Tony-OH

The video, had you watched it all, showed how much spin rates have increased since 2018.

Absolutely. Bauer was able to work a $38 million a year contract thanks to his sticky stuff that changed his stuff to the point he was dominant. With most pitchers cheating, who wouldn't cheat better than the others and collect that paycheck?

I think it's a combination of the spike in strikeouts, the lower average, and the obvious data available to everyone via statcast that shows the increase in spin rates since 2018. Did baseball execs know Bauer was going to create his super goo that was going to change him as a pitcher? I think most execs and others knew pitchers have been doing it for a long time, but it never got to the point where it made these crazy movement curveballs and sliders. I'm not thrilled with them in the middle of the season suddenly start enforcing this in anything other than the most obvious cases. I'd rather them go back this offseason and make it part of the collective bargaining agreement that spells out penalties. Trust me, I 100% agree that MLB is led by mostly imbeciles and that they make knee-jerk decisions based on emotion rather than facts, but I think the amount of high profiles hitters claiming they were going to spill the beans forced their hands a bit here.

Every time I watch him he hits. He can turn on good fastballs, go the other way, and he seems to hang in against breaking pitches and offspeed. He has gap power and probably only has average speed, so his ceiling is limited, but I can see him being a solid 4th outfielder.

If you actually watched the video instead of dropping your typical snarky comment, you would have seen how much it has increased spin rates since 2018.

Updated as of 8 June. Big jump for Ofelky Peralta who is commanding two pitches, while throwing his change decently. With a Fastball sitting at 96-98, with a new repeatable delivery, he's back on the scene.

I watched this video and was pretty amazed at how often pitchers are clearly cheating in the MLB. Watch this. What are your thoughts?

Lowther was optioned after yesterday's game.

So how long before it's Wells turn to go on the IL for a bit?

I get that, trust me I do. Most quote from players and managers are fluff. Most players though are not going to outright lie about their manager if they don't like him. they are not going to speak glowingly of him but would probably be more vanilla if you get my point. It's tough to know because I judged a lot off mannerisms when I talked to guys after the official interviews. Can't do that now.

Just like to point out that Scott has been very good over his last 6 games. Kremer has been bad no doubt and has the stuff to be much better so that is a question mark. Kremer seems to have fallen in love with cutter, but that cutter has been hammered when he doesn't locate it well. If his cutter could become more of a slider like Bradish was able to do, that would help him a lot. With a bad change up, Kremer may end up in relief if he can't get more movement on that cutter or at least command it better.

I don't think any of us know how good a "motivator" Hyde is but every player speaks glowingly about playing for him, including Mancini. We're always going to have disagreements from time to time with manager's decisions. Sometimes we aren't going to have all of the information on why he made a certain move. I haven't seen Hyde make any awful, head scratching decisions, though I question why certain guys were given so many chances while others very little. Saying that, I don't know how much he's told who to play on his roster because it always been described as a collaborative approach by Hyde with Mike and Sig being part. Because of that, it's hard to know whether or not it's Hyde's decision to try and make Rio Ruiz a second baseman when they have 1000s of PAs in the minors and over a full season of major league PAs to know that Ruiz is not going to be anything more than a replacement level hitter at best. At the end of the day though, I don't think we can judge Hyde on whether he can be a successful manager with good talent until he's given that team. Hyde was given a tough task to lead this team through a rebuild and the team still plays hard. Heck, even in the disastrous losing streak i never saw the team look like they quit. That's a credit to him honestly.

I've talked to a lot of hitters and I've never heard of any who can pick up a grip during a pitch. Perhaps Posada was special, but I would say the vast majority of hitters judge more off of release point and spin.

Never heard of batters picking up grips unless the pitcher is tipping it pre pitch with glove movement, but release points can be giveaways to good hitters.

The rankings will be updated tonight with all the updated info. Thanks though. Some big jumps this week after watching some pitching performances.

If he can find a way to come up with an effective change that he can get down to mid 80s and get a little drop or fade, that would really allow all his other stuff to play up.

Yeah, he let's a lot of "close" pitches go that look like balls but get called strikes by the umps. His strike zone judgement is no doubt outstanding.

So I guess he did have an option afterall.

I watched all of Bradish's start on Sunday and a few others earlier in the year (i didn't see his AAA debut). Pros: Has a real nice three pitch mix with the fastball (94 avg), curve and slider. That slider has become a real difference maker as it gives himself something hard (85-87) with some horizontal movement. It compliments well with his fastball and gives the batter two legitimate breaking balls to look for along with his 80-82 hammer. The change is very hard and more of a slow fastball that comes in the 88-90 mph range. it does not have very good movement and is not a very effective pitch other than to hopefully get the batter's timing off a bit. Command is what will determine his ultimate role in the big leagues. He needed 89 pitches to get through 5 innings yesterday and wasn't able to get the curveball over effectively low in the zone. The ones he left up got hit. He was missing arm side a lot with the fastball so it looks like maybe a mechanical thing that he can correct. He got a decent amount of swing an miss but, his velocity did look like it feel off a bit after the 2nd inning. He was holding his 94-95 into 75+ pitches I'd be more excited about his prospects as a starter, but right now I'm going to tamper those expectations a bit until we can see better command and the ability to hold his velocity from the 75-100 pitch point. Can he be a starter in the big league if that happens, certainly. The good news is a see a guy who would probably pitch 96-97 pretty consistently with two potential plus breaking pitches in relief so his floor still looks like a major league pitcher. He's a nice story though and with some more experience he could really end up something nice out of the Bundy trade.

Just to clarify, Henderson was from the 2019 draft, not 2020. Bradish and Vavra look like the big take aways so far from the trades, but Kevin Smith is also looking good with a wipe out slider that he commands well. Brnovich and Peak look pretty good as well, but still need to work on the command. Don't sleep on Jahmai Jones either. Not sure where his best position is yet but I think that stick has a chance to play.

His XWOBACON which basically means his production when he makes contact is now .415 vs .363 MLB avg and his XWOBA has climbed up to .298 vs .312 MLB avg. He's still hurt by 1% percentile chase rate a 7th percentile WHIFF rate. So the good news is he's at least hitting ball hard now when he does make contact.

This is a fair statement.

Would I say right now that he is a "build around" player based on what we've seen this year, yes. Based on everything we know of his past, I'm more inclined to see it through a season or two, but I'm not trading him yet unless I was blown away by the package (There is no one on this team I would not move for the right package). We are really in uncharted territory here because we've never seen a guy ditch switch hitting then tear it up like Mullins is doing. Mullins is entering his prime next year, so there is a chance he's a guy that we can build around since right now he's very good at four tools out of five and he's become a guy who knows how to hit his cut off man quickly to offset a below average arm. I'm not ready to to anoint him the guy we build around yet, but I'm going to dismiss it either. I never thought Mullins would be more than a 4th outfielder platoon guy because of his inability to hit right=handed effectively, and since we've never actually seen someone ditch one side as a switch hitter and become very effective hitting the same hand pitching as the side he uses, who know he could become what we've seen this year? What we have seen is that Mullins at 26-years old is currently playing like one of the best players in baseball. We can only hope he continues to sustain it, but even if there is some regression, he has a long way to fall before he isn't an above average center fielder at the major league level.

Young man is white hot for sure!

Let's hope it doesn't take Santander that long or the need to take the magic B-12 shots. Saying that, Santander needs to prove he can play and produce over one full season without being injured before his value skyrockets. His lack of plate discipline this year has been disappointing after his spring where he walked a bunch.