Yesterday, I identified and discussed the hitters who have increased their FB% by at least 10% compared to last season. That’s a good thing for the hitters’ home run potential, assuming all their other metrics remain stable. Today, we’ll look at the decliners, those hitters whose FB% marks have fallen the most versus last season. While this might raise their BABIP expectations, it’s bad news for their home run potential, unless their FB% reverts back to previous levels.
Read the rest of this entry »
We have a 12 game slate on DraftKings for Tuesday! Don’t forget to check your lineups before lock. Read the rest of this entry »
The 2020 version of Bullpen Report includes six different sections, as well as the closer chart, which can be found at the bottom of the page.
The “RosterResource” link will take you to the corresponding team’s RosterResource depth chart, which will give you a better picture of the full bullpen and results of the previous six days (pitch count, save, hold, win, loss, blown save.)
Angels
• A simplified swing may have rejuvenated Max Stassi’s career.
“I feel a lot better after my hip surgery I had in the fall,” Stassi said. “My routine is totally different. Mindset, gameplan, everything is a lot better. Obviously, a lot more confidence.” Stassi had previous experience with assistant hitting coach John Mallee from their time together with the Astros and said he worked hard with fellow hitting coaches Jeremy Reed and Paul Sorrento to simplify his swing. “The short version would be I’m hunched over a little more over the plate,” Stassi said. “Kind of a posture thing, so I’m able to get into my back hip and keep my posture level, versus getting too uphill. My lead arm is now down, so I can work directly towards the ball. And then, I’m just trying to rotate as much as I can.”
“I feel a lot better after my hip surgery I had in the fall,” Stassi said. “My routine is totally different. Mindset, gameplan, everything is a lot better. Obviously, a lot more confidence.”
Stassi had previous experience with assistant hitting coach John Mallee from their time together with the Astros and said he worked hard with fellow hitting coaches Jeremy Reed and Paul Sorrento to simplify his swing.
“The short version would be I’m hunched over a little more over the plate,” Stassi said. “Kind of a posture thing, so I’m able to get into my back hip and keep my posture level, versus getting too uphill. My lead arm is now down, so I can work directly towards the ball. And then, I’m just trying to rotate as much as I can.”
The big improvement so far with Stassi is his contact rate jumping from 68% to 75%. The improvement has helped halve his strikeout rate from 33% to 16% and improve everything else. For his career, he has a .640 OPS but it is up to 1.096 this season. Read the rest of this entry »
It’s easy to dismiss Randy Dobnak, to turn him into a punchline. When 99.99% of baseball fans were introduced to Dobby last fall, they learned two things:
That’s just enough, but also plenty, to undercut a grown man’s legitimacy. It’s this very illegitimizing, I hypothesize, that has allowed Dobnak to fly under fantasy radars, even as he demonstrates nonzero aptitude on the mound.
Besides earning more playing time, there are only three skills-based methods to hitting more home runs — striking out less frequently, which means more balls put into play, hitting more fly balls, which means more chances for a batted ball to jump over the wall, and hitting a higher rate of those fly balls over the wall, which is represented by HR/FB rate. Of the three, the middle skill of hitting more fly balls is possibly the ideal skill you want to see from your early season home run surge. That’s because batted ball type distribution is more of an approach or decision by the hitter rather than an actual improvement in talent. We need a much larger sample to determine if talent has changed, but a hitter could seemingly wake up one day and decide he wants to uppercut the ball more in an effort to hit for more power. You can’t decide to strike out less or hit more fly balls over the well, though I’m sure all hitters wish they could!
We have a 9 game slate on DraftKings for Monday! Don’t forget to check your lineups before lock.
2020 in a nutshell:
I…. pic.twitter.com/bhfYqxhq5V — Fabian Ardaya (@FabianArdaya) August 9, 2020
I…. pic.twitter.com/bhfYqxhq5V
— Fabian Ardaya (@FabianArdaya) August 9, 2020