[USML Announce] Why Berliners and Angries Will Not Be Damonized in 2013, Part I

Andy Klein anrklein at gmail.com
Fri Jul 26 14:29:33 EDT 2013


What Kerber said.  Thanks, Brad.

Can you disseminate THE TRUTH about Nick Franklin, too?

Sincerely,

-Andy


On Fri, Jul 26, 2013 at 1:25 PM, <springkerb at aol.com> wrote:

> Thanks, Brad.  I was thinking about making Jeffrey an offer for Machado.
> Now I know THE TRUTH!
>
> Mark
>
>
>  -----Original Message-----
> From: Brad Jansen <bljansen at gmail.com>
> To: USML Announcements <announce at usml.net>
> Sent: Fri, Jul 26, 2013 12:04 pm
> Subject: [USML Announce] Why Berliners and Angries Will Not Be Damonized
> in 2013, Part I
>
>  FROM espn:
>
>  If the playoffs started now, the Baltimore Orioles<http://espn.go.com/mlb/team/_/name/bal/baltimore-orioles>would be in -- they hold a one-game lead over the Rangers (who lost
> Thursday afternoon to the Yankees) as they go into their game tonight
> against the Royals. That lead is obviously precarious, with the Yankees and
> Indians trying to hang in there, and made even more precarious by the
> doubts that Chris Davis<http://espn.go.com/mlb/player/_/id/29170/chris-davis>and Manny
> Machado <http://espn.go.com/mlb/player/_/id/31097/manny-machado> can
> repeat their monster first halves.
>
> Let's start with Machado. His defense is so superlative that it's easy to
> overlook his offense, but he hit .310 with 39 doubles in the first half.
> For most of the season, he's been on pace to break Earl Webb's record of 67
> doubles, but that pace has dropped to 62 as he's struggled at the plate in
> recent weeks. In fact, his offensive output has actually been sliding since
> June. Through May 31, he was hitting .331/.363/.515; since then he's hit
> .271/.293/.397 with 41 strikeouts and five walks in 47 games.
>
> As Justin Havens of ESPN Stats & Information reports, "Machado's approach
> has completely fallen apart since June 1 -- he's striking out more often,
> walking less, swinging through pitches more often and chasing more pitches
> out of the strike zone." Justin reports that Machado has especially
> struggled with two strikes; through May, he was hitting .267 with two
> strikes, but since then he's hitting .170 with a chase percentage that's
> increased from 33 percent to 47 percent thanks largely to a heavy dosage of
> sliders that he can't lay off. In other words, typical struggles you expect
> to see from a kid who just turned 21 and isn't named Mike Trout<http://espn.go.com/mlb/player/_/id/30836/mike-trout>.
>
>
> Machado has also struggled against good fastballs since June 1; on pitches
> clocked at 93-plus mph, he's hit .093 with a .230 OPS, worst in baseball.
> The sample size is small -- just 163 pitches -- but all the indicators are
> down compared to the first two months, with a swing-and-miss percentage up
> from 15 percent to 23 percent and line drive rate down from 24 percent to 9
> percent. He's just not hitting the good heat. Machado hasn't missed a game,
> so while it sounds a little bit like a young hitter struggling to adjust,
> it also looks like a guy who could use a day off.
>
> As for Davis, Joe Sheehan pointed out last week …
>
> Through the end of May, Davis was running the lowest strikeout rate (23%)
> and best K/UIBB (2.3) of his career. Some of the improvement in his walk
> rate might have reasonably been credited to the power he was showing --
> there is some relationship between power and walks drawn, but by and large,
> he looked like a more mature version of his established self. For
> statheads, it was an easy story to sell. We love to make the point that
> being patient at the plate isn't just about drawing walks, but about
> getting better pitches to hit and producing better results on those
> pitches.
>
> What's happened since the end of May has put the lie to that. For while
> Davis has continued to hit for power, with 18 homers and a .678 slugging,
> he has gone back to being an even worse version of his old self. Davis
> posted a 60/7 K/UIBB in those two months, striking out in 36 percent of his
> plate appearances.
>
>
>
> Joe wrote that a week ago. The numbers now read .261/.320/.636 since June
> 1 with 69 strikeouts and eight unintentional walks. That's still a huge
> offensive force, as long as the balls keep leaving the park, but it's a big
> drop from the MVP candidate hitting .356/.442/.749 through May and closer
> to Raul Ibanez <http://espn.go.com/mlb/player/_/id/3504/raul-ibanez> than Miguel
> Cabrera <http://espn.go.com/mlb/player/_/id/5544/miguel-cabrera>. Like
> Machado, Davis has started to expand the strike zone; he chased 28 percent
> of pitches out of the zone the first two months, but that has increased to
> 35 percent since. As a result, his batting average and on-base percentage
> have decreased.
>
> The net effect is that Machado and Davis are now using up a lot more outs
> to create runs. Through May, the Orioles averaged 5.1 runs per game; since
> June 1, they've averaged 4.5 runs per game.
>
> If Machado is a young player the league has figured out (for now) and
> Davis is, as Joe wrote, a "35-homer guy having a year," then we shouldn't
> necessarily expect them to reverse course back to what they did in April
> and May. Which means the Orioles, if they want to hold on to the wild card
> or catch the Red Sox and Rays, need some other players to step up.
>
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