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Not trying to rain on the “over-the-moon” expectations that people have for Skenes, but at least some evaluators were saying this about him prior to the draft.

“his four-seamer features minimal separation between its induced vertical break and its horizontal break, putting it in the "dead zone." The fear is Skenes' four-seamer will play down as a result, causing him to underperform draft night expectations.”

The Pirates ignored that and passed on a “generational hitter” (whatever that is) to pick him. We can only hope the evaluators were wrong and the Pirates were right.

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Yeah, I'm fingers crossed all the other tools help offset that. If he has the advertised plus control, it should help mitigate it. I think to the recent debut of Rangers reliever Alex Speas who throws 100, but he's thrown only 2 FF out of 62 pitches and just goes pretty much 94% cutters. Skenes has multiple pitches, and the better those pitches are, the less reliant he'll be on the FF.

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That's the good shit.

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Jul 28, 2023Liked by NolaJeffy(BnP)

This was an awesome article to read! Seems like fastball shape is the new wave of success to ride, feels like we need to target someone who can teach that (idk if thats even possible) for this offseason

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There's just so many components to pitching lol I'd say they've done well with breakers (particularly sliders/sweepers), or at least identifying kids with plus breakers.

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Jul 28, 2023Liked by NolaJeffy(BnP)

Great article; I never really grasped fastball shape before, from a technical perspective.

It would be interesting to know what Priester’s numbers look like; we keep hearing the knocks against his shape, and I wonder if that is based on the data, or on the perception that his fastball is hittable.

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And to be honest, it wasn't really anything I thought of or looked too deep into (in part cause it's even less accessible data) until I started seeing it mentioned a lot more. Then I started going down rabbit holes reading up on it more. Then you see something like Alex Chamberlain's data and it backs up, "Ok, Oviedo and Ortiz's FF's are troublesome, even though they can throw upper 90's", backing up why they draw such minimal swing and miss.

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Looking at the small sample size of MLB raw numbers, his fourseam has an average drop of 17.6 in, which is 2 inches less than average. His sinker has 24.9 in of drop, so that alone doesn't provide much separation. Given his arm slot, I'd venture to guess his IVB isn't particularly strong.

So for someone like Quinn, it's going to put more emphasis on his command/control, while also tunneling his pitches so they appear similar out of hand before moving. Keller has taken steps forward in this department, while also having an arsenal of 5-6 pitches in a given start.

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Great stuff, Jeffy. Are you related to Aaron Nola?

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Unfortunately not, but I did watch Austin play SS for the Baby Cakes

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And you stayed at a Holiday Inn Express once, right?

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Who told you?!?!

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I saw the commercial that you were in.

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