. That might be because the oft-injured 29-year-old has never had so much as 400 plate appearances in a given season since his major league debut in 2008. Through it all, he’s been trying to shake off those injuries and prove himself as a young veteran in the league. Maybe we’re just getting to know the real Jed Lowrie now.
| 8:46 |
: 15!
|
| 9:01 |
: Couldn’t have been older than 10
But to me and my friends The voice on the other end might as well have been God’s 1995, the Division Series Edgar’s up to bat Bottom of the 11th inning Got the whole town listening “Swung on and belted,” the words distorted. “Joey Cora rounds third! Here comes Griffey! The throw to the plate’s not in time! My, oh my, the Mariners win it!” Yes. Fireworks, they lit up ceiling in the Kingdome We had just made history lyrics of the day. should be easy. |
| 9:01 |
dee gordon to transition to 2b? |
| 9:01 |
: Might actually help him make the bigs! He is taking grounders there.
|
| 9:01 |
How much longer until BJ Upton comes around? |
| 9:02 |
: in batting average leagues, never, not in that cat at least. But I think he’ll hit homers and steal bases eventually.
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“I’m not a tremendously gifted athlete,” Mark Trumbo said. “I have to work at it, and be smart out there.” That might be surprising given how country strong the six-foot-four, 225-pound outfielder looks, but if you consider his game at as a whole, it’s obvious that there are aspects that could use refinement. Statistics have helped shape some of his baseball values as he’s worked to improve himself, even if he doesn’t incorporate them daily.
Sliders have platoon splits. The traditional slider does, at least. So opposite-handed hitters are always a struggle for the fastball/slider reliever.
That’s not really the case for Luke Gregerson. Though the throws his slider more often, percentage-wise, than anybody in baseball not named Sergio Romo, Gregerson has avoided platoon splits over his career for the most part. The right-hander has struck out 24.6% of lefties, and 25.2% of righties. He walks a few more lefties (9.6% vs 6.3%), but that’s not the profile of a guy who can only get righties out. How does he do it?
Luke Gregerson has three sliders.
| 8:46 |
: Here in 15!
|
| 9:01 |
: okay!
|
| 9:01 |
: looking for lyrics real fast!
|
| 9:02 |
: Now that I’ve realized how it’s all gone wrong
Got to find some therapy, this treatment takes too long Deep in the heart of where sympathy held sway Got to find my destiny before it gets too late in honor of not having slept much in the last day |
| 9:03 |
Do you think Wheeler is going to be better than Harvey? |
| 9:04 |
: I don’t think so but I don’t know. Also has control issues, but for some reason that hasn’t plagued Harvey in the bigs. If your stuff is good enough, you can get batters to reach and turn balls into strikes. Wheeler has legit stuff. Hard to imagine being better than Harvey right now.
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When we, as fans, use anecdotal evidence in our quest for baseball truths, we often over-emphasize iconic moments. Our sample degrades into big moments we can remember. So we turn to data to give us an unbiased look at the facts. But when a hitter evaluates himself and his swing, he usually turns to his memory for help. And though that evidence is anecdotal as well, the sample is huge — that hitter spends most of his time thinking about hitting, and all of his time being himself.
So it’s no surprise that Chase Headley knows best why Chase Headley showed more power in 2012. And that the slugger has had a complicated history when it comes to using data.
| 12:13 |
: Okay. Let’s try again!
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| 12:14 |
Yes?? |
| 12:14 |
: I hope so.
|
| 12:14 |
YOU SAVED US! |
| 12:14 |
: maybe.
|
| 12:14 |
Fuck it we’ll CoverItLive! |
The ranking might change day-by-day, Jarrod Parker said, but he agreed: “Overall I would say the fastball and changeup are my two better pitches.” And that changeup is special — he threw it more than any secondary pitch last year, it was his best-rated pitch, and a big part of why he had the 21st-best swinging strike rate among qualified starters. It wasn’t always that way, though. Coming out of high school, Parker was a fastball/curve guy. So what happened?
“I got hurt and didn’t want to throw as many breaking pitches, so I started working on a changeup.”
Most of the time, pictures do more justice than talking. So when Jason Castro said a few words about catcher framing, I immediately wanted to run to a computer to look at what he was talking about. Maybe next time we’ll take a look at some video together and tease out what he meant a little further. But this time, just a few words were worth a lot of thinking, and the pictures filled in the blanks.
Sometimes, a little comment can send you down a wormhole. Brandon Crawford is a glovely young man, and we talked about platoon splits — he doesn’t remember having trouble with lefties in the minors — and a few other topics, but it was one thing he said about his defense that popped.
Jhoulys Chacin hasn’t thrown a curve ball yet this season. Don’t think he hasn’t noticed. “That was my strikeout pitch,” he said, while agreeing he hasn’t thrown it. But he used it more before the four-man rotation, before the team decided to emphasize ground balls, before he injured his pectoral muscle, and before he learned the benefits of contact. This year, he hasn’t thrown a curve ball.
Lucas Duda has made some changes. Though you’ll recognize the syntax from our look at Domonic Brown and his swing changes, Duda’s changes are more subtle. You might not even see them the first time around. But look a little closer — or, earlier — and you might notice a difference in approach. Maybe it’ll allow the big guy to tap into his power better this year.
Sean Doolittle is a lefty and throws one pitch 87% of the time. Even without knowing his back story — he was a first base prospect that couldn’t stay healthy on the field, and pitching was his chance to “activate his insurance plan” as he put it — you’d be forgiven for throwing the dreaded “LOOGY” moniker on him. First basemen aren’t generally known for their arms, he can’t have a great breaking ball with so little experience pitching, and he’s a lefty with one pitch. He must be there to get lefties out.
But no, Doolittle is not a LOOGY, and he talked to me a little about how he makes that one pitch work for him.
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