You can't tip a curveball that is 6 inches (or more, often much more) out of the zone. The location is the tip. Framber's mechanics got confarculated (landing foot) and he just lost the ability to control the breaking ball.
Looking on baseball reference Yordan is listed at 6’5” and 225. Not sure on that 225. Yordan Ruben Alvarez.
Again, I am not saying it was a smart pitch, I wouldn't have even pitched to Alvarez..... all I did was explain the reason that they approached Alvarez the way they did. It wasn't a spur of the moment thing, it was something that planned out. As far as what Servais did or did not do, this is what he said about it recently: "We talked about it coming into the series. We talked about it pregame today. I looked at it in the 7th inning and said, hey, this could happen. So that was the plan going in. End of the day, you have a plan, we still got to execute it. A lot of it is tied into who is available, what the matchups are, and what our matchup numbers are, they’re developed by us. […] Every team has an analytical group that puts all the information together and it spits out a number to me and my coaching staff and the whole strategic group that puts together game plans and how we’re going to use guys. So you rely on it,” I am not sure why you believe that I am defending Servais and the decision to 1. pitch to Alvarez and 2. to have Robbie Ray pitch to Alvarez and 3. throw two straight sinkers that honestly were a half foot or a little more too far into the hitting zone. All I was saying is that the Mariners thought out the decision, they had a basis for the decision and obviously they failed to execute.
I don't know about 225, but in person he has less fat on him that you would think. He also tends to breathe through his stomach that makes it extend more. If I had to guess is around 240 lbs. He wouldn't move like he does if he were too much heavier. He is a little stiff in his lower body as it is.
Also, as for the irony of me not usually reading fangraphs.... I know Goldstein has worked for them several times, but the reality is that IMO their content just isn't that good anymore. Their prospect lists are middling, their articles will sometimes bring something to the table but they are not really "adding" anything at this point as far as evaluation of performance. I do enjoy when they interview players or coaches, but that isn't too often. Baseball numbers and evaluations are things that can get very stale without new measures or inputs.
I have my opinions but I will keep those to myself for right now. I will just point out that this isn't the first time he has changed gloves in a game. The Red Sox complained about Valdez swapping out his glove during the game. FWIW Valdez is superstitious and will do odd things. He really wanted to pitch with the Astros alternate jerseys during some of his starts. it got to the point that in one of his starts they let him do it. All because he felt the jersey was "lighter". He has mixed up his gloves at different points this season.
I'd say the Astros tanking about a decade ago plays into, and the wealthy teams playing smarter are bigger factors than teams currently tanking. 12 of the 100-win teams over that time frame are the Astros, or in LA or NY. It is hard to win when so much value is already on the good and great teams. For the most part, the good and great teams aren't trading as much of the farm (Seattle excluded) for a short term boost making tanking/rebuilding a lot less productive. The Astros, Yankees, Dodgers, Mets, and Braves won't win 100 every year (see 2022 Yankees), but I have a hard time seeing these teams become average much less below average in the next 3 or so years (unless Mets go cheap, but I expect they go big).
Right, an 0-8 stretch is going to happen for every player and it’s never surprising. Sometimes it’s just inconvenient.
I believe it was a TV thing. they did not want to start one set of DS games on Tuesday and another on Wednesday. They started them all on Tuesday. Thus if they had played as they normally do all teams would have played on Wednesday, taken a travel day on Thursday and played today. That would have left no Thursday games. I think they chose to split the AL out to have games every day and reduce the amount of head to head games they had for TV purposes. The NY-Cle rainout threw a little bit of a wrench in that because they didn't have a Prime Time game yesterday and had to move them to an early game today.
Valdez is a great enough pitcher that he can let fungus grow on his shower shoes, and he's just being colorful. He's great enough to have a personal catcher and a personal LF. He should be able to pick the jersey (I have some shirts that for whatever reasons feel better so I can dig the feels lighter comment) and switch gloves any time he wants. These things do not seem like they matter much in terms of winning and losing.
<Puts on Seattle brand tin foil hat> He put too much sticky stuff on the other glove, but didn't have time to put sticky stuff on the new glove.
