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Red Sox Sign Benintendi to Deal
ericmvan
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Supposed to be working on something more important
Posts: 8,926
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Post by ericmvan on Oct 19, 2020 8:41:52 GMT -5
I was in attendance for an early 2019 spring training game and was shocked at how fat Benny was. It was NOT added muscle it was extra weight in the legs & a$$. The spin was that he "bulked up" but he was just out of shape. He trimmed down some as the season progressed, but didn't appear to have worked very hard over the off-season. My opinion is that he has never had to work to be good, always got by with his natural athleticism. I'm not sure if that is psychologist thing but couldn't hurt to try one. Similar situation may have also been a factor in his 2020 injury. Not very active during the covid shut-down and then tried to ramp up quickly during the abbreviated training period and ended up pulling his oblique. His sophomore year breakout is attributed to the fact he worked his ass off in the weight room over the summer before when he couldn't play summer ball due to an injury. To suggest he's never had to work hard is nonsense. Every adult who has adequate access to food knows that putting on weight and being willing to work hard to be in shape are weakly correlated at best.
I think a sports psychologist could help him with confidence and dealing with failure. He clearly tried to adapt his approach to leading off the game, with disastrous results, but during that stretch he hit even better than in 2018 once he had that first PA out of the way. I cited the .418 wOBA ... that's .347 / .448 / .595 in 145 PA. It was after he was demoted -- certified a failure -- that his numbers declined in the situation he had always thrived in -- hitting with RISP.
It's also worth noting that he didn't hit well in high leverage and late and close until 2018, and went back to struggling in those situations in 2019.
I see a guy who puts a lot of pressure on himself to help the team win. And the more he feels he's letting the team down, the less he's able to straighten himself out.
I assume that Roenicke asked him if he would hit leadoff again this year and he agreed. Being thought of as a good teammate who'll do anything to help the team is consistent with his agreeing -- even if a part of him was dreading it. Or perhaps he was over-eager to prove to himself that he could do it, which can be a recipe for disaster as well.
It's true that "getting back up on the horse" is a good way to deal with failure, but a) you have to be in the right frame on mind when you do, and b) you actually have to know how to ride. I do think Benny could hit leadoff if he understood that he should ignore the situation and just do his best to hit. But he's thrived with runners on, and the 2018 Benny would be a force hitting 5th, or even 2 to 4 somewhere.
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Post by manfred on Oct 19, 2020 9:12:03 GMT -5
I was in attendance for an early 2019 spring training game and was shocked at how fat Benny was. It was NOT added muscle it was extra weight in the legs & a$$. The spin was that he "bulked up" but he was just out of shape. He trimmed down some as the season progressed, but didn't appear to have worked very hard over the off-season. My opinion is that he has never had to work to be good, always got by with his natural athleticism. I'm not sure if that is psychologist thing but couldn't hurt to try one. Similar situation may have also been a factor in his 2020 injury. Not very active during the covid shut-down and then tried to ramp up quickly during the abbreviated training period and ended up pulling his oblique. His sophomore year breakout is attributed to the fact he worked his ass off in the weight room over the summer before when he couldn't play summer ball due to an injury. To suggest he's never had to work hard is nonsense. Every adult who has adequate access to food knows that putting on weight and being willing to work hard to be in shape are weakly correlated at best.
I think a sports psychologist could help him with confidence and dealing with failure. He clearly tried to adapt his approach to leading off the game, with disastrous results, but during that stretch he hit even better than in 2018 once he had that first PA out of the way. I cited the .418 wOBA ... that's .347 / .448 / .595 in 145 PA. It was after he was demoted -- certified a failure -- that his numbers declined in the situation he had always thrived in -- hitting with RISP.
It's also worth noting that he didn't hit well in high leverage and late and close until 2018, and went back to struggling in those situations in 2019.
I see a guy who puts a lot of pressure on himself to help the team win. And the more he feels he's letting the team down, the less he's able to straighten himself out.
I assume that Roenicke asked him if he would hit leadoff again this year and he agreed. Being thought of as a good teammate who'll do anything to help the team is consistent with his agreeing -- even if a part of him was dreading it. Or perhaps he was over-eager to prove to himself that he could do it, which can be a recipe for disaster as well.
It's true that "getting back up on the horse" is a good way to deal with failure, but a) you have to be in the right frame on mind when you do, and b) you actually have to know how to ride. I do think Benny could hit leadoff if he understood that he should ignore the situation and just do his best to hit. But he's thrived with runners on, and the 2018 Benny would be a force hitting 5th, or even 2 to 4 somewhere.
I agree with all this, but I wonder Eric if the leadoff is all of it... I may be wrong (hence this question), but I feel like he tried too hard to add more power and screwed himself up mentally and physically. Didn’t he put on a lot of upper-body weight a few years ago? This might be another example mentally of trying to address people’s desires but losing sight of who he is. Maybe it is just my perception. |
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Post by incandenza on Oct 19, 2020 10:30:23 GMT -5
Yeah, my impression was that he tried to do the launch angle thing in 2019 and even with the juiced balls it only seemed to give him warning track power, for whatever reason. But it screwed up his swing and he struck out a bunch more.
Maybe the thing to do with him would be to give up on the dream of him becoming a top tier slugger and aim for him to settle in as a 15 homer, .830ish OPS guy. That could make him a solid 3-4 WAR player.
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ericmvan
Veteran
Supposed to be working on something more important
Posts: 8,926
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Post by ericmvan on Oct 19, 2020 20:03:51 GMT -5
I wonder Eric if the leadoff is all of it... I may be wrong (hence this question), but I feel like he tried too hard to add more power and screwed himself up mentally and physically. Didn’t he put on a lot of upper-body weight a few years ago? This might be another example mentally of trying to address people’s desires but losing sight of who he is. Maybe it is just my perception. Yeah, my impression was that he tried to do the launch angle thing in 2019 and even with the juiced balls it only seemed to give him warning track power, for whatever reason. But it screwed up his swing and he struck out a bunch more. Maybe the thing to do with him would be to give up on the dream of him becoming a top tier slugger and aim for him to settle in as a 15 homer, .830ish OPS guy. That could make him a solid 3-4 WAR player. He absolutely improved his LA in 2019. But it didn't f*** him up. It made him into a monster. Had they not tried the leadoff experiment (a total analytics failure) ... I don't even want to think about it.
This is LA on line drives and fly balls (10 to 50 degrees), then the percentage of all balls in play this represents, then the percentage of balls in this range that were LA 22 to 35 (optimum for power hitting), then the slash line.
26.1, .517, .343; .290 / .366 / .465 . 2018
28.5, .569, .557; .301 / .387 / .497. 2019, through 5/29, excluding 1st PA of game (3/27, 4 BB, 1 HBP)
26.5, .547, .414; .270 / .336 / .437. Rest of 2019, after the demotion from leadoff.
It does look like he tweaked his LA going into 2019, and his OPS went up 53 points despite the fact that he was selling out to move runners over with less than 2 outs (and going 2 for 18 with a BB), which he hadn't done in 2018. As I noted, he has a 1.043 OPS if you exclude those. He was hitting like a .345, 80 BB, 45 2B, 25-30 HR dude. But the situational hitting knocked that down to .260 / .355 / .420, a drop of 56 points of OPS from 2018.
After he was demoted, his overall LA on these balls actually went back to 2018, essentially. He retained most of his improvement in not grounding out or popping up, but he lost most of his concentration of good balls in the air into the power zone.
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Post by philsbosoxfan on Oct 19, 2020 20:14:04 GMT -5
I'm seriously not seeing any sports psychology issue, I'm seeing an approach issue which should be addressed by his working with the analytics department via the coaching staff.
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Post by larrycook on Oct 19, 2020 21:47:40 GMT -5
So he gets 10 million for stinking in 2019 and being putrid in 2020?
I sure hope he is indeed fixable!
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Post by philsbosoxfan on Oct 19, 2020 23:36:03 GMT -5
So he gets 10 million for stinking in 2019 and being putrid in 2020? I sure hope he is indeed fixable! 2020 (before adjustment) & 2021, sunk cost and we all do. |
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Post by philsbosoxfan on Oct 20, 2020 0:04:36 GMT -5
Just for perspective, Benintendi only played 14 games in 2020. I am guessing there aren't too many players in baseball that haven't had a horrendous 2 week stretch.
2019 is another story.
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