Balta1701

I don't know if there's a stat to show this but I feel like Petricka does better when he comes into the game with runners on than when he leads off the inning himself. His OPS is about 100 points lower with RISP than with the bases empty, that's about as close as I can get.

5-4 Royals, run scores on the contact play, grounder to Abreu but throw home is high.

Huge break for the White Sox. Rios was on first, Orlando killed a double into the gap, Rios would have scored easily but ball bounced over the fence. I always think the umps should use some judgment on that play & give the guy home if he'd clearly score, IIRC the rule book does allow that. Anywho.

QUOTE (Soxfest @ Aug 9, 2015 -> 04:51 PM) Worst team I have ever seen with guy on 3rd and 1 out. Um, they got the run in.

Melky singles, ties the game at 4.

Run-saving play by Moustakas. Gloved a hard hit bouncing ball by Abreu, kept his footing, kept his face towards the plate, held Eaton at 3b.

QUOTE (L. Ron Paultard @ Aug 9, 2015 -> 04:40 PM) More confusion. You are choosing to judge someone in a midst of a horrible slump and then retroactively applying/projecting it to his entire career. The guy has regressed big time while batting, what, 150 over month+.... When say Konerko, an infinitely better inside-fastball hitter than Garcia, had one of this long slumps, he too looked like he was "inexplicably" Derek Jeter-ing it up. But it's not just illusion, Balta. That's not really what's happening, or rather it's a SYMPTOM of a much more serious, fundamental break-down. Garcia is not seeing the ball, he is desperately over-compensating, the opposing pitchers smell the blood in the water.... it's a classic vicious spiral. Now you are crying out "Why isn't he turning on those inside pitches"???? HE IS TRIED TO, BUT COULDN'T TOUCH THEM. Hence the effect like he doesn't even start the swing on some of those inside sinkers or cutters... until the ball is in the catcher's mitt. It looks comical. Like his reactions are so slow, it's all in slow-motion. But again, that's simply because his pitch recognition, his "trigger", the swing itself is so slow & loopy that Avi has no prayer on inside pitches unless they are BP quality hangers. And even then, he predictably curls them way foul for Strike 1.... it's very much hitter's version of Catch-22. Another hitting coach, another off-season, maybe it'll get better. Prolly not. There's no "retroactively applying it to his entire career", that's who he's been his entire career. When he first came up in 2013 he was able to keep his batting average high by blooping the ball in front of the RF. You can see that easily in his spray charts for 2013 and 2014, That's the root cause, the symptom for him was always "the balls he hits are falling in-between the 2b and the RF". He kept his batting average up that way...then pitchers learned to adapt. We've been saying it would happen since 2013 - in fact that might be the biggest disappointment of his 2014 campaign, since he lost so much time he never got into the slump that was bound to happen with his approach. Several of us were saying that as far back as 2013 - his approach would never work longterm, and now he's in exactly the funk that we expected.

QUOTE (L. Ron Paultard @ Aug 9, 2015 -> 04:11 PM) Balta, again you are mixing different issues (failures) together. I can't blame you because you must be watching so many games, full of so much failure, it all starts to blur. Plus, when hitters are having fundamental break-downs in every aspect of their approach and get that "lethargic in-between look".... it it's easy to just zero in on some opposite-field bloops by a big struck overhyped Miggy 2.0 lookalike like Avi and say why is he slapping at the ball so pathetically the other way? Think back to his oppo HR off David Price in April at Comerica, not an easy feat to say the least. I know that's just 1 swing, but that's his upside. When everything else is right, Avi would still stay back on the ball long enough to TURN on off-speed hanger which about in a league full of bad-to-mediocre pitching. However, try to get him to go against his element, and he will get blown away by 85 mph "fastball" in on the hands, and instead of crushing hangers to LF as he did against Tampa, he will be way too early and off-balance, too. A lose-lose situation. It is what is it Balta. Avisail Garcia is not an elite HR slugger talent, no matter how strong he is. And not only he can't play CF, he may not even stick in Right. I am sorry you and evidently Rick Hahn got fooled by horrible Sox scouts. That doesn't mean that with a some mechanical adjustments & a more humble attitude, Garcia can't become a decent line-drive type of a hitter. Ideally a #6 hitter on a really good team. (Which is the Sox aren't, hence additional problems) Finally, I'd like to see someone other than Todd Steverson work with Garcia before render final judgement. Your Kilometerage May Vary. I still very much disagree with this. His swing is 100% an inside out swing. When he's doing that, his natural process is to flip the ball on the outer half of the plate to the opposite field. He's strong enough that he'll make contact with some of them and hit them as strong line drives, but it leaves a gaping hole in his swing on the inner half of the plate and it robs him of his own natural power. You can make that type of approach work if you are able to cover all parts of the plate and you don't expand your zone, but neither of those are true with him. This approach worked for Derek Jeter because he could do exactly that - cover the full plate, not get jammed, and he didn't expand the zone. It's never going to work for Avi Garcia because he can't cover the inside pitch in the same way, he gets jammed too easily by anything on the inner half when he can't get around ahead of it.

Down against the Royals going into the 8th inning isn't a good place to be.

4-3 Royals after a bloop, bunt, single up the middle. Trayce bobbled another one in CF while trying to pick it up.

QUOTE (fathom @ Aug 9, 2015 -> 03:46 PM) Does he have any homers to left on a fastball this year? I have no way of knowing what pitch he hit HR on.

QUOTE (L. Ron Paultard @ Aug 9, 2015 -> 03:41 PM) Good! Trying to pull (non-hangers) in June-July is what got him in such trouble. That is not his game and never will be. He is not Gary Sheffield-on-roids or even Alexei Ramirez. Now, does it mean Avi is going to magically solve his woes by just letting the ball get deeper on him? No, that's not enough. He still needs to learn to utilize the advance scouting reports and to "think along" with the opposing pitcher. Avi still needs early pitch recognition. Smaller strike-zone. Shorter path to the ball and a more level swing plane. He is so strong, his line-drives oppo will still turn into doubles and HR in July at USCF. In other words, just making (quality) contact, is paramount. Maybe another off-season + ST will get him back on track. I continue to think this is 100% wrong. He constantly tries to flip the ball to right field and so he's extremely vulnerable to the pitch in the middle of the plate/in.

come on tyler no dp

Duffy's struggling alot this inning and here's the guy you don't want to face when you're struggling.

Tie game 3-3 on base hit by Alexei.

Podsednik and Harrelson thinking that Eaton's sore shoulder is impacting his swing.

Have to do some damage here.

Quintana being beaten up this inning, double by Rios on fastball right down the middle. Looked like the OFs were giving a wide space in left center that time and that's again where the ball went.

Hosmer doubles into right field, outfielders had given him a lot of space in right center, Trayce bobbled the ball a bit while trying to avoid colliding with Avi, 1-0 Royals.

Escobar works leadoff walk.

Dyson fooled a bit on a hard line drive from Abreu but recovers for a decent catch.

Game starts on time. Apparently Duffy hasn't allowed a hit to a lefty in 3 straight starts.

QUOTE (Brian26 @ Aug 9, 2015 -> 01:03 AM) This is one of those WTF posts that I can't believe I'm reading. Sounds like you did not watch any games before Memorial Day. Perhaps you were wrapped up with the Hawks bandwagon fans. Melky was absolutely crushing the ball for the first two months of the season and was the recipient of the worst luck I've probably seen ever by a player. Every time, seemingly, he came up, he crushed the ball right at somebody. Those balls are now finding holes and gaps. Check the stats on his BA of balls in play to verify this. No, he didn't all of a sudden start juicing again. He's a solid hitter. That was a stupid post and I apologize.

QUOTE (L. Ron Paultard @ Aug 8, 2015 -> 09:45 PM) Josh Phegley is playing in a zero-pressure environment and even at his peak, he's a 1-WAR player (not that S-metrics can't be useless in a smaller sample size or can capture the true suckage that is his defense... mind you) As for Avi, again you're mixing everything up. Avi wasn't rushed to the big at all. At a quick glance, Mister Garcia's problems are 2-fold: 1) aformentioned Terrible scouting. Apparently someone told Rick Hahn that Garcia is a top-flight defensive CF.... who can also steal 30 bases with ease... and has Miguel Cabrera's HOF-caliber combination of poise, early pitch-recognition, hand-eye coordination & batspeed. I feel sorry for Hahn, haha. 2) And even with limited upside, Avi could still hit 20-25 HR in the majors because of his natural strength & an all-field line-drive swing. Which is what seem to happen before he tore his shoulder at age 22. When he came back, his mechanics were different. Still got off to a good start in 2015, including an impressive oppo HR against David Price no less. Sure he still needed to learn a lot in terms of plate-discipline & how to "think along with the pitcher".... but he was trending in a positive direction at 23 yo. Then everyone, including the media and fans began to whine how Avi need to pull more of those majestic Gio Stanton type HR to LF. Evidently Garcia took heed. And has been in pull-n-uppercut loopy off-balance swing mode for a couple of months. Numbers tanked big-time. Sure some responsibility is on Avi himself, got greedy, got out of his element. Avi Garcia's mechanics have changed? No one who has watched 2 games of White Sox baseball since 2013 would say that. he's 100% the exact same player he was in 2013 and 2014. He flips the ball constantly the other way. Pitchers aren't used to that from guys who come up so it took a while for his scouting report to get out, but he doesn't pull the ball and therefore he can be beat as long as you don't give him the pitch high and away. His batting average will always stay positive, but it will be a completely empty batting average. Opposite field HR are all he can do - he deserves no credit for those if he's not pulling the ball. He has no way to exploit his own power using his approach. He's the exact same player he was in August 2013 when he piled up bloop hits to right field. He wasn't rushed, but counting on him to contribute as a 23 year old was as dumb as trading away Phegley because he wasn't ready right now or counting on Rodon as a rookie. It's baseball stupid. The same people who said that Avi Garcia is a MLB center fielder said that Josh Phegley could not learn to hit big league pitching or field big league pitching. You indict them for calling Avi a CF and then assume they're right about Phegley being a failure when he's already outperforming what you say he could do.

Got his pitch on 2-1 and fouled it off. Ballgame. 10-11 since the AS break and they continue proving me right.