Matan K

📍Chicago

🏴‍☠️

My thought would be that based on the fact that high 4sFB typically get less ride, the Z break that Mahle is getting in those locations is absurd.

Just noticed that Orioles prospect Reed Trimble is 41 for 41 stealing bases in his MiLB career, which is honestly incredible. It's the most SB without a CS in the Fangraphs MiLB leaderboard database by a huge margin: www.fangraphs.com/leaders/mino...

My eval weighting must be much more talent/skills centric vs track record than most, because the Crochet deal seems great for BOS to me. Even if he’s injured for 1/2 the deal, a Top 5 most talented SP in baseball for his entire prime is worth 170m by a large margin in the current baseball economy.

Good guess but no.

Player-level correlation. Y axis? 👀 🤔

while Jake Burger, JD Martinez and Jose Altuve tend to remain more closed.

Corey Seager and Jose Ramirez typically open up their front foots towards the pitcher at the intercept point (of the bat and ball)...

In contrast, Aaron Judge does not gain much ground with his front foot from release to intercept, though his foot is farther forward than in his batting stance.

New data so not 100% sure this is correct, but it seems like Corbin Carroll "gains the most ground" with his front foot from pitch release to intercept point, measured using the front heel.

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Baseball Savant - Statcast Game Feed & Advanced Metrics Baseball Savant

791894 baseballsavant.mlb.com/gamefeed?dat...

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Aiva Arquette 86 mph bat speed

Calling my shot: Chris Rembert will be a 1st rounder

I also think that a significant part of a secondary’s effectiveness remains its synergy with the FB (which is obvs baked in to models as well) and a hypothetical “expected” movement profile might coincide with higher synergy.

Will Dion averaging 92 with 19ish IVB seems good. He seems to fit in the Eli Morgan bucket of 'switch pitchability guy to bullpen for a tick or two' imo.

round(better_than, 0) but 2000 feels good.

Lefties are no longer underrated by Stuff+! Handedness is (a form of) deception. Great stuff from @enosarris.bsky.social, @choicefielder.bsky.social and the whole Stuff+ team.

for INTL pitchers (the timeline is also stretched thin for INTL position players) and perhaps a domestic reserve exception as well. The goal of MLB should be to maximize the talent on the field and INTL pitcher success is a clearly necessary area for improvement.

Some of this disparity is likely due to demographics (for instance, height tends to be emphasized for SP and the Latin American population is ~0.4 SDs shorter on average) and other factors. However, it does seem like MLB as a whole can do more to ease INTL pitcher dev, like increasing R5 time...

Short 🧵: On international signing day, it's worthwhile to acknowledge one of the larger crises in MLB today: the glaring lack of successful INTL (pool) pitchers. Just 5 of the top 50 P in 2024 fWAR (13 of 100) were pool signings vs 19 of 50 (36 of 100) for position players.

Sasaki seems relatively similar to Senga imo. His splitter is devastating (like the ghost fork) but he badly needs another in-zone weapon if his 4sFB gets tagged. Senga developed an improved cutter that was the key to his 2023 success. Roki will likely need a pitch of that ilk.

The easiest fix is for Roki to regain his '23 velocity, though it's fair to question if that will happen. Almost no SP truly average 99 mph and Sasaki's injuries suggest that it may be unsustainable. If he doesn't, Sasaki's 4sFB seems trapped in a dead zone, given shape + spin.

explains the tremendous drop in NPB whiff rate (24% to 13%) that accompanied his velo dip from '23 to '24. In fact, at 96-97 it's quite possible that Sasaki's fastball will play as a 45-50. In particular, MLB hitters may damage the pitch much more than in NPB (vs simply not whiffing).

Quick 🧵 on Roki Sasaki fastball quality and conversion to MLB (credit
@lancebroz.bsky.social vids and NPB profiler): By comparing with Senga, Yamamoto and Imanaga, we can get a rough idea of how Sasaki's 4sFB will play in MLB. Roki's meh FB shape makes him extremely velo dependent, which...

I wonder if this means that Cristopher Polanco is back on the market (as Morel was) for a team to swoop in and sign him on Jan 15.

Relatedly, Cecconi's FF stands out in rarely discussed "Total Movement." Its high total spin and active (non-gyro)% contributes to + movement. Most of that is unexpected run (credit @choicefielder.bsky.social for plot), which isn't *that* helpful. At a higher slot, unexpected rise + run might be.