Of course the beaning, suicide and stroke weren't expected. Those were external and concrete reason as to why they declined. The same with an injury. If you're going to compare Bregman's decline, find a player who was MVP caliber and then became 10% above league average. It is possible that he has yet to fully recover from his hand surgery and/or muscle injuries.
THIS is why I have a bit more patience with him than most. Even as he struggles, he's keeping his OBP competitive with walks and plate discipline. To maximize 2022 Bregman, I'd lead him off or hit him after C to keep him out of the popup / DP scenarios. To be honest, I'd like to see lefties hitting 1,3,5 since we typically face more rightys. Something like: 1. Brantley 2. Altuve 3. Yordan 4. Pena 5. Tucker 6. McCormick 7. Gurriel 8. Maldy 9. Bregman Yordan gets more RBI opportunities, Pena get's more ABs. Bregman gets more opportunities without a runner on 1B and DP/pop up . But I'm just an amateur.
538 - Yordan Álvarez Might Just Be Baseball’s Best Hitter (Look Out, Mike Trout) https://fivethirtyeight.com/feature...be-baseballs-best-hitter-look-out-mike-trout/ So far this season, Álvarez is pacing the rest of baseball in hard-hit percentage, expected batting average, expected slugging percentage and expected weighted on base average. By xWOBA in particular, Álvarez excels over the competition, leading the next best hitter by more than 30 points.
Sorry been out of pocket but wanted to respond here. Today no starter goes deep anymore - that’s my point. Go look last year at your innings leaders if you want to prove my point. You think hitting the average SP the third time you face him is harder than hitting some guy out of the pen throwing 98 like today? Of course not. When Bagwell played the former was the norm. Today the latter is the norm. Regarding you questioning whether the data overwhelmingly favoring pitchers - it 100% without question does. Think about it - if you have slow bat speed and can’t catch up to 95+ MPH 4 seamers up in the zone, what do you think you’re going to see any time a pitcher has the ability to throw 95+? Or if you can’t hit a plus slider (go back and see how we have pitched Judge in the playoffs)…what do you think you’re going to see? You can’t just wave the magic wand and end up with an ability to hit 95+ or drive plus sliders into the opposite field gap… Meanwhile, pitchers have the ability to choose on demand whether or not to break their data trends because after all it is simply their choice what they’re going to throw in what count, etc. Managers have the ability to choose the pitcher out of their pen that has an arsenal that statistically you struggle with. Additionally, data resulted into to use of shifts league wide which has literally ended the careers of pull happy lefties whereas guys like Ryan Howard were able to survive during Bagwell’s era (until the shift began). At the end of the day it’s a lot harder to be successful hitting (which is why getting a hit 3 out of 10 times is considered great), and if you want proof that having data as a hitter is way less valuable, once again go back to LMJ throwing 24 straight curve balls to the Yankees to close out the ALCS in 2017 - that’s all the proof you need.
I was looking at Fangraphs earlier and saw his expected BA was .359 and expected slugging was .759. That’s Barry Bonds in his prime type s***. If y’all want to see mind blowing stuff just go look at his stat cast profile - no one that hits the ball that hard that often should not be able to do so while also not striking out. It’s absolutely absurd. And once again he’s only 24 and in his first full year in the MLB that isn’t coming off major knee surgeries! Edit: Here’s some more mind blowing stuff for you. He’s 24th in the AL in K rate for qualified hitters. Aside from my man crush Jose Ramirez and his absolutely ridiculous MLB leading 7.0% K rate to go along with his 16 bombs and .641 slugging % (seriously I’d trade anyone and everyone not named Alvarez for him lol), Yordan is the only other one in the top 25 that has a slugging % north of .500. Outside of Ty France and his 9 homers, the next highest HR total for anyone on this list is SIX and no one is slugging over .460. It’s a bunch of slap hitters like Elvis Andrus and JP Crawford….and then the two unicorns Jose Ramirez and Yordan Alvarez.
Can you explain Bagwell's performance and how it fits your view? OPS by inning for career: 1 .907 2 .990 3 1.047 4 .953 5 .952 6 .975 7 .881 8 .932 9 .904 Looks like his best at bats are first time seeing starters. A little less 7th on, but you’re saying the starters are still in during the 7th, right?
I'm as big of an Alvarez fanboy as there is but the only negative about him is that he's not nearly as good with players in scoring position as he is where the bases are empty. His numbers get progressively worse as more people are on base and there are more outs. He's almost like Springer in this regard.
For his career, Yordan is a .303./.393/.605 hitter with runners in scoring position. He is pretty awful when two runners are in scoring position (.161/.256/.194 in 43 plate appearances in this situation) and 1B is empty, however.
I think that is mostly the result of too much adrenaline. You can not discount the additional pressure those situations put on the pitchers he is hitting against. They are just as over stimulated and the pitches he sees are often the unexpected result of that.
His RISP numbers and bases empty numbers are basically identical for his career. His bases loaded number are better than both, although you get into negligible sample size when you start breaking it down by particular bases occupied.
I was just looking at this season. His numbers with RISP are much lower. I hope that trends back to his career averages.
And even then it's .283/.408/.433, which aside from the significantly lower slugging, isn't that precipitous of a drop.
He's a line drive hitter with so much power he can easily launch 30+ homers in a season. He doesn't have to sacrifice BABIP for power by trying to hit as many fly balls as possible like with Bregman. The only times he gets into trouble is when he's hitting too many ground balls. If I were facing him in a late game situation I would want someone with a heavy sinker on the mound.
