Adley's health this season

[Sports Guy]

3 hours ago, Surhoffan17 said:

When has he made excuses? I can't recall one instance. 

You aren’t actually thinking there is an intelligence answer coming from him, do you?

[Tony-OH]

16 hours ago, DirtyBird said:

Isn’t this saying -14 Swing Runs in the shadow?

That chart on the right is confusing AF. I see -14 swing runs in the shadow and -13 runs on take but the chart on the left says -16 runs total in the shadow. I dunno. 

I do know it backs up what we show with our eyes and that he missed or took way too many hittable pitches this year.

[DirtyBird]

6 minutes ago, Tony-OH said:

That chart on the right is confusing AF. I see -14 swing runs in the shadow and -13 runs on take but the chart on the left says -16 runs total in the shadow. I dunno. 

I do know it backs up what we show with our eyes and that he missed or took way too many hittable pitches this year.

I think green bar above the color coded line is Swing and the brown bar below the color coded line is Take. So data from each zone straddles its color coded line.

So he was bad when he took pitches in the heart, and bad when he swung at them in the shadow.

[Tony-OH]

9 minutes ago, DirtyBird said:

I think green bar above the color coded line is Swing and the brown bar below the color coded line is Take. So data from each zone straddles its color coded line.

So he was bad when he took pitches in the heart, and bad when he swung at them in the shadow.

Forget the value for a second since they don't add up from the chart on the right to the chart on the left. Just look at how much less he swings at pitches in the heart of the zone. He swings at 10% less pitches than the major league average in the heart of the zone where most of the damage is done. He actually swang at 3% more pitches than major league average on chase, so not sure how he was worth 22 more runs unless he did more damage than others in that area.

[Pat Kelly]

 

[e16bball]

45 minutes ago, Tony-OH said:

Forget the value for a second since they don't add up from the chart on the right to the chart on the left. Just look at how much less he swings at pitches in the heart of the zone. He swings at 10% less pitches than the major league average in the heart of the zone where most of the damage is done. He actually swang at 3% more pitches than major league average on chase, so not sure how he was worth 22 more runs unless he did more damage than others in that area.

It’s that last bolded part. Mostly. 

What they’re showing in that chart is the run value of the actual outcome of each pitch the batter saw in that zone — not the value of “good take” vs. “bad swing,” as you might assume based on the context.

So in the the heart of the plate, for example, everyone’s “take” runs are going to be negative, because taking almost assuredly resulted in a strike every time. So every “take” outcome was negative, and they’re adding up that negative run value for each one to get the total damage done by taking pitches in the middle of the plate. For Adley, that was -13 runs of negative value this year. 

On the other hand, you get a wide disparity of values from “swings” in the heart of the plate, and that’s basically dependent on how good the hitter is. Because what they’re looking at is the result of the swing — good hitters do tons of damage on pitches down the middle, but bad hitters still make lots of outs on them.

The worst hitter in baseball on pitches in the heart of the plate was Maikel “Just Go Ahead and Bunt Three Times” Garcia. He took almost as many of these pitches as Adley, so his takes in the heart of the plate were worth -12 runs. He also sucked something terrible at hitting them, posting a whopping -19 run value when he swung at pitches in the heart zone.

The best hitter in baseball on pitches in the heart of the plate (and top 5 in every zone) was…wait for it…Aaron Judge with +41 run value. Though he was much better than league average at swinging at heart pitches, he still took 160 of them (for strikes), so those were worth -11 runs. He destroyed the pitches he swung at, though, to the tune of +52 runs on swings. 
 

It’s the same throughout all the other zones. So for Adley, his takes were a little below average in the “shadow” zone — meaning the pitches he took around the fringes of the plate were called strikes more than they were called balls. And all the called balls he took in the “chase” and “waste” zones were worth a combined total of +40 runs.

Swings in the “shadow” zone usually result in negative value, except for your really elite hit tool guys (Witt, Ramirez, Marte, Alvarez, etc). Which makes sense, because it’s really the so-called “pitcher’s pitch” area. Adley was -14 runs of value added on his swing here, which is not great but not really horrible either. 

The last two zones are pretty simple — taking pitches will result in a ball, so all of those are good outcomes. Swinging at them pretty much inevitably will result in a strike or an out, so they’re almost all bad outcomes. Adley was comparatively good in this area, with the value of his ability to lay off bad pitches far outweighing the damage done when he did chase. 
 

In the end, it sort of tells us the same story that we already knew from watching him. He’s pretty good at laying off bad pitches, although he expanded the zone a lot more this year than last (which didn’t seem to work out). He also just inexplicably took tons of good strikes in the heart of the plate (which definitely didn’t work out). Swinging at more bad pitches and less good pitches is certainly part of the recipe for the disastrous 2nd half, I think.

[BRobinsonfan]

On 10/3/2024 at 1:58 AM, MDK02 said:

So everything is great as long as we just make the playoffs? At what point is expecting to win a playoff game acceptable? Isn’t the goal to win a WS or is it to win more than 80 games?

If we’re just going to keep failing when it really matters in the playoffs then 55 wins or 95 wins doesn’t make a difference in the grand scheme of things. In fact, you could argue 55 is better for the long term. 

Well, you can't make the playoffs if you're a 55-win team, so the first goal has to be able to win enough games to make the playoffs.  

[BRobinsonfan]

On 10/3/2024 at 9:38 AM, phxosfan said:

I'm totally comfortable calling a team that has won 192 regular season wins and has an 0-5 playoff record an epic failure. The team had a superior record to the Rangers last year. They just got swept at home to a team that was 4-9 down the stretch. Do you believe the those two teams had a better team? I don't. If that isn't an epic failure, what is it to you?

What is it to me?  A really small sample size.  The worst teams in baseball can beat the best teams in baseball in a short series.  It happens.  It's disappointing, it's frustrating, and it doesn't absolve management and the front office from all of the decisions they made, but it's 5 games.  

Edited 1 hour ago by BRobinsonfan

[BRobinsonfan]

On 10/3/2024 at 11:28 AM, Moose Milligan said:

Check your sarcasm detector.

Maybe he's not spending enough time with the girlfriend?  (Nudge, nudge, wink, wink). 

[LookitsPuck]

I don't know why we're just going to ignore that hit on the hand against the Rangers. He was performing amazing up until that point, and even 2 weeks before. Immediately after he fell off a cliff. 

Now, is that an "injury" if he didn't miss time? No. But is it also possible that it affected his bat speed, and he thought he'd just battle through it? Sure, I think so. Especially if it there wasn't pain. As said before, Elias and Hyde can't force him to go to the doctor, do blood tests, whatever. The initial x-rays were negative, but think folks need to realize that X-Rays aren't always conclusive that there isn't damage or you're not hurt. 

Now, this wouldn't have impacted his framing bottom of the zone, since it hit his throwing hand. But this would definitely impact bat speed. Your torso generates so much of your speed, but your wrists play a non-insignificant part of it as well. So, wouldn't shock me that his wrists were never able to recuperate throughout the season. Even if he's not starting at C or even DHing, these guys swing all the time. 

[interloper]

1 hour ago, Pat Kelly said:

 

If this is the reason (and I'm not 100% convinced) I don't understand why he or Hyde or Elias think that hiding something like this is beneficial in any way. It just increases the frustration of the fans. It just makes everyone think he's either out of shape or bad at baseball. Wouldn't you rather confirm an injury? 

[Surhoffan17]

7 minutes ago, LookitsPuck said:

I don't know why we're just going to ignore that hit on the hand against the Rangers. He was performing amazing up until that point, and even 2 weeks before. Immediately after he fell off a cliff. 

Now, is that an "injury" if he didn't miss time? No. But is it also possible that it affected his bat speed, and he thought he'd just battle through it? Sure, I think so. Especially if it there wasn't pain. As said before, Elias and Hyde can't force him to go to the doctor, do blood tests, whatever. The initial x-rays were negative, but think folks need to realize that X-Rays aren't always conclusive that there isn't damage or you're not hurt. 

Now, this wouldn't have impacted his framing bottom of the zone, since it hit his throwing hand. But this would definitely impact bat speed. Your torso generates so much of your speed, but your wrists play a non-insignificant part of it as well. So, wouldn't shock me that his wrists were never able to recuperate throughout the season. Even if he's not starting at C or even DHing, these guys swing all the time. 

One interesting thing is I think he homered later that game and it was his last for a while. 

[LookitsPuck]

3 minutes ago, interloper said:

If this is the reason (and I'm not 100% convinced) I don't understand why he or Hyde or Elias think that hiding something like this is beneficial in any way. It just increases the frustration of the fans. It just makes everyone think he's either out of shape or bad at baseball. Wouldn't you rather confirm an injury? 

They might not even know. Initial x-rays were negative, it's possible that Adley thought he could just play through it and maybe it wasn't painful, just fatigued? Who knows. But unless Adley tells them (assuming they're not hiding it), nothing they can really do. Wonder if Adley just felt the All Star Break was coming up, so he'd just deal. 

I think it's way too obvious of a data point to ignore, personally. 

[interloper]

6 minutes ago, LookitsPuck said:

They might not even know. Initial x-rays were negative, it's possible that Adley thought he could just play through it and maybe it wasn't painful, just fatigued? Who knows. But unless Adley tells them (assuming they're not hiding it), nothing they can really do. Wonder if Adley just felt the All Star Break was coming up, so he'd just deal. 

I think it's way too obvious of a data point to ignore, personally. 

I watched both the Elias and Hyde press conferences in full and they both get weird around the Adley question. You can feel the hesitation on saying it's not an injury, and the way they kind of squirm around the question. If we can point to the HBP then surely they can do and would have done MRIs if Adley still felt iffy after the x-ray. Unless he's truly hiding it. But it sure feels like all parties know about something and for some reason that makes no sense to me, they aren't divulging it. 

[Moose Milligan]

I hate that Adley getting hit on the hand is the excuse why he kept playing and his season went down the crapper, yet Italian Breakfast gets hit on the hand, breaks his thumb and works his ass off to get back to his team in time for the playoffs. 
 

I’m a 50% believer that Adley getting hit on the hand is the reason that he was so bad towards the end of the season, but it still doesn’t explain the drop in OBP. He’s getting down to Adam Jones levels of on base percentage. 

His approach seems to be totally different than when he first came up. A hurt hand doesn’t have anything to do with that.