BCB’s Sweet Day at ESPN

Published by on March 2, 2011 | 1 Response

In case you missed it — or you aren’t following our twitter accounts, you jerks — me and Otis took over ESPN’s SweetSpot Blog today.

Head on over to the blog to check out the full posts, here’s a few links and quotes from our postings.

The top 10 struggling sluggers since 1950

I run down a list of the worst 10 hitters sorted by OPS+ that hit at least 25 home runs in a season. I hope you like Tony Batista, because whoa.

7. Andruw Jones, Atlanta Braves, 2007, 26 HR, 87 OPS+

Jones’ lack of productivity, even with power, is forgivable depending on how you rate his defense in center field. And even in 2007, by most metrics, Jones was still a solid plus in center field. This was, however, the downturn in Jones’ career as a hitter.

Did I mention Tony Batista? Because Tony Batista.

Trimmer Sandoval set for bounce-back year

Otis makes good, solid sense with his take on Sandoval’s weight issues.

And that’s the problem. We can’t really know what caused the terrible season, and it could come and go as it pleases, especially if the problem was mainly mental. If Sandoval were a 10-year veteran, we would be pretty well-assured that he has the mental fortitude to pull himself back up after a down season. But he’s a 24-year-old kid who rode a rocket to the big leagues and found success probably before he knew how to deal with it.

I’m looking forward to Sandoval’s 2011 season, and I really hope he’ll be able to turn things around. He was just too much fun to watch between 2008-09.

The princes of popups

It turns out that Otis is a demented pop-up loving freak.

I love pop flies. That’s not a normal thing, even for a huge baseball fan to say. I know that. But I love watching good pitching, and inducing popups is good pitching.

Gross. This man needs help. However, he makes a good point in that pop-ups are rarely as sexy as strikeouts and control, but they are important slices of the pitcher pie.

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Thanks for reading, and even if you don’t love our brilliant writing, the SweetSpot blog is full of other fellow SSN bloggers. Go ahead, read ‘em.

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Liem
Liem

This comment was meant for the SweetSpot Blog on ESPN's site, but I wanted to start a discussion on this site as well. The response is directed to Otis' question "How does extra weight stop you from driving and squaring up the ball?" Added weight can dramatically affect how a hitter squares up on a ball. In order for a normal hitter to make solid contact with the ball he must first clear his hips to make room for his hands to come through. A fat batter must not only clear his hips, but also his stomach, which means he must start his hips even earlier. This is why many fat players are dead pull hitters. The only way they put solid contact on 90+mph pitches is by "stepping in the bucket" in order to clear both their hips and bellies. For extremely fat hitters, such as Sandoval last year, this could present a massive problem (pun intended). Sandoval had to start his hitting motion (i.e. load) much earlier than he was used to. Those of you who watched Giants' broadcasts may recall Mike Krukow talking about how Sandoval needed to get "his front foot down earlier." This earlier front foot plant helped Sandoval to recognize the earlier timing; however, this meant that the Panda was often either to far out in front with his weight or had to commit to swinging before he fully recognized the pitch, or both. Because Sandoval is extremely gifted with his hand/bat/eye coordination, he was still able to bat the ball into play, but because this contact (for the reasons just explained above) was not squared up the results were often weak ground balls or lazy fly balls, hence the low BABIP but steady K-rates.