[Official] A's @ Astros

rocketpower2 · Jun 29, 2017

This version of Jake we are seeing right now is unsustainable given absurd HR/FB% but he could probably hover around a .750 OPS long term with the stance and swing changes. That alone combined with his defense is a 2-3 win player (assuming he's a regular) and worth $15MM per on the open market.

Uprising · Jun 30, 2017

Mlb.tv is only $10 for the year tonight.... Celebrating ten years the iPhone..

donkeypunch · Jun 30, 2017

Uprising said: ↑

Mlb.tv is only $10 for the year tonight.... Celebrating ten years the iPhone..
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Yeah but arent the Astros still blacked out?

SuraGotMadHops · Jun 30, 2017

I'd be cool if they brought back that buzzing sound in MMP that they played whenever one of the Killer B's knocked in a run. It would be limited to Beltran and Bregman now, but still. Woo's and buzzing everywhere!

Nick · Jun 30, 2017

SuraGotMadHops said: ↑

I'd be cool if they brought back that buzzing sound in MMP that they played whenever one of the Killer B's knocked in a run. It would be limited to Beltran and Bregman now, but still. Woo's and buzzing everywhere!
Click to expand...

Borrea
Bringer
Baltuve
Bccann
Battis
Beddick
Baoki
Barrisnick

Granted, buzzing was only played ad-nauseum during the playoffs with a packed house. It loses its intimidation/annoyance factor with a partially filled stadium or non-rabid crowd.

CometsWin · Jun 30, 2017

Yaosthirdleg said: ↑

http://www.houstonchronicle.com/spo...Marisnick-works-swing-shift-adds-11248841.php

Jake Marisnick had swung a bat the same way his entire life. The results made him a third-round draft pick, a top 100 industry prospect and a big leaguer at just 22 years old.

But after 1,000-plus plate appearances in the majors yielded significantly below-average production, Marisnick embarked on last offseason with the mindset he needed to make a change. When in October the Astros outfielder was introduced to Eugene Bleecker, he had a direction.

Bleecker, a 33-year-old former NAIA catcher, runs a baseball research and training facility called 108 Performance in Marisnick's hometown of Riverside, Calif. A baseball junkie, Bleecker parlays his knowledge and understanding of kinesiology and biomechanics to help hitters improve their swings.

In Marisnick's case, he engineered a total overhaul.

"You give it a certain amount of at-bats, and then you look at the body of work and say, 'There's more in there. There's more in the tank. I can be better than what I've done,' " Marisnick said. "And this was probably the first offseason that I really took that to heart."

With just less than half a season complete, Marisnick's new swing has already translated to career-best results at the plate. On Thursday in Oakland, he hit his 10th home run, a career high, in just his 118th plate appearance of the season after averaging a homer every 57.7 plate appearances in his first four big league campaigns.

Marisnick, 26, has hit the five longest homers of his career this season, the loudest a 454-foot blast off Boston's David Price on June 18 that clanked off the train tracks in left-center field at Minute Maid Park. He has worked his way into regular playing time in baseball's best lineup. Astros manager A.J. Hinch started Marisnick in five of seven games on the team's just-completed West Coast trip.

Marisnick enters Tuesday's series opener against the Oakland Athletics with an .848 OPS in 113 at-bats. He has recorded an 130 OPS-plus, a metric indicating his OPS is 30 percent better than the league average this season. His .522 slugging percentage is third on the Astros, albeit in the fewest at-bats of their 12 position players. He was already the best defensive outfielder on the team.

An offseason of reinvention is at the root of his offensive improvement. Marisnick met Bleecker through Riverside Poly High School teammate Austin Barnes, now the backup catcher for the Los Angeles Dodgers. After hearing Bleecker's philosophies on hitting, Marisnick decided to give the partnership a shot.

The goal was to get Marisnick to stay behind the ball, hit it hard, and hit it in the air with a comfortable and easy-to-repeat swing. The 6-4, 220-pound outfielder is probably among the most athletic players in baseball. But until this year, his contributions to the Astros were pretty much confined to defense and baserunning.

Before this season, Marisnick swung down on the ball and hit low line drives. He pounded ground balls to the left side of the infield and hit flares to the right side. His barrel path was so steep that it left him little margin for error.

"We're a big believer in swing patterns," said Bleecker, whose vernacular includes such terminology as kinesthetic awareness and dynamic adjustability. "How the body operates during your swing really tells a story about the results that you're going to achieve."

The first step in remaking Marisnick's swing was a full-scale analysis that included video and data study and lasted three to four hours. Bleecker found that Marisnick didn't land on his front foot with any of what he describes as posture, limiting his adjustability and vision mid-swing.

"Your posture is your ability to have dynamic adjustability when you land," Bleecker said. "When his front foot hit, his torso was kind of stacked above his backside. When you think about hitting and how athletic and dynamic it is, you don't know what pitch is coming, where it's going to be, (so) you have to have the ability to adjust in different things and different ways. What you really want is your chest to kind of hang out over the plate."

Marisnick's steep barrel path was another major issue to address.

"Great hitters, no matter who you look at, their barrel stays on plane with the ball for a really, really long period of time," Bleecker said. "So they give themselves a lot of opportunity whether they're early, late or on time to be able to barrel the ball up and hit it hard in the air.

"Jake was very hand-dominant, and because he's so tall, he was even steeper than most guys, and his hands came first. His body didn't drive his hands. His hands came first."

Bleecker said he focused with Marisnick on "creating a swing pattern with that posture that would allow him to get on plane and stay on plane and through the ball for a longer period of time." Before Marisnick progressed even to hitting off a tee, Bleecker had him start with dry swings of a PVC pipe to gain better understanding of his specific movement patterns.

"When you take the bat out of the hands and you take the ball out of the equation, it gives your brain the freedom to kind of do things and operate differently than you normally would," Bleecker said. "Your only objective is internally learning how to move differently. It has nothing to do with any type of external result."

After two to three weeks of drills exclusively with a PVC pipe, Marisnick translated the work to hitting off a tee, then to soft toss, then to overhand batting practice in the cage, and then on a field. He said that by his third or fourth time hitting on a field, he felt the ball jumping off his bat like it never had.

"The hardest thing was getting used to it," he said. "Because I had hit a baseball the same way my whole life."

Marisnick studied video of players with similar body types like Kris Bryant, Matt Kemp and J.D. Martinez. He picked the brains of Astros teammates like Carlos Correa, Jose Altuve and George Springer. He worked between two and three hours a day Monday through Friday and sometimes on Saturday, according to Bleecker. The changes instilled confidence, and even after Marisnick struggled in his first handful of at-bats at spring training, he stuck with his approach.

His swing now is simplified compared with its predecessor. He widened his stance and moved his hands back. His barrel stays longer through the zone, and his chest lands over the plate.

In the past, Marisnick hit a lot of balls to the pull side on the ground. This season, he's hitting more up the middle and in the air. He has cut his ground-ball percentage from 45.2 to 37.3 and increased his fly ball percentage from 35.5 to 46.3, according to FanGraphs.

Marisnick's revamped swing makes it easier for him to adjust from pitch to pitch and at-bat to at-bat. He's actually striking out more than last season - his rate has risen from 26.7 to 34.9 - but when he gets a hold of a pitch, he's crushing it to areas of ballparks typically reserved for teammates Springer and Correa.

"I've been guilty of doubting myself. A lot of guys have," Marisnick said. "I think that doubt is pretty much gone now."

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Great article. Certainly explains what we're seeing this year.

Buck Turgidson · Jun 30, 2017

SuraGotMadHops said: ↑

I'd be cool if they brought back that buzzing sound in MMP that they played whenever one of the Killer B's knocked in a run. It would be limited to Beltran and Bregman now, but still. Woo's and buzzing everywhere!
Click to expand...

Neither of those guys have earned it here.

If you dedicated yourself for a weekend, I bet you could engineer a vuvuzela, and a rally monkey.

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[Official] A's @ Astros

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