We’re back! Apologies, but the last week is annually my busiest week of the year at the full-time job covering the NFL Draft. But with that in the books, we’re here.
Our 14U and 10U teams are in action this weekend, but we’ll get into that tomorrow. As for today, we’re going to talk about a few things I found interesting today while I was watching the Chicago White Sox complete a sweep of the Los Angeles Angels.
We’ll start with a phrase our players are no strangers to: “Back Door!”
Runner at first, base hit to right field. We’re setting up two bases ahead for our cuts — but the Los Angeles right fielder Jorge Soler knows that with the ball taking him to the right field line and his glove-side, there’s no play at third, so he sends his throw (without hesitation) to first base, and nails Austin Hays on the back door.
We tell guys all the time about pre-pitch, the moment where a fielder plays through the potential scenarios in their head. During Soler’s pre-pitch, he identifies the runner and the potential throws available to him when he fields the ball. By the time he fields the ball to his left, he knows there’s only one play, and he executes the throw.
If he hesitates, it’s runners at the corners with zero outs in a tie game in the sixth inning. Instead, it was a runner at third with one out. Los Angeles secured the next two outs, and the runner at third was stranded.
Next — some high-level hitting by White Sox second-baseman Chase Meidroth:
2-2 count, Meidroth takes a fastball low and away to the opposite field alley for a double. Most impressive: 88.2 MPH exit velocity for Meidroth. It’s especially impressive when you look at the swing. He’s on time for the fastball wherever, but when it’s low and away, he lets it travel and just flicks his barrel into the baseball and drives it into the right-center alley, with an effortless stroke.
A couple of points here.
Adjustability. Meidroth was on time for the fastball, but not that fastball. He was on time for something inside that he needed to catch out front and pull, but he was adjustable enough to let the outside fastball travel and still find the barrel.
Let the barrel (and your timing) do the work: He’s adaptable on the fastball away, and the swing looks compact, but he still generates a batted ball just shy of 90 mph. Why? Because he was on time, and on plane. Not because he tried to overswing and manufacture a hard-hit result. Because he was ready for what came (whether the fastball inside, a breaking ball away from a left-handed pitcher, or the fastball away), and just got his barrel to the baseball on time and on plane.
A real-time, recent example of the opposite: We had an intrasquad game over the weekend with the 16U guys. I designed the lineups so that some advanced hitters faced advanced pitchers to open the game. Ty Kincaid was on the mound to start the game. He threw two innings, most of which we watched guys step to the plate with a pure pull approach.
The results spoke for themselves.
Why would plan A be to pull a left-hander with mid-8s velo and a three pitch mix?
In the first inning, guys were overwhelmed by velo. In the second inning, Ty lived on a backdoor sweeper, which froze opposing hitters.
After watching Meidroth’s AB above, do you think he gets frozen by a back-door breaker?
Probably not.
Approaches are important.
Around the Horn
- Here’s a good sample I found this morning looking at our Pelotero data from Ethan Gonzales:
- This data is generated by player-inputted at-bats, specifically, whether or not Ethan was one time, early, or late for a pitch in specific count situations. To date, Ethan has logged more at-bats than anyone in the program (by far), so this is the biggest sample size we have, and it shows a hitter with a fair mix of results, good, bad, or indifferent.
- I have two points here, and neither have anything to do with the data itself: 1) Data is only good if it’s consistent and 2) data is only good if it’s accurate (honest).
- Upload EVERY at-bat, and do so honestly. It’s the only way a process-driven data set like this can help a hitter.
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