Parker Hageman

No, I was not crediting the development staff for the full 12%, just citing the increase above the league average as well as their big jump over the previous season. But the overall point is that these numbers are a trend (however much weight you want to put in the increase) toward that goal of more strikeouts and more home runs. This isn't an accident. This is the plan.

The league jumped 7% while the Twins staff improved by 12%. But yes, the IL has seen the K/9 rate increase steadily over the last few years -- from 7.1 in 2015 to 8.2 in 2017 to 9.0 now. I don't know how much of that is due to training and pitching development (when you look, the league leaders are often the Rays and the Yankees) or to increased emphasis on getting the ball in the air. Probably a little of both.

One thing I wanted to point out about Romero is that since his lower back injury, he has been working on shortening his arm action: https://twitter.com/ParkerHageman/status/1166397620178362374 It could lead to more velocity and better command but so far in August, he's walked 12 batters in 12.1 innings pitched. That may be a byproduct of the adjustment.

The drafting of power hitters is very evident in the amount of home runs hit at Elizabethton (69, nice), which is a mark they only hit three times in the last ten years (one of those years Rosario and Sano combined for 41 dingers). They won't hit that 80 mark from 2009 but they probably will have the 2nd highest home run total since then when the season ends in two days. Of course, Elizabethton is also striking out a hell of a lot more hitters than they ever had before (by like 2K per 9 IP over the last ten seasons). Again, you can look at the trends and absolutely see that the development program is heading in a different direction. This is the plan.

I would point to Garver, Kepler, Buxton (when healthy) and Sano as big time recipients of the development system. The work from this spring is a big reason why they are performing better in 2019. Ok, how about this: 1. Minor league system-wide the Twins pitchers have gone from 8.5 K/9 in 2018 to 9.6 K/9 in 2019. 2. They have hit 603 home runs so far in 2019 compared to 506 in total in 2018. 3. Ok, but the juiced balls at triple-A, right? In AA, the Blue Wahoos have hit 121 home runs so far whereas the Lookouts hit 107 in 2019. (By the way, Wahoos hitting coach Matt Borgschulte might be one of the most positive influences for offense at any level.) 4. If you remove the juiced ball effect at Rochester, the system as a whole is allowing far fewer home runs. If there was anything the Twins didn't do, it's hit home runs and strike hitters out. With the new personnel and direction, that script has been flipped. I would also point to the development of Lewin Diaz (again, Borgy was hugely influential in getting him to hit like he did) and that gave the Twins the ability to trade for Sergio Romo and Chris Vallimont. That's big value from someone who was starting to become an afterthought. I get that you probably want to point to one player and say that's a player that was developed by the new system but that's not how this works. It's incremental improvements in small areas. The end goal is to be able to cultivate few more players out of that system. It's a process but you can see some of the early fruits.

Here's what I will say about Berrios' release points: I don't believe the change has anything to do with the grip or any manipulation at the actual point of release. Mechanically speaking, most of the issues pitchers have out front stem from issues in the back. The arm mirrors the hips. In Berrios' case, since the end of July, his hip rotational action has increased from driving toward home plate to driving toward third base line then home: https://twitter.com/ParkerHageman/status/1160637308347080706 This directional movement is going to pull the arm further away from the rubber toward the third base line. Likewise, if his initial direction is first going toward third base, he's not going to get that same extension out front. Clean up the hips, you'll clean up the arm.

how bout now?

that's actually a good indicator of what is happening with berrios and it may be what is tipping off hitters. in the baseball savant pitch visualization app, you'll see that berrios' curveball has been coming out of his hand at a lower point than his fastball (particularly the 4s). https://twitter.com/ParkerHageman/status/1162905056326356998 you'll see the tight cluster in 2018 and the loose one in 2019 (light blue cluster is the curveball): the astros are a team that talked about how they use this type of data to create windows for pitches. if they know a pitcher's offering with come from a certain area, they can eliminate it right away. good overall summary of berrios' issues.

logan paul reference. this is the audience who knows and loves logan paul.

In late June, Miguel Sano’s 2019 season felt like it was on the brink of collapse. From his delayed start in May through the end of June, the Minnesota Twins’ third baseman led baseball with a grotesque 42 percent strikeout rate. He had been strikeout prone but now in nearly half of his trips to the plate, he headed back to the bench without putting a ball in play, often looking a fool in the process. While the game was trending toward more whiffs, the average hitter still managed to strike out in only 20 percent of his plate appearances. Pitchers had him eating out of their hands. The Twins staff finally intervened, retooled, and rewired his swing. The results have been no short of outstanding. Since the end of June, Sano’s 627 slugging percentage has been one of the best in the game. His average exit velocity of 95.6 miles per hour has been the third highest among qualified hitters and he has hit 60 percent of his balls in play over 95 miles per hour (third best in MLB). While all the rocket shots and batted ball data is intriguing, perhaps most importantly, Sano no longer leads all hitters in strikeouts. So what changed? Here’s how Miguel Sano became hotter than hard seltzer this summer.Sano’s low point involved a frustrating pitch selection and inexplicable inability to make contact with fastballs. He would swing through low 90s center-cut fastballs or flail at a breaking ball that bounced in the left-handed batter’s box. To repair, the Twins and Sano focused on his hand path, starting with eliminating the extra movement before getting to his launch point. As innocuous as it may seem, with the added bat tip forward Sano would put himself in the position of having to cheat to catch up to fastballs while getting burnt on breaking and offspeed pitches. Refraining from tipping the barrel toward the pitcher (as seen on the left) provided him with the ability to read pitches better. Since reducing the slack, Sano is swinging less, chasing pitches out of the zone less and swinging through fewer pitches. Download attachment: FSFrameGIFImage (10).GIF “The goal is to put his hands in a position to handle balls out over the plate to get to that ball up a little bit better and to be able to stay through the ball so that he can get on top of the ball consistently or to be able to drive through it more consistently,” Twins’ hitting coach James Rowson told The Athletic’s Dan Hayes. That ball up, as Rowson noted, was Sano’s kryptonite. Pitchers who threw even the softest of gas could tie him in knots when elevating in the upper third. Before the correction, Sano swung through 66% of fastballs up in the zone and had just one hit. After Rowson and Rudy Hernandez performed their magic — working on drills that reduced hand movement from his start to his launch point — Sano improved his swing-and-miss rate on fastballs up from 66% to 28% and has three home runs on fastballs in that area of the zone. Before the adjustment, Sano’s swing was powerful but one-dimensional. He mashed fastballs in one spot in the zone (outer-third, waist high) yet, because of his delayed swing process, his barrel would struggle to find anything middle-in. As long as opponents stayed away from that zone with their fastball, Sano’s power was muted. Again, speeding up his timing mechanism paid dividends. Over those first 30 games, Sano hit just .120/.267/.280 on fastballs middle-in but has since hit .395/.469/.907 with 7 home runs. Download attachment: Sano Average.png And that has been the key to Sano’s turnaround: hammering the heat. Former player and manager Matt Williams used to say that the best way to hit a curveball was to not miss the fastball. In Sano’s case he would miss the fastball and would be reduced to rubble on various breaking balls. Even with the new approach, Sano has not handled non-fastballs well when swinging. However, he has greatly reduced the number of hacks at them. Download attachment: Sano Approach.PNG Sano also points to another factor in his offensive uptick. He told Fox Sports North that Rowson had recommended adjusting his grip on the bat, aligning his middle knuckles rather than having his top hand bottom (proximal) knuckles aligning with his bottom hand bottom (proximal) knuckles. This is a similar effect to how Axe Bat-type handles naturally align knuckles, a feature that some hitters have raved about, which the Cubs’ Kris Bryant credited with turning his 2019 season around. It stands to reason that once he was able to decipher good from bad pitches, he would be able to drive them better with a new grip and more efficient hand path. His load adjustment provided him with the ability to separate pitch types earlier while his grip allows him to drive through the ball. Needless to say, Sano’s in-season turnaround is a testament to the Twins’ coaching process as well as his ability to implement changes on the fly. Click here to view the article

In the movie Fastball, Wade Boggs said that he faced Juan Berenguer on a day when he hit 101.5 on a radar gun.

I'm not entirely certain Cron's increase in whiffs in August has anything to do with the thumb injury -- after all, when he made contact this month he's had the highest exit velocity of the season (95). It could play a role, specifically with timing, but another factor is that Cron was pressed into some tough assignments this month when Cruz went down. He had to face some guys with very good fastballs in Clevinger, Bieber and Civale that he might not have had Cruz been healthy (not to mention, starts against Keller and Foltynewicz). That being said, Sano faced a lot of the same guys and maintained a low swing/miss rate at their fastballs. Still based on his exit velo, I'm in favor of letting him find it but it does merit consideration that if Cron can't handle the tougher right-handers, there's got to be someone available.

Which finger the pitch comes off is a product of the hand supination -- if the hand is turned, you can't really have contact with the middle finger at the last point. if your hand is behind the ball, you can have both. I will say that in terms of pitch design, one of the missing links is pressure points from the fingers. You can have the edgertronic slo-mo cams capture some of the exterior clips but it would be really beneficial to measure the pressure from the ball. That's probably the next steps in pitch designing -- using a ball that can capture different pressure points.

Several weeks ago in this space we discussed how Rapsodo technology can help pitchers and coaches establish a baseline with their breaking balls. Now it is time to look at what data says about the heater.This past March, the Chanhassen High School baseball program visited Starters Sports Training in Shakopee to put all of our arms under the Rapsodo microscope. One of the first things we got the data back from Starters was convert all fastballs into Bauer Units. For those unfamiliar, Driveline Baseball champions Bauer Units as a good measuring stick to tell if a player’s fastball is better suited for a 4-seam or 2-seam based on the spin rate divided by the velocity. If the fastball had a high Bauer Unit -- 27 BUs or higher -- a pitcher’s fastball would play better with a 4-seam grip. A lower Bauer Unit -- says 21 or lower -- and it would be better to use a 2-seam fastball. This would give us a fastball roadmap for each pitcher. Why is knowing fastball spin rate important? After all, for generations players and coaches used their eyes and intuition to figure out how a fastball moves. It’s heavy. It has late-life. It has rise. It has sink. Why should we strive to assign a number to every aspect of the game? As a real world example (and to loosely tie this into a Twins-related subject for Twins-related website) let’s consider Jake Odorizzi and Trevor May. In terms of velocity, Odorizzi (whose 4-seamer comes in at 92.8 mph on average) has a fastball that is 2 clicks below May's (94.9). Factoring in spin rate, May has approximately 100 more rpms on his fastball (2,338 rpm) than Odorizzi (2,239 rpm). Based on those two data points alone one might think May has a superior fastball. However, both share fastball Bauer Units of 24. While that amounts to a decisively average Bauer Unit among all MLB pitchers according to the Baseball Savant database, it is partly the reason why Odorizzi can be so effective at the top of the zone with a little less firepower than May. On the surface, Odorizzi might be considered a softer throwing arm in the modern era — seeing that his fastball “only” averages 93 — but it is with the additional metadata that you can concoct a game plan for him. Prior to the prolIferation of TrackMan, Rapsodo, et al, pitchers like Odorizzi may have been told to work on keeping his fastball down in the zone — which is exactly what happened to Odor: In fact, both Milwaukee and Kansas City informed Odorizziduring his player development days that if he didn’t adjust and hit the bottom of the zone, he wouldn’t make it in the big leagues. That changed when he arrived in the forward-thinking Tampa Bay organization and he would embrace the high ride heater. This year, 57 of his 70 strikeouts on fastballs have been located in the upper third of the zone or higher. It makes you wonder how many pitchers were jettisoned because they were higher-spin pitchers instructed to throw the ball down in the zone (or else). How can this information be applied to the amateur ranks? With regard to the Chanhassen program, we found that the bulk of the fastballs fell within the average Bauer Units range — leaning toward neither end of the spectrum. As a practice, those with average-ish Bauer Units who had three-quarter deliveries were asked to try 2-seam or cut fastballs and those with higher Bauer Units and more over-the-top deliveries worked on getting behind their 4-seamers in efforts to get better spin direction and carry (like Odorizzi). The high spin Bauer Unit rate guys were interesting to observe. In subsequent bullpen sessions or warmups, some confessed that they were taught to shoot for the knees, a counterproductive concept based on their stuff. It seemed clear that years of being told to hit the bottom of the zone was deeply ingrained whereas intentionally elevating felt foreign. Meanwhile, in game action, you could watch the same pitchers throw fastballs above the belt and hitters swing underneath as they struggled to reconcile the fact that the pitch’s trajectory was not falling the way their brains were suggesting it would. With high spin fastballs being all the rage and 2-seamers the cargo shorts of the pitching world, we needed to consider what to do with two intriguing outliers with super low Bauer Units. The first, Cade Plath (2019), was a genuine athlete. Here was a big, strong young man who is headed to play Division 1 football and had a mid-80s fastball. However, the combination of a low three-quarter slot and 4-seam grip seemed to result in a ton of glove-side carry. He also had a Bauer Unit of 15, a telltale sign that a 4-seam fastball might not be conducive to success for him. Following the Rapsodo session, Cade tried out a fresh new 2-seam grip, trying to capture that laminar flowgoodness. In his first live AB session, teammates who stepped into the box against him were impressed by what they perceived as late movement darting to his arm side. We lacked the funds for a high-speed slow-mo camera but even from the grainy iPhone camera you can still see the difference in movement between the 4-seam grip (from March on the left) and the 2-seam grip (from June on the right): Download attachment: FSFrameGIFImage (8).GIF What was interesting is that those two pitches above — despite having very different movement — spit out virtually the same movement data from the Rapsodo. Download attachment: PLATH FB.PNG This was confounding. We figured he had made the necessary grip change and the feedback from hitters and catchers suggested this pitch was doing something different. Why wasn’t the data saying so? Turns out, Driveline Baseball already studied this very phenomenon. According to their research Rapsodo “detects the ball’s spin rate, spin direction, and velocity and recalculates trajectory based on a physics model – hence why it thinks both pitches shown in the video have nearly identical movement when in reality they are quite different.” In short, there is an issue when using Rapsodo data to try to incorporate a . Armed with his 2-seam action, Cade’s in-season results were impressive. His walk rate dropped significantly from the previous season and he increased his swing-and-miss rate. A lot of his success came because of his steadfast conditioning, overall athleticism, and the fact he threw a “heavy ball” from a three-quarter slot but swapping out fastball grips played a role in his being able to locate that pitch more effectively. The other super low Bauer Units pitcher was junior Kody Dalen (2020). During the initial March session, Kody told us that he threw a 2-seamer, even showing us his grip, yet the Rapsodo data didn’t reflect 2-seam action. If anything, it had the exact opposite movement -- it had cut and a healthy amount of vertical drop. The low spin rate made it difficult to hit — another example of the proverbial “heavy fastball”. In season, Kody’s fastballs averaged approximately 80 mph, but touched 84. His 63 percent ground ball rate was second on the staff only to Cade (65 percent ground ball rate) while allowing just seven hits in 18.2 innings. After one of his outings, an umpire, supposedly impartial referees maintaining law and order, approached a member of our coaching staff and said how impressed he was at his movement. The cases of Cade and Kody raised more questions: Why, if two pitchers who have the same low spin rate, similar arm slots, and used the same 2-seam grip, are they producing two very different movements? It was only later that we came to find out the difference was generated by how the ball came out of their hand -- something that Rapsodo can’t pick up (or the human eye for that matter). In the clip below, you will see a side-by-side of Kody (left) vs Cade’s (right) 2-seam fastball. Download attachment: FSFrameGIFImage (7).GIF For Kody, his 2-seam is punctuated by glove-side run and a late sharp downward break. Cade’s more conventional laminar 2-seamer fights against the glove-side run and moves back toward right-handed batters late in the path. Now watch how the ball comes out of their hands: Download attachment: FSFrameGIFImage (9).GIF If thrown the conventional way, the two black dots should be spinning outward. Cade, on the right, has his fingers stay behind the baseball at release, imparting both the tilt and spin angle necessarily to give the pitch the standard 2-seam run. Meanwhile Kody supinates his hand at release, getting his fingers to the side of the baseball producing the cut action. This action likely costs him some velocity but the added movement appears to make up for it threefold. You often hear of pitchers having natural cut on their pitches and this is one of those in action. Kody’s movement is just that. To revisit the initial question -- why is knowing a fastball’s spin rate important -- it is because that knowledge helps take the guesswork out. If you know that a pitcher has a high-speed, high-carry fastball, you can work with them to develop a more vertical breaking ball. Now you have a solid plan of attack: high fastballs up at the top of the zone and a 12-6 curveball to drop out of that same tunnel. If you have a repertoire like Kody who has a bunch of pitches that run in to a left-handed batter, it was suggested by one of Starters’ instructors to tinker with a slider to give him a variety of pitches that run in (the Dalin Betances model). You absolutely could accomplish the same thing without the use of technology but, to paraphrase the reigning College World Series champions’ director of player development, if you don’t use it, you are behind. Click here to view the article

Max Kepler says his 2018 season was sidetracked when he got caught up in thinking about launch angle. “I’ll be honest,” the Twins outfielder confided this spring, “I bought into it a little bit -- the launch stuff -- and I wanted to see if it would work for me. I wouldn’t say that it didn’t [work] but it certainly opened my eyes to my strengths and what works for me.” The confession was strange considering Kepler had been an advocate of hitting down through the ball. As more hitters sang from the gospel of getting the ball in the air, heading into the 2017 season he went so far as saying he found the idea of elevating the ball to be “completely bogus” as he based his philosophy to advice from Barry Bonds, who told him to focus on hitting “hard ground balls” and “hit the ball through the pitcher’s forehead”. The growing trend was too strong for him to resist.By his own admission, Kepler’s ultimate goal was never to hit ground balls. He wanted a level swing. One, he said, that imparted backspin on the ball to help it carry. While batted balls can certainly travel with different variations of spin (back, top, side) more recent research has found that concepts like chopping or cutting a ball to create that spin is a fool’s errand. In fact, physics show that more spin can even suppress the distance, regardless of spin direction. The end goal, as Twins hitting coach James Rowson so eloquently put it in his instructional video, should be to hit the ball square. In 2018 Kepler would post the highest launch angle average of his career (15.2 degrees) but also learned the lesson that if you hit too many balls into the vast wasteland of the middle of the ballpark, many of those can be tracked down. Target Field was especially unforgiving for him when he wasn’t pulling the ball. “Last year I tried to work on my swing mechanically, and that’s the result I got, popping up a lot of balls,” Kepler said. “One of the lowest batting averages on balls in play, someone brought that up.” He hit .203 on fly balls well below the league’s .283 average on fly balls, so you can see how that can grind. You find the money part of the barrel only to watch another well-struck ball land in a welcoming center fielder’s glove. Kepler acknowledged it was frustrating but resigned himself to concentrate on the process, not the results. The thing the Minnesota Twins evaluators enjoyed about Kepler’s 2018 season was his ability to make consistent solid contact. He finished the year just behind Joe Mauer and Miguel Sano in terms of average exit velocity. They figured it wouldn’t take much to tweak that into improved production. The Twins worked with him on his bat path into the zone (trying not to be as steep into the swing zone), his posture including straightening up in his stance, and had him close his front side up a bit. Download attachment: Kepler Stance Difference.png All the moves have aided in his increased power production but one element has been more of a catalyst for the home run totals. Removing the wider front leg starting point helps keep from cutting himself off and frees him up to pull the ball more. Watch his front leg travel inward a longer distance in 2018: Download attachment: FSFrameGIFImage (6).GIF With momentum carrying toward home plate, this limited his ability to turn and open up on a pitch effectively. This is why he hit more of his hard hit balls to center instead of pulling them. You might also notice is occasional toe tap he implements in 2019 as well. With the shortened stance, this helps him stay back instead of aggressively attacking the pitch and pulling it foul. Even with a vow of returning to his previous methods and avoid getting caught in a launch angle-centric trap, Kepler entered 2019 hitting the ball in a very similar manner that he did the year before -- in the air. The difference was that rather than sending the balls with premium contact into the big part of the field, with adjusting his set-up, Kepler started to pull the ball: Download attachment: Max Kepler 95 Spray Chart.png After pulling all balls in play 48% of the time last year, he’s yanking 64% of balls in play this season. That shift in approach has led to more power and the added home runs has inflated in that average on fly balls to .342. Now, after hitting a career-best 28th home run of the season, Kepler has increased his home run percentage to 6.4 percent -- one of the top 15 home run rates in baseball. It must be far more satisfying watching those balls disappear over the fence instead of into an outfielder's glove. Click here to view the article

Good post. There are some exceptions I take to Smalley's assessment. Not that he's wrong, it's just that he fixates on one aspect of it (SHORT TO THE BALL) and doesn't explain, elaborate and compare to show viewers what he's talking about. Instead, he repeats that cue every time Garver does something good offensively. Here are some additional things I think he should be talking about to expand on that topic: 1. Short to the ball. You highlighted some pretty good stuff there but let's take a look at what his short to the ball now means. The top clip is from 2019 and the bottom one is from last year. Both pitches are similar speeds and locations. Watch just the hands travel. In 2018's swing the hands turn at the same rate but then travel forward to meet the ball (a pulling the bat action, if you will). In 2019, they turn then just pivot. Hence, shorter action. The key for me, while it's quicker, is how in 2018 he releases his top wrist *before* contact. 2. Long through the ball. This aspect of his swing is not discussed enough on the broadcasts. Smalley did mention that Rowson was trying to keep him from "spinning out" with his front shoulder. What Rowson is trying to accomplish is to get Garver to swing long through the ball (having the bat path travel forward after contact instead of immediately turning toward his body). With the top wrist releasing, it is difficult to have a long through swing. You almost will always start to turn away from the pitch plane. Think about Sano earlier in the year. His pull-centric approach had him pulling off that plane quickly. By straying from that path, a hitter's contact zone decreases and they swing and miss more often. Garver's improvement in this area is one of the reasons he has so much more power to center field this year versus last year. .500 BA/1.094 SLG with 6 HRs in 2019 vs .352 BA/.451 SLG with 0 HRs in 2018 when hitting the ball to center. 3. Rear Hip Load Compared to last year, Garver loads up on his rear leg/hip much better, creating power connection from the lower half to the upper body better. You'll see an inward turn of his hip, loading power. This was not nearly as pronounced last year (you'd see him turn the front hip inward but not the back hip). One of the things a Twins coach told me that Garver focused on was hitting the ball outfront more than he did in the past. The contact point is one way to increase your fly ball rate without dropping the barrel all the time. It also helps a hitter become more pull focused but staying through the ball (as noted above) keeps him from pulling off of the pitch plane.

Strib's Jim Souhan wrote a column today basically confirming that the Twins and Sano are essentially working on the hands. and stuff from Falvey: You heard it hear first folks.

It might be to him but, mechanically speaking, there are plenty of large individuals who drive the ball without needed to roll to and through the launch point (Aaron Judge is another that comes to mind). He doesn't *need* to do it to mash. A lot of hitters use some movement as a timing mechanism (Brian Dozier's pre-swing barrel tip comes to mind). One of the things that has made Buxton so effective this year is his brief pause at the launch point instead of rolling through it into the swing. It creates a stretch point and the added ability to shut a swing down. The Twins have far more tools and people on staff to ID and create a plan of attack to solve. I'm certain they know this and more. They are likely trying to do things but it just takes time.

I don't know if they are resistant. Players like to do things the way they have done things. Byron Buxton is a prime example. I think in the case of Sano -- and I'm wildly speculating here -- that he does know that he's struggling and has tried to shift some things. During the series in Cleveland Sano tried to kill his leg kick much like Buxton did. And like Buxton, it looked completely foreign. It must have felt that way too since he came back after a rain delay with the leg kick. https://twitter.com/ParkerHageman/status/1136455283226681344 There's also the case of when he struggles for a bit and then hammers a pitch into the third deck, there's a burst of reaffirmation that he's doing things correctly. But really it's just that he ran into a mistake pitch in the one spot he's swinging well at. After that, he goes about everything the same way and winds up picked apart again. That's my view from the couch. In regards to why it wasn't fixed in the minors, it's probably because Sano mashed everything in the minor leagues. It's possible that he rarely saw good velocity fastballs up. We're only a few years into the understanding of high spin fastballs and that pitchers are asked to elevate. (It's crazy, i remember writing an article in 2014 begging the Twins to start elevating fastballs and it took another 2 years before it became a regular thing.) The Twins now have their players using Blast Motion sensors that measures swing plane elements. There's an analyst hired -- Rachel Heacock -- who I believe is in charge of that program. They now have tons of data, analysts crunching it and coaches distributing it through out the minor leagues. If a player has an obvious shortcoming or hole in their swing, they will attack it then instead of allowing a player to advance.

Kepler has fared much better at fastballs up this year. In fact, 5 of his home runs have come on fastballs up in the zone (like this one, this one, and this one). There's a reason behind that which I hope to discuss more in a post in the coming weeks. He still swings through a lot of those fastballs but the ones he does connect in that area, he's lifting well. But his swing plane isn't really geared toward that portion of the zone, he does most of his damage on fastballs down whereas Eddie Rosario's barrel turn does most of his damage on fastballs up (and struggling a bit on fastballs down). Barrel turning, like any movement, it can be added to the swing. It just takes time and dedication. It is difficult to see a hitter make that kind of adjustment in season. The suggestion of getting to the launch point sooner isn't that much of a fundamental difference in the overall swing. Turning the barrel would be a big change from how he has delivered it in the past. 1. Axe bats are great. This spring I was talking with Michael Cuddyer about hitting and I asked him his thoughts on the Axe bats, half expecting him to poo-poo them as newfangled science. He lit up. He says all his kids now swing Axe bats and he wished he had that opportunity while playing in the pros. I've since bought my daughter one for her fastpitch season and you can see how well it keeps wrists from rolling early. It definitely is a different feel in your hand so I can see what some players might be resistant. 2. It's possible that's what they are working on -- driving things to right-center. Here's another stat that missed the cut for the article: the volume of fastballs middle-in that he yanks foul is staggering. He's fouled off 65% of fastballs he's swung at on the middle-third, the highest in baseball. That says to me he's trying to pull those pitches with a vengeance. And that's fine. Do damage. However, the more times you miss something middle-in and foul it off, the quicker you might get to two-strikes. The quicker you get to two-strikes, the more likely you will see those stupid sliders and spinning fastballs at your letters. If he makes adjustments and starts driving those pitches early (instead of fouling them off), he could get on a tear.

It's possible but we don't have data from anything before 2009 to prove that out. What we do know is that the narrative that is cited in local broadcasts that umpires are calling higher strikes more frequently is not accurate, at least as far as recent history goes. I'll amend this -- the amount of fastballs called strikes at the upper third of the strike zone has shrunk from 2009 (23%) to 2019 (19%). Fewer fastballs are getting called at the top of the zone. HOWEVER, more BREAKING BALLS at the top of the zone are getting called strikes: In 2009 it was 34% and now it's up to 37%, highest it's been in that era. Furthermore, breaking balls ABOVE the zone are getting called at a 5.5% clip (compared to 3% last season). Switching to feel mode now, I feel like I've seen more high breaking balls that barely catch the upper reaches of the broadcast's strike zone box called more often this season -- those high breaking balls that are at a hitter's eyes and then somehow grab the upper line of the zone. So when we hear the broadcasters talk about more called strikes at the top of the zone, it's possible it is happening when it comes to breaking balls. But, yes, high fastballs are difficult for any hitter to handle -- that's why hitters are a group have hit .231 vs fastballs up and .284 vs fastballs down since 2009. That is definitely one driver for why teams are instructing their pitchers to go up.