Fangraphs: Orioles have good reason to be excited about Trey Mancini

[Can_of_corn]

Just now, OsFanSinceThe80s said:

I swear Mike Trout would get criticized if he was an Oriole. He strikes out too much and how many playoff games has he won?

It is a shame that only Oriole fans, in all of sports fandom, are occasionally critical of their own players.

[BohKnowsBmore]

3 minutes ago, Hallas said:

He can't catch up to the high heat.  Obviously.

Can't hit a slider****

[Can_of_corn]

3 minutes ago, Hallas said:

He can't catch up to the high heat.  Obviously.

He's slugging .750 against middle up strikes.

[Hallas]

1 minute ago, Can_of_corn said:

He's slugging .750 against middle up strikes.

Doing a bit worse vs up/in and up/away.  The narrative that he sucks vs high heat has somehow stuck around though. Obviously you can't actually punish him for it because if they could, they would hammer him up/in 24/7/365.

[Can_of_corn]

2 minutes ago, Hallas said:

Doing a bit worse vs up/in and up/away.  The narrative that he sucks vs high heat has somehow stuck around though. Obviously you can't actually punish him for it because if they could, they would hammer him up/in 24/7/365.

Part of what makes him so good is that he seems to pick one part of his game to improve each year and then manages to improve it while maintaining everything else.

[Hallas]

2 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

Part of what makes him so good is that he seems to pick one part of his game to improve each year and then manages to improve it while maintaining everything else.

Yeah.  I'm actually amazed he strikes out as much as he does.  He doesn't really swing at bad pitches anymore, and his contact rate went from being really good to Nick Markakis level.  My only thought is that he gets hosed on pitches off the corner.

[BohKnowsBmore]

17 minutes ago, Hallas said:

Yeah.  I'm actually amazed he strikes out as much as he does.  He doesn't really swing at bad pitches anymore, and his contact rate went from being really good to Nick Markakis level.  My only thought is that he gets hosed on pitches off the corner.

Not all of it, but he is #27 in the MLB in pitches per plate appearance.  Combine that with a 20% walk rate, it gives credence to the idea that it may be that he gets in a lot of really deep counts.  He's tenth in XBH (MLB) and has more PPPA than any of the guys ahead of him.  So going deep in counts and swinging hard.  That said, his BB% is still higher than his K%.

[Hallas]

1 hour ago, BohKnowsBmore said:

Not all of it, but he is #27 in the MLB in pitches per plate appearance.  Combine that with a 20% walk rate, it gives credence to the idea that it may be that he gets in a lot of really deep counts.  He's tenth in XBH (MLB) and has more PPPA than any of the guys ahead of him.  So going deep in counts and swinging hard.  That said, his BB% is still higher than his K%.

Sure he swings hard, and he goes deep in counts, but he has elite contact skills this year.  His contact and plate discipline, and P/PA stats are quite similar to Markakis; he pretty much never swings at balls, and only swings 1/2 the time at strikes.  Trout's 12th in the league in contact rate as well, at 86.2%, just a hair behind Markakis at 88.7%.  The only difference is that Trout sees balls in the zone way less often.  But given that he rarely swings at pitches outside the zone, this shouldn't lead to more strikeouts unless umpires are shafting him on balls out of the zone.

[BohKnowsBmore]

1 minute ago, Hallas said:

Sure he swings hard, and he goes deep in counts, but he has elite contact skills this year.  His contact and plate discipline, and P/PA stats are quite similar to Markakis; he pretty much never swings at balls, and only swings 1/2 the time at strikes.  Trout's 12th in the league in contact rate as well, at 86.2%, just a hair behind Markakis at 88.7%.  The only difference is that Trout sees balls in the zone way less often.  But given that he rarely swings at pitches outside the zone, this shouldn't lead to more strikeouts unless umpires are shafting him on balls out of the zone.

Maybe. Or he just doesn’t shorten and defend as much like some other guys. I’m not sure the right conclusion is that he’s getting hosed more than other guys. I’d definitely have to map out the logic, though. 

[Hallas]

25 minutes ago, BohKnowsBmore said:

Maybe. Or he just doesn’t shorten and defend as much like some other guys. I’m not sure the right conclusion is that he’s getting hosed more than other guys. I’d definitely have to map out the logic, though. 

There's some data to suggest he doesn't shorten and defend like other guys.  The splits leaderboard that Fangraphs has doesn't allow you to filter for plate discipline stats, but he ranks a bit lower than other players in terms of % of at bats that end in Ks from 2 strikes.  However, these could be strikes looking, and since we can't filter for plate discipline, we don't really know.  Among players with at last 120 PA, he's ranked 102 in K% with 2 strikes, but he's also ranked 14 in BB% with 2 strikes, and he's ranked 3 in wRC+ with 2 strikes.  The 2 possibilities here are that he won't chase balls he can't do anything with (in or out of the zone) and he gets rung up on them, or he doesn't shorten up much with 2 strikes and just tries to hit the ball hard somewhere, resulting in more swinging strikes.  Given that he rarely swings and misses as is, and given that his contact-to-damage ratio (to borrow a Showalter-ism) is quite high with 2 strikes, the latter possibility doesn't seem to fit the available facts.