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Javy Baez


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1 minute ago, JackPine said:

No hits or walks but no K's today and continued to swing at strikes. My post yesterday was way too optimistic but I'll take these signs of discipline 

I like that the one swing and miss on a slider that I saw in the game today was on a pitch that was actually in the strike zone as well.

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On 6/11/2022 at 4:14 PM, chasfh said:

Not saying this is you, but a lot of fans ask what good a hitting coach is, since major league position players already know how to hit, duh, so what can a hitting coach teach them?

There may be little new that a major league hitting coach can teach a major league hitter, but the coach should be able to get to know his players well enough to see when a guy is out of sync, and should be able to suggest tweaks to fix whatever the problem may be.

As for this particular situation, I don’t know whether Scott Coolbaugh doesn’t know enough about Javy to fix his issue, or whether Javy is resistant to whatever input Coolbaugh is offering up to him, but either way, it doesn’t reflect well on Scott Coolbaugh.

Add to this that there are multiple qualified batters on this team who are having terrible years, and that almost none of them have been doing well all season, or in the last month, or in the last two weeks, or during just about any period this season, and, coupled with the fact that the Tigers are having a historically terrible year scoring runs, it looks to me like Scott Coolbaugh is going to have to stand tall before the Man to answer for it.

But wait—wasn’t Scott Coolbaugh the Tigers’ hitting coach last year? Sure he was. So why wasn’t I calling for his head last season? Because we were not this terrible last season. We were merely a slightly-below-average-hitting team. It is this season our hitting has completely collapsed. Just because the Tigers weren’t this bad hitting last year doesn’t mean Coolbaugh bears no responsibility for the hitting collapse of this season.

We have no proof positive that this team’s relationship with Scott Coolbaugh is the same or different, whether players are listening to him more or less this season than last, whether there were broad coaching changes he implemented leading to the scoring outage or whether players are getting worse on their own and ignoring his input. What we see are the results, and the results show that the 2022 Tigers are in the 1st percentile in history for run-scoring through 57 games. Shouldn’t that be considered unacceptable?

Unless there is dramatic improvement in run-scoring starting today, Scott Coolbaugh will be fired really soon, and I would agree with that. 

While I don't think that Hinch is likely at all to fire Coolbaugh, nor do I think firing him would likely help the level of coaching, since the new guy would be starting from zero, and would likely be a second-rate hire (otherwise he would already be on a MLB staff), nevertheless this shocking situation requires some kind of action by Management at either a player or coaching level.

I would prefer better players be brought to bear.  A capable and moderatly creative GM would be pushing player personnel buttons, but our GM is not capable or creative....so here we are.

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7 minutes ago, sabretooth said:

While I don't think that Hinch is likely at all to fire Coolbaugh, nor do I think firing him would likely help the level of coaching, since the new guy would be starting from zero, and would likely be a second-rate hire (otherwise he would already be on a MLB staff), nevertheless this shocking situation requires some kind of action by Management at either a player or coaching level.

I would prefer better players be brought to bear.  A capable and moderatly creative GM would be pushing player personnel buttons, but our GM is not capable or creative....so here we are.

One difference between this season and last season is there were more "shock and awe" options in terms of roster management.

Bringing up Jake Rogers and Eric Haase was an easy choice when the alternatives were Wilson Ramos and Grayson Greiner. Or bringing up Hill or Cameron when the alternative is JaCoby Jones. When you look at this roster, there aren't many options besides shuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic with the guys on the 40 man (particularly the outifelders) or DFA'ing a veteran in order to clear space. And I don't see Robbie being DFA'd to give ABs to someone in AAA, for better or worse.

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3 hours ago, Dave Christian said:

When I look at 3 of the worst batters on this team, Baez, Torkelson and Clemens, I see that they all have an excessively open stance with the bat too far back over the shoulders.

This creates too many moving parts so the bat is late getting to the ball.

Just my humble opinion of course😁

good point, though a stance doesn't matter that much IF you get out of it early enough in the cycle. I think as big an issue is to get your head to it's stable point quickly. If your eyes are still moving once you are trying to track the pitch you are toast. Just as comparison, I used to think this was Alex Avila's big Achilles heel, but for him it was because he started too upright and his head was still always moving down while he was already in his swing. But in general, it seems logical you want to start with your eyes as close to the path of the ball as possible and execute your swing with as little translation of your head as possible, what movement there is needs to happen early in the load so your eyes can be set during your swing.

Edited by gehringer_2
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4 hours ago, mtutiger said:

One difference between this season and last season is there were more "shock and awe" options in terms of roster management.

Bringing up Jake Rogers and Eric Haase was an easy choice when the alternatives were Wilson Ramos and Grayson Greiner. Or bringing up Hill or Cameron when the alternative is JaCoby Jones. When you look at this roster, there aren't many options besides shuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic with the guys on the 40 man (particularly the outifelders) or DFA'ing a veteran in order to clear space. And I don't see Robbie being DFA'd to give ABs to someone in AAA, for better or worse.

I don't disagree, there aren't seemingly good options, but they have to make some moves nevertheless, even if it's just temporary in nature.  Having the entire IF tanking for 60+ games like this is just beyond.

Consider Baez.  He had several bad stretches last year of 60-80 PAs, but even in those stretches he maintained a decent hard-hit + barrells pct and hit 7 HRs during those 150 PAs.  This year he has failed to hit the ball with any authority.

That seems to be the story with every flyball hitting Tiger this year.  The only guys who have been OK are guys who don't hit flyballs.  Miggy, Harold, and Reyes.

If the new (old) ball is causing the problem for mediocre FB hitters, then the Tigers are kind of stuck.  They invested a league-average payroll and top tank picks in the key players that they have, they have failed to develop any position players after many years of Avila's control, and even Dombrowski himself would have a challenge to make good deals out of this.  And we all know that Avila is no Dombrowski in terms of milking a trade.

I was feeling pretty good as of Saturday, after they had won 14 out of their last 25 games with terrible hitting and their rotation wiped out.  Now, I'm really wondering what the hell is going on.

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On 6/15/2022 at 12:25 PM, sabretooth said:

 

I would prefer better players be brought to bear.  A capable and moderatly creative GM would be pushing player personnel buttons, but our GM is not capable or creative....so here we are.

YES, but just look at the tremendous job big Al has done protecting the team from drunken sailors. 

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  • 2 weeks later...
49 minutes ago, Archie said:

He's got the attitude back too instead of hanging his head after each AB.

He can relax and enjoy playing again

But the problem is that if he has this spark 20 games ago, they're not completely out of it now.    Ryan Raburnitis/Tony Clarkitis.   That illness that wows everyone with your talent when there is really nothing to play for but stats.   

April counts, boys. 

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This is the Javy I said you will love watching. During his nine-game streak he is 14-for-35, with three doubles, a triple and four homers, good for a slash line of .400/.432/.886. His wOBA is .551 and his wRC+ 272, built with a relatively sustainable BABIP of .357. And bonus: he has struck out only three times during this stretch.

This is not a prediction at all, because anything can happen and good times always end eventually, but Javy is capable of keeping up this kind of production for weeks at a time.

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

All I know is, last night he took a first pitch ball during his second or third at bat. I nearly fell off the couch. I like aggressive hitters, but Javy is amazing. There has to be a stat on the percentage of first-pitch swings and he has to be the leader (all-time?).

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40 minutes ago, Tigerfan6884 said:

All I know is, last night he took a first pitch ball during his second or third at bat. I nearly fell off the couch. I like aggressive hitters, but Javy is amazing. There has to be a stat on the percentage of first-pitch swings and he has to be the leader (all-time?).

Baez is 64th in first-strike percentage since his career started in 2014, one notch below Nick.

https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=bat&lg=all&qual=y&type=5&season=2022&month=0&season1=2014&ind=0&team=0&rost=0&age=0&filter=&players=0&startdate=2014-01-01&enddate=2022-12-31&sort=10,d&page=1_100

Look who's eighth on this list! 😅

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