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American League Division Series Game #2 10/7/24 4:08PM


Tigeraholic1

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9 hours ago, chasfh said:

A 7 K/9 is well below average in the major leagues, and opponents hit .228 off him this season because his BABIP was .261. These are not good signs for a leverage guy.

What’s Vest? What’s Holton? Foley is certainly not perfect or the ideal, but he’s been solid and not deserving of all the angst.

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Exhibits A and B as to why they haven't implemented an automated strike zone at the MLB level. Exhibit C would be the report card they give to De Jesus, which is going to be neither of these.

Which one is right all just depends on your margin of error and what you're okay with being called and not. These systems are imperfect.

 

 

 

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25 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

right now apparently Vest and Brieske are better choices in Hinch's view. 9th inning guys don't so much win jobs as move into them as managers lose confidence in the guy they've been using.

Vest has been practically unhittable the last month.    Foley’s meltdown in Game 1 vs. Astros certainly helped but Vest was going to wrestle the high leverage spot away from him regardless.  

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3 hours ago, Sports_Freak said:

Carp could probably learn 1st base but we would still need a RH bat to play there against LH pitchers. Unless we want to see Carpenter prove once and for all whether he can hit LH pitchers...

Not sure why managers do that to young players...they immediately platoon guys so they never get a chance to hit against, in this case, lefties.  It's almost like there is a rule and they have to do it or they just want to show everyone how smart they are.  I doubt if Carpenter can hit any worse against lefties than Torkelson hits overall 

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3 hours ago, Longgone said:

What’s Vest? What’s Holton? Foley is certainly not perfect or the ideal, but he’s been solid and not deserving of all the angst.

Yes, his results have been mostly very good. Hope he can continue it into the future as long as he's with us.

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30 minutes ago, tiger2022 said:

Not sure why managers do that to young players...they immediately platoon guys so they never get a chance to hit against, in this case, lefties.  It's almost like there is a rule and they have to do it or they just want to show everyone how smart they are.  I doubt if Carpenter can hit any worse against lefties than Torkelson hits overall 

That has been a thing in baseball since forever it seems, and I'm old. At the same time, there is a difference between a R/R matchup vs. a L/L, in my opinion. Curves are different for one thing. Hard to explain. A right handed curve to a right handed batter is easier to hit than a left handed curve to a lefty. Might sound nuts, symmetry and all. Related, and strange, bowling is the very same way. Southpaws had a natural hook that hit like a truck. Crazy, I know. 🙂

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44 minutes ago, tiger2022 said:

I doubt if Carpenter can hit any worse against lefties than Torkelson hits overall 

so far he definitely does.

The dilemma for a manager is winning now versus developing his players. If a manager has a reasonable platoon pair for a player there just isn't much incentive for him to embark on a 'learn on the fly' program with his player at the MLB level. If a left hand hitter comes up who has already shown a reasonably small platoon split like Riley or Keith, they may get the chance to stick as everyday players, but otherwise they are probably out of luck. 

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8 minutes ago, Screwball said:

That has been a thing in baseball since forever it seems, and I'm old. At the same time, there is a difference between a R/R matchup vs. a L/L, in my opinion. Curves are different for one thing. Hard to explain. A right handed curve to a right handed batter is easier to hit than a left handed curve to a lefty. Might sound nuts, symmetry and all. Related, and strange, bowling is the very same way. Southpaws had a natural hook that hit like a truck. Crazy, I know. 🙂

I think a lot of it is just how much experience is available. Riley's father pitched to him left handed constantly as he was learning to play. For most lefties, they just aren't going to see enough LHP to hone their skill on the ball breaking away as much as right handers will get the chance to see RHP throw them breaking balls away. OTOH, right handers don't suffer all that much from not seeing a lot of left handers because most left handers can't throw them anything that breaks away from them.

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3 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

I think a lot of it is just how much experience is available. Riley's father pitched to him left handed constantly as he was learning to play. For most lefties, they just aren't going to see enough LHP to hone their skill on the ball breaking away as much as right handers will get the chance to see RHP throw them breaking balls away. OTOH, right handers don't suffer all that much from not seeing a lot of left handers because most left handers can't throw them anything that breaks away from them.

I don’t know Kerry's splits but some of the articles I've read said he was crushing LH pitchers in the minors.

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11 minutes ago, Sports_Freak said:

I don’t know Kerry's splits but some of the articles I've read said he was crushing LH pitchers in the minors.

but if that was before the big changes he made in approach it may not be transferable. A hitter has some choice in how much he is willing to tailor his approach. A left hander may be able to give up coverage against RHP to hit LHP better, but is that necessarily his best strategy? If he believes (or knows) he's likely to be platooned anyway, then he should probably sell-out on a approach to hit RHP and if his splits get worse, so be it. 

to answer the initial question, last year Kerrys platoon split was about 180 OPS pits. This year it is off the charts (>400 OPS points) but it's on a tiny sample size (30PA) because Hinch hasn't let him face LHP. So egg, meet chicken.

Edited by gehringer_2
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1 hour ago, tiger2022 said:

Not sure why managers do that to young players...they immediately platoon guys so they never get a chance to hit against, in this case, lefties.  It's almost like there is a rule and they have to do it or they just want to show everyone how smart they are.  I doubt if Carpenter can hit any worse against lefties than Torkelson hits overall 

Lefties that can't hit lefties don't usually learn how to hit them.  I think it's a harder thing to fix than many fans believe.  

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21 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

Lefties that can't hit lefties don't usually learn how to hit them.  I think it's a harder thing to fix than many fans believe.  

I think it's hard to learn to handle a breaking ball away period whether you are LH or RH. But maybe a difference is that RHHs who can't manage the breaking ball away are never going to get to (or stay long in) the majors at all, whereas a LHH who can't hit good LHP can still be plenty useful on a major league roster.

The other thing that is funny about platoon splits is that the two best LHP in baseball this year both have pretty small platoon splits against. Skubal is only 85 OPS pts, Sale is less than that - about 50. But neither of them depend that much on horizontal break. Skubal is mostly fastball change, Sale throws a lot of 'sliders' but his slider is more like a 12-6 curve ball - slow  and mostly vertical.

Edited by gehringer_2
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9 hours ago, Tiger337 said:

Lefties that can't hit lefties don't usually learn how to hit them.  I think it's a harder thing to fix than many fans believe.  

This is my point. If anyone who has played was a switch hitter they would know that batting left against a left is not the same as a right against a right. Due to symmetry one would think it is, but it's not.

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1 hour ago, Screwball said:

This is my point. If anyone who has played was a switch hitter they would know that batting left against a left is not the same as a right against a right. Due to symmetry one would think it is, but it's not.

So one of the factors in play is that eye dominance and handedness do not match one to one. Fewer lefties are left eye dominant than righties are right eye dominant, so indeed your lefties and righties don't necessarily see pitches the same way. On top of that many - maybe most MLB LHH are not left side dominant, they are right handers who learned to hit left handed, so within the group of LH hitters you have two different sub classes.

There has also always been conventional wisdom that LH hitters and RH hitters hit better on pitches in different areas of the K zone. With heat maps available today it seems that could be verified or debunked either way if anyone cared to.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15513112/#:~:text=Abstract,handers being left eye dominant.

Edited by gehringer_2
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On 10/8/2024 at 9:00 PM, gehringer_2 said:

For most lefties, they just aren't going to see enough LHP to hone their skill on the ball breaking away as much as right handers will get the chance to see RHP throw them breaking balls away.

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  • MotownWebGuy changed the title to American League Division Series Game #2 10/7/24 4:08PM

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