Angels GM Perry Minasian did minor additions at the trade deadline rather than making moves for the future. The goal, he said, was to have the team play meaningful games down the stretch. Since the deadline, the Angels have gone a woeful 9 and 15.
Thankfully 3 of those wins came in a second series sweep of the Dodgers. Yes, the Angels went 6 and 0 against the Dodgers this year. But that sweep is the only series win of the month and is counterbalanced by a home sweep against the Cubs.
In a game dominated by numbers, the team is still playing meaningful games in many ways. The standings simply are not one of them, unless staying out of last place holds value to you.
With 29 games left on the season, the Angels have all but clinched the #1 spot for most strikeouts in the league. And it there’s still an opportunity to end up with the worst on base percentage. Unlikely, but with our bottom third of the order, not impossible. Finishing worse than the White Sox in and of itself would be quite an accomplishment.
Can the Angels crack the top 25 all time K list as a team? Yes. The question is how high can they climb.
The Angels currently strikeout at a rate of 9.8 per game, which would tally 1588 on the year. That tally would place the Angels 8th all time. At their current rate, they should displace the 25th ranked 2018 Phillies with a week so spare. Of course, more starts by Kavadas, Moore, and Peraza could accelerate both timelines.
In better news, Jose Soriano was an absolute stud this week. His outing on Monday was as good as we’ve seen him.
Taylor Ward and Jo Adell are mashing home runs. They became the first set of Angels teammates to notch 30 home runs seasons since some guys named Trout and Ohtani. Taylor Ward is also the first player to 30 home runs and 30 doubles on the year. The kid is slugging.
For Adell, he notched his 30th dinger under the eyes of his mentor, one of my all time favorite players Torii Hunter. I could go with either player for the Highlight of the Week, but the best clip I saw on the twitterverse was Adell’s. So here it is.
With the MLB team scuffling, the best thing to do is look at the farm. And there’s some good news there.
Mitch Farris had himself a great outing and leads all Angels farmhands in strikeouts this season. He was a bit of an afterthought this off season, but is showing plenty of swing and miss stuff.
Meanwhile, a couple of levels below Farris, Angels hurler Dylan Jordan needs some shine.
Dylan Jordan is getting some love from Baseball America. The 5th round pick in last summer’s draft was promoted to the Cal League at the end of July and went on a tear. In 20.2 innings he’s allowed a slash line of .188/.269/.217 and a very nice 1.31 ERA. Control is often an issue for youngsters, but the 19 year old has notched 22 K’s against 6 walks since his promotion.
Continuing with the theme of links to Taylor Blake Ward, check out this one on Nelson Rada.
And I’ll give you one last TBW tweet just because I really like this kid and appreciate TBW. It isn’t hard to dream on Trey Gregory-Alford. He just has that look about him and the stuff backs it up. He’s a long way off, but just look at the kid and the stuff.
From around baseball:
Giancarlo Stanton is crushing baseballs again. Is he back back?
Cal Raleigh has set a record and evened the MVP race.
Cal’s competition for the hardware is Yankees slugger Aaron Judge. The Yanks demolished the Nationals this week, including a 15 hitter, 41 minute half inning.
The Mets and Phillies played a huge series this week. New York swept the Phils largely thanks to a masterful performance by rookie Nolan McLean.
Enjoy your weekend and link what I missed. Be thankful for the workers who came before us and struggled for the 40 hour work week, pensions, and health benefits we are losing by the day. I’m not sure exactly what I’ll do but it will involve my family.
Why is Kavadas on the roster? Hes not going to be productive against ML pitching.
Give Rada a chance instead.
Kavadas plays first base. Schanuel is hurt.
Plus dude is helping with the all time K ranking. Me might add 100 by himself this month.
Angels should pick up Walker Buehler now as a tryout to see what he has left. He might be an option next year if healthy.
The focus today seems to be on players, some very good players all the way down to not very good players. Some think too many players that are not that good on the Angels and that makes us a below .500 team. Some believe that our coaching at all levels is weak from a lack of coaching fundamentals. The truth imho is both are accurate.
“Analytics” changed the game in ways that we had never expected. Revolutions in pitching to Launch Angles in batting. OBA is today more important than BA, just a half dozen players in each league are hitting .300 if even that many. MLB fiddle f-cked with changing the baseball to make sure it fly’s farther than ever and so goes the theory that that will put fannies in the seats. Guess what – it works according to attendance numbers.
Coaching at the major league level started in Oakland and now touches every team and their minor league affiliates and independent leagues (Cape Cod as an example.) Take the major leagues, used to be in the past, up until the 1980’s there were past greats coaching at most levels, they were respected for their past accomplishments, and most were very good coaches. Today most coaches and managers have sit down meetings with the GM and the Analytics Dept. to figure out the best way to coach each player on what to do on every pitch type. Some of what is taught today was the same as yesterday, but a lot was not and that is what has changed the game today, well at least 50% of the game anyway.
The other half of the equation is players today are bigger, stronger and throw harder than ever before. I played through Junior College and I never saw a 100+ mph pitch, at least I don’t believe I did as there were no radar guns around then. Today I’m amazed that anyone can hit a ball thrown that hard and you have to believe that hitting one of those or not hitting a 100mph pitch has sure as heck makes a huge dent in how the game is played. How do you coach a kid to hit or bunt that pitch. Pitchers have off speed pitches that in the old days we would say that pitch fell off the table. Today a curve ball will not just curve a few inches, but curve over a foot and fall off the table.
As a MLB fan we knew when the third time threw the line-up that not every game would a starter make it through, but that used to be when the pen was used to come in, heck today the pen even starts games.
Today’s hitters are over matched; today’s .290 hitter is yesterday’s .320 hitter. What is missing is making contact. Now that Homeruns are the way the game is played, we all know that launch angle has a lot to do with the change of not hitting the ball. How is a batter to adjust to a pitch when he is taught to swing back bottom to top to get a HR. You will notice that today’s high strike is missed and when the attempt is made it results in a miss or ground out and does not go through for a hit on the ground. (Unless you are a David Fletcher in his prime)
I’ve just scratched the surface of what changes that bigger, faster, stronger players have changed the game, especially in pitching, but I will add that I believe the pitching plate needs to be taken from 60ft6in to 66ft6in to improve the game. Thanks for reading this, I know it was a long one.
Good stuff. I didn’t know you played through college.
I wonder if the increased velocity and framing intended to trick the ump has made that part of the game worse, or do we know more because of the superimposed box.
The superimposed box isn’t that accurate. It does show when an ump is very very off though.
I was not scouted, but that was where I started out coaching too.
I’m a fan of moving the mound back and for the same reason.
Hitters have less reaction time now than ever. Moving pitchers back a few inches would give them the same reaction times as players 30 years ago.
1. Rada
2. Neto
3. Trout
4. Ward
5. Rendone
6. Adell
7. Schanuel
8. Ohoppe
9. Moore
Potential 2026 lineup? Lol
RenDone will never happen
Let’s hope not.
If he does I will laugh so hard. If he does well I’ll probably choke on my tongue. I have no idea if he can even swing a bat now….
that’s likely a real thing. He’s missed so much time he’s gone past when he would have retired. Same with Trout, actually.
It’s so sad with Trout from both his personal perspective, and from our perspective with him taking a huge chunk of our payroll, while not contributing much at all.
If he doesn’t play next year he will had made more money not playing baseball the next 2 years than Tim salmon did his whole playing career. Ouch
That’s a horrible thing to know.
This year and next
Last night had some disappointing pitching performances from top prospects (Dana, Cortez) but I wanted to call out a very impressive outing from Ubaldo Soto at Fresno. Ubaldo is one of the quartet of young guys who’ve come up since the trade deadline (including TGA, Jordan, Kent) and are making noise.
Soto was regularly touching 96-97 with his FB, which he was commanding high and low. Hadn’t seen that velocity from him earlier in the year (more of a 92-94 guy), and he showed two looks on his curve/SL, one with impressive vertical break that the Fresno batters swung straight through. Counted a dozen whiffs overall between the FB and breaker. K’ed an impressive seven batters across five innings – all the more so because he expended only 60 pitches doing it, inducing a lot of grounders and harmless pop ups along the way.
Athletic 6’2″ (made an excellent fielding play in the third to get a speedy runner out at first), much more filled out than last year. Just turned 19 last month. Eye-opening outing for me – if he can repeat this, it’s a legit starter package, and arguably even more far along than the others at IE.
(No Ethan Holliday in Fresno’s lineup last night, but I continue to be impressed by Roldy Brito – the ACL MVP – at the top of their lineup. Lot of ceiling there.)
Oh…and zero walks – just two hits, and a scoreless outing despite two errors on the infield behind him.
I know Dana is 21 but I’ve stopped expecting him to be helpful. I haven’t given up on him, just that I’m not eagerly anticipating his callup
He doesn’t pass my eye test, but I hope he turns it around and figures out a dominant pitch.
There’s just not much pitching coming to the rescue at A+ and above right now.
They’ve throttled Johnson and Hurtado to manage innings (giving them 1-2 IP in short stints as the season peters out). Cortez, Gordon, Klassen, Urena have all taken steps back and are probably destined for the bullpen, like Silseth and Bachman before them. (Natera Jr, and Southard probably next in line.)
Dana can’t find any rhythm or consistency. Farris and Aldegheri are command lefties that feel more like taxi squad / emergency starter types at present.
Low A and below is where the action is. There’s a killer bullpen to be assembled from internal parts if they can do the jenga puzzle right, but outside of Bremner 18-24 months from now, just not much for the rotation for the next three yrs.
He feels like a 4 or 5.
Yup. Right now he doesn’t even look like he won’t get killed every third start as a 4/5. But he’s young. We have a lab. We’ll see.
I think we can get him to be some back end part of a rotation or at least a replacement piece in case someone gets injured.
Exactly. I’ll worry when he’s 23. For now just let him work on stuff.
Does he work on it in the minors or the majors?
Minors I hope.
Yep. I liked the tools Soto had when we signed him. I like his delivery a fair amount for a young n geeked up pitcher.
Well, when he was signed two years ago, he was sitting 87 with his FB, and looked like this:
https://x.com/BenBadler/status/1614665914678480897
8-10 mph velocity gain in two years, and now he looks like this:
https://twitter.com/SundayHalos/status/1961483430186865104
He landed a changeup low and in to cap the fifth inning that was as advanced as I’ve seen among A ball pitchers on the Angels.
Indeed. I wasn’t worried about sub-90s velo when he was a sprout because clearly he was gonna get bigger. But I like that, other than the hard load up on his back leg, he doesn’t have a weird/violent delivery. Bodes well for repeating pitches when he learns them (as you saw in this game) and not getting wild as easily. Which should mean he can pitch deeper into games etc. We actually signed a couple Latin kids with pretty easy deliveries the last couple years.
That’s awesome.
Today would be a good day to fire Minasian.
Agree 👍
It would be a mistake if Raleigh gets the MVP. He’s hitting .244 with lots of HRs. bWAR gives him a negative defensive rating. fWAR likes his pitch framing. I find pitch framing annoying and embarrassing, where catchers hope to trick umpires into calling strikes. Does Fangraphs have the staff needed to watch every pitch in every game? If not, and I don’t think they do, how can they rate all catchers on this unofficial stat?
If we look at league leaders it’s basically Judge, Judge, Judge, Raleigh, Judge,Judge, Judge.
And I hate the Yankees. Of course, I hate the Mariners, too
But you like Nolan and Perry 🤮
“But you like….Perry”
I do?
I think some of us here would like you to succeed him.
No loss yesterday, so we have that.
We’ll always have Paris…
I mean of course, the first two weeks of Kyren Paris before he turned back into a pumpkin.
I watched that movie again last night. One of my all time favorites. I’ve been battling a cold and somehow a familiar black and white film is just comforting.
One of my faves. And I think it should be ranked higher than that Orson Welles thing….
I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship…
Jeff – thank you for the upbeat article. That takes a lot of time and is clearly a labor of love.
I think it would be interesting to dive a bit deeper into what seems to me a particular lack of contact hitting on this team. The fact that they have hit so many HRs while striking out at a record pace is interesting. Is this coaching or the product of a social media driven “highlight reel” society? A lousy single, sacrifice fly or even moving runners over may not get much social media attention (can you imagine a post JO ADELL MOVES THE RUNNER OVER) but it is how you win with consistency over 162 games.
The long ball is great (particularly with runners on base) but if you have a team full of players swinging for the fences and not focusing on the baseball basics like situational contact hitting to the right side of the infield- then runs will be left on the base paths and winnable games lost. Sure a home run focused hitting team will be steakily good but the lack of contact hitting over 162 games will bring that team back to earth.
If these coaches have not recognized the problem then they are not doing their jobs. But maybe it is coming from the top of the Org since home runs are easier to market than moving the runners over and situational hitting.
I wonder if players using the “torpedo bat” has had an effect?
Are torpedo bats even still a thing?
Cal Raleigh and his 50 HRs love the bat.
That’s it! Let’s fire torpedo bats!
That’s not the intent. Just wondering if there’s been any research on the impact the bat has had for the players using it.
I understood your intent.
Still, we can fire them right?
Torpedos are made to be fired.
Pretty much every team on that top 25 list is from the last decade.
The “good” teams when it comes to K’s would be bottom of the league in previous eras.
Why are the Angels so bad at this? Probably an overall lack of talent.
Would Newman and Rengifo get starter level at bats on a good tempo? Would Moore be at the MLB level on a good team? Teodosio?
“ Why are the Angels so bad at this? Probably an overall lack of talent.”
I don’t disagree but can’t coaches augment the approach at the plate? Maybe it’s harder to do in this era of superstar attitude, but if the coaching is telling then to “swing away” rather than working on fundamentals that is a problem.
I remember going out to batting practice a few times in the late 90s and early 2000s and watching Salmon and Anderson and Erstad using at least half of their swings to practice ground balls to the right side.
They would also swing for the fences but were coached to also do the small things too. As I think on it more, I gain a greater appreciation for Sosh and his coaches.
Quite likely.
I read a theory that boils down to: now that guys are throwing harder than ever with more spin than ever and being replaced in games faster than ever it is more difficult to sustain long rallies. So guys are swinging for the fences more often and coaches/organizations are fine with it.
Not sure if I agree with that totally, but it makes some sense.
I think a big issue with the Angels in particular is that our big bats, Trout and Ward, strike out a ton. The only way to mitigate this is to get other guys with high OBP, which the Angels do not.
So we have stars who K a ton and then sub replacement players who K a ton. Really a bad combination.
Yes, the organization needs to go back to teaching a 2 strike approach and using the entire field. But it needs actual talent (like the 3 you mentioned) to pull it off.
Charlie Lau turned George Brett into. HOF. They can help. Our guys offer less than nothing, they confuse.
Sure. All we need is a pile of George Bretts and a Charlie Lau. Easy. Hell, I’d settle for one Steven Kwan and a video detailing what our hitting coaches actually do so you can stop making shit up.
There it is, that’s what we need, a pile of George Bretts!
And lots of pine tar.
I’m trying to illustrate the point that sometimes a good coach can unlock a player to reach whatever maximum level they have. I think if we had a decent hitting coach we could get some of them to be better as time goes on. We have seen progress with Jo Adell and Taylor Ward. Neto keep improving.
It’s crappy hitters. The AL West isn’t even close to being the top pitching division.
It’s really hard to avoid the old man “get off my lawn” type of statements with this. When you compare these guys to teams of the past they are clearly selfish hitters with a me first approach, but then again the standards have changed. Ward and Adell will both cash in big paydays because they have good power numbers but still I question how much they help to create wins. Neither are defensive standouts or do the little things well.
I agree with Jeff that a overall lack of talent is the biggest difference.
Super good insight about the “get off my lawn” feeling of this subject. The reality is that as much as baseball has arguably changed, it really does remain the same game particularly over a 162 game season. Teams that do the little things well and create runs win games with more consistency. I understand that this is a selfish era for athletes, but I do think coaches matter in this regard. You’ve gotta get in the heads of these players and get them to buy into the concept of giving up at bats for the good of the team if they want to win games and get to the playoffs. It is a team sport not an individual one.
Agreed, I think the Brewers are a good case study. Very solid Manager that got his team to buy in.
For all of our fandom complaints, me included. Sosh did always seem to get more wins out of his teams than the raw numbers would have suggested. Especially in 2014.
The K’s are definitely my “get off my lawn” subject. My age still starts with a 4 (barely) but I highly doubt I fall in love with this game the way I did with the game of the late 80s.
Strikeouts are fascist!!
😂
Much like the “Speak Truth to Power FO” I have yet to see this hitting coach who actually gets this to happen across a large pile of hitters.
Pedro mentioned below. The Brewers. I think they at least manage to find hitters who are likely to play this way…. partially because they are cheap. I doubt that the hitting coaches transformed many of them at the MLB level.
We all need to root for the Brewers. If they win a WS I guarantee more players will get the bug for situational hitting.
The Reds have a similar offensive approach. I really enjoy watching their games too.
But you have seen a speak-truth-to-power FO – Dipoto was that. Angels fans just block that out because office disloyalty mumble mumble mumble.
Cherington also played a similar role in Boston – tussling with ownership while building the young core who’d drive their 2018 championship after his exit. Frankly a lot of these stories as analytics driven FOs dragged recalcitrant owners into the new era. Cherington still tussles in Pittsburgh while building an enviable pitching factory on the cheap.
So not sure about this doubling down on the point – maybe looking to be the voice of schleppy middle managers trod underfoot who play the quiet game? But it just seems DOA even given only local evidence, whatever office flacks say over drinks.
The last time the Angels had multiple winning seasons was under a truth-to-power GM, and the subsequent word salad types that please an imperious and emotionally brittle Moreno have presided over a whole lot of mediocrity. Keep the faith and mumble on, Arte boys.
Yeeeeaaaahhh… sort of. He got in a Piggy fight with Soth. Then he “spoke truth” by quitting…. I guess?
I am with you, I think he’s a good GM. Or WETF they call him now.
But you’re blocking out a whole lot of cope and seethe from JerJer when it comes to his stint with the Marinas. He has made plenty of “oh yeah, this is awesome. Totally what I had planned.” statements while looking down the barrel of some bad directives from his overlords.
I just don’t see that guy who goes into the owner’s office and “sets him strait” or what ever fantasy we have on this site ever actually happening.
JerJer has gotten where he is, which is still actually the nice part of nowhere, by accepting the limitations of his owners and those owners mostly staying out of his way otherwise. Which is about all we can hope for.
For example. He made the famous 54% comment. After smiling through cutbacks in 2022 and 23 and a sell off in 2020. Then he still smiled and meekly traded contracts in 2024.
FO personnel…. that’s about as ballsy as they get.
The ways in which our modern society dishes out economic rewards, has made anyone who depends on “entertaining” to earn a living into knee-jerk responders to our Internet overlords. They know their careers will be short and completely buy into the YOLO philosophy. It ain’t just baseball suffering this syndrome. And, yeah, get off my lawn!
I am curious. I actually prefer a hitter that walks some, hits .280, but sticks me with only 20 HR. What’s more, I bet that guys WAR is pretty high if his defense is OK. Example, Neto has mid-defense and isn’t even hitting .280. He’d likely be a six WAR player if he did.
I’ve wished Trout would do this, even when he was TROUT. He could have hit .340 with “just” 30 HR when he was younger.
Turks and I have both looked at a lot of prospects that are available for the meh talent we have to trade. You know which 50 Grade prospects fall into the value area we can get? Guys with only a 45-50 grade on their power. But is basically having an OF with three Garret Andersons in it a bad thing?
At some point is some GM gonna get smart and start collecting these less powerful players? Especially because they will cost less?
It depends on their off season moves, but Arizona may be that team. They may be looking at a line up next year with middling power but six guys with OBPs over .350…. and solid pitching if healthy. So we’ll see how that works.
But a team full of Nolan Schanuel, Geraldo Perdomo, TJ Freidl, Ryan O’Hearn, Sal Frelick and Gleyber Torres…. it may not be sexy, you may need a couple thumpers like Adell, but it can do a lot of what we wish would happen.
Again, it would be awesome if we drafted guys like Jack Quinn Irons to try to get this way, or traded for #11 prospects from teams that have that kid blocked by “super prospect”. But then we wouldn’t be all in for one sweep per year and meaningfulness.
It still get’s back to the fact that there’s no clock but each team gets 27 outs. If you have guys that make lot’s of outs with low OBAs, like we do, then you have fewer opportunities to score runs. The HRs are great, we just make too many outs so we run out of chances. We also rarely walk and swing at a lot of bad pitches. I don’t know the answer but that stuff needs to be addressed in order for the team to be more successful. But I think that both you and Jeff hit the nail on the head regarding needing better players as opposed to better coaching. Better coaching and managing would help, but not so much with our current talent.
Shanny is our guy who is that kind of hitter.
Yup. Hopefully he gets even better.
Occam’s Razor. the principle that in explaining a thing no more assumptions should be made than are necessary.
It’s pretty simple. The hitters do not make consistent solid contact, especially to all fields because THE HITTERS do not make consistent solid contact, especially to all fields.
It’s very unlikely that that any team has coaches or managers or owners that are telling an entire roster, or even say four players, “Screw contact, swing for the fences fella!”. The idea that a guy from marketing would come down and tell coaches and players to do this for the Tik Tok reel and the players and coaches would be OK with it is hilarious.
On top of that, we know that the #1 issue that almost all prospects have all the way through the minor leagues and the MLB level isn’t lack of power. They know they have it or don’t by age 20 generally. It is “Will prospect @@##$$ make enough contact to “get to” his power? Does he have “in game” power against real pitching?”. The general wisdom is that if a player is fairly strong and focuses on making quality contact as often as possible the SLG stats will come along for the ride. This is why I have semi-high hopes for Nolan down the line. Hitting coaches are likely pushing this, but how do you make a player do it?
I think pitching is just harder to hit, and hitters are harder to coach, and hitters generally want to hit home runs…. the junk food of hitting. Dingers = fame = money. Bending 15 guys away from this while a season goes on is impossible.
It’s the same issue as bunting. By the time I was a marginally scouted senior in high school it was very hard to bunt against me. You didn’t “just lay down a bunt!”, much less a bunt to a particular side of the field. There were a half dozen things I did to stop you, including throwing at you if you came around early to get set up sooner. I have to imagine MLB pitchers are infinitely harder to bunt on and the fielders are better, which is why it’s a low percentage play. But CtPG Guy still bitches about it like it’s “just laying down a bunt” because they saw a gap on the left side.
Hitters can’t hit because hitters can’t hit and generally won’t learn to hit. It’s like they completely ignore that the HUGE contract hitters like Judge, Ohtani, Soto, Seager, Guerrero and Tucker this year all have OBPs over .370. They walk. They make a lot of good contact. Home run numbers are just a bi-product of pitchers having to throw them strikes and their hitting them solid.
There is no secret hidden evil here. No toady to focus your ire upon. No manager who is sthooooogh stoopidth. It’s baseball players. A lot of them kinda suck.
Lawd I miss guys like Paul Molitor and Rickey Henderson. Hell, I’d take some prime Willie McGee….
Amen to some prime Willie McGee!
I have 1 baseball from a game, and he’s the guy who fouled it off.
Pitched by Doc Gooden too.
No doubt Angels are horrific when it comes to Ks. They are Top 5 in HRs. Top 10 in runs scored in the first 5 innings; but, 28th in total run differential. That tells me they could have got away with the Ks if they had descent pitching. Pitching-wise, they are bottom 5 in runs allowed. I’m so done with this team after seeing them bring in 2 position players to pitch the other day.
If we’re going to lean into being the home run team, we could do it more intelligently.
Trout, Ward, and Adell could all crush 25+ bombs in 2026. The jury is out on Soler. Of those only Trout has a good OBP this year but this group is here for power.
So, now, do we roll out guys with high K rates or get some dudes who get on base to flesh out the lineup?
We currently roll out Rengifo’s career OBP of .309 and Moncada’s decent .331. Newman is somehow .300 in his career but was .209 this year.
O’Hoppe and d’Arnaud are .264 and .262 OBP this year, respectively.
Add in the pile of suck from Tim Anderson to Lamont Wade to Scott Kingery and you will see all numbers that start with a 2.
Of this group I’d say Rengifo and Moncada swing for the fences. The rest are simply not good hitters in any way, shape, or form. And no level of coaching will make any other than O’Hoppe and Moncada capable MLB hitters.
Blame modern metrics if you like. The explosion in modern metric measurements has caused all kinds of changes in the game. The metrics tell us that home runs are much more valuable in winning a game than situational hitting. Or at least home runs are much more directly responsible in scoring runs that can lead to winning a game. Metrics such as Run Expectancy, wOBA, Win Probability Added will tell us that home runs, on average, deliver much more value that situational hitting that just moves runners but not score.
Home runs have a wOBA weight of 2.10 while the much loved sacrifice bunt has a negative weight of -0.10.
As much as velocity chasing has changed, and in some cases ruined pitching, the data that shows us to “hit the ball hard somewhere and angle skyward”, has changed hitting.
Obviously there are nuances. The better the pitcher the less likely a team will bash 5 HRs. So a different approach is needed. I expect coaches to have the pitchers analyzed for speed, how pitches break, tendencies per different counts, and so on and communicate that to the players.
No one is being selfish. The coaches are coaching and the players are playing according to what is most likely to win games. Coaches should be responsible for in game adjustments and communication to the players.
There are certainly exceptions to any rule. You don’t necessarily need a team with 5 30HR hitters to win. Balance is nice to have. I really don’t want Schanny to try to hit more home runs. He is fine the way he is. He hits the ball and many times something good happens. I dont’ want him chasing exit velocity. I would like to see Neto tone down his swing a bit.
All in all, I think modern baseball is like modern golf. I think it was Nicklaus that was quoted as saying, and I’ll paraphrase, “There are a lot of good players today. There were more great players in my day”.
Soooo…. what you’re saying is we need to fire Ron Washington and all his coaches, and then fire his replacement and all their coaches mid-season next year, which will scare hitters into bunting more. Which will make me feel heard and seen. Plus it will piss off Arte because he loves Tik Tok. Right? OK.
We will stop this despotic evil from spreading. Resist!
Don’t forget to fire Perry. I heard today is a good day for it.
I say we fire Perry and punch one of his kids in the mouth to show we aren’t taking his shit anymore.
I vote Jason Statham for next GM.
I say Putin. Those fkin FAs WILL SIGN then.