| 12:01 |
Dave Cameron: Happy Wednesday, everyone. I’m off to Boston for the Sloan conference this weekend, so if you’ve got a ticket, come say hi at some point this weekend. The baseball panel features Mike Petriello, Harry Pavlidis, the guy behind the eBIS software MLB teams use, Brian Kenny, and myself, so it should be a lively discussion.
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| 12:02 |
Erik: Is the Warthen slider real or myth? If it’s real, how? It’s not like he can copy the pitch, and it can’t be that he’s the only person to know how to throw a hard slider, right? Why isn’t everyone doing it?
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| 12:03 |
Dave Cameron: Pitching coaches can emphasize different aspects of pitches or grips, and it seems pretty clear that Warthen encourages his pitchers to throw hard breaking stuff. Everyone else probably doesn’t agree that the emphasis is necessary, just as everyone didn’t agree with Dave Duncan about sinkers down or Leo Mazzone about fastballs away.
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| 12:03 |
Dave Cameron: Just because one guy has success with one approach with one group of pitchers doesn’t mean that everyone should or will copy it.
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| 12:03 |
The Average Sports Fan: Is Eric Hosmer good? What does his next contract look like?
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| 12:05 |
Dave Cameron: I think it’s difficult to defend the idea that, to this point, Eric Hosmer has been a good MLB player. He just hasn’t hit well enough to be a good first baseman, and there isn’t enough evidence to support the idea that he’s made up for it with his glove.
That said, the Statcast numbers suggest that he could be a good hitter with a different launch angle, and scouts obviously love the swing, so that combination probably makes him more likely than most meh players to become a good player in the future. I don’t think it would be all that weird if he finally figured out how to stop hitting groundballs at some point and became the guy the Royals apparently think he is already.
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