Jump to content

Heston Kjerstad 2023


Three Run Homer

Recommended Posts

1 hour ago, Tony-OH said:

I think there is little doubt he starts the year in Bowie. This year should tell us a lot about him. He clearly has his strength back, he's out of the Sally League (still seems weird to say that about Aberdeen) hitter hell, and AA is usually the place where you can really get an idea of what kind of major league hitter a prospect will become. 

He's had a great spring, but more importantly, we hope to see a great April and May and beyond. Pretty impressive so far for sure though.

He also had a great AFL although his cumulative SO numbers give you pause. However, after the first 2 weeks his SOs were 35%, by end of month they were down to 31% overall. The last 2 weeks he was in the low 20's% SOs. He adjusted. he is also a much bigger, stronger guy than he was when drafted, just look at his legs. I don't expect full on Gunnar, but more a Norby-like bat explosion would get him to AAA mid-year to backfill Cowser.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

33 minutes ago, AnythingO's said:

He also had a great AFL although his cumulative SO numbers give you pause. However, after the first 2 weeks his SOs were 35%, by end of month they were down to 31% overall. The last 2 weeks he was in the low 20's% SOs. He adjusted. he is also a much bigger, stronger guy than he was when drafted, just look at his legs. I don't expect full on Gunnar, but more a Norby-like bat explosion would get him to AAA mid-year to backfill Cowser.

Considering the strikeouts and the light-tower power, if he turns into a better-fielding Kyle Schwarber for the O's I'll be thrilled. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

What does Kjerstad have to do to be promoted in 200 PAs in Bowie?

Gunnar had 208 PAs.  Norby had 296 PAs.  Cowser 224 PAs.  Westburg 209.  Ortiz had 485 PAs. 

Obviously, all of them are different players with different skill sets to focus on.   So, what metrics are you/should they focus on?

Dingers?  BB%?  K%?  ISO?  HH%?  OPS+?  Defensive metrics?

 

I'd like to see some ISO juice (.230+), 8+ BB%, sub30 K%.  Something along the lines of what Westburg did in AA last year with more power.  If he does that, then I think he'll be promoted around 200 PAs.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, LookinUp said:

That wasn't just a bp fastball. It was slightly above the belt and cutting in on him. Nice to turn on that, even if it wasn't 100 mph.

I give Kjerstad credit for the pure power, but when I watch that pitch in slow-mo/freeze frame, I see a pitch that was started out slightly outside-plate and barely cut middle-middle, right at his belt buckle. Not to take away from the power, but that wasn't a particularly competitive pitch in my opinion. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

19 hours ago, RZNJ said:

Half the home runs in baseball are on mistake pitches, center cut fastballs, high changeups, and hanging breaking pitches.   Some hitters take advantage of those mistakes more than others.

Agreed. but I'd guess more like 80% are on mistake pitches. Though at the MLB level, a mistake pitch is defined much differently than at lower levels because the big league hitters are so good.

  • Upvote 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.




  • Posts

    • dWAR is just the run value for defense added with the defensive adjustment.  Corner OF spots have a -7.5 run adjustment, while CF has a +2.5 adjustment over 150 games.    Since Cowser played both CF and the corners they pro-rate his time at each to calculate his defensive adjustment. 
    • Just to be clear, though, fWAR also includes a substantial adjustment for position, including a negative one for Cowser.  For a clearer example on that front, as the chart posted higher on this page indicates, Carlos Santana had a +14 OAA — which is the source data that fWAR’s defensive component is based on. That 14 outs above average equates to 11-12 (they use different values on this for some reason) runs better than the average 1B.  So does Santana have a 12.0 defensive value, per fWAR? He does not. That’s because they adjust his defensive value downward to reflect that he’s playing a less difficult/valuable position. In this case, that adjustment comes out to -11.0 runs, as you can see here:   So despite apparently having a bona fide Gold Glove season, Santana’s Fielding Runs value (FanGraphs’ equivalent to dWAR) is barely above average, at 1.1 runs.    Any good WAR calculation is going to adjust for position. Being a good 1B just isn’t worth as much as being an average SS or catcher. Just as being a good LF isn’t worth as much as being an average CF. Every outfielder can play LF — only the best outfielders can play CF.  Where the nuance/context shows up here is with Cowser’s unique situation. Playing LF in OPACY, with all that ground to cover, is not the same as playing LF at Fenway or Yankee Stadium. Treating Cowser’s “position” as equivalent to Tyler O’Neill’s, for example, is not fair. The degree of difficulty is much, much higher at OPACY’s LF, and so the adjustment seems out of whack for him. That’s the one place where I’d say the bWAR value is “unfair” to Cowser.
    • Wait a second here, the reason he's -0.1 in bb-ref dwar is because they're using drs to track his defensive run value.  He's worth 6.6 runs in defense according to fangraphs, which includes adjustments for position, which would give him a fangraphs defensive war of +0.7.
    • A little funny to have provided descriptions of the hits (“weak” single; “500 foot” HR). FIP doesn’t care about any of that either, so it’s kind of an odd thing to add in an effort to make ERA look bad.  Come in, strike out the first hitter, then give up three 108 MPH rocket doubles off the wall. FIP thinks you were absolutely outstanding, and it’s a shame your pathetic defense and/or sheer bad luck let you down. Next time you’ll (probably) get the outcomes you deserve. They’re both flawed. So is xFIP. So is SIERA. So is RA/9. So is WPA. So is xERA. None of them are perfect measures of how a pitcher’s actual performance was, because there’s way too much context and too many variables for any one metric to really encompass.  But when I’m thinking about awards, for me at least, it ends up having to be about the actual outcomes. I don’t really care what a hitter’s xWOBA is when I’m thinking about MVP, and the same is true for pitchers. Did you get the outs? Did the runs score? That’s the “value” that translates to the scoreboard and, ultimately, to the standings. So I think the B-R side of it is more sensible for awards.  I definitely take into account the types of factors that you (and other pitching fWAR advocates) reference as flaws. So if a guy plays in front of a particular bad defense or had a particularly high percentage of inherited runners score, I’d absolutely adjust my take to incorporate that info. And I also 100% go to Fangraphs first when I’m trying to figure out which pitchers we should acquire (i.e., for forward looking purposes).  But I just can’t bring myself say that my Cy Young is just whichever guy had the best ratio of Ks to BBs to HRs over a threshold number of innings. As @Frobby said, it just distills out too much of what actually happened.
    • We were all a lot younger in 2005.  No one wanted to believe Canseco cause he’s a smarmy guy. Like I said, he was the only one telling the truth. It wasn’t a leap of faith to see McGwire up there and Sosa up there and think “yeah, those guys were juicing” but then suddenly look at Raffy and think he was completely innocent.  It’s a sad story. The guy should be in Hall of Fame yet 500 homers and 3,000 hits are gone like a fart in the wind cause his legacy is wagging his finger and thinking he couldn’t get caught.  Don’t fly too close to the sun.  
    • I think if we get the fun sprinkler loving Gunnar that was in the dugout yesterday, I don’t think we have to worry about him pressing. He seemed loose and feeling good with the other guys he was with, like Kremer.
    • I was a lot younger back then, but that betrayal hit really hard because he had been painting himself as literally holier than thou, and shook his finger to a congressional committee and then barely 2 weeks later failed the test.
  • Popular Contributors

×
×
  • Create New...