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Braves Ongoing Season Comments Thread..
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The DH rule is an abhorrent aberration, it sucs bucknuts.
Agreed, and I mainly DHed in college
Let me get this straight. The American league plays a more exciting type of baseball because it employs the DH. Therefore the National League will some day follow suit and go to the DH. Sounds reasonable except for one thing. The NL teams average over 4,000 more fans per game than the AL teams. Of the 10 MLB teams with the lowest attendance this season 8 are AL teams. This despite the fact that the AL teams overall are located in larger markets. Not to mention the fact that the AL figures attendance by tickets sold and the NL uses actual turnstile counts.
I don't consider AL baseball as being more exciting than the more complex NL variety, not at all.
Our guys had quiet nights in The All Star game. FF had a walk, Acuna went 0-2 and while Soroka set them down 1..2..3 in the inning he pitched, the box score is deceiving. He wasn't sharp at all. He went to full counts twice and only threw a couple of strikes, the hitters just missed hittable pitches. This was the 4th straight appearance where he wasn't sharp. He seems to have little idea where the ball is going of late, I'm a bit worried.
Because I’m bored, I decided to go back and look at the zone maps for Soroka’s last start. What I said in other channels (and maybe once on here) and what Ivan the Great said on talking chop became blatantly obvious when I looked in retrospective, the Phillies sat on the sinker at the knees and simply hit it where it’s pitched for the first inning on him, and they have good low ball hitters to boot too (at least with Kingery, and I think Segura too). Looking at the location map, I’d say there was maybe 2 mistakes made in the inning that were taken advantage of, and no, they came after the first three hitters (partially helped by the hit and run but even if it was an out, Segura sitting on a sinker led to him hitting the ball at least 100 MPH). After that became a problem, they switched to the changeup, and it worked for the second turn through because the Phillies were still sitting on the sinker at the knees.
Was there really a difference between that start and let’s say, the Padres start in location for example (which I also pulled up)? Honestly, no not really based on the location maps I looked at. In the Padres start, he came out with very similar location (which granted, put him in a little bit of trouble in the 1st then too, but still) to how he started vs the Phillies.
BTW: What I was saying in other channels was the Phillies were sitting sinker and it might be a night to throw the 4-seamer instead. I didn’t even think about the changeup, but that worked.
So, there’s two things based off that, one, in the modern day, keeping the ball low doesn’t always work (the Pirates also had a bunch of good low ball hitters), and two, they are indeed, adjusting to Soroka.
There's good reason why I keep saying that Soroka is more likely to be a top 30 starter (a #1) than an ace, like the Verlanders and Scherzers. Perhaps he has a full year or two of a mid to high two's ERA in his career but his most likely year to year outcome is 200+ innings and a 3-3.5 ERA.
GG. The difference in Soroka's results over the past 4 games and his 1st 11 games has nothing to do with adjustments by opponents in my opinion. When he's getting the movement on all of his pitches and he has command of them like he had over his record setting start of giving up 1 or fewer runs in 9 of his first 11 starts, all opponents can do IS guess. Even then there was so much movement and he could throw any pitch on any count they couldn't sit on any particular pitch with any favorable degree of success.
In short when he pitches like he did over those 11 games he is truly great. He has gotten progressively worse with both command and action on his pitches over his last 3 starts and his inning in The All Star game though and it worries me. I don't think he needs to make any adjustments to what he was doing, he just needs to get back to where he was.
Honestly if you can't watch the actual games and SEE the difference in where he was and where he's been the last few weeks, I don't know what to say. I mean he's missing the catcher's set up spot by up to 2 feet where he was bullseye on most pitches earlier in the season. If he regains his form and maintains it, he'll be a great pitcher. He doesn't have Scherzer's power though, so in that much we agree. It is harder to maintain excellence when you are more dependent on mastering yourself like Maddux did, so fewer are able to pull it off. Power is power, as long as Scherzer has it and can throw strikes, he'll be exceptional.
If David Ortiz was in this line up, it could compare to the best line ups in baseball history.
No doubt MODawg. I don't know how old you are but Thomas, Molitor, Ortiz and Thome were all great hitters. Baines was a very good hitter, but not great. At his best Thomas was probably the best of the lot. He was the first modern hitter who could hit 40 hr AND hit .340.
The Big Hurt was scary for opposing pitchers, no doubt about that. Didn't realize he hit for that high of an avg though. Imagine what he could do with these new balls
Thomas was scary then, he'd be Paul Bunyan with a bat instead of an axe the way balls flew last night.
Kirb are you related to Georgia Girl ?
@WCDawg not as far as i know lol. why do you ask?
Just a hunch.
Here's evidence to the contrary on Soroka is missing more on his pitches:
If there's anything that I see that's significantly different, it's actually mainly him missing just out of the zone down. There is slightly more red up in the middle of the plate (and I am not looking at the red down in the zone, I'm looking at the upper quadrant), but like I said in the late night post, he really was "not" getting got by those types of pitches by Philadelphia. Au the contraire. They were getting him by looking for the sinker at the knees and hitting it where it was pitched. While a couple of the sinkers were up in the zone, this made the Philly game plan obvious:
McCann sets up away, Soroka pretty much hits the wanted spot, yet the result? A line drive base hit. A weak one, but still a liner.
Of course, all of that ended up not mattering for the team because going for power usually trumps looking for the base hit, and it did again there.
My next post will be backing up a comment that Soroka made after he started vs the Tigers.
After the Tigers got Soroka for 3 earned runs in 6.2 innings (for the first time he allowed more than an earned run), he said that it was mainly hard hit balls finally finding grass instead of gloves. Here's evidence of what he was talking about and pitches where he missed:
He was down to Goldy 2-0 and allowed a hard hit grounder. Yet, instead of it getting into the outfield (and potentially being two runs), it was right to Ozzie and ended the inning. Soroka had some moments of REALLY GOOD, but he also had some moments of luck too, and he knows it, otherwise he wouldn't have commented on it. Here's a few more:
Yes, that was beaten into the ground, but look at the location (he missed) and EV (102). Then imagine if he was sitting sinker. If he's sitting sinker, that's a line drive up the middle.
The American league plays a more exciting type of baseball because it employs the DH. Therefore the National League will some day follow suit and go to the DH.
No. Nobody cares about that. Its about the money. The American league has more high dollar salaries because of the DH position. They could double that by bringing the DH to the National League.
They will argue its about bringing everyone under the same tent but the above and the players union is the real reason the NL will get the DH. Probably sooner than later.
Your theory isn't supported by MLB payrolls. 12 of the top 17 payrolls in baseball are National League teams.
Your theory isn't supported by MLB payrolls. 12 of the top 17 payrolls in baseball are National League teams.
And it would be even higher with the DH. Simple logic.
The players union wants the DH in the NL. Because it will create an additional high paying salary spot
And that, above and beyond all else, is why the NL will get the DH.
It’s not necessarily a surprise that the players would want to bring the DH to the NL, given that it could create an additional “position” for players to be better compensated, and could increase the overall bidding landscape for high-end position players. NL teams could join AL teams in knowing that they can accommodate an additional bat by moving guys around between positions and the DH, and could also have a place to put older – perhaps pricey – guys who still have the bat but can’t quite hack it in the field.
From the above article
Case closed.
I am a huge baseball fan who hates the DH. I have been following this for awhile. Best to just agree with me on this one and move on.