Say O!

Loving the statcast metric availability. These numbers from Povich start are eerily similar to Ragan’s pitch mix% with Logan Allen speed/spin from yesterday.

This

The two plays last night which have generated some discussion are here — link to reels I thought his diving attempt in the first was great effort, his jump was solid, he tracked outstanding, just didn’t make the diving catch. The other play of note was the double to RCF, again I thought he tracked well to cut if off, conditions were wet, ball didn’t bounce as high, skipped under his glove although Mateo quickly regrouped preventing any runners further advancing. net/net, while he didn’t make these (potentially outstanding) plays, to me he looked capable in CF whereas I did not get that impression last year when his tracking was circuitous and missteps were prevalent in limited action.

Against LHP, Os need Mounty and Hays to rake. Both have historically done so when digging into their respective splits, particularly against LHP fastballs feasting to the tune of xWOBA .400-.500 and xSLG .600+ (heck Mounty was .798 xSLG in 23 and .763 xSLG in 21 against LHP fastballs). Neither one has done much at all so far this season vs LHP.

Burnes has that *dawg* in him. It was fun to watch him battle. Excited for the next “Corbin Burnes day.” Despite yesterday’s low strikeouts, his stuff was solid in terms of movement/spin and still got 13 swings & misses (btw more than his debut vs Angels of 12 and same number as Ragan’s last night) But I thought he/McCann were getting too predictable in terms of pitch locations, and not as varied in quadrants. Against, KC it seemed nearly everything to righties was low/away whereas against LAA he went up in the zone more with cutter and didnt try to spike the curveball below the zone all the time. Here are the baseball-savant illustrators from these two games.

Say Adley made it to 2B, would KC have walked Mounty against the LHP, then determine if they prefer Santa vs LHP/RHP? if could do it again, I wouldn’t run on Renfroe and have Mounty against the LHP (since KC couldn’t go to bullpen given minimum batters). Then force KC to confront walking or not.

Burnes location is off tonight.

No hit kinda stuff from Ragans today

Ragans stuff is sick. Nasty change , followed by 98mph on the black to get Mateo.

He’s 100 percentile in sprint speed…literally the fastest player in the game.

KC is looking down on the zone, gotta change eye levels and start throwing inside.

To me, ZIPs is low on GRod right now, evaluating him based on full 2023 and not 2H when he was a different GUY. Even the 70% case table might be low at 3.6 WAR. Szymborski qualifies that saying

Royals not chasing the outside cutter today, Burnes/McCann need to adapt and start throwing them in on the hands.

Nice dig out there by Mounty.

McCann is kinda jerky with his pitch framing today, not as smooth with it as Adley. I think it’s cost Burnes a couple potential strikes so far.

For those who want to go down the stats nerd rabbit hole — FanGraphs library piece on when do metrics stabilize (with link outs to other site pieces on reliability). I think many would be shocked at how many ABs it takes for metrics to stabilize. “Stabilization” Points for Offense Statistics: 60 PA: Strikeout rate 120 PA: Walk rate 240 PA: HBP rate 290 PA: Single rate 1610 PA: XBH rate 170 PA: HR rate 910 AB: AVG 460 PA: OBP 320 AB: SLG 160 AB: ISO 80 BIP: GB rate 80 BIP: FB rate 600 BIP: LD rate 50 FBs: HR per FB 820 BIP: BABIP “Stabilization” Points for Pitching Statistics: 70 BF: Strikeout rate 170 BF: Walk rate 640 BF: HBP rate 670 BF: Single rate 1450 BF: XBH rate 1320 BF: HR rate 630 BF: AVG 540 BF: OBP 550 AB: SLG 630 AB: ISO 70 BIP: GB rate 70 BIP: FB rate 650 BIP: LD rate 400 FB: HR per FB 2000 BIP: BABIP

MLB Pipeline blog predicting when top prospects will get called up. Eleven prospects cited, and three are O’s.

Nice first outing, way better than what he looked in the spring prospect game.

Velocity?

Last inning with Tate, Adley looked like he was channeling Tony Pena crouch with one leg extended. He’s back to more normal crouch with Webb.

Indeed a good sign

Lots of detail about individual pitch offerings on Baseball Savant — link to page on Kremer. Here is data table on his 2023 pitch types, can see that curveball stands out, particularly BA, SLG and corresponding WOBA xWOBA. Also quite low whiff% and anemic put away% (Corbin Burnes for comparison gets around 50% whiff% on his curveball). Watching on TV, pitch appears to have decent spin/movement so perhaps it’s more a matter of hitters picking it up out of his hand or not tunneling well with other pitches. For overhand curveballs, sometimes it is noticeable to get a bump/hop at pitcher release and therefore something that hitters can distinguish from other pitch types. (Also note that can see the cutter as effective pitch, but does yield more HRs than Kremer’s other pitches.)

He looked like a left handed Pedro Cerrano up there last night.

Tough inning there, I thought Kimbrel stuff and pitches looked good enough. Bloop single, gets burned by SBs, sac fly after could have gotten strike 3 on the SB attempt.

Damn the ball beat him and great throw by Adley but looks like Urias tagged late.