jdgoin

We drafted Plouffe thinking he was going to be a SS who hit for some power. I don’t recall anyone trying to make him a slap hitter. Maybe use the opposite field (Parker wrote an article on that in 2015) but not a slap hitter.

Yes, I understand that and I agree with you. My point was Martin had not been able to establish his pro career and figure out who he was as a professional hitter yet before these changes came about. Maybe it was just too soon in his development process. My bet is eventually he figures out how to get to some power.

Dozier became one of the more productive hitters in the game from 2014 to 2017, posting ISOs well above league average and hitting 23, 28, 42, and 34 HRs in that time. Kubel posted ISOs well above league average from 2007 until 2010 (.177, .199, .239, .178 vs league avg of roughly .155) after returning from a knee injury when he shredded his knee the 2004 AFL. Plouffe posted ISOs of .154, .220, .165, .190, .160 while the league average was around .145.

Dozier’s power came in two waves. He started to show signs of power potential in 2011 when he played in High-A and AA. I’m not sure he completely changed who he was a hitter though. He was already hitting fly balls to the pull side. Dozier also showed good plate skills, making contact, & walking as much or more than he struck out. His next power wave showed up after we signed Josh Willingham. Willingham was an extreme pull hitter and Brian realized the pulling the ball was the easiest way to hit HRs. You can see in his bathed ball profile the jumps in fly ball and Pull% beginning in 2013. Dozier was a good hitter in college and the MiL who eventually sold out for power but was still productive. Martin hasn’t had the chance to find his power yet. He was traded in his first season of pro ball. His next season his swing/approach was altered greatly. He may or not find his power as he understands when and how to pull the ball better rather than trying to maximize his power through a different swing.

Sounds similar to a backup SL. Hitter thinks it’s a SL but it doesn’t do what it “should” do. Perkins always told me it was the most effective pitch he had, even if it was an accident.

What I find interesting is neither the Rays or Brewers are not on any of those lists on the more extreme ends. My guess here is the Rays try to maximize matchups and each of those clubs focus on squeezing every bit of what a pitcher is good at rather than remake them. In the Lopez and Pagan cases it doesn't seem like it was a pitch quality issue. The issues run deeper.

Thank you @SethStohs for taking the time to remember “Cliffy” on here. He was mentor of mine. He was a kind and generous person, with a mischievous grin and chuckle. Wicked smart. I mean REALLY smart. As we are fond of saying in the baseball world, Mike was a “good human”. He will be missed by many. But mostly by his wife, kids, and grandchildren.

It’s been that way for awhile now. There is SO much that goes into overhauling a player though. It really ends up being a quantity thing. You identify the qualities you want to target and try to fix all of them and hope one works out every once in awhile. The structure around the, pitchers is most important. You need a fixer or fixers. In the MiL and the ML. I think orgs overlook that. That was always my first question. Who is go8ng to fix them? Then the player has to have the aptitude for change. Not all of them do. These cases should be supplemental and right now it feels like MIN is almost trying to build a pen this way. Good guys can get better, but fringe guys aren’t usually becoming real guys.

These are the type of changes that makes scouting more difficult now. You think you have a guy pegged and he spends an off-season overhauling his mechanics or swing and comes back a totally different dude. Sometimes there are signs. Thielbar always had a high spin CB, but altering his release point to give it more vertical activity, coupled with throwing it firmer gives him a new weapon.

But also in this case Hef was in NY by now.

I would believe that. Hef is smart. He had an easy way about him. ML experience. You could tell from the first interview he had ceiling if he stayed with it. He had just retired a few months earlier. I wanted to hire him in Arizona when the Mets hired him.

I am trying to understand what you mean by stats don’t tell the whole story in this case?

Nice work @Parker Hageman. There is a lot to unpack here. I'll start with the changing of Lopez. The Lopez & Pressly situations while similar, seem to be very different as well. As I recall, HOU never asked Press to change the shape of either of his breaking pitches. They wanted him to throw his CB more often & with confidence. Your analysis of Lopez it seems like they tried to change his SI & CH to pair up "more efficiently" & alter his release point to do so. For a reliever in season, one of those is difficult, let alone all three. MIN has also lost their "Fixer" when Wes Johnson left. This has always been my biggest thing when someone wants to acquire a pitcher based on pitch data. Who do we/they have who can fix it? It's a hard mental adjustment for a guy.

Yes, I'm guessing the Twins were hoping if they could come close enough in money that the sales pitch they gave during the 2022 season would mean something even if the money was a little less. I don't know if they could have gone higher or not. But I'm pretty sure Boras either told all teams involved or a select few what offers he had in hand and gave them a certain amount of time to beat them. The Giants chose to do that and make sure nobody else was close. The Giants had to make a decision as well. They could have increased their offer slightly and risk not signing Correa. Or do nothing and call Boras' bluff. None of us know what the offers were as of say, Sunday night. For all we know the Giants offered 10 years and $295 million at first and came back with the winning offer.

@Parker Hageman Nice question! Do teams "miss" players when they are targeting one or do they conduct due diligence and make an informed decision on who to target, keep multiple conversations going, etc? Of course they miss out on players by targeting someone. Just by definition they missed out on Turner, Bogaerts, etc. because their main SS priority was Correa. They were willing/wanted to get Correa and would let the others sign first if they didn't have an answer. I guess a team could make the same or similar offer to those 3 players and give the agents 48 hours to respond and whomever responds first gets the deal. Not sure that would be received to well by the agents. If you're asking did they miss out on an impact starter by waiting on Correa, then they chose to miss out on the starter. But the reverse would have been true as well. If they would have targeted a SP at the top end and had to wait they would have missed on Correa as well. There is always a tradeoff. Even the Yankees missed out on a starter because they went after Judge. So maybe they missed on DeGrom and settled for Rodon. Just like if you were thinking of doing a marathon you might need to think about giving up Coors Light during training. There is a tradeoff. Teams have their pref lists for FA and potential FA ongoing. That helps make decisions in future seasons as well by studying the quality/depth of positions available this offseason, next offseason, and going forward. The real work on the current FA class probably started right after the Trade Deadline. Personnel departments will begin to rank them by position, then maybe by all position players, pitchers (SP & RP separate), and then combine everyone together. Using this offseason as an example, let's say the Twins had no clear SS frontrunner. They would take Correa, Turner, or Bogaerts. But they really wanted Rodon and their second SP candidate fell behind all the SS in their rankings. They may go after Rodon while keeping dialogue going with the SS class and be happy with whichever SS they signed. Does that make sense? You use your projections and internal rankings on all ML players so you can quickly see how each player affects your roster, your payroll, etc. Doesn't matter if they're FA or currently in an organization. I would say most teams do not have the payroll availability to sign two guys like Correa and DeGrom, so you have to make decisions. Adding $60+ million in salary probably strains most teams. In today's game, teams are talking with each other all the time. You're keeping track of who might be available via trade. During FA you have all sorts of conversations going on with multiple agents or agencies. I would say every teams at least checks in on just about every free agent to get a lay of the land. Maybe something pops up that wasn't on their radar. Teams do a lot of due diligence nowadays.