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Jason Ross
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Everything posted by Jason Ross
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Between July 30th and September 19th he had a 3.69 ERA, and a 3.79 xFIP. He faced the Brewers twice in that span, to be clear and was just fine. Yes, there were home runs surrendered in there, but Shota is always going to be a bit of a HR merchant; his fastball will do that. But it wasn't really an issue. He was doing everything else pretty well. There is nothing there outside of a bit of a too high HR/FB% rate in there (and to be clear, his HR/FB% of 17.2% is high, but it's not like, impossibly high either. It's about 5% higher than league average). But no where near enough to say "strip it down and completely change this dude's mechanics".
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I try to be pretty optimistic and find the good when everything feels dark... But that feels like it's curtains.
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Not how it works. It's confusing. At the end of this year multiple things happen. First: the Cubs will chose whether to accept or decline the option. If they accept it, his contract will slide to 5 years. Secondly, if they decline it, Shota has an option. He can either accept the original 4 year contract or immediately opt out and become a FA.
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Well, for a lot of reasons. First, you can't just "fix" an arm-slot immediately. Arm slots aren't like levers where you just pull it and poof. Biomechanics are deep and to change an arm slot you're tinkering with a lot of things. It's a near impossible change to make at the end of the season - by tweaking on thing, you can create new issues. And the last thing the Cubs wanted is that. And frankly, he wasn't terrible for much of the run - up until his last start of the season he was pitching really well. But that's not kept. Secondly, Craig Counsell is the manager, he isn't the pitching guy. Tommy Hottavoy and Tyler Zombro are two of the big pitching gurus in the Cubs system. They'd make the changes. I do think they did change this into the season, though. The Cubs in general have lowered a lot of arm slots - to the benefit of the pitcher. It creates extra run to the arm side and actually is a less violent arm action to aspects of the arm. For Shota, my guess is that they hoped it helped create extra arm side movement on his splitter or to create extra sweep on the sweeper. Sadly, it's also created an issue where the fastball cannot sit as high as you'd want it and he's struggled because of it.
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They have to make the decision this offseason.
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Not optimistic, but the pathway forward becomes clear when you data dive. There are obvious things that work well and things that don't. And we can usually diagnose issues. With Shota, the fastball shape is worse and we can see it's running more on the arm side. We can also see the drop in the arm slot. We also have enough data on what pitches with that much IVB do; they're horsefeathers nasty if you throw them on the upper third - they directly attack launch angle and essentially eliminate the hit box for a hitter trying to elevate the pitch (thus, weak flys). He doesn't have any obvious signs of injury so the issue becomes mechanical. I don't think Shota is like, the ERA monster he was through June last year. I do think that the best version of Shota Imanaga, at around a 40-degree arm slot and throwing his fastball up and in on the hands is pitcher who belongs in the middle of a rotation of a playoff team. I also think the Cubs do a good job with working with pitchers. When you add it together, I think Shota should be fine.
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My assumption is that he's dropped the arm slot to give his sweeper better run. But it's resulted in a worse Shota.
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Correct. Zero chance. He's still a good pitcher, even at $16m AAV. And I think the issues are quite fixable. His arm slot is about 4-5 degrees lower. It's creates more arm side ride (for Shota against a RHH, pitches that tail bail into the zone) and has lowered it's elevation. The outcome is that his fastball is tailing both into the zone more and not getting the elevation. High ride fastballs are killer in the top-third but horrible in the bottom two-thirds. It's a narrow path to live, but high ride fastballs kill the launch angle of hitters. But only if you elevate. A flatter arm path has killed his fastball a bit.
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Pitching it away is not the fix. He needs to elevate his fastball. He's not doing that.
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His arm slot is all horsefeathered up. He's coming in too shallow. So he's leaving things lower than he did last year. Last year that pitch probably gets upper-90 and it's a swing and a miss. But this year he's just dropping his arm too much and he's getting more of the middle of the zone. For a ride-heavy fastball, you can't leave it lower. It rides into the barrel.
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I gave Vaughn credit for getting one off the plate. That one is far more on Shota. That's middle third.
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Yeesh.
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Statcast did. But that's because Statcast doesn't show a graphic that is height adjusted per each hitter. So it's not an issue with statcast, it's just how they display the graphic. The zone doesn't change laterally. The plate is unchanging. Thus, the pitch to Happ, which was an issue left and right, not up and down, is 100% accurate regardless of who's hitting.
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Priester has big issues against LHH right now and Jose Quintana gets rocked against RHH even worse than Priester. My guess is they want to try to mitigate them in Milwaukee, hope to get both of those guys to Chicago with the wind and hope they keep the ball in the park Especially with an off day today and no offdays between the next two.
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What issues has Statcast had?
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Yeah, that was hard to watch. Kid you got a ground out with 2 outs, one on, in the third inning.
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Statcast had it as a strike, to be fair.
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100%. This kid is going to walk the world if they let him right now. Let him.
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Here comes the struggle. Miz will do this if you let him.
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Big inning to shut them down 1-2-3. Halt the momentum.
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Find a post where I was talking about wanting extra rest of Shota Imanaga. I'll wait. You're just projecting at this point because you got caught out. Instead of doing this, just say "you know what, I was wrong". You're wrong. Shota has been working on normal or extra rest for a bit. He's not even pitched as many innings as he did last year...he was hurt.
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I wrote up all this data on Quinn Priester, I diagnosed his cutter issue and they don't even bother to use him today? Why does Pat Murphy hate me?
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Justin Turner reads your posts.
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He literally just pitched on extra rest. He gave up a towering bomb to Machado and 3 runs in less than 5 innings. The extra rest isn't the thing. His last start was on the 25th of September and he got blasted. The Cubs clinched the playoffs on the 17th. What are you talking about?
