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Post by scottysmalls on May 20, 2016 8:05:19 GMT -5
Because I don't think it could ever be duplicated where someone was that lost and became such a great player. Hoping for that to happen is like buying a lottery ticket in an attempt to raise money. Some guys that come to mind: Xander, Jose Bautista, Alex Gordon, Zobrist, Brandon Crawford, Jake Lamb (if he sustains what he's doing this year), Brett Gardner, Chris Davis. Maybe not all of their turn arounds are to the extent of Jackie's, but similar.
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Post by jrffam05 on May 20, 2016 9:11:30 GMT -5
Because I don't think it could ever be duplicated where someone was that lost and became such a great player. Hoping for that to happen is like buying a lottery ticket in an attempt to raise money. It wasn't the feel for me that Jackie Bradley was that lost. He had a terrible offensive 2014 and a bad showing in the MLB in 2013, but beside that his minor league stats and scouting report suggested he could hit. I correctly picked JBJ to win the highest OPS in the predictions game last year (I think I won last years game again with a quick glance). No one was projecting him to be this good, and I would say he is hitting over his head this year, but him sticking as an MLBer wasn't something I thought was far from reality.
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Post by sox fan in nc on May 20, 2016 9:11:34 GMT -5
Also (slow starters)..Yadier, Rizzo, J D Martinez, Arrieta..If only Checcini, Middlebrooks & Lavarnway drank the same kool-ade.
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atzar
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Post by atzar on May 20, 2016 9:42:30 GMT -5
Because I don't think it could ever be duplicated where someone was that lost and became such a great player. Hoping for that to happen is like buying a lottery ticket in an attempt to raise money. On a more serious note: Alex Gordon comes to mind. Although his struggles were on both side on the ball, yet he didn't struggle as bad as Jackie at the plate. Roy Halladay is the first name that comes to mind for me. It does happen.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on May 20, 2016 10:02:50 GMT -5
Except you're looking at an article that's deriving conclusions largely based on a stretch of time when JBJ was struggling to hit anything. That's the reason I posted the article I did: it shows a very clear development of approach/skill: the ability to hit the fastball (2015), and then recognizing and hitting off speed stuff (2016). The article you posted also has some glaring, questionable statements, the most egregious of which is that "JBJ is *fast*." No, he's not. He's barely above average. His high BABIP is likely fueled not by speed, but by an all-fields approach, which fits just about every bit of data there is: hitting coach's methodology, spray charts, basic scouting, knowledgable commentary from teammates and qualified observers, and just watching games. The author is making a truly terrible argument, in that it presupposes that Bradley hasn't evolved as a hitter, which just about anyone who's seen him play will attest he's done. In fact, his BABIP during his MLB stints have gone .246-.284-.310-.396. That sure looks like progression to me, especially with his ISO going .149-.068-.249-.269, despite his K rate dropping from 29.0-28.6-.27.1-20.8%. Couple this data with the knowledge that he made a TON of weak contact in 2014 (hence the awful HR/FB rate, and atrocious BABIP, due to excessive GB especially on inside fastballs), and it's not that hard to see that he's making adjustments. Now, he is probably just incredibly locked in right now, and .390-something is essentially unsustainable for a BABIP, but .350 isn't. The assertion that he's likely a .240-250 hitter with maybe a dozen HR a year absolutely flies in the face of any reasonable interpretation of his career to date, because it denies any trend towards improvement. In his first 530 PA (to start his career), he had 4 HR and struck out nearly 30% of the time. Since then, in 414 PA, he's raised his BA about 75 points, his SA over 200 points, and he's striking out about 5% less. I'm not saying he's going to hit .330/.400/.600 with 25-30 HR and 40 doubles, because that's an MVP-worthy season. But at this point, I think .300/.360/.500 is a pretty safe bet, give or take a little here or there. He *could* lose it and go back closer to the hitter he was before, but that seems awfully unlikely barring injury or some devastating psychological event. The comment I left: Four notes. First, the rolling wOBA chart omits 71 games where he was pretty much the best hitter in the minor leagues. It’s thus hugely misleading in terms of the percentage of time spent in the peaks as opposed to the valleys. Second, no one who has actually watched Bradley hit would consider any data from before last year to be meaningful. You know what you should do as a control? Repeat the study for J.D. Martinez, 400 PA into 2014. Third, if you go trolling for relatively unchanged data, of course you’re going to find some. But it needs to be considered in the context of all the changed data. For instance, Bradley had a career .352 SA on pitches in the zone prior to becoming a Sox starting outfielder last July 29, and an .852 SA since. Fourth, the last time Rotographs looked at JBJ, last winter, Paul Sporer pegged him at a $1 value, maybe $2. How’s that working out?
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Post by jmei on May 20, 2016 10:20:31 GMT -5
Except you're looking at an article that's deriving conclusions largely based on a stretch of time when JBJ was struggling to hit anything. That's the reason I posted the article I did: it shows a very clear development of approach/skill: the ability to hit the fastball (2015), and then recognizing and hitting off speed stuff (2016). The article you posted also has some glaring, questionable statements, the most egregious of which is that "JBJ is *fast*." No, he's not. He's barely above average. His high BABIP is likely fueled not by speed, but by an all-fields approach, which fits just about every bit of data there is: hitting coach's methodology, spray charts, basic scouting, knowledgable commentary from teammates and qualified observers, and just watching games. The author is making a truly terrible argument, in that it presupposes that Bradley hasn't evolved as a hitter, which just about anyone who's seen him play will attest he's done. In fact, his BABIP during his MLB stints have gone .246-.284-.310-.396. That sure looks like progression to me, especially with his ISO going .149-.068-.249-.269, despite his K rate dropping from 29.0-28.6-.27.1-20.8%. Couple this data with the knowledge that he made a TON of weak contact in 2014 (hence the awful HR/FB rate, and atrocious BABIP, due to excessive GB especially on inside fastballs), and it's not that hard to see that he's making adjustments. Now, he is probably just incredibly locked in right now, and .390-something is essentially unsustainable for a BABIP, but .350 isn't. The assertion that he's likely a .240-250 hitter with maybe a dozen HR a year absolutely flies in the face of any reasonable interpretation of his career to date, because it denies any trend towards improvement. In his first 530 PA (to start his career), he had 4 HR and struck out nearly 30% of the time. Since then, in 414 PA, he's raised his BA about 75 points, his SA over 200 points, and he's striking out about 5% less. I'm not saying he's going to hit .330/.400/.600 with 25-30 HR and 40 doubles, because that's an MVP-worthy season. But at this point, I think .300/.360/.500 is a pretty safe bet, give or take a little here or there. He *could* lose it and go back closer to the hitter he was before, but that seems awfully unlikely barring injury or some devastating psychological event. To be clear, I didn't mean to imply that I agreed with all (or even most) of the analysis I linked to, but I thought it raised a few fair points: - Despite his decline in strikeouts this year, Bradley's swinging strike rate (11.5% in 2016; 11.8% career) is not much lower than his career marks, and swinging strike rate is highly correlated to and predictive of strikeout rate. That suggests that his strikeout rate should regress and increase as the year goes on.
- He hits the ball hard enough to get a BABIP boost there, but it's an exaggeration to say that he hits the ball to all fields. This year, his pull/cent/oppo percentages are 45/35/20 (career 42/34/24), which is actually more pull heavy that the league average (39/35/26 this year).
- Bradley's being more aggressive than ever on both pitches in the zone and pitches outside the zone. Swinging at more pitches in the zone is great, and he's been crushing those pitches. But he's also chasing more, and as the chart in the article shows, while he's been making a decent amount of contact on those pitches, it's been mostly weak contact. His decreased walk rate may be here to stay if he sticks with this aggressive approach. Pitchers will also adjust by throwing him fewer strikes (he's 58th lowest of 188 qualified hitters in percentage of pitches in the zone, so they've not totally backed off of challenging him yet)-- can he adjust by laying off the pitches outside the zone?
- Most worryingly, Bradley is still a fairly extreme ground ball hitter (51.3% this year, 49.5% career). It is very hard for hitters with that high of a ground ball rate to sustainably hit for elite power. From 2013 to present, of the 45 qualified hitters with a 49%+ GB rate, only one had a .200+ ISO. Of the 34 hitters who had a .200+ ISO during that time, just four had as high as a 45% ground ball rate.
Because of the above, I find .300/.360/.500 pretty optimistic. He still swings and misses too much for me to see him as a true-talent .300 hitter, and his batted ball profile makes me skeptical that he'll maintain a .200+ ISO. I still think he's a really, really good hitter and overall player, but I'm more thinking .260/.330/.440. That would still be All-Star-level CF production (in the four to five win range), but it's more Carlos Gomez than Andrew McCutchen.
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Post by humanbeingbean on May 20, 2016 10:22:11 GMT -5
I don't know if this has already been noticed before, but from watching a highlight reel video of Jackie in 2013 (in Pawtucket), it looks like he used more of a toe-tap stride. From watching a 2015 highlight reel video and looking at his homer off Volquez this season, he has more of a pronounced leg kick, though obviously not as pronounced as a Bautista-type leg kick. Maybe that's how he's channeling his power and getting his timing down. And I did only watch a few at bats, so maybe he changed his approach more than just those, but that is a noticeable change.
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Post by jmei on May 20, 2016 10:23:27 GMT -5
To be fair, I can remember a half-dozen bad defensive plays already this year, and not too many great ones. That probably won't continue, but he's definitely been worse defensively this year than in years past. For context, I put a like on that comment because it's the first one I've seen you make that actually involves watching baseball. Sick burn, dude. You sure showed me.
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Post by philsbosoxfan on May 20, 2016 10:28:33 GMT -5
For context, I put a like on that comment because it's the first one I've seen you make that actually involves watching baseball. Sick burn, dude. You sure showed me. Actually, I originally meant it as a compliment without comment, then I saw that load of crap you posted afterwards.
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Post by thursty on May 20, 2016 10:52:16 GMT -5
When it comes to projecting JBJ, rest-of-season and years foward, I have no fricking clue
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Post by michael on May 20, 2016 11:38:50 GMT -5
When it comes to projecting JBJ, rest-of-season and years foward, I have no fricking clue Diogenes, your search is ended.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on May 20, 2016 11:55:29 GMT -5
JBJ BABIP on groundballs, and breakdown by location. 2015E (early) is his up-and-down stretch before his recall. 2015 and 2016 are divided into hot and cold stretches (H and C), which are as clear as could be.
Outs to SS are classified as middle, outs to 3B to Opp, and to 1B and 2B as pull.
Period AB BABIP Pull Mid Opp 2013 40 .175 .625 .300 .075 2014 121 .231 .645 .198 .157 2015E 8 .250 .750 .250 .000 2015H 22 .409 .773 .227 .000 2016H 35 .400 .486 .371 .143 2015C 44 .136 .614 .250 .136 2016C 23 .217 .565 .348 .087 His GB BABIP the last two years when hot is tremendous. This year he's using the whole field, a quite dramatic difference.
Pulled grounders:
Year AB BABIP 2013 25 .160 2014 78 .179 2015E 6 .167 2015H 17 .412 2016H 17 .294 2015C 27 .111 2016C 13 .077 He looks lucky on pulled grounders in last year's hot streak ...
Up the middle grounders:
Year AB BABIP 2013 12 .167 2014 24 .333 2015E 2 .500 2015H 5 .400 2016H 13 .385 2015C 11 .091 2016C 8 .375 But unlucky on up-the-middle grounders. That suggests that opponents weren't shifting on him enough. He had a .409 combined BABIP on grounders to SS, 2B, 1B, P, C, CF, and RF in last year's hot streak, but only .333 this year. He's made up for it by going 4/5 on grounders to 3B and LF, whereas he had none last year.
Opposite grounders:
Year AB BABIP 2013 3 .333 2014 19 .316 2016H 5 .800 2015C 6 .333 2016C 2 .500 He had a .333 BABIP (10/30) before going 4 for 5 this year. Given that he's hitting the ball much harder and that they're apparently shifting on him more, I don't think there's more than 1 lucky hit there.
Speaking of luck, based on his career rates he had 3 extra infield hits last year and is one short this year and 2 short in 2013.
(BTW, I do hope to do fly balls and line drives later. I've got the FG play logs already in a spreadsheet, and producing the data takes less than an hour.)
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Post by brianthetaoist on May 20, 2016 14:53:39 GMT -5
I don't know if this has already been noticed before, but from watching a highlight reel video of Jackie in 2013 (in Pawtucket), it looks like he used more of a toe-tap stride. From watching a 2015 highlight reel video and looking at his homer off Volquez this season, he has more of a pronounced leg kick, though obviously not as pronounced as a Bautista-type leg kick. Maybe that's how he's channeling his power and getting his timing down. And I did only watch a few at bats, so maybe he changed his approach more than just those, but that is a noticeable change. Can I get an amen? This is basically my entire point about JBJ ... I realize this is a very Eric Van thing to say, but you really can't consider JBJ the same hitter now that he was before last year. You can look through the data and find some similarities, some differences, but, honestly, you need to think of JBJ as the guy from, at best, the beginning of 2015 until now. And even "beginning of 2015" probably undersells JBJ a little bit because he was still finalizing the transition to his new swing in the early days of 2015. Bradley used to get his foot down *really* late, and it was part of a complicated toe tap/hip cock thing that made him very slow to get to pitches. So he had to guess and sell out on certain pitches to have a chance. He was really exposed at the major league level by pitchers who knew what they were doing and had a good scouting report on him. But his swing load is radically different now. He stays square to the ball and direct to the mound in his stride. It's really very different. So I think we're at the point where we're still at a small enough sample that we can't say JBJ is *this* good (and I think some of jmei's data has some good cautionary tales in it), but we've got enough data from after his swing overhaul to say that he's ... GOT A 4 WAR FLOOR!!!! Woo-hoo! OK, kidding about that last part, but I think he's established himself as *at least* a good major league player. And it's possible he's more than that. And, for those who remember, I was a big JBJ skeptic with his old swing.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on May 20, 2016 15:39:35 GMT -5
I don't know if this has already been noticed before, but from watching a highlight reel video of Jackie in 2013 (in Pawtucket), it looks like he used more of a toe-tap stride. From watching a 2015 highlight reel video and looking at his homer off Volquez this season, he has more of a pronounced leg kick, though obviously not as pronounced as a Bautista-type leg kick. Maybe that's how he's channeling his power and getting his timing down. And I did only watch a few at bats, so maybe he changed his approach more than just those, but that is a noticeable change. Can I get an amen? This is basically my entire point about JBJ ... I realize this is a very Eric Van thing to say, but you really can't consider JBJ the same hitter now that he was before last year. You can look through the data and find some similarities, some differences, but, honestly, you need to think of JBJ as the guy from, at best, the beginning of 2015 until now. And even "beginning of 2015" probably undersells JBJ a little bit because he was still finalizing the transition to his new swing in the early days of 2015. Bradley used to get his foot down *really* late, and it was part of a complicated toe tap/hip cock thing that made him very slow to get to pitches. So he had to guess and sell out on certain pitches to have a chance. He was really exposed at the major league level by pitchers who knew what they were doing and had a good scouting report on him. But his swing load is radically different now. He stays square to the ball and direct to the mound in his stride. It's really very different. So I think we're at the point where we're still at a small enough sample that we can't say JBJ is *this* good (and I think some of jmei's data has some good cautionary tales in it), but we've got enough data from after his swing overhaul to say that he's ... GOT A 4 WAR FLOOR!!!! Woo-hoo! OK, kidding about that last part, but I think he's established himself as *at least* a good major league player. And it's possible he's more than that. And, for those who remember, I was a big JBJ skeptic with his old swing. I really like this breakdown of the change in hitting mechanics. I pick up on the fact that a guy looks like a different hitter to me, but I don't visually process the swing at that level of detail. I don't have much of a visual memory of anything but the bat going through the zone. He hits pitches hard now in the zone that he never hit hard previously, and that jumps out at me. But why his timing is so much better now -- that's great to know. In one replay during the last week or so, Remy raved about how long JBJ kept his head and eyes on the ball. I know that changes in swing mechanics that lessen head movement are good -- could that be an additional beneficial effect of the simpler timing mechanism?
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Post by umassgrad2005 on May 20, 2016 15:52:52 GMT -5
Because I don't think it could ever be duplicated where someone was that lost and became such a great player. Hoping for that to happen is like buying a lottery ticket in an attempt to raise money. I would say more major league player take the Bradley type of development route, then the Betts route. Most young players struggle when reaching majors and need time to develop. The Red Sox also did Bradley no favors in how they handled him. Still remember him getting hot and they called up Betts and sent him down.
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Post by jimed14 on May 20, 2016 16:08:09 GMT -5
Except you're looking at an article that's deriving conclusions largely based on a stretch of time when JBJ was struggling to hit anything. That's the reason I posted the article I did: it shows a very clear development of approach/skill: the ability to hit the fastball (2015), and then recognizing and hitting off speed stuff (2016). The article you posted also has some glaring, questionable statements, the most egregious of which is that "JBJ is *fast*." No, he's not. He's barely above average. His high BABIP is likely fueled not by speed, but by an all-fields approach, which fits just about every bit of data there is: hitting coach's methodology, spray charts, basic scouting, knowledgable commentary from teammates and qualified observers, and just watching games. The author is making a truly terrible argument, in that it presupposes that Bradley hasn't evolved as a hitter, which just about anyone who's seen him play will attest he's done. In fact, his BABIP during his MLB stints have gone .246-.284-.310-.396. That sure looks like progression to me, especially with his ISO going .149-.068-.249-.269, despite his K rate dropping from 29.0-28.6-.27.1-20.8%. Couple this data with the knowledge that he made a TON of weak contact in 2014 (hence the awful HR/FB rate, and atrocious BABIP, due to excessive GB especially on inside fastballs), and it's not that hard to see that he's making adjustments. Now, he is probably just incredibly locked in right now, and .390-something is essentially unsustainable for a BABIP, but .350 isn't. The assertion that he's likely a .240-250 hitter with maybe a dozen HR a year absolutely flies in the face of any reasonable interpretation of his career to date, because it denies any trend towards improvement. In his first 530 PA (to start his career), he had 4 HR and struck out nearly 30% of the time. Since then, in 414 PA, he's raised his BA about 75 points, his SA over 200 points, and he's striking out about 5% less. I'm not saying he's going to hit .330/.400/.600 with 25-30 HR and 40 doubles, because that's an MVP-worthy season. But at this point, I think .300/.360/.500 is a pretty safe bet, give or take a little here or there. He *could* lose it and go back closer to the hitter he was before, but that seems awfully unlikely barring injury or some devastating psychological event. To be clear, I didn't mean to imply that I agreed with all (or even most) of the analysis I linked to, but I thought it raised a few fair points: - Despite his decline in strikeouts this year, Bradley's swinging strike rate (11.5% in 2016; 11.8% career) is not much lower than his career marks, and swinging strike rate is highly correlated to and predictive of strikeout rate. That suggests that his strikeout rate should regress and increase as the year goes on.
- He hits the ball hard enough to get a BABIP boost there, but it's an exaggeration to say that he hits the ball to all fields. This year, his pull/cent/oppo percentages are 45/35/20 (career 42/34/24), which is actually more pull heavy that the league average (39/35/26 this year).
- Bradley's being more aggressive than ever on both pitches in the zone and pitches outside the zone. Swinging at more pitches in the zone is great, and he's been crushing those pitches. But he's also chasing more, and as the chart in the article shows, while he's been making a decent amount of contact on those pitches, it's been mostly weak contact. His decreased walk rate may be here to stay if he sticks with this aggressive approach. Pitchers will also adjust by throwing him fewer strikes (he's 58th lowest of 188 qualified hitters in percentage of pitches in the zone, so they've not totally backed off of challenging him yet)-- can he adjust by laying off the pitches outside the zone?
- Most worryingly, Bradley is still a fairly extreme ground ball hitter (51.3% this year, 49.5% career). It is very hard for hitters with that high of a ground ball rate to sustainably hit for elite power. From 2013 to present, of the 45 qualified hitters with a 49%+ GB rate, only one had a .200+ ISO. Of the 34 hitters who had a .200+ ISO during that time, just four had as high as a 45% ground ball rate.
Because of the above, I find .300/.360/.500 pretty optimistic. He still swings and misses too much for me to see him as a true-talent .300 hitter, and his batted ball profile makes me skeptical that he'll maintain a .200+ ISO. I still think he's a really, really good hitter and overall player, but I'm more thinking .260/.330/.440. That would still be All-Star-level CF production (in the four to five win range), but it's more Carlos Gomez than Andrew McCutchen. JBJ has also added more than 20 pounds of muscle in the last year or two, most of it to his legs.
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Post by Oregon Norm on May 20, 2016 16:56:53 GMT -5
Here's another take on Bradley and his evolution, this one from Jeff Sullivan at FanGraphs. It details his emerging ability to hit offspeed stuff. Add that to his uptick against inside fastballs last year, and he does look like a very different hitter. I'll upgrade the running chart from last year and paste it into this comment as soon as I get it hammered out. Add: The takeaway from the article, one which hits at the heart of the amazing revival Bradley has undergone: Add: Here's the chart. Remember that these stats encompass running totals over all of last year and through this year. The OPS, for example, is over that entire stretch, currently at about .900 during that timeframe. A few takeaways are the declining K rate, the BABIP which has drifted back up to .350 over that period, and the downward trend in the isolated discipline. He mentioned swinging at more pitches earlier, and that appears to be what he's doing. What I like about this is that it looks, for all the world, like a heart patient undergoing a near-death experience. The vital signs have since made an amazing comeback and the patient has recovered (click to enlarge).
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Post by soxfan06 on May 20, 2016 17:20:09 GMT -5
I couldn't help but lol when he said: Anyone who watched JBJ in his first two years saw that he rarely made quality contact, and his "superb" wheels have literally never once in his career actually been superb. Above average? Sure. Superb? No one in their right mind would call JBJ a speedster.
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Post by Oregon Norm on May 20, 2016 17:37:31 GMT -5
Those wheels must be fairly good quality. He hasn't been caught stealing yet.
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Post by brianthetaoist on May 21, 2016 7:44:32 GMT -5
In one replay during the last week or so, Remy raved about how long JBJ kept his head and eyes on the ball. I know that changes in swing mechanics that lessen head movement are good -- could that be an additional beneficial effect of the simpler timing mechanism? Could be ... I don't remember that much head movement, but he really twisted his hips before just before the hands started to move in his swing, which (speculation) could have closed his field of vision just a little bit at the critical moment of the flight path of the ball. Also, one thing I noticed last year in person was that his stride was still quite long relative to other players. I figured that was a fair trade off for some power since he was still really balanced and direct to the ball. On TV that looks *slightly* shorter this year, which could improve his performance against off speed stuff since he can stay back a little better. I'm not any good at recognizing swing mechanics in the action of the hands, so I don't know if he's doing anything different there, but that always looked really good to my untrained eye. Here's a piece about how he's performing in off-speed this year (tl;dr he's doing great!): www.fangraphs.com/blogs/what-jackie-bradley-jr-figured-out/Small sample on this year, but he's just crushing everything right now. I keep bringing this up partially because of jimed's point about people bringing this up about another prospect who flames out spectacularly at first in the majors ... JBJ had a really clear flaw in his swing, a big one, a flaw so obvious that even I could see it, but one that could be corrected. He didn't just make some minor tweak. If there's another guy flaming out like JBJ did, there has to be a reason he can turn it around that's not, "well, Jackie Bradley Jr sucked at first, too."
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Post by rjp313jr on May 21, 2016 8:25:59 GMT -5
Bradley is a fun player to watch right now and I think it's safe to say he's put to rest any real concerns about if his bat can play in the major leagues. I think making any real predictions on what he will be going forward is premature. Even if he finishes this season with 25hrs and an insanely good triple slash, I still won't be comfortable saying that's what he will be going forward. This league is littered with players who have huge seasons even huge power years and never come close to replicating them. Maybe this will be his career year... Maybe it's the start of s trend. Who knows? Jacoby Ellsbury and Joe Mauer both say hello.
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Post by burythehammer on May 21, 2016 12:01:37 GMT -5
To be fair, I can remember a half-dozen bad defensive plays already this year, and not too many great ones. That probably won't continue, but he's definitely been worse defensively this year than in years past. For context, I put a like on that comment because it's the first one I've seen you make that actually involves watching baseball. Considering how awful most of your posts are, maybe you should give watching less baseball a try?
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Post by telson13 on May 21, 2016 12:26:25 GMT -5
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Post by mandelbro on May 21, 2016 22:01:51 GMT -5
Both are outweighed by the team hanging off his back.
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ericmvan
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Post by ericmvan on May 22, 2016 23:39:17 GMT -5
Some JBJ hit streak trivia:
He has 98 AB, but Ortiz in 2002 had a 27-game streak with 97. Fewest AB for longer streaks:
28: 101, Ron Santo, 1966 29: 107, Rico Carty, 1970 30: 110, Carty 31: 113, Carty
He has a solid chance to best Carty if he can extend it another 2 games.
He has a 1272 OPS. Carty after 28 games had a 1270, but he ended it at 1273. JBJ has a shot at him, too.
To find a higher OPS for a 28 game or longer streak, you have to back to 1922 and 1923. Hornsby had a 33 game streak with a 1302 OPS in late '22, and Heilmann had a 32 game streak with a 1406 over the end of '32 and the start of '33. But offense was insanely higher then: the league hit .285 and .283 those two years, including the pitchers. Bradley's doing it in a league that's hitting .250; Carty .253, again including pitchers.
I hope I didn't jinx him by not comparing him to other 27 game streaks after I saw the Ortiz streak. Let's just say that he's a game from having one of the two greatest hitting streaks in history, in terms of the combination of length, production, and low opportunities (AB/G). He may be there already.
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