May 18, 20188 yr I think it is safe to assume most people agree that Caleb Smith has shown improvement over the course of the season. During the broadcast they crew highlighted Smith’s ability to “pound the zone” to get outs and specifically called attention to his ability to hide the ball during his delivery. Well, he didn’t “pound the zone” yesterday. Below is a chart from his last three starts in Marlins Park. These charts show the location of balls and called strikes. It is pretty clear that Smith was living outside of the strike zone yesterday. [ATTACH]1964._xfImport[/ATTACH] Perhaps this was intentional. Different opponent and all that. Well when you compare Smith’s balls and called strikes to that of Chen and Hernandez the previous two games it is clear that the Marlins were going after the strike zone against the Dodgers. Probably a location issue. [ATTACH]1965._xfImport[/ATTACH] Finally, when the Dodgers did their damage to Smith in the third inning the runs were scored on pitches on the edge and outside of the zone. The Dodgers I guess figured out this guy isn’t throwing strikes today and they made him pay in the third. [ATTACH]1966._xfImport[/ATTACH] Most pitchers aren’t great everyday. That is one of Severino’s go to lines. He re-tells this story a lot about how you have dominant stuff ten times a year, average stuff ten times, and bad stuff ten times. Some pitcher told him that once and he’s run with it. I’m not convinced and Holly doesn’t sound like he is either. I guess Smith was off yesterday. But I also thought the strike zone was tougher yesterday than it was for Chen and Hernandez. Different ump maybe. Or maybe with Realmuto getting the day off, Holaday doesn’t frame as well. That could be a stretch because I think framing value has largely gone away once umpires became wise to the fact that had become a big thing. Regardless yesterdays final looked really bad but it was largely a function of Smith having several things go against him and then once the runs poured in Mattingly took this as an opportunity to finally get Tazawa run out of town on a rail.
May 18, 20188 yr Author OMG an educated post on marlinsbaseball.com? Did I break a rule? Not sure where to put that seeing as that there aren’t many places other than here where people read about the Marlins. No offense to Fish Stripes but they don’t seem to get much traffic
May 18, 20188 yr OMG an educated post on marlinsbaseball.com? We need to correct this now. Fuck Jeter, he's worse than Loria. He is going to move the team to Montreal.
May 18, 20188 yr Did I break a rule? Not sure where to put that seeing as that there aren’t many places other than here where people read about the Marlins. No offense to Fish Stripes but they don’t seem to get much traffic No I love it. Just being funny. Fish Stripes sucks. You'd think they were better but they just write articles based off nothing.
May 18, 20188 yr Fish Stripes sucks. You'd think they were better but they just write articles based off nothing. HOT TAKE!
May 18, 20188 yr @THRILLHO what do the spray charts look like in the first two innings? He looked pretty good those innings.
May 18, 20188 yr Author @THRILLHO what do the spray charts look like in the first two innings? He looked pretty good those innings. I assume you mean Smith’s heat map and not the hitters spray charts. Here’s the map for each inning (identifying pitch type). You’re right, he threw a much greater percentage of pitches in the strike zone during those two innings. Also noteworthy is that he was exclusively throwing fastballs in the first inning. In the second he brought the slider in, and in the third the changeup. He threw 8 changeups in the third, three of them in the strike zone. This is somewhat understandable considering the runners on base he didn’t want to throw a giant meatball over the middle of the plate. Going back to the first post though he wasn’t getting those calls on the edges of the zone though like Hernandez and Chen were getting. Who knows what was going on behind the scenes. He’s a pro. Maybe he intentionally changed his approach for this game and it didn’t work out. His next scheduled start is against the Mets who have come back down to earth. [ATTACH]1969._xfImport[/ATTACH]
May 19, 20188 yr OMG an educated post on marlinsbaseball.com? fuck that. i want knee-jerk and irrational threads
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