Hendriks goes to the back of his cap, quite often. Perhaps it's just before he throws that nasty slider. Having his effectiveness significantly diminished would be very costly. Yikes!!  Let's hope not. The pen has been shaky enough, even with a dominant closer.

Edited June 6, 20214 yr by Lillian

1 hour ago, Lillian said:

Hendriks goes to the back of his cap, quite often. Perhaps it's just before he throws that nasty slider. Having his effectiveness significantly diminished would be very costly. Yikes!!  Let's hope not. The pen has been shaky enough, even with a dominant closer.

But if other teams get cracked down that would level the playing field again especially since other teams have  better analytics and R&D and thus possibly more efficient substance mixes whole Sox might be more good old pine tar. 

15 minutes ago, Dominikk85 said:

But if other teams get cracked down that would level the playing field again especially since other teams have  better analytics and R&D and thus possibly more efficient substance mixes whole Sox might be more good old pine tar. 

I think the point is we paid Hendricks a ton of money to be elite, not slightly above average

I was watching Hendriks today. He does indeed go to a shiny spot, on the back of his cap, especially just before he throws the slider. 

 

 

4 minutes ago, soxfan49 said:

 

What am I looking at, regarding the LMAO especially. ?

29 minutes ago, Big Hurtin said:

What am I looking at, regarding the LMAO especially. ?

Probably the drop in spin rate.

What is interesting about Bauer is that he likely was using before and this year is another plus 200 or so. 

 

That likely means he has found a new substance that significantly outperforms the state of the art what others are using. 

Oops.

 

https://www.chron.com/sports/astros/article/Dodgers-Trevor-Bauer-spin-rate-down-cheat-rules-16229875.php?utm_medium=referral&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=socialflow&fbclid=IwAR257fJ0eZFKEp5xaC44C6KSH0KZAM5Hc8k2ZFqyov8PJ5MXwBWS-C11dogc

On 6/6/2021 at 4:49 PM, Big Hurtin said:

What am I looking at, regarding the LMAO especially. ?

Look how much his average spin rate decreased in this start, just a few days/hours after the league announced this will be looked at much more closely

2 hours ago, soxfan49 said:

Look how much his average spin rate decreased in this start, just a few days/hours after the league announced this will be looked at much more closely

Same thing happened with Cole.

However, Bauer's spin rate was only down significantly on his fastball. The additional spin on the fastball is not nearly as important as it is on a breaking ball. His spin was only down slightly on the breaking stuff. If you listen to Bauer, it is very likely he is going to manipulate his spin rates to skew his numbers. So we know for a fact his fastball is down significantly. I'd be interested to see where his change up is at given less spin can make it more effective and further offset his heightened rates. Despite all the social media/MLB drama being annoying, Bauer is the guy to watch because he is working with cutting edge science and having better results than others (both by spin rate and traditional performance measures).

I'd imagine Bauer takes the spin off his FB and change-up and uses the spin for high leverage pitches where he's going to a breaker. 

With Cole starting to get lit up, I wonder if the Astros pitchers were cheating more than their hitters. Verlander went from struggling to better than ever. 

I remember watching an MLBN segment where they were just gushing how the Astros were able to teach their pitchers how to increase spin rates. 

Looks like that entire team was a scam. Too bad really. They had the talent to win straight up.

Edited June 9, 20214 yr by Dick Allen

5 minutes ago, Dick Allen said:

With Cole starting to get lit up, I wonder if the Astros pitchers were cheating more than their hitters. Verlander went from struggling to better than ever. 

I remember watching an MLBN segment where they were just gushing how the Astros were able to teach their pitchers how to increase spin rates. 

Looks like that entire team was a scam. Too bad really. They had the talent to win straight up.

Morton did well for Rays but struggling mightily with ATL this year.

3 minutes ago, caulfield12 said:

Morton did well for Rays but struggling mightily with ATL this year.

Which could mean he just got old, or he tried to play it straight. 

There going to start checking guys more than once a game. This appears so widespread, it will be a major game changer. Some guys will probably be just fine. But I bet more than a few fall apart.

On 6/6/2021 at 2:49 PM, Big Hurtin said:

What am I looking at, regarding the LMAO especially. ?

Ignore the top chart and focus on the 2nd one .Looks like a 1 game sample size of Trevor Bauer's spin rate on 3 different pitches. Then focus on the Avg spin rate on that day for each pitch , then the Yr.Avg spin rate for those pitches. You can see each pitch for the day is lower than the yearly average.

The 4 seamer, cutter and slider spin rates all dropped

1 minute ago, Dick Allen said:

Which could mean he just got old, or he tried to play it straight. 

There going to start checking guys more than once a game. This appears so widespread, it will be a major game changer. Some guys will probably be just fine. But I bet more than a few fall apart.

I'd wager 90% 

No one is really addressing the elephant in the room here. Wasn't it reported the White Sox had the 2nd highest spin rate increase after the Dodgers ?

 IS anyone looking at any differences in our guys spin rates after the 4 minor league guys got suspended ?

2 minutes ago, CaliSoxFanViaSWside said:

No one is really addressing the elephant in the room here. Wasn't it reported the White Sox had the 2nd highest spin rate increase after the Dodgers ?

 IS anyone looking at any differences in our guys spin rates after the 4 minor league guys got suspended ?

I haven't looked at White Sox spin rates, but the guys I would really be concerned with are Rodon and Giolito.

16 minutes ago, CaliSoxFanViaSWside said:

No one is really addressing the elephant in the room here. Wasn't it reported the White Sox had the 2nd highest spin rate increase after the Dodgers ?

 IS anyone looking at any differences in our guys spin rates after the 4 minor league guys got suspended ?

We definitely addressed it one page back.

On 6/4/2021 at 12:57 PM, southsider2k5 said:

Worth noting from the previous article....

 

On 6/4/2021 at 1:34 PM, Quin said:

While our dudes are definitely using stuff, you an also account for:

- Adding Lynn

- Cease has a new pitching coach

- Rodon deciding to care about baseball and remember he had his stuff from college.

 

On 6/4/2021 at 3:38 PM, South Side Hit Men said:

Reviewed year over year change in spin rate on baseball savant.

Rates for Keuchel and Lynn actually decreased.

Rodon’s rate is consistent with last year.

Giolito and Cease both show significant spin rate upticks across most of their pitches.

If a rate doesn’t change for a pitcher, it doesn’t necessarily mean they are not using, just that there is a possibility they have been using substances over multiple seasons.

Its a sticky situation baseball finds itself in. Can credit Joe West for leading this particular crackdown.

 

On 6/4/2021 at 6:14 PM, raBBit said:

The lowest 5 spin rates on the Sox in 2020 (see below) have combined for 0 innings pitched in 2021. 5th and 6th lowest is Rodon (barely pitcher last year) and Keuchel (spin rate down year-over-year. After those two it's Fry (hasn't pitched) and Detwiler (gone)

-Alex Colome (FA)

-Jimmy Cordero (IL)

-Reynaldo Lopez (AAA)

-Dane Dunning (trade) 

-Gio Gonzalez (FA)

So if you look at the top 17 "used" (min. 100 pitches) pitchers from the prior year, 7 of the 9 lowest spin rates haven't pitched for the Sox this year for one reason or another. These pitchers have been replaced with: 1) More Rodon (similar spins y-o-y) 2) More Crochet 3) Lynn 4) Kopech 5) Hendriks

Past that there have been a few 2020-2021 increases (FB spin rate)

Cease - 2521-2612

Marshall - 2334-2456

Giolito - 2349-2425

Foster

 

9 minutes ago, Quin said:

We definitely addressed it one page back.

 

 

 

 

Thanks Quin. I read an article on the Cardinals pitchers that looked at spin rates for the past 4 seasons which is probably due to the info on Baseball Savant being available for that time period only. https://www.vivaelbirdos.com/2021/6/9/22525109/spinrates-doctored-balls-cardinals-2021

It might paint a more detailed picture by going back on some of our guys who have been around that long.

Edited June 9, 20214 yr by CaliSoxFanViaSWside

You know this is only a thing right now because the league wants to drive a wedge between players right?

9 minutes ago, mqr said:

You know this is only a thing right now because the league wants to drive a wedge between players right?

Ooh, I didn't think about the CBA negotiations. That's really cynical and probably true.

14 minutes ago, mqr said:

You know this is only a thing right now because the league wants to drive a wedge between players right?

That isn't the only reason it is a thing. It may not even be a reason tbh. Offense sells. Offense is putrid right now. They need to do something to get it under control. Hitters are suffering because of this. Sooner or later, some hitters would spout off about it and the MLB would get grilled for ignoring it, just like with steroids. 

3 hours ago, ron883 said:

That isn't the only reason it is a thing. It may not even be a reason tbh. Offense sells. Offense is putrid right now. They need to do something to get it under control. Hitters are suffering because of this. Sooner or later, some hitters would spout off about it and the MLB would get grilled for ignoring it, just like with steroids. 

I think the hitters are making their own problems as well. The launch angle trend is really decreasing the offense from an action point of view. It much easier for a pitcher to strike out a hitter when they are increasing the launch angle and swining for the fences on every pitch. If they didn't do this they could get on top of a high fastball much easier.

Edited June 9, 20214 yr by ptatc