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143

Crunching Numbers and Don’t Get Suckered Into Hype:
This is a perfect example of the good vs bad results of draft picks, hype is the area to avoid.
URL: Handing Out Grades for Every Relevant MLB Rookie for the 2024 Season | News, Scores, Highlights, Stats, and Rumors | Bleacher Report
Pitchers that out-performed expectations:
Luis Gil: Yankees typically pick pitchers that have long endurance and this fits the usual profile of their “ideal pitcher” or role model pitcher.
Paul Skenes: Likely the more durable starter pitcher out of this list, again he fits the profile of past pitchers the Pirates have drafted.
Shota Imanaga: Similar to past pitchers the Cubs had either drafted or looked for as free agents.
Mason Miller: Closers are a tricky job, 4FB at a high % can lead to batters like Jazz Chrisholm or Aaron Judge to sit back for that meatball.
Ben Joyce: A trend in ignored pitchers is 3rd-5th round typically held up better than higher round picks. Tanner Bibee is an example like Mason Miller.

Best Shortstop:
Masyn Winn

Fielders That Reached Peak Hype:
Evan Carter
Jackson Holliday: Keep in mind in 2022 the best draft pick ended up being Zach Neto. The potential upside Holiday could opt for the Corbin Carroll option of stealing bases. A nicely used bunt and easy base hit.
For reference, better than Elly of pushing a double into a triple… or a triple for an inside the park HR:

For extra interesting batter observation, Soto

Anyone that felt Jazz is overrated, that swing is just as impressive as Tony Gwynn and Will Clark so the Yankees pulled off a trade that fits their ideal batter…

144

Art of Seam Shifting and Alt Grip:
Plenty of examples of this being done before getting called the Sweeper, the best solution to break up a batters attention span is make sure the release points are exactly the same. Ideal combo is Slider, Sweeper and Cutter.

Those that can flex the Sweeper, can typically use the Forkball…

Those that have played shortstop, using a Sinker sidearm racks up a ton of Ks… only risk is your Cutters/Sliders can have some close calls of deep inside pitches.

A long running theory around pitchers, he did his own analytics against every batter by studying their swing and focus… batters that lifted their foot up to hit a fastball at certain pitch counts, it’ll be a breaking or offspeed to get that strike.

Batters like JT Snow don’t lift their foot are able to make it harder to estimate a batters reaction time to fastballs. Slow the video down and see JT lock onto the ball

145

How fast of a pitch can a cheap camera sensor for a Raspberry Pi/Jetson handle:
This had been more of a “failure in the level of Linus Tech Tips” as lighting sensitivity is a factor.
Cheapest $7.99 fixed focus Raspberry Pi 1080p camera that originally competed against the Pi official camera: Unless you dial the resolution to 240-480p to increase the sensors’ light ISO, a ball moving above 75 MPH is hard to read the seam movement.

Moving up to a Sony IMX 1080p: These fixed focus models are nicer, they track hard sliders and sinkers at 90+ MPH but again fixed focus is light dependent. Dial it to 720p and you can track your own sinker movement of the seams.

Moving up to a 2K generic fixed focus web camera: The sensor tracking fell into Sony IMX handling and I’m thinking the company that made this generic webcam used a Sony IMX. Its no longer sold on Amazon or NewEgg, they’re a certain company that makes chargers and cables so their 4K version should be on par to Logitech’s Brio 4K.

Logitech Brio 4K: The firmware originally sucked for baseball tracking, bought this on its first release and it took 3yrs before you could see actual seam movement of a hard dropping side arm thrown sinker or sweeper. Personal opinion avoid Logitech premium products until they iron out bugs, they seem to just focus upon software features yet ignore content creators complaints. On a Raspberry Pi still have to dial it to 1080p so you can flex the 60fps for crisp seam tracking.

Nuroum 4K: A bit more pricier than the Brio, far better and more reliable auto-focus if you’re slinging a 85+ MPH ball. Can’t comment on Pi5 as I don’t have one, an older Pi4 handled 1080p/60fps decently at a slightly higher memory usage rate vs Brio 4K.

Durability scale if you accidentally plunk a camera, Logitech’s C920 is the baseline of surviving a forkball at 80-ish MPH. Demolished a generic 1080p camera from a kick change that moved too far over.
As far as capture, pitchers may it be baseball or softball don’t share practice seam movement :grinning:

146

Sports Trade Rumor Analytics:
Been having some fun skimming through various blogs of sports writers and tossing those theories into “analytics”.
Crazy “trade rumors” put into analytics:
Vlad Jr being traded from the Jays to O’s: There is some huge bird droppings if that happens. One sports guy hints the O’s prefer to ditch Montcastle for Vlad Jr. Jackson Holliday batting performance is the trade factor so a Holliday+Montcastle trade in theory fits into “budget trade”. Max Wagner promotion gives room to fuel this shuffle theory, less HRs but Wagner fits into base hit focus.

A more abnormal yikes rumor mill is Luis Robert Jr is being eyed by several bird teams, White Sox gutted their farm system on the fielder level so the Cards might have a feather up…

Yikes 2.0 rumor mill is Bo Bichette is moved, the O’s already have stability at 2B/SS so a Bo+Vlad combo isn’t likely. Cards could pull a 1B/DH move as his error rate is extremely low so performance is on par to their batter profile system and a cheap option if Paul Goldschmidt goes FA. Jays are in a better position if Vlad is moved.

Interesting shift on the ESPN rumor mill is Jordan Lawlar moves to 3B so that means Tommy Troy is moving to SS in the pre-season as it tracks or aligns to the D-Backs promotion cycle of 2-3yrs of player development. Doing some data crunching similar players to Troy have averaged into Cowser stats and that is reasonable. NL West has some stronger AA options, it looks to be a Dodgers vs D-Backs battle of the rookies.

Dodgers have the most depth for prospect pitching, they could let Ohtani spend more time as DH and provide tons of rest for starter and relief pitching.

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Anyone that loves ball movement this is a perfect video on YouTube:
Why waste energy pushing 98+ MPH pitches, do a Sinker, Sweep and Knucklecurve at a minimal… Ohtani moved away from the Spitter as it creates pain on pressuring the sides to get that hard movement. Sweeper you’re using half the pressure to get the seam movement.

Some interesting deep diving into the pitches by Ohtani… a smart pitcher can use 8 pitch types to change up the opposing teams batting order sense of “hitting quality”, just abruptly stop using 4FBs and rack up chase swings on breaking pitches. Some teams use a dual-clean up hitter batting order, 3rd batter isn’t a total power hitter yet can drive a ball deep into gaps so a double/triple opens the flood gates of a 4th batter getting a base hit and the 5/6th batter tears into HR mode. Last batter just repeats the 3rd batters’ “batting style” of drop the ball into a gap and you can run up the score.

Edit: This batting style seems to be exactly the stuff AJ Hinch has pulled off perfectly, do a batter lineup shift to increase on-base/hit to run ratio:

Stealing bases is still about timing so trying to any Elly stuff may it be regular or post-season gets stupid very quickly… stealing bases against the Mets and Royals you’re going to be seeing an instant out.

Jake Rogers of the Tigers doesn’t have to worry about a slight delay, he could actually run at full speed football WR style to do a tag out if someone tries to steal from 3B or a poorly done bunt. That speed is Bo Jackson level.

On a semi-related video, pitchers do strange stuff if you think they’re just whispering into their ball+hand in the glove… some pitchers lick their fingers then wipe them dry to increase grip/spin if its too humid. Almost similar to batters that sometimes spit onto their hands after using pine tar on their bats.

148

Digging deep into stats:
Some data crunching and you’ll find some interesting moves of why the off-season is going to be much bigger than anything as the 2024 ASB sell off is a hint of movement.
Several examples of why the O’s aren’t worried about the 2024 mistakes or poor trade deadline timing, they’re just warming up like the Tigers and any similar big moves like the Tigers is possible.
The Nats on the other hand are equally interesting, more mind boggling of why there is rumors of the GM is trying to get Soto back…

Yohandy Morales(Nationals):
BA .328, OBP .408, SLG .493, RBI 24
Could be an interesting call up more for contact hitting than providing big hits. Who needs Soto at this point?

Cayden Wallace(Nationals):
BA .256, OBP .329, SLG .354, OPS .683 RBI 23
Break down the previous season of 27 doubles and 7 triples that is more usable than chasing the FA market. Clocking more than 5 HRs is just a bonus. There is some Tigers vibes in their top prospect/rookie roadmap.

Max Wagner (O’s):
BA .151, OBP .247, SLG .256, RBI 5
Numbers may look ugly on a smaller MiLB, dig into a 1 double, 1 triple and 2 HRs with 3 SBs more on par to a Cowser of run production than hard hitting expectations. 1 hit by pitch is a sign pitchers are trying to force chase pitches and failing.
Overall stats BA .226, OBP .330, SLG .380, 25 2B, 7 3B, 16 HRs. This kind of stats are very similar to Cowser and tips into JT Snow level of batting focus.

Creed Willems (O’s):
Overall stats: BA .220 OBP .306, SLG .398, OPS .704, 45 2B, 6 3B, 38 HR. Strikeout rate had gone from 68 to 115 then dropped to 81 is plenty of reasoning in reducing a chase rate of crappy pitches.
BA .243 for 2024 may look average, in the era of pitchers taking more notes about batters anything above .220 is similar to a batter in the 90s having a Kevin Maas .250 average and trying to keep their whiff rate at a minimal.

Patrick Reilly:
Scouting grades: Fastball: 60 | Slider: 55 | Cutter: 50 | Changeup: 45 | Control: 40 | Overall: 45
DRAFTED: 2023, 5th (140) - PIT

Draft picks by the Pirates tend to be more interesting, they fall into the Expos/Nats of finding the least hyped fielders/pitchers.
Best quote: “His mid-80s slider flashes plus, though he only landed it for a strike half the time at Vanderbilt in 2023, and he can also turn it into an effective harder cutter.”
A pitcher that can flex the cutter for quicker outs, this is fine.

On the ugly level WS has nearly 4-5yrs gap of any sustainable effort, by the time anyone fills gaps you’ll see Luis Robert Jr getting the Mike Trout or Joey Votto treatment.

149

Digging into batting stats 101 / Pitchers Measuring Batter Stupidity 101
For those looking at the recent purchases and questioning the concept of ditching anything Julio. From a pitchers angle everything is going to slide to Rob Deer range. It dropped in 2023 then gone up again so there are many pitchers that “got his numbers” and only a matter of time his chase and K rate get to the magic number of 32-35%
Chase rate 37.4%
Whiff: 30.9%
K rate: 25.4%

Julio Rodríguez

Lets look at Cal Raleigh stats, the performance of batting can’t be blamed upon the Mariners “baseball field layout”. Again his chase/whiff/K numbers are the same as Julio. It makes you question the possibility during their at bats, if a starting pitcher tells their teammate to “dial it back” it just gets ignored. This is why many people used to think Jazz Chisholm Jr. got the “over-rated”, if you compare his rookie year to 2022/2023 he began listening to his teammates to cut the chase % that leads to increasing K-rates. Jazz’s K-rate dropped to 24.5% so while his “bat speed” dropped a bit due to more check swings, its in relation to a focus of “quality at bats” than going into Rob Deer try to hit as many strike zone balls.

Cal Raleigh

At the end of the day, you can’t blame the previous coach if teammates refuse to listen to their own teammates. This is the same logic that goes on in the NBA, people bashed Lebron and he kept proving the media the opposite of trying to focus upon the Jordan “do better” the next season.