I continue to be totality blown away by Marte. This mf has 20 steals, 0 CS, in 30 games with Oakland. A freaking perfect 100+ pace. He's 42/45 on the year. Top notch sprint speed but your do not get there without unparalleled instinct and know-how. At his age it's one of the most incredible accomplishments this season in baseball.
Watching highlights on the MLB app with captions on is quite a bit of comedy. They have a data bank of names that sometimes hilariously override what the announcers actually say. So the announcer says "breaking ball" and then caption says "Zack Greinke ball". Then for "grand slam" it said "Greg Amsinger" and so on. Every highlight is littered with them.
None of them are as important as launch angle and speed, but wind, spin, and altitude also play pretty big roles in total distance. Thank you. I figured wind did, but on such low trajectory, I just couldn't see it making such a drastic difference.
I readily accept that there's a lot I don't know. This article has me bugging. Maybe some of you can explain how this works. https://blogs.fangraphs.com/a-steep-dive-into-shohei-ohtanis-latest-homer-and-other-statcast-extremes/ So I'm looking at these tables and I see some numbers that are confusing to me. I see 2 different home runs, with almost identical launch angles and exit velocities but with drastically different distances traveled. Look at the table for home runs with the highest EV of the Statcast era. You have Stanton and Machado each with the lowest LA ever recorded on HR, at 15 degrees, Machado at 119.6 and Stanton at 119.3. But Machado's bomb went just 357 feet, whereas Stanton's went 416. Doesn't add up to me.
I was thinking if my kids end up caring about sports I'll encourage them to pick whichever team they want to root for. If Tampa can keep dominating for the next couple years that will be quite an easy decision for them to make.
History says “never”, as OL has been a concern every year I’ve watched this team (under multiple coaches and GM’s) It was league best throughout the 80s and quite good during much of Lovie's run. Angelo and Pace both went on extended runs of failing to address it, but it takes one or two signings to significantly upgrade things in a hurry. Yep 2005 they signed Tait and Brown and boom they had one of the best in the league