With the way he quasi-locks his front arm and sweeps the bat, he can't shorten it. Very encouraging to see him take harder stuff middle out to RF, those are pitches he was hitting on the ground to the right side last year. He's killing breaking balls. Haven't seen him turn on a really good inside fastball much, if at all (he hasn't exactly been facing a bunch of hard throwers). eta: I'd be curious to see his results based on pitch type, velo and location. Too lazy to dig around on fangraphs or brooks.
Bold strategy to rest Altuve and Springer on a Wade Miley start knowing it'll take about 15 runs to win. Miley is gonna bounce back, right? Wonder if AJ will back off the shifts while Miley is in the game.
All Tucker needs to do to shorten his swing is not shove the bat head into the first row behind home plate. Problem is that it is hard to change years of the same setup.
How much would that mess with how he loads up his uppercut, though? I sure don't know. Pretty sure there's a reason you don't see other players with his swing mechanics. I'm actually quite curious how he started doing it, where he learned it, etc....
I'm aware that other players have retooled various things about their swing. I was just speaking to the unorthodox nature of what Tucker does potentially making it more interesting. How'd you like to be his hitting coach? "Ok, forget 75% of everything you've taught...."
