Conway12

He's a beat reporter for The Sun

Three balls to deep center last night and a laser to the Left Fielder.

My biggest takeaway as well. It's categorized as a splitter by Statcast. It is definitely a different pitch from his changeup. Has WAY lower spin, more vertical drop, and less horizontal movement. It's also a tad slower. I had no idea he was working on a Splitter. It's been his best pitch through 2 starts. Something to watch for sure.

I have to dust off the old statistics class, so a lot of this may be wrong. But, in the Fangraphs glossary article they say that "stabilization" is when the R^2 of the variable crosses .49 to .50. Said another way, the variable (for example strikeout rate) "stabilizes" at a certain sample size (60 PA). In this case, "stabilize" means that the variable (Strikeout Rate) is at least 50 percent determined by the sample size (60 PA). So, going forward, you would expect the variable (Strikeout Rate) to not go 50% higher or lower than when it crosses that "stabilization" point (60 PA). For example, if after 60 PA you had a strikeout rate of 10% you would only expect it to go up or down 5% (or less) moving forward. However, that is only if the sample (60 PA) is the exact same as the previous sample (60 PA), which of course it is not in baseball. Russel Carleton, the guy who popularized this stuff in baseball, has written on numerous occasions that his "stabilization point" was some what arbitrary and is used incorrectly nowadays to explain early season performances. He says it's really more like 150 PA to explain strikeout rate in a season to get to the "stabilization point." You should read the linked article and anything else he has written on the subject to understand it better. Here is quote from that article that I linked.

"Webb looked like he was going nowhere after Kansas City drafted him out of high school, as he spent four years in rookie-level leagues. After the pandemic season, though, his fastball velocity took a big jump, to 95-97 mph, reaching triple digits. The pitch gets a lot of swings and misses up in the zone. Webb throws it most of the time, but also has a slider that sometimes generates swings and misses, and a change that needs a lot of work. The Royals added him to their 40-man roster after the 2021 season, but dropped him after an injury-plagued 2022 season. The Pirates signed him as a minor league free agent." https://www.piratesprospects.com/nate-webb Lots of K's, lots of walks.

This measures the total population of prime age people and gives you a percentage of how many of them are working or looking for work. It has nothing to do with the available number of jobs.

I don't want to be insulting, political, or go away this much from baseball but this "nobody wants to work anymore" narrative just bothers me. The prime age labor participation rate is the highest it's been since the late 1990s which was when it was at it's peak. The reason it is hard to find people is that there are fewer prime age workers (aging of the population) and those fewer works don't want crappy low level low paying jobs. Why don't people want those crappy low paying jobs? The answer is in the question.

100% agree with this. He pitched completely differently last night and they had him warming up early in the game. I think they wanted to give him game action to try out some things. He only threw 2 sinkers and 1 changeup. 5 four seam fastballs and 9(!!) sliders. If he can keep that four seam up (and out) of the zone consistently it would definitely keep hitters from sitting on the sinker.

Easiest schedule remaining in the division as well.

Michael Forret signed per Jim Callis. $450K, $300K against the bonus pool. I couldn't figure out to embed tweets because I'm a dummy. But here's a link.

Yes. It's all of his WAR combined. He averaged 2.3ish WAR for per season for 18 years.

Maybe. Looking at the game logs, he missed two games, came back on 4/23 and was still hitting pretty well for the remainder of April. Including 2 more home runs. Maybe he aggravated it again at the end of April and we didn't hear about it. He really got cold once the calendar turned over to May.

The Fangraphs Splits Tool is a little clunky, but once you figure out how to use it, it is great for stuff like this. I agree with you as well. Nothing about Mateo since about late-April would indicate to me that he needs to hit against anyone. And you are right on it. Since May 1st his OPS against RHP is, not fit for human consumption, at .329.

His OPS vs. LHP since May 1st is .536. Also, since he came out of the game for a hip injury on 4/19 his overall OPS is .492. Don't want to blame that since he didn't go on the IL and no one has mentioned it yet, thought it was semi-interesting considering they had Hays play all of last year with a beat up wrist.