Post by nonothing on Sept 16, 2024 19:31:31 GMT -5
I maxed out my own personal baseball career as a little leaguer with solid strike zone judgment. So I truly don't understand what is going on with Rafaela when he swings at pitches so far outside the zone; not least of all on those pitches that he's actually able to make contact with. Some people have suggested his chronic chasing means that he's stubborn or uncoachable, but I don't want to assume that.
Still, there is something about it I don't understand. If a pitch is well outside the zone but he is able to make contact with it, why can he not just... decide not to swing at it? It's like he knows where the pitch is going, it's going well outside the strike zone, yet he swings anyways. I just don't have the context to understand this.
Can someone with a lot more experience than me in either hitting or scouting speak to this at a psychological level - like, what is it like to be this sort of hitter? Why does it seem so difficult to change? And how optimistic can we be that Rafaela ever will change?
What's worse is he frequently tries to pull said pitch off the plate outside. He has great contact skills. If he chased, but had a reasonable hitting approach, it would only be poor self control... but he combines no self control with an insatiable desire to hit pull-side HRs instead of taking outside pitches the other way.
He also pulls his head off the ball far too frequently for a pro. To hit a baseball at any level, you need to have your eyes locked in on the ball. It is maddening.
But you are right, he simply shouldn't be chasing so many of these pitches.
But there have been stretches where he shows a bit of discipline, but most importantly looks to hit outside pitches to RF, and those are the stretches where he does well. Hitting outer half pitches the other way also buys him some inner half pitches to crush.
They need to make him spend 20 min a day with Jim Rice. He would fix the kid. And I mean that. Rice is all over what is killing this kid. Just even make CR sit once a week with Rice going over his ABs. How often would he want to hear Rice tell him to lay off the bad pitches and to have a 2 strike approach and take the ball on the outer half to RF? CR's reputation is that he is smart. Somebody important needs to stay in his ear telling thim he already got paid for 8 yrs. To stay on the team he should be trying to hit .280+ with OBP .320+ while playing stellar CF. He will hit some HRs, but what they really need is for him to get on base as traffic and play a stellar CF. He can try to impress people with 20+HRs in the last couple yrs of the contract. But if he doesn't get on base, he will end up out of baseball and unable to get his bigger FA deal.