At PP, someone -- likely Tim -- reported that the new regime's development strategy was to work with the player's natural inclinations his strengths. This approach differed from the Huntington's regime's strategy that was most noticeable with the pitchers in the pipeline and the majors. Pitch to contact, induce ground balls. We saw the folly of that strategy when some pitchers went elsewhere.
Those Mitch Jebb numbers reek of the current day minor league mindset of hoping contact players can find game power, instead of letting them do their thing. Jesus Castillo won the FCL batting title at 18 years old two years ago and them the Pirates sent him to Australia specifically to learn to hit for more power. Why not just let him be a high contact/high average hitter with some doubles and triples, who runs well and plays sold defense?
His batting average dropped 143 points and he hit one homer. Great work there, Pirates. You identified that he's not a typical caveman/swing hard and hope for the best hitter and you made sure he conformed to the way everyone else plays.
Does anyone else find it odd that the minors all over preaches launch angles and bat speed over anything, yet they also want their pitchers to just throw it hard to make that type of hitting much harder? It's like they are setting batters up for failure. I've shared this story, but in my mind it is worth repeating.
I went to the batting cages when I was around 12-13 years old. I crushed the ball in the 60 MPH medium for 30 minutes, then decided to try fast pitch at 80 MPH. I think it was 12 balls. I swung and missed at the first ten, just swinging hard, trying to match power with power. My dad said to me, at least make contact once, so I instinctively cut down my swing, fouled the next pitch off, then hit a line drive on the last pitch (possibly would have been a foul ball, but I hit it hard).
At 12-13 years old, it took me about a minute to figure out that I needed to make a change to hit that type of velocity and it worked. It's insane to me to see these guys swinging out of their cleats with an uppercut swing trying to hit chest-high 100 MPH and failing over and over. They are gearing up to swing as hard as they can.
If I said to some normal person, you have to hit this baseball coming at you at 60 MPH or you owe me $1,000, who is swinging for the fences? No one. I'm going to do the complete opposite (probably bunt the ball if we are being honest) and that's because you lose some contact ability when you swing like a caveman. It's like with Termarr Johnson improving mid-season last year. The kid was trying to hit the ball 500 feet every time, falling down often, sometimes just to one knee. I didn't see him that out of control when he was hitting well last year.
Rant summary: If someone like Mitch Jebb, Jesus Castillo, Nick Gonzales (remember him being unable to hit at Altoona?) and even how they handled Ke'Bryan Hayes! If they can hit already for average and doubles power without your interference, let them be that hitter. You got enough guys who strikeout often, there's no reward for having the most.
"Does anyone else find it odd that the minors all over preaches launch angles and bat speed over anything, yet they also want their pitchers to just throw it hard to make that type of hitting much harder?"
No, in fact there's no other logical manner of going about it.
Why? Because it turns out hitters like Jared Triolo suck.
This is the hitter equivalent to the fans who say clubs are stupid for chasing pitcher velo.
In reality, it turns out to be far more difficult to develop plus or better command of an 88mph fastball plus multiple plus or better secondaries than it is to develop velo and spin.
There are 30 teams in baseball desperate to do whatever they can to spend as little money as possible for the greatest benefit. If anyone in the game had any amount of confidence they could develop better players *without* paying the velo/power premium they'd have done it already.
Yeah, it seems they took away the old adage of just put a good swing on the ball, and the power will come. Your story made me think of when I'd play intramural coed softball in college. We'd go up against a team of college baseball players thinking we were about to get stomped, but they would try to hit every pitch 800 ft and just hit pop ups. Now when they connected, they connected.
Honest question, are you genuinely arguing that you believe Oneil Cruz and Endy Rodriguez and Jared Triolo and Ji Hwan Bae and Liover Peguero and Hank Davis - or frankly any single one of them! - have had they swings altered for launch angle and approaches to swing max effort every time?
Please, pleeeeaaaase tell me this isn't your argument. You're smarter than this.
Not making that argument at all, his story just made me think of it.
A lot of players, especially most of ones you mentioned, are really geared for LA already. Pirates either have a scouting issue, or some sort of developmental glitch that is developing or increasing swing and miss. Pirates would turn Tony Gwynn into a strikeout machine.
I am feeling a little more confident about pitching though lol
This describes everything I'm seeing at Bradenton. I've been watching most of these guys for three years and virtually every one is getting worse, in some cases dramatically worse. Guys who seldom used to swing and miss, like Castillo, are trying to pull the ball and whiffing far more. Esmerlyn Valdez, who had a very good approach at the plate while he was in rookie ball, is consistently chasing low sliders and suddenly can't catch up with 93 mph fastballs. Shalin Polanco routinely has ABs where he gets three straight low changeups and chases every one. He's literally seeing the exact same pitch most of the time and can't adjust to it.
There's a massive level of dysfunction in this organization and the FO thinks everything is coming up aces. It was hilarious to see Cherington before Sunday's game carrying on about what a great job the hitters are doing of taking lots of pitches, and then seeing Shelton after the loss saying they were too passive. These dimwits just mindlessly spout empty words to the public without any conception of what they're saying or how it relates to reality. They just continue with their failed practices, oblivious to how it turns out.
It takes like 15 second of googling "results" to see the Pirates aren't even the most egregious franchise in this respect, but all you care about anymore is shitposting so why bother.
At PP, someone -- likely Tim -- reported that the new regime's development strategy was to work with the player's natural inclinations his strengths. This approach differed from the Huntington's regime's strategy that was most noticeable with the pitchers in the pipeline and the majors. Pitch to contact, induce ground balls. We saw the folly of that strategy when some pitchers went elsewhere.
The Pirates need to fix this now.
My one observation is Ana's cafe in Key West has amazing sandwiches
Those Mitch Jebb numbers reek of the current day minor league mindset of hoping contact players can find game power, instead of letting them do their thing. Jesus Castillo won the FCL batting title at 18 years old two years ago and them the Pirates sent him to Australia specifically to learn to hit for more power. Why not just let him be a high contact/high average hitter with some doubles and triples, who runs well and plays sold defense?
His batting average dropped 143 points and he hit one homer. Great work there, Pirates. You identified that he's not a typical caveman/swing hard and hope for the best hitter and you made sure he conformed to the way everyone else plays.
Does anyone else find it odd that the minors all over preaches launch angles and bat speed over anything, yet they also want their pitchers to just throw it hard to make that type of hitting much harder? It's like they are setting batters up for failure. I've shared this story, but in my mind it is worth repeating.
I went to the batting cages when I was around 12-13 years old. I crushed the ball in the 60 MPH medium for 30 minutes, then decided to try fast pitch at 80 MPH. I think it was 12 balls. I swung and missed at the first ten, just swinging hard, trying to match power with power. My dad said to me, at least make contact once, so I instinctively cut down my swing, fouled the next pitch off, then hit a line drive on the last pitch (possibly would have been a foul ball, but I hit it hard).
At 12-13 years old, it took me about a minute to figure out that I needed to make a change to hit that type of velocity and it worked. It's insane to me to see these guys swinging out of their cleats with an uppercut swing trying to hit chest-high 100 MPH and failing over and over. They are gearing up to swing as hard as they can.
If I said to some normal person, you have to hit this baseball coming at you at 60 MPH or you owe me $1,000, who is swinging for the fences? No one. I'm going to do the complete opposite (probably bunt the ball if we are being honest) and that's because you lose some contact ability when you swing like a caveman. It's like with Termarr Johnson improving mid-season last year. The kid was trying to hit the ball 500 feet every time, falling down often, sometimes just to one knee. I didn't see him that out of control when he was hitting well last year.
Rant summary: If someone like Mitch Jebb, Jesus Castillo, Nick Gonzales (remember him being unable to hit at Altoona?) and even how they handled Ke'Bryan Hayes! If they can hit already for average and doubles power without your interference, let them be that hitter. You got enough guys who strikeout often, there's no reward for having the most.
"Does anyone else find it odd that the minors all over preaches launch angles and bat speed over anything, yet they also want their pitchers to just throw it hard to make that type of hitting much harder?"
No, in fact there's no other logical manner of going about it.
Why? Because it turns out hitters like Jared Triolo suck.
This is the hitter equivalent to the fans who say clubs are stupid for chasing pitcher velo.
In reality, it turns out to be far more difficult to develop plus or better command of an 88mph fastball plus multiple plus or better secondaries than it is to develop velo and spin.
There are 30 teams in baseball desperate to do whatever they can to spend as little money as possible for the greatest benefit. If anyone in the game had any amount of confidence they could develop better players *without* paying the velo/power premium they'd have done it already.
Sad part: how many times during this losing streak did the Pirates need a base hit and come up empty? Amazing to see the FO blind to the issue.
Yeah, it seems they took away the old adage of just put a good swing on the ball, and the power will come. Your story made me think of when I'd play intramural coed softball in college. We'd go up against a team of college baseball players thinking we were about to get stomped, but they would try to hit every pitch 800 ft and just hit pop ups. Now when they connected, they connected.
Honest question, are you genuinely arguing that you believe Oneil Cruz and Endy Rodriguez and Jared Triolo and Ji Hwan Bae and Liover Peguero and Hank Davis - or frankly any single one of them! - have had they swings altered for launch angle and approaches to swing max effort every time?
Please, pleeeeaaaase tell me this isn't your argument. You're smarter than this.
Not making that argument at all, his story just made me think of it.
A lot of players, especially most of ones you mentioned, are really geared for LA already. Pirates either have a scouting issue, or some sort of developmental glitch that is developing or increasing swing and miss. Pirates would turn Tony Gwynn into a strikeout machine.
I am feeling a little more confident about pitching though lol
This describes everything I'm seeing at Bradenton. I've been watching most of these guys for three years and virtually every one is getting worse, in some cases dramatically worse. Guys who seldom used to swing and miss, like Castillo, are trying to pull the ball and whiffing far more. Esmerlyn Valdez, who had a very good approach at the plate while he was in rookie ball, is consistently chasing low sliders and suddenly can't catch up with 93 mph fastballs. Shalin Polanco routinely has ABs where he gets three straight low changeups and chases every one. He's literally seeing the exact same pitch most of the time and can't adjust to it.
There's a massive level of dysfunction in this organization and the FO thinks everything is coming up aces. It was hilarious to see Cherington before Sunday's game carrying on about what a great job the hitters are doing of taking lots of pitches, and then seeing Shelton after the loss saying they were too passive. These dimwits just mindlessly spout empty words to the public without any conception of what they're saying or how it relates to reality. They just continue with their failed practices, oblivious to how it turns out.
Which organizations are doing anything different?
Judging by the results -- or if you actually see the games here -- all of them.
lol
It takes like 15 second of googling "results" to see the Pirates aren't even the most egregious franchise in this respect, but all you care about anymore is shitposting so why bother.