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

Fri Jul 26 18:16:22 EDT 2013

The Truth about Nick Franklin? Do you think you can handle the Truth about
Nick Franklin?

On Fri, Jul 26, 2013 at 1:29 PM, Andy Klein <anrklein at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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.
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> announce mailing listannounce at usml.nethttp://lists.usml.net/mailman/listinfo/announce
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> announce mailing list
>> announce at usml.net
>> http://lists.usml.net/mailman/listinfo/announce
>>
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> announce mailing list
> announce at usml.net
> http://lists.usml.net/mailman/listinfo/announce
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://usml.net/pipermail/announce_usml.net/attachments/20130726/aff473c5/attachment-0001.html>