Adley's health this season

[interloper]

3 minutes ago, Moose Milligan said:

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. 

I tend to agree, I'm not convinced. Cowser had hand/nerve stuff and continued to play his game. Westburg broke his hand, came back, and looked good. Not sure why getting hit on the hand suddenly made Adley swing at trash out of the zone. 

[clapdiddy]

12 minutes ago, interloper said:

I tend to agree, I'm not convinced. Cowser had hand/nerve stuff and continued to play his game. Westburg broke his hand, came back, and looked good. Not sure why getting hit on the hand suddenly made Adley swing at trash out of the zone. 

Not trying to be naive or contradictory, but are we sure that he's swinging at bad pitches?  

[Witchy_Chick]

23 minutes ago, interloper said:

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. 

I wonder if Adley's issues are something health related but not necessarily an injury per se.  IIRC we all found out in the offseason that Ced was suffering from Crohn's in.......2020?  2021?   After Ced was pretty dreadful offensively all that season (whichever year it was).

I mean something like that could potentially be at play with Adley.  Health issue but not an "injury."  Maybe something that was medically revealed after the HBP?

IDK, spitballing here.

[TopGunnar]

On 10/3/2024 at 1:06 PM, Ohfan67 said:

Or Elis is being honest and Adley's not really injured and he's just sucking. Hard to tell. 

 

Apparently Adley was crying after the game. He didn't want to suck, so if it's a conditioning or preparation thing, then hopefully he gets in gear. 

Good, he should cry. His performance the last 3 months including playoffs isnt something that gets forgotten easily. Atleast not for me

[Moose Milligan]

25 minutes ago, interloper said:

I tend to agree, I'm not convinced. Cowser had hand/nerve stuff and continued to play his game. Westburg broke his hand, came back, and looked good. Not sure why getting hit on the hand suddenly made Adley swing at trash out of the zone. 

Yeah, everyone's different.  I can understand why a bad back and a bad hand would make someone an ineffective hitter.

But Adley's chase rate went from 81st percentile to 47th percentile on statcast.

[e16bball]

18 minutes ago, clapdiddy said:

Not trying to be naive or contradictory, but are we sure that he's swinging at bad pitches?  

Pulling on that trusty but extremely confusing data/graphic that @Tony-OH was referencing earlier, we see the following swing rates for Adley in the various zones (2022 / 2023 / 2024):

Heart: 67% / 66% / 63%

Shadow: 47% / 47% / 51%

Chase: 19% / 18% / 26%

Waste: 3% / 3% / 3%

The short answer is that he did swing at a lot more bad pitches this year than he had before. And at less good pitches. One could probably quibble about whether shadow pitches are entirely “bad,” but there’s no doubt that pitches in the chase zone are just bad pitches to try to hit.

Edited 1 hour ago by e16bball

[LookitsPuck]

56 minutes ago, Moose Milligan said:

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. 

He had a 351 OBP at the time of the HBP. That said, only 26 walks in 348 PA or 13 PA/BB at that point. Last year had 92 walks in 687 PA or 1 every 7 PA or so. For whatever reason he got more aggressive last year. But I will say he was tracking to have a 32 HR, 116 RBI season over the course of 162 (obv would be less numbers due to him probably only playing in 154 like last year, but still close enough) which I think all of us would have signed up for rather than the 19 HR, 79 RBI season he ended up with.

[LookitsPuck]

58 minutes ago, interloper said:

I tend to agree, I'm not convinced. Cowser had hand/nerve stuff and continued to play his game. Westburg broke his hand, came back, and looked good. Not sure why getting hit on the hand suddenly made Adley swing at trash out of the zone. 

Did Westburg look good, though? He hit 192 and slugged 232 before the playoffs back from the IL. In the playoffs he did drive a couple, but neither of them gone (obviously). And I don't think we really know much if anything about Colton's "hand/nerve" stuff.

Edited 1 hour ago by LookitsPuck

[e16bball]

The more complicated answer to the above goes back to the original point that @interloper raised, about the hand being a factor in causing Adley to swing at bad pitches. 

I think Adley was swinging at these pitches all year. And I don’t think it’s at all clear that swinging at bad pitches was the key issue in Adley’s second half struggles. 

I can’t split those Baseball Savant zone “take/swing” breakdowns into half seasons, so the best I can do is use Fangraphs to try to zero in a little bit on when the more free-swinging Adley we saw this year really came about. Using their plate discipline rates, the answer is a bit interesting:

Adley (2022): 40.5% swing rate; 22.8% out of zone swing rate; 15.6% whiff rate

Adley (2023): 41.0% swing rate; 24.5% out of zone swing rate; 13.9% whiff rate

Adley (4/1 - 6/30): 45.2% swing rate; 31.7% out of zone swing rate; 17.9% whiff rate

Adley (7/1 - 9/30): 43.6% swing rate; 28.1% out of zone swing rate; 12.4% whiff rate

The upshot is that 1st half Adley was an absolutely massive departure from the player he’d been previously. He was pretty consistent between 2022-2023, pretty similar across the board. But this season, he came out swinging far more than he ever had. That included swinging at a lot more balls and a lot more swings-and-miss. He actually swung more than both Gunnar and Colton, which is sort of wild if you’ve ever tried to spot Adley on a swing rate leaderboard (hint: scroll to the bottom). 

By contrast, it looks like 2nd half Adley was actively attempting to get back to his roots. The swing rate is back closer to his previous norms — and if you break it down more closely, he was swinging less and less each month as the second half went on. There was an obvious effort to put the bat on the ball, as his second half contact rate was basically 95th percentile. 
 

So really, the part of the season where Adley sucked out loud was actually the part where his swing decisions were more like his old self. The “new” Adley that was swinging more, chasing more, striking out more, walking less? That guy was actually the most productive version we’ve ever had, with a 135 wRC+. More power and a higher batting average than he’d ever done, and very nearly to a career high in HRs by the ASB. 

[Pat Kelly]

12 minutes ago, e16bball said:

The more complicated answer to the above goes back to the original point that @interloper raised, about the hand being a factor in causing Adley to swing at bad pitches. 

I think Adley was swinging at these pitches all year. And I don’t think it’s at all clear that swinging at bad pitches was the key issue in Adley’s second half struggles. 

I can’t split those Baseball Savant zone “take/swing” breakdowns into half seasons, so the best I can do is use Fangraphs to try to zero in a little bit on when the more free-swinging Adley we saw this year really came about. Using their plate discipline rates, the answer is a bit interesting:

Adley (2022): 40.5% swing rate; 22.8% out of zone swing rate; 15.6% whiff rate

Adley (2023): 41.0% swing rate; 24.5% out of zone swing rate; 13.9% whiff rate

Adley (4/1 - 6/30): 45.2% swing rate; 31.7% out of zone swing rate; 17.9% whiff rate

Adley (7/1 - 9/30): 43.6% swing rate; 28.1% out of zone swing rate; 12.4% whiff rate

The upshot is that 1st half Adley was an absolutely massive departure from the player he’d been previously. He was pretty consistent between 2022-2023, pretty similar across the board. But this season, he came out swinging far more than he ever had. That included swinging at a lot more balls and a lot more swings-and-miss. He actually swung more than both Gunnar and Colton, which is sort of wild if you’ve ever tried to spot Adley on a swing rate leaderboard (hint: scroll to the bottom). 

By contrast, it looks like 2nd half Adley was actively attempting to get back to his roots. The swing rate is back closer to his previous norms — and if you break it down more closely, he was swinging less and less each month as the second half went on. There was an obvious effort to put the bat on the ball, as his second half contact rate was basically 95th percentile. 
 

So really, the part of the season where Adley sucked out loud was actually the part where his swing decisions were more like his old self. The “new” Adley that was swinging more, chasing more, striking out more, walking less? That guy was actually the most productive version we’ve ever had, with a 135 wRC+. More power and a higher batting average than he’d ever done, and very nearly to a career high in HRs by the ASB. 

Perhaps the hand injury was why he dialed back, was not able to swing as aggresively as he had in the first half.  He adjusted his exercise regime/approach and when/if it fully healed could not find H1 form.

Edited 57 minutes ago by Pat Kelly

[Just Regular]

Digesting these few days, it is I think what a main memory of 2024 will become.    

Adley, Gunnar, Felix, Grayson and Bradish are perhaps the top 5 long term Orioles for October baseball until the younger players can hold their own with the men.    We had 1 out of 5 right this pennant race.