Luke on Fangraphs (Re: John Means)

[sportsfan8703]

10 hours ago, BohKnowsBmore said:

Means getting his fastball up to 94 to end the third inning. 

Sprinkling some of that magical Houston dust on him. Hopefully this offseason Elias can bring in even more of his guys. 

[Going Underground]

13 hours ago, Can_of_corn said:

I would have gone with...

 

Or this. We must never surrender. History recalls how great the fall can be.

 

[Camden_yardbird]

18 hours ago, Luke-OH said:

Sometimes you can fool the league once, but after the book gets out (in Means’s case, his changeup usage, location, etc) hitter’s do better. It’s easy to get exposed at this level.

This is a good point.  I think everyone should read the whole article.  The easy take away is "Means has been good.  Change up Magnificent."  But if you read the whole thing this talk about how is going to have to improve the curve or slider, how they are low spin rate pitches, and how is game plan works now but may not later. 

It challenges some common misconception we see throw around to.

1) Pitchers with as much minor league tread as Means cant significantly improve.

2) Meaningful velocity increases are not achievable.

3) An MLB pitcher is a fully baked product.  

This is the kind of thing you see and is allowed to happen during a rebuild that you dont always see when you are expecting wins and why at the end of the year the most meaningful statistics the Orioles will have will not be record but in metrics like FB velocity, spin rate and hitters exit velocity.

 

[Aristotelian]

19 hours ago, Cy Bundy said:

My girlfriend fooled me once every day for 6 years. 

Every day? Must have been a fun six years.

[Il BuonO]

20 hours ago, Luke-OH said:

Sometimes you can fool the league once, but after the book gets out (in Means’s case, his changeup usage, location, etc) hitter’s do better. It’s easy to get exposed at this level.

I’m not particularly impressed with the command of any of his pitches so far. It seems to come and go from hitter to hitter and he’s often up in the zone. The CH tends to flatten out up higher and his FB isn’t hard enough to challenge hitters and doesn’t have much movement.

That said, there is enough deception that makes the CH a viable weapon if he pitches backwards.