"Let's Shoot Off Some Fireworks" Free For All Mailbag
Photo Credit: Sacramento River Cats
Fourth of July? What the heck??? How did that happen?!?!?!
The tentpole of the summer baseball schedule is here — time to fire up the grill, crack open a beer (or other!), reflect on the journey we’ve been through so far and where it might be going from here. Also time to enjoy some bright, sparkly colors lighting up the night!
I can’t help much with the fireworks — you’ll have to go to a game or town center for that experience. But reflection and prediction? Yep, you’ve come to the right place!
Now, let’s crack open that bag!
Kent Iverson
Hi Roger,
Thank you for all the great coverage and insights! My question concerns the minor league systems of Tampa Bay, the Yankees, and another unmentionable organization: the affiliates of these organizations often seem to be at the top of their leagues in terms of winning percentage. Do you think these organizations view winning team environments as essential to player development and structure their rosters accordingly, or is winning just a byproduct of deeper talent?
Hi Kent! Thanks for the kind words.
This is a great question, and I’ve spoken with members of each of these organizations on this very topic before (yes, even the unmentionable one). The topic of the benefit of winning team environments is a fascinating problem in player development. Like a lot of things, it’s one that I think you’ll hear most every organization say they value, but in practical terms it doesn’t tend to factor in most player movement decisions. Still when you look at the Montgomery Biscuits (Tampa Bay’s Double-A team) clinching the playoffs for the 9th consecutive year, as they did last week, and the Durham Bulls (Tampa’s Triple-A team) having won four of the last six International League titles, it feels like something institutional is at work there.
Certainly, those three organizations do tend to be at the top of organizational rankings, and they are the three orgs that are consistently raided by other clubs when Rule 5 time comes around — either by making small trades with them to get players who won’t fit on the 40-man, the way the Giants did with Brett Wisely, or simply by selecting players out of their organizations in the Rule 5 draft itself.
Still, there is something about the outrageous consistency of success that makes me feel like something else has to be at play here. I think a big part of the equation is not just about talent, it’s about a specific kind of talent. All three of these organizations are known for improving pitchers. Tampa was really at the vanguard of optimizing pitch shapes and usage patterns (as we’ll see in a moment). The Yankees have a long history of increasing velocity for every pitcher they touch. The Dodgers seem to prioritize acquiring velocity and then teach pitchers to throw strikes. They’ve all also been at the tip of the MLB spear in identifying sweepers as a weapon and teaching them to basically everybody in their system.
I think maybe a quantity of quality on the pitching side underpins a lot of the team success these orgs have had the last many years. Hitters come and go and it’s much harder to keep up a steady stream of quality position players that can create the kind of annual success that Tampa or the Dodgers have had on their farms. But having complete staffs full of legitimate arms can get you a lot of the way there.
Beyond that, I think you have to credit those orgs for doing a good job of teaching fundamentals and “winning baseball.” That’s another thing that every team tries to do, but obviously not every team succeeds to the same level. These three orgs haven’t necessarily been producing star level prospects constantly, but they do all seem very successful at getting role players integrated successfully into the majors (like Wisely), and a solid grasp of fundamental baseball probably undergirds their success at that.
Does it seem like Esmerlin Vinicio is putting it together in Low-A? I saw he got a start and threw five shutout innings. Any idea if he’s grown some man strength and added some ticks to his fastball to make it more playable?
I think we’ve definitely seen growth in Vinicio over the past few years — at least in terms of his craft. He’s still thin as a reed, but he is throwing a little harder this year than in years past. He’s not exactly throwing gas these days, but he’s not sitting 88 the way he was in his early attempts at the Cal League. It’s more 90-91 these days, with even an occasional 93 lighting up the gun.
But the big difference is coming in other areas of his game: he works faster, he looks confident and in control, his mound presence is far better than when he was a teenager (not surprisingly). He seems to know what he wants to do to attack a hitter and goes after it, while in prior years he looked much more tentative on the mound: hoping a pitch would work rather than feeling confident that it would.
I suspect that being teammates with Ubert Mejias has probably been good for Vinicio, as the older and more experienced Mejias pitches in a very similar style to Vinicio, though from the right-hand side. But a lot of the development is just growing older and maturing. It’s been a fun growth process to watch!
Hi Roger, your discussion with Eli Walsh (the part about Luciano) spurred this question: of the top prospects in the system who are 22 or younger, if they are in the upcoming draft (somehow converting their pro stats/profiles into a rough college equivalent), where do you think they would go?
Well, first, let me walk some of that comment back. The sentiment of the comment — that having players who are talented and still really young at the upper levels of your organization is an unmitigated good thing — is absolutely true and what I wanted to get across. But the specific point has a touch of hyperbole in it. Luciano turns 23 in six weeks; he was born in September of 2001. The college players being taken at the top of this year’s draft are all a year or more younger. JJ Weatherholt, the West Virginia shortstop, was actually born on Luciano’s first birthday, and Travis Bazzana of Oregon State was born just two weeks before Weatherholt. Charlie Cordon, the outfielder from Georgia whom Baseball America has ranked #1 in this class, wasn’t born until April, 2003, so he’s a full year and a half younger than Luciano.
All of that is to say that, if Luciano were somehow part of this draft class, he’d be a senior, which would hurt his draft stock some. If we went back to the summer of 2023 and inserted him into that class, I could probably blow him up into the top half of the first round fairly easily, based on his power potential. As a 22-year-old senior, he’d be a little harder to place, but maybe an example like Jud Fabian isn’t completely out of line. Fabian, the outfielder from the University of Florida, was at one point considered a top 10 pick based on his huge power, but as the strikeouts with the Gators piled up, he began slipping down draft boards. Ultimately, he slipped down to the 40th pick in the 2021 draft. Not liking that outcome, he chose to return to campus in an attempt to improve his draft status, but his senior year was mostly a replay of his junior one, and his status actually dropped, with the Orioles picking him up with the 67th pick in the 2022 draft. (I’m actually watching Fabian play as I write this; perhaps that’s why he’s on my mind). But as Carlos Collazo mentioned, this is considered a fairly weak class, so even if Luci somehow found himself back on campus as a senior, I think I can push him up into the 1st round easily enough.
As you can tell, counter-factuals quickly descend into a morass of forking paths. Aeverson Arteaga actually is the right age for this college class. Since we’re being speculative here, I’ll speculate him back into perfect health (which I think we all wish we could do). I think you could make a reasonable comparison of him to someone like the Giants’ own Maui Ahuna were he coming out of college — a guy who has a good chance to stick at shortstop with some power potential and some swing and miss concerns. So putting him somewhere in that high Day 2 area (3-5 rounds) doesn’t seem crazy to me. Manuel Mercedes could be a later Day 2 possibility given his velocity and movement, though the fact that his velo was higher when he was a teenager might be a strike against him for teams who had been tracking him for years.
The one really interesting guy is probably Rayner Arias. He’s of the same age as this high school class and, again assuming health, I think his hit tool would put him right into a 1st round consideration — especially with this high school class that is seriously bereft of hitting talent. Given what he’s shown so far in his career, it’s hard to believe he wouldn’t be considered one of the best high school hitters in this cohort.
But other than Arias, I’m not sure there are a lot of players in the 21- or 18-year-old range in the Giants’ system who would be forcing their way into Day 1 draft consideration. One pretty intriguing possibility is Cesar Perdomo, who is a lefty with a good frame. He’s 22 as well, so he’d be another senior sign player, which would drop him down. But a lefty throwing in the low- to mid-90s with a killer slider would probably be a guy who could work his way into Day 2 consideration if a fairly weak pitching crop. Maybe he could even pull a Joe Whitman and sneak into the end of Day One?
Thanks for your analysis last week of the Giants' evolving plan for Reggie Crawford. Here’s another starter or reliever query. If a team drafts a pitcher in the first round and that player ultimately develops into an MLB reliever, would the team view that as a success? If a team could predict the future and knew a draft prospect would become a big league reliever but never a starter, would they likely pick a position player instead? These are simplistic questions for a complex thing. But I’m curious about this as we’re watching the development of Crawford and Will Bednar unfold. Lastly, do you know of any articles/studies that list the WAR hope/projection for draft slots or something similar?
Ooh boy, more speculative draft counter-factuals! Scott, the general rule is teams are always happy to get value out of a 1st round pick (and its associated bonus money). That’s as true of a starter turning into a reliever (hello, Brad Hennessey) as it is for a position player turning into a utility player (Mike Fontenot, successful 1st round pick!). There are even teams who intentionally draft relief pitchers from time to time — especially teams that have multiple 1st round picks (and want to save some money with one while still getting value). The Nats rather famously did that with the 10th overall pick (Drew Storen) in the same draft that saw them select Stephen Strasburg with the top pick. The Giants, once upon a time, took a pure reliever with a late 1st round pick in David Aardsma in the same 1st round that they nabbed Noah Lowry (though in their case, they grabbed the reliever first and starter second).
I think we can say that all teams hope that they are finding future stars with their top picks, and more value is better than less. But it’s hard to answer your question much more fully than that because I presume that if a team had the ability to look into the future enough to know that, say, Chris Stratton was ultimately going to be a reliever, then they’d probably check out “future Baseball Reference website” and just take the guy who turned out to be the best player in the draft. It would be shocking in the moment to take an unheard of Albert Pujols in the 1st round — but they’d sure look smart in the long run!
In the end I don’t think teams look at things as programmatically as you’re thinking here, Scott. They find talent they believe in and the people they believe in and hope for the best!
Marco Luciano, second baseman?! Despite much ink having been spilled about where Luciano might play if not at shortstop, I don’t recall 2B being mentioned as a top-3 alternative in the There R Giants community or beyond. I know it’s hardly been a week since the move and things may well change — but why do you feel the Giants picked 2B (instead of 3B, corner outfield, etc.)? How much of that choice do you suspect is based on the front office thinking 2B may be the best fit for Luciano’s skills vs. the best fit to make him a big league starter ASAP (prioritizing the big club’s needs)? Is your sense that the brass has decided/ conceded he’s not an MLB-caliber SS?
Feels like the middle infield may need to be addressed soon. Are there any new internal options that could shine late season? If Christian Koss is the best defensive SS in the org as you have said, it seems like he could be a better option than Brett Wisely given how he has hit in the minors.
Lots of interest in the middle infield!
I’ve heard 2b mentioned as a potential landing spot for Luciano for years. To be honest, I’ve always thought it was on the strange side, as it negates his greatest defensive strength (his arm) without really mitigating his defensive weaknesses (range, tendency to clank some plays) very much. But on reflection, another issue that Luciano has had at short is what I think of as a slow internal clock — the game can speed up on him sometimes at short. The pressure that the speed of the game puts on him is reduced somewhat at 2b, so perhaps that’s a reason for the Giants moving him there. Or maybe, it’s just to give him a different look (but not too different) to help start orienting him towards moving around on the field. Other position changes (3b, OF) are a little tougher for a player to jump into mid-season, when the pressure really is on getting ready to play every day. Moving across the base from short to second feels like an in-season baby step to me. Maybe there was some sense at the time that Thairo Estrada was likely going to need an IL stint soon, and that could have played into it as well. I don’t really believe that the team has “conceded” anything about his long-term future as of yet, but they certainly have to be considering all angles to get him onto the team at this point.
As for Joe’s question — I think we’ve seen all the candidates (unless there’s a trade coming this month, which doesn’t seem likely). Wisely, Estrada, Nick Ahmed as the primary group with Fitzgerald, Luciano, and Schmitt behind them feels like it. And Wisely has been really good! I don’t think it’s too much wish casting to think he might continue to grow and improve in the second half.
As I’ve written a few times over the last year, Wisely has a very long track record of hitting success. He has a career .850 OPS over his minor league career, and, outside of a five-game end-of-season stint in Triple-A two years ago, never hit lower than .274 at any level. He always showed the kind of aptitude that one could imagine leading to major league success of some sort (whether that’s as a quality starter or a good utility player remains to be seen over the long run). So, no, Joe, I do not think that Christian Koss is likely to be a better option this year than Wisely. Koss is making some real advances in his game this year — particularly in his swing decisions. But he’s also a 26-year-old playing in his third Double-A season (with some time in Triple-A as well), and that has to be part of the calculation as well. Last year, Wisely was a player who had had real success in Double- and Triple-A, but he still needed to go through some real failure at the big league level in order to make the adjustments that are paying off now. And I suspect Koss will have his own learning curve ahead of him as he moves up.
I should also note that when I said Koss was the best defensive shortstop in the org, I was putting him in with a pool of those currently healthy and active — so I wasn’t really intending to compare him to Ahmed, who is a multiple Gold Glover at the big league level, or even Arteaga or Ahuna (neither of whom were playing at that time). He IS a very good shortstop, and, on a defense-only comparison, I think he grades out a little better than Wisely, Fitzgerald, Luciano, or Schmitt. But I also think that all of that group are better hitters than Koss is, and all have more power at the plate than he does. Koss has been a very nice pick up, but I wouldn’t be trying to solve major league roster issues with him in the immediate future.
I admit this is a crazy thought and I have no data to back this up... maybe the reason that the Giants are promoting young prospects to upper minors quickly (as opposed to requiring them to first dominate a level) is because the one dimension they want to optimize for is the prospects' learning and growth, and they think that the prospects can learn and grow better in higher levels (over the long haul).
Let's say Eldridge has to season in the minors for N years anyway, might as well have him spend more of that time in levels where he can see quality pitches (assumes this best helps him learn). To make up some numbers, let's say instead of a year of A/A+, a year of AA, and a year of AAA, instead he might do a year of A/A+/AA, and then 2 years of AAA so that he will have seen 2 years of AAA pitching by the time he reaches majors. I imagine in this scenario, the prospects will get promoted once they are good for the current level (as long as the next one is expected to be challenging and not overwhelming). And of course, they won't get promoted to the majors (or get added to the 40-man) unless they are deemed useful to the big league.
And this strategy doesn't have to be applied in contrary to their hitting philosophy, e.g. swing decision, etc. For example, the Giants might only require the prospects to achieve a level of swing decision that is decent enough for their current level. That is, swing decision is still important, but the Giants will let them learn that in upper levels.
Now, even if this is indeed the Giants' thinking, doing this would cause issues with the AAA roster, so I'd imagine they would apply this strategy only on guys they are really high on. And I'd think they have to be super confident that getting promoted too early would not hurt the prospects' development long-term (which I imagine would get a lot of pushback).
I guess my question is, from 1 to "they should try Reggie Crawford as a hitter again", how crazy does this sound?
Yeti, I wanted to include this question because you put so much time into it, and I thought other readers should see it. But I have thought and thought….and I honestly have no intelligent response to it. John McGraw famously did something like that with a 17-year-old Mel Ott, keeping him in the big leagues so nobody would mess with his swing in the minors. But I have to say, I’m a little dubious on the development virtues of this suggestion. I am a believer that all of the levels have important things to teach players — and that we’ve lost something valuable to player development in the elimination of the short season leagues.
On the other hand, the Giants have made some player moves that have definitely inspired theories around the ballpark that aren’t any further out there than your idea. So, who knows? Maybe you’re onto something!
Wade Meckler was promoted to Giants 40-man with a .400 BA with RC = 10 games. Giants were in the WC race and offense was struggling. Say this scenario plays out again in August or September, should the Giants do it again?
The Giants are going to need 40-man room. Do you think it is safe for them to move Meckler and McDonald off the list?
Two very different ideas on Meckler’s future! Will we see him promoted or DFA’d?
What was surprising about the decision to promote Meckler last August was the fact that room had to be made on the 40-man for him — and there were other outfielders on the 40-man (including Heliot Ramos, whose path to playing time was effectively shut off by that move). With Meckler on the 40-man, it would not be at all surprising for him to be brought to majors if the need arose — any more than it is surprising for any 40-man player to be called up when needed. Heck, they just promoted Landen Roupp out of an ACL rehab stint! Right now, Meckler is the only outfielder on the 40-man who is not either in the majors or on the IL, so he’s not far down the depth chart.
That said, getting Meckler healthy is the first issue on the table when it comes to his future. He’s been bothered by a wrist inflammation most of the year and the rehab hasn’t been going that well. It was interrupted for three weeks at one point and then he was sent back for a second stint in the ACL (where he is currently still playing). Despite having spent 2/3 of his season in rookie ball, he’s only hitting .225 at this point (though the hits have started to fall in lately). So, let’s get him healthy, and then we’ll try to figure out if there’s a need for him on the big league roster. At the moment, the outfield depth is holding up alright! It’s not the offense that’s hurting the club this year, it’s the dearth of healthy arms.
As for moving either Meckler or McDonald (soon to make his Double-A debut) off the 40-man, I’m not sure they’d be willing to try that. They’re probably both 40 FV players with options, and that’s a real value. The Giants have certainly grabbed players with less value off of waivers over the last six years.
One move that they might make with Meckler, instead, is to put him on the 60-day and see if more rest makes the wrist feel better. That might take away most of the rest of the season for him (I’m not entirely sure whether they’d be able to place a player who is in a rehab assignment on the 60-day retroactively to the original date of injury), but they could use the Fall League to get him some at bats he’s lost (which they might do anyway). One player who they added recently who I think they might chance taking off the 40-man is Kai-Wei Teng. When I was making inquiries among scouts last Fall, I couldn’t find anybody who thought he needed to be protected, and certainly, the year he has had thus far doesn’t seem like it should have made him more desirable. I don’t think the Giants want to do that, but unless some more 60-day candidates pop up in the next few weeks (Keaton Winn potentially???), some sort of personnel loss is coming their way.
Hi Roger - so much player movement this week, it's hard to keep track! Appreciate how much you share on development and timing on club decisions for moving up (or down) and I'm trying to consolidate it all. How much do those decisions differ (or not) depending on level/age/etc? Would the team ever push a promotion given that a player might be Rule 5 eligible in the next year? Are there proprietary metrics that the club uses for their decisions? Need of the club at the next level? What else might I be missing? - lol
Goodness! There are so many complexities involved in these decisions. I mentioned this in a recent podcast, but if you’re really interested in some of the factors that go into promotion decisions, I’d recommend going back and listening to my podcast conversation with Eric Flemming, who spent a couple of decades in the Giants front office, including many years as Assistant Farm Director:
Absolutely age and level matters. The younger players are, the more unusual it is for them to be moved up — players in the DSL very rarely get promoted in season, to take one obvious example. High school draftees or international free agents who are playing in their first full season are often held at a single level for a full year, and part of the reason for that is that these players are going through a huge life change for the first time, and giving them a little sense of stability can help them navigate a very challenging time in their lives. Do you remember what it was like when you were away from home for the first time? Or did you ever spend a summer abroad in a non-English speaking country as a teenager? These kids have a lot going on and moving up levels just piles on additional stress to what is already a stressful year.
In addition, part of what players need to show to be moved up is the ability to make adjustments, and that’s something that grows with experience. A player who has already made it up to Double-A has likely shown the club that they have a strong work ethic and a curious mind and know how to self-assess and incorporate mechanical changes. Players in Low-A or rookie ball might have a little more to prove on those fronts.
Proprietary metrics play a huge role in promotion decisions. Teams aren’t looking at slugging percentage and home run totals — they’re looking at chase rates, in-zone contact, fastball contact, spin rates, whiff rates, exit velocities, and much more. Every team has some sort of proprietary formula that calculates things like the “expected” stats you see on Baseball Savant — xSLG, or xwOBA, or whatever they want to call it — based on batted ball data. They all have proprietary calculations that reduce “swing decisions” to a single number. They have proprietary versions of the Stuff+ model that Eno Sarris and Fangraphs have popularized. And all of those things have more to do with promotions than the traditional numbers than old time fans are more familiar with.
As far as “need at the next level” goes, that’s the thing that causes most player movement, but you have to understand it in very pragmatic terms. In recent weeks, we’ve seen a number of relievers jump up from Eugene to Sacramento and back. They go up as essentially a buffer. Every pitcher on the Sacramento staff has a day when they are scheduled to pitch and a number of pitches they can throw. That usually leaves the coaching staff with a fairly narrow window of possibilities for covering innings, so the org will provide them with an emergency A-ball pitcher to cover for the night in case one of the regular pitchers doesn’t get through as many innings as scheduled. If the A-ball emergency guy gets into a game, he then usually heads back to Eugene and is replaced by a different pitcher who would be available to go the next night (we saw exactly this happen with Cameron Cotter, Julio Rodriguez, and Hunter Dula recently).
In some cases, there’s just a need to send bodies so that all the clubs can suit up a full team that night. Richmond has recently had a couple of minor league free agents sent their way to make up for the ripple effects that the huge wave of injuries at the big league level in May caused, and several players jumped up from San Jose to Sacramento for the same reason.
Under less drastic circumstances, a consideration before any promotion is how playing time will be impacted on both the roster that the player is joining and the one he will be leaving. Who is losing opportunities and who is gaining them. And when rosters are full, who are you moving off a roster in order to promote a player onto it. Tyler Myrick’s recent promotion, for instance, was well deserved, but it also helped clear a space on the Richmond roster for Trevor McDonald’s impending promotion.
As for Rule 5 eligible players, I don’t think that has much of an impact. We’ve seen the Giants, for instance, add players to their 40-man from A-ball in recent years (including McDonald), and, in borderline cases, they might not want advanced scouts getting a look at their players at higher levels. I heard that as a theory for why the AFL was so weak last fall — that teams didn’t want their counterparts getting a last look at their Rule 5 eligible players. Getting a last look at a player before deciding whether to add them to the 40-man before the draft used to be a major reason why teams would send players to the AFL, but as the industry gets more and more secretive and overly possessive of information, that may be a trend on the wane.
I think because Evan Gates, Hunter Dula, and Tyler Myrick are all RH RP who joined the org in 2021, they get mixed up a bit in my head. I see they’re all at Sacramento now (though Myrick might be a proximity-based promotion). Could you help me differentiate them and assess which might have the best chance of helping the big club (with the caveat that there are a lot of pitchers on the 40-man right now)?
As explained above, it was Dula who was the proximity promotion to Sacramento, not Myrick — though both were sent to the AFL together two years ago, so it’s easy to get them mixed up.
Myrick (14th round) and Dula (18th) were both taken in the 2021 draft — Myrick out of Florida International and Dula from Wingate University in North Carolina. Myrick is a bigger kid, with a really good pitcher’s frame. He also throws a bit harder (more 95-96 than 93-94) and has the best command of the three. Myrick throws primarily a sinker, cutter and slider, and all three are good pitches. Despite quality stuff, he tends to be more of a pitch-to-contact guy than a strikeout artist. In a way, his pitching reminds me a bit of Spencer Bivens. Good quality stuff around the strike zone inducing weak contact with a few strikeouts mixed in. He’s a big league arm, I think.
Dula is a bit shorter and doesn’t quite have Myrick’s command of his pitches. What he does have is really good shape on his fastball. It has a ton of rise and carry through the zone. A little more command and a tick more velo would help him keep pushing his career upwards. Along with Myrick, Dula was promoted to Richmond in the second half of 2023, but he wound up back in Eugene to start this season.
Gates is the undrafted player of the group — though he’s arguably had more success than either of the others. The native Michigander is yet another player who went to school in North Carolina (the system is positively crawling with Carolinians!). Gates has a unique over-the-top delivery that has always reminded me a bit of the old Arizona Diamondbacks’ pitcher, Josh Collmenter. It’s not quite that extreme, but it’s in the same neighborhood. I think that release point does a couple of things for Gates: 1) it gives his slider an incredible, vertical movement that is incredibly hard for hitters to pick up; and 2) it makes it hard for him to command his fastball. When Gates throws strikes with his fastball, he’s a very difficult pitcher to face, because the slider is a killer — that’s the reason why he’s struck out more than 30% of the batters he’s faced in his career. But he’s always battled walks, and he has a tendency to get himself into jams with free passes and then work out of them with strikeouts. Gates’ fastball velocity has been a little lower this year than it has been in the past, and recovering that lost tick would probably help him get on the map for a call up in the future. But in a world that favors odd release points, he might be the biggest outlier of the group.
I'm sure you are aware of the fascinating 5-part series in The Athletic "Missing Bats: Strikeouts broke baseball." What are your observations? Not necessarily just regarding the Giants, but do you think they've gotten it right?
I am more than aware — I’m eagerly awaiting the final installments! Andy McCullough is a fantastic journalist, researcher, and writer (his biography of Clayton Kershaw is a great read, by the way), and I would say you can count on him to get things he reports on right. Of course, there are a lot more hands touching this series than just McCullough, but I can certainly see his work and mind throughout.
I can’t recommend the series too highly for any of you who have subscriptions to The Athletic (or the NY Times). Along with the book The MVP Machine, by Ben Lindbergh and Travis Sawchik, this series is an essential investigation into why the current version of baseball is what it is. I can’t begin to touch upon all of the insights in this series, but it traces a lot of the developments that came from some brilliant people interpreting big data in the wake of pitch tracking technology (Mike Fast of the Houston Astros, being one of the most brilliant). The primary insight that has completely changed the game (and this comes directly from Fast) is that the difference between “some contact” and “no contact” is far more significant to winning games than the difference between “poor contact” and “hard contact.” That simple mathematical proposition has changed the way pitchers are used, how long they stay in games, how close to max velocity and max spin they get on every single pitch….it’s changed everything about our perception of what successful pitching is. As a result, it’s completely changed the way the game is played at every level right down to youth baseball
Yeah…I’m aware and I’m pretty in awe of what they’re accomplishing with this series. Everybody go read it now if you really want to understand the modern game!
And with that, we’ll close up the bag for this week. I should have a podcast out tomorrow with my friend Kevin Cunningham, who recently went to Alabama for the Field of Dreams game, so look for that. There should also be a new KROG coming on the 4th of July. Lots of content coming from There R Giants!
Enjoy the 4th everybody! And may we have some great ball to watch!