1 hour ago, wegner said:

On the radio side, weeks ago DJ was saying that Colson needs to work on hitting the ball the opposite way to help him break out of this. I remember thinking don't they have coaches to work on that with him?

I don't have a strong opinion about that one. It's only slightly less old school than "keep your eye on the ball". I think it's a swing thought that helps some guys sometimes, but I suspect that too much pull is more of a symptom than a cause for Colson.

2 hours ago, Capn12 said:

40 K's in 90 PAs in August. Brutal.

It’s really sad that my reaction to reading this post was, “Wow, I’m surprised he has struck out less than 50% of the time in August. It honestly feels like 75% of the time.”

1 hour ago, southsider2k5 said:

The whole "2 strike approach" thing kind of died with bunting.

Carl Everett was great at changing his stance and approach with two strikes. I wish Colson could do that.

2 minutes ago, South Side Fireworks Man said:

Carl Everett was great at changing his stance and approach with two strikes. I wish Colson could do that.

It sounds like these guys are being coached for power above all else, because when you do hit it its hard and does damage. I am not necessarily sure I agree with that approach. Pitchers seem to be better than ever nowadays and we need to be able to fight off tough pitches, and go with what the pitcher gives you, which is sometimes opposite field.

The approach worked great for a month or 2 earlier this year but the league figured it out and they've been .500 since.

4 minutes ago, South Side Fireworks Man said:

Carl Everett was great at changing his stance and approach with two strikes. I wish Colson could do that.

Usually, a guy is who he is. His imperfections were well documented, and this should be no surprise.

The timeline of Colson's season is mostly just a mixture of slow start that was immediately countered by an even hotter streak and then he just kinda hung in there for a while around league average production. Then around the beginning of July the productivity starts dropping almost uninterrupted and it hit bottom around the first week of August before he started to slowly climb up but never getting back to the old holding pattern of ~league average. So there's a few things that change around the same time of the productivity drop: the whiffs started increasing and his launch angle went up for what I'm sure are related reasons. He just started missing the ball. I'll note that his xwOBA did not drop until a couple weeks after his actual production had begun dropping; if you want to say there's a mental element, you wonder if a bad run of luck affected him negatively. There's a change in his attack direction (how much the bat is angled towards pulling at point of contact) but the timing doesn't match anything very clearly and it's been inconsistent. Bat speed consistent. The up/down angle of his bat fairly consistent.

A couple things that jumped out: his chase rate jumped and never came down starting around mid-May. Initially, he was still hitting well enough anyway. But I think this change in his approach might have been the beginning of his troubles. The other thing that jumps out is there is no slump against LHP. Always beware of small sample sizes, but he really is a different guy against them and I think it is probably because they can't easily exploit his weaknesses.

We've always known he has a couple holes or more gently put, soft spots in his game. Slow stuff low and in is very hard for him to hit. Hard stuff up and away is likewise a problem. And he hasn't hit them even when he's going good. So the simplest thing to say about Colson is that it's important that he at least makes pitchers hit those spots in the zone because he is utterly hopeless at even just staying alive when he chases those pitches. He tended to chase the breaking stuff low and in from the get-go, but it has increased as of late. And his tendency to chase the high and hard stuff has seriously cranked up. Pitchers have noticed and have greatly increased how often they are throwing those two pitch + location combos. Since the beginning of the season, RHP have nearly doubled the rate at which they are throwing either high+away heat or low+in breakers. Sometimes they are missing the spot, giving Colson an opportunity to hit it or take it for a ball. There are probably sometimes they are missing the spot according to my definition but still basically hitting it (like high-middle may work nearly as well, IDK). A lot of the increase is driven by pitchers not saving it for 2 strikes and starting to just attack his weakness from the jump. I hesitate to simply call this phenomenon a case of him being "figured out" because I think part of the reason pitchers are doing this is because he has become much less disciplined against these pitches. Why? I don't know.

And then the last ingredient is clear to many of us watching lately: He hasn't hit the meatballs as well lately. We saw that AB last night, for instance, when he got two bad misses over the middle that he fouled back before wiping out to more slow s%*# in the dirt. The at bat terminates with a happy ending if he just kills the mistake.