Aaron_Kennelly

hahaha

Please let me see a glorious dong, Kyle.

Uh oh

Nvm... LaStella

Time to dong.

His velocity is up a good amount, coming out of the pen, too.

You think Yadier Molina's career will be understated in the mainstream? Have you not read anything in the mainstream about him? The mainstream loves Yadier Molina!

Might be interesting pretty soon with the Giants playing a crap schedule Sure...

Welp, I'll see you guys in October.

Good start, Hammel.

Well, we have the lead.

So here is some good stuff about Javy. (This comes with an obligatory small sample size warning.) Let's take a look at Javy's batted-ball profile. (last year's stats on top and this year's below): [pre]LD% GB% FB% IFFB% HR/FB IFH% BUH% Pull% Cent% Oppo% Soft% Med% Hard% 13.7 % 41.0 % 45.3 % 20.8 % 17.0 % 8.3 % 0.0 % 48.3 % 31.4 % 20.3 % 18.6 % 50.0 % 31.4 % 24.1 % 41.4 % 34.5 % 10.0 % 10.0 % 0.0 % 0.0 % 34.5 % 34.5 % 31.0 % 10.3 % 62.1 % 27.6 %[/pre] A lot of this stuff doesn't correlate year-to-year and nearly all of it has yet to reach stabilization points. However, it's still nice to see. He's hitting fewer balls softly. His infield fly ball rate is down. He's hitting more line drives. He's spraying the ball to all fields. Here's another really good sign: His contact% is up from 59.0% to 67.1%. So what were Javy's problems last year? Well, basically everything. He had no real approach at the plate. He was susceptible to fastballs above the zone and breaking balls below the zone. He swung at a bunch of junk out of the zone, and pitchers exploited all of his weaknesses to devastating results. His pitch recognition was terrible. He got fooled a lot. Pitchers were able to catch him guessing. He didn't really attack pitches in the zone and do damage with them like you would hope, especially for someone who chased so much junk. And, his two-strike approach was -- well, there wasn't one, other than to swing at essentially everything. So let's see what Javy is doing differently this year. We'll start with two-strike counts. Here's a chart showing Javy's zone profile and his whiffs per swing on two-strike counts last year: [spoil]http://www.brooksbaseball.net/plot_h_profile.php?s_type=2&gFilt=&pFilt=FA%7CSI%7CFC%7CCU%7CSL%7CCS%7CKN%7CCH%7CFS%7CSB&time=month&player=595879&startDate=01/01/2014&endDate=01/01/2015&minmax=ci&var=whiffswing&balls=-1&strikes=2&b_hand=-1[/spoil] Here's the same thing, except for this year: [spoil]http://www.brooksbaseball.net/plot_h_profile.php?s_type=2&gFilt=&pFilt=FA%7CSI%7CFC%7CCU%7CSL%7CCS%7CKN%7CCH%7CFS%7CSB&time=month&player=595879&startDate=01/01/2015&endDate=01/01/2016&minmax=ci&var=whiffswing&balls=-1&strikes=2&b_hand=-1[/spoil]That's 74 whiffs in 173 swings on two-strike counts last year, good for a 57.2% contact rate. This year he has 6 whiffs in 26 swings on two-strike counts, good for a 76.9% contact rate. Ok, that's encouraging. Is there anything else notable that Javy is doing on two-strike counts? What about his balls in play? I'm glad you asked. Here is a spray chart of balls Javy has put in play on two-strike counts this year: [spoil]http://www.brooksbaseball.net/plot_hc_spray.php?s_type=16&gFilt=&time=month&player=595879&startDate=01/01/2015&endDate=01/01/2016&minmax=ci&var=count&balls=-1&strikes=2&b_hand=-1[/spoil]So he's going the other way with fastballs. Nice. Anything else Javy is doing better this year? Well, somewhat surprisingly, Javy struggled with fastballs more than just about anything else last year. According to Fangraphs, his fastball runs above average (wFB) was -10.0 last year. It's 0.6 this year. On at bats ending on four-seam fastballs last year, Javy was 7/70 with 35 strikeouts. This year, he is at 4/12 with 1 strikeout. Ok. Why was he so bad against fastballs last year and what has changed this year? Here is a zone profile showing Javy's whiffs per swing against four-seam fastballs last year: [spoil]http://www.brooksbaseball.net/plot_h_profile.php?s_type=2&gFilt=&pFilt=FA&time=month&player=595879&startDate=01/01/2014&endDate=01/01/2015&minmax=ci&var=whiffswing&balls=-1&strikes=-1&b_hand=-1[/spoil] Here's the same thing, except for this season: [spoil]http://www.brooksbaseball.net/plot_h_profile.php?s_type=2&gFilt=&pFilt=FA&time=month&player=595879&startDate=01/01/2015&endDate=01/01/2016&minmax=ci&var=whiffswing&balls=-1&strikes=-1&b_hand=-1[/spoil]That's 64 whiffs in 149 swings against four-seam fastballs last year, good for a 57.0% contact rate. That's really, really bad. This year he has whiffed 6 times in 27 swings against four-seam fastballs, good for a 77.8% contact rate. So, what is the major difference this year? Well, it's mainly because Javy is attacking fastballs in the zone and laying off of that junk up above the zone. Here is a zone profile showing the percentage of pitches Javy swung at against four-seam fastballs, from last year: [spoil]http://www.brooksbaseball.net/plot_h_profile.php?s_type=2&gFilt=&pFilt=FA&time=month&player=595879&startDate=01/01/2014&endDate=01/01/2015&minmax=ci&var=swing&balls=-1&strikes=-1&b_hand=-1[/spoil] Here's the same thing, except for this season: [spoil]http://www.brooksbaseball.net/plot_h_profile.php?s_type=2&gFilt=&pFilt=FA&time=month&player=595879&startDate=01/01/2015&endDate=01/01/2016&minmax=ci&var=swing&balls=-1&strikes=-1&b_hand=-1[/spoil]Last year, Javy swung at 47 of 92 four-seam fastballs he saw that were above the zone. This year, he's only swung at 2 of the 9 he's seen above the zone. And on two-strike counts last year, he swung at 26 of 50 four-seam fastballs he saw that were above the zone. This year, on two-strike counts, he's swung at 1 of 6 above the zone. He's also improved his approach against breaking balls below the zone. Last year, he swung at 99 of 178 breaking balls that he saw that were below the zone. That's a 55.6% swing rate at breaking balls below the zone. Horrible. This year he is at 12 for 26, which isn't great, but it is an improvement. Last year, with two strikes, he was even more susceptible to the breaking ball below the zone. He swung at 47 of the 73 he saw on a two-strike count. That's a 64.3% swing rate. This year, he's swung at 5 of 10 on two-strike counts, so far. So Javy is still susceptible against breaking balls below the zone, though not to the same degree of putrid that he was last year. But, mainly, Javy is attacking fastballs in the zone and laying off the ones above the zone. He's also been much more disciplined on two-strike counts. Yes, small sample size warnings abound, but this is still really encouraging to see.

Russell's UZR/150 at short is now 16.4, which is second in MLB for players with as many innings as Russell's 323 at short. He's also at 4 DRS, which would rank 4th in MLB on a per-inning basis.

Have you read anything about Arrieta and his work with Bosio? Are you aware of his work to completely change his throwing motion and obtain a more repeatable delivery? Are you aware of how valuable his cutter (or super slider, or whatever you want to call it) has been to his success? I mean, I agree, in the sense that Jake is just really good now and there isn't any voodoo magic that made him good. He just got a lot better. He had a lot of unfulfilled potential, and he finally fulfilled it. But, is it such a huge coincidence that he did so directly after working with Bosio? There has been a ton written about what Jake and Bosio did to improve him as a pitcher. How much of that credit goes to Bosio? Well, probably not too much, since it is Jake that is actually out there pitching. But, to completely write off Bosio's influence is pretty silly, as well.

I'm firmly in the RBIs camp, when we are discussing the plural form of RBI. In fact, RsBI and RBI, when used as the plural form, make me rage. When you initialize that phrase, it becomes its own thing. We are no longer talking about the plural of "run batted in"; we are talking about the plural of "RBI." People have no problem referring to WMDs, POWs, AGs, et. al. Why do we have a problem with this plural initialism and not any others?

Ugh... how many more of these stupid games until I get to see Jake pitch in the playoffs?

You sonofabitch! [expletive] you, BABIP gods!

Uh oh! Rizzo dong to tie it?

lol. They still have a series against the Cards, too. And a West Coast trip in which it looks like they will face both Greinke and Kershaw. 5 of 7 or 4 of 7 could easily get it done, or even 3 of 7, you goon.

Does it really matter when they happen? I mean, the only time it matters more is if it is against a team you are competing with for playoff positioning. It's more frustration at the fact that we could be right on top of the Cardinals and Pirates if we didn't have all these incredibly unlucky losses in the past few weeks. seriously, you need to stop complaining about luck with this team. we've been lucky. the only [expletive] thing worth complaining about is blowing all those head to head cardinal games that we should have/easily could have won over the course of the season Yeah, and the only thing really unlucky about those is that there were a bunch of them against that one team. Those aren't even unlucky losses. Those things happen. It's just that they keep happening against the [expletive] Cardinals.

Does it really matter when they happen? I mean, the only time it matters more is if it is against a team you are competing with for playoff positioning.

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/sortable/index.php?cid=1819518

These line-outs and fly-outs to the warning track are really starting to piss me off.

Come on, Dexter.

Rizzo with a weak grounder into the shift to the second baseman. Second baseman bobbles it, fumble fucks around. He tries to track it down and the ball is just rolling around. As he is trying to scoop up the ball, he runs into the baseline, past the base. Rizzo runs through the base and there is a collision. Rizzo destroys this guy's thumb. I mean, his thumb is completely fucked.