October 8, 2024

41 thoughts on “Yankees (26-15) @ Rays (20-20), Sunday, May 12, 2024, 1:40 PM EDT

  1. Only Booner would start a very bad hitter, Jones, out of position. He probably is the best option for left field other than Verdugo or Grisham who has a higher OPS against LHPs than right or Berti who has 95 games in the out field or Waldo.

    1. Marinaccio had been pitching well, so they had to send him down to bring Burdi up. It is just more Stupid Cashman stuff.

  2. These new bat-tracking metrics, even the more opaque ones, are nifty. Soto ranks super high on “squared-up rate” – 40% of swings (3rd in MLB) or 50% of contact (2nd in MLB) – while Stanton and Judge currently rank at or below average in squaring the ball up, and appear to compensate with their bat speed. The fact that Soto both swings fast and squares it up well might correlate with his swing being shorter.

    The MLB leader in “squared up rate”, at least for swings, is Luis Arraez, whose bat speed is well below average. By Statcast measurements, his swing is also super short.
    There does seem to be a direct correlation between “swing length” and bat speed (suggesting relatively constant swing times across the league), and an inverse correlation between “swing length” and “squared-up rate”.

    They don’t measure “swing time”, but absent direct measurement, such a metric could be computed as a ratio of swing length to bat speed. Would be interesting to see whether shorter swing time is actually allowing Soto to start a swing later, see a ball longer, square it up better.

    Would also be fun if these kinds of metrics had existed back in the days of Wee Willie Keeler, or Tony Gwynn, or Ichiro, or Vlad Sr., or Barry Bonds.

    1. It’s not surprising that Stanton and Judge have such long swings as they have such “long levers” as Eric Longehagen refers to them. This is why really big guys are considered difficult to develop and why they are ao often “all or nothing” hitters as Stanton has become.

      The ESPN crew last night mentioned that Chipper Jones swung a heavier bat with a thicker handle to *slow down* his swing with the aim of keeping it in the zone longer.

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