We’ve talked (a lot, maybe) about lifting the ball more here, and so far the discussion has revolved around hands, legs, and intent — the mechanics of the swing, more or less. There’s another way to lift the ball better, though, one that hasn’t been addressed here: swinging at better pitches. That’s what Kevin Pillar has focused on, and his story offers another look into the effort to hit the ball over the shift.

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Bo Bichette is making mincemeat out of lower-level pitching, and not in subtle fashion. The 19-year-old shortstop has a swing designed to smash baseballs into smithereens, and that’s pretty much what he’s done since the Toronto Blue Jays selected him in the second round of last year’s draft. In 283 professional plate appearances, former big-league slugger Dante Bichette’s rapidly rising son is slashing .396/.456/.656.

The damage he did in Rookie ball last year — which led to an 1.182 OPS over 22 games — is largely being replicated in Low-A Lansing. Slotted near the top of a loaded Lugnuts lineup, Bichette is hitting an electric .381/.458/.619, with 18 doubles and six home runs. He leads the Midwest League in all three slash-line categories, as well as in total bases.

Anecdotally speaking, he also tops the circuit in aggressive hacks. When Eric Longenhagen wrote up Bichette in his Blue Jays Top Prospect rankings, he cited “exceptional bat speed and above-average raw power,” but also an “exaggerated leg kick” and hands “noisier than a Dinosaur Jr. concert.” He added that “Toronto may actively be working to quiet things down.”

Somewhat surprisingly, that isn’t the case. With a presumed organizational mindset of “If ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” the precocious youngster is being allowed to continue to do his own thing. I learned as much when I spoke to Bichette, and to Blue Jays farm director Gil Kim, in mid-May.

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On His Aggressive Swing

Bichette: “I’m a really aggressive hitter. I take a big leg kick, and I use everything I have. I’m not the biggest guy out there — I’m 5-11, 190 — so I need all the power I can get. I use my upper body and my lower body. I have a little bit of an inward turn with my upper body, which I think people may see as weird, but everything I do is to generate as much power as I can.”

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Over the winter, Jose Bautista was forced to settle on a one-year contract of about $18 million, or roughly the price of a qualifying offer. Given Bautista’s performance over the previous half-dozen years — during which he’d been one of the game’s best hitters — that deal came as a surprise. Most thought he would get three or four years guaranteed at that rate.

When a player receives so little compared to the general consensus, there’s an inclination to believe that maybe the teams know something we don’t. Bautista had just recorded one of his worst seasons, putting up a 122 wRC+, a 20-point drop from his previous three campaigns. Perhaps there was reason to believe that his poor 2016 season was going to carry over into this year. That certainly looked to be the case just a few weeks into the current season. Not so much anymore.

On April 25, Jose Bautista had played in 19 games, recorded 85 plate appearances, and produced just three extra-base hits, only one of those a homer. His walk rate was a solid 15%, but his strikeout rate was 31%. A lot of strikeouts and no power caused an early-season hitting line of .129/.271/.200 and just a 33 wRC+. As for the cause of Bautista’s poor play, age-related decline was certainly a possibility. Curious himself, Jeff Sullivan requested reader assistance, on April 25, to help better understand the underlying causes for some hitters’ struggles. Jose Bautista was one of those struggling hitters. Since that time, however, he hasn’t struggled at all. In fact, he’s been one of the game’s best, recording a 177 wRC+ in the meantime.

Regarding Bautista, the first issue raised by Sullivan raised was contact. The Jays’ right fielder had historically made contact on 81% of pitches, but he was down to 71% this season. His whiffs both in and out of the zone were up. To help gain some context, let’s separate Bautista’s last few years into a few different segments: 2013-2015, 2016, the 2017 season through April 24, and the 2017 season since April 24. Let’s start by looking at contact rate.

The good news is that Bautista has brought his contact rate back up to near-vintage Bautista levels. When the ball is pitched in the zone and Bautista swings, he’s making good contact. Before we get to the damage done on contact, that dropping O-Contact% is worth a look. From 2013 to -15, Bautista was above the league average of 63% on swings on balls outside the zone. Last season, Bautista tumbled below the 62% league average. This season, whether looking at the early or latter part of this year, Bautista is well below league average. While that is likely an indication of his declining skills, given Bautista’s batting eye, it might not hurt him as much as others. Bautista’s 21% swing rate on pitches outside the zone is among the top-10 rates in baseball.

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When you look up and see that the Athletics are in the midst of a two-game mid-week series against the Marlins in late May, you might suspect that the major-league baseball schedule is simply an exercise in randomness. At this point in the campaign, that’s actually sort of the case. The combination of interleague play and the random vagaries of an early-season schedule conspire to mean that your favorite team hasn’t had the same schedule as your least favorite team. Let’s try to put a number on that disparity.

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In something of a surprise move, the Blue Jays summoned top prospect Anthony Alford to the big leagues on Friday. The move is a surprise not because Alford lacks talent, but because he’s played a mere 33 games above A-ball, all of which came this season with the Jays’ Double-A affiliate. Alford has performed exceptionally well this season, slashing .325/.411/.455. But he was overmatched by low-minors pitching as recently as last season, when he struck out 29% of the time and could only muster a .236/.344/.378 batting line at High-A.

Alford cut his strikeout rate by over 12 percentage points (from 29% to 17%) this year while maintaining his robust walk totals and modest power. The result has been substantially better offensive numbers. This is an encouraging development, especially since Alford’s so much more than his offense. He’s a 70 runner per Eric Longenhagen, which makes him a no-doubt center fielder and a threat on the bases.

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The Toronto Blue Jays have reportedly called up 22-year-old outfielder Anthony Alford from Double-A. It’s an aggressive promotion, albeit likely a temporary one. The organization’s No. 2-rated prospect would be filling a void created by Kevin Pillar’s suspension and an injury to Darrell Ceciliani.

Regardless of the duration of his stay, Alford has a bright future with Canada’s team. The former Ole Miss football player augments his athleticism with outstanding baseball instincts. In 141 plate appearances for the New Hampshire Fisher Cats, Alford was slashing .325/.411/.455, with three home runs and nine stolen bases in 10 attempts.

Gil Kim, Toronto’s director of player development, gave a snapshot rundown on the newest Blue Jay.

“Alford has made huge strides,” Kim told me earlier today.” He was a two-sport athlete, and I believe 2015 is the first year he fully committed to baseball. When you combine his character, makeup, and natural ability, and factor in the inexperience, I’m comfortable saying he’ll make quicker advances than most. He’s coming into his own, just focusing on baseball. He had a 2016 season that saw him progressively improve. He carried that into the AFL, and he’s obviously doing a very good job now in Double-A.”

Kim proceeded to double down on his opinion of Alford’s character.

“I can’t speak more highly of character and makeup in our organization than Anthony Alford. He’s an impressive human being. He’s going to be a very successful major-league baseball player, and he’s already a successful human being. If you talk to our field coordinator, Eric Wedge, or Angus Mugford, our high-performance director, Ben Cherington, Ross Atkins, Mark Shapiro — as we strive to create the culture, and environment, of what a Toronto Blue Jays player is, Anthony Alford is off the charts. He’s impressive, man.”

On Wednesday, Aaron Loup threw this up-and-in fastball.

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Jake Thomas is flying under the radar with a sky-high OBP. Playing on a Lansing Lugnuts team that features some of the top prospects in the Toronto Blue Jays system, the 23-year-old outfielder has logged 17 hits, and drawn 27 walks, in 84 plate appearances. His slash line is an eye-popping .315/.536/.407.

On-base percentage was his MO in college — Thomas slashed .322/.453/.470 at SUNY Binghamton — but MLB clubs weren’t exactly clamoring to procure his services. He went undrafted in 2014, and when he joined the Blue Jays organization a year later, it was as a 27th-round senior sign. When he reported to rookie ball, he did so with a degree in finance and the odds against him.

The uphill battle continued last summer. Despite having put up a .393 OBP in the Gulf Coast League, Thomas began his first full professional season in extended spring training. He was subsequently promoted to Low-A Lansing, in June, but his first go-round with the Lugnuts was pedestrian at best. As Courtney Barnett sang on Saturday Night Live, the left-handed hitter “made a mess of what should be a small success.” He slashed just .244/.326/.315.

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Seemingly ever since humans gained sentience, we’ve been obsessed with the concept of flight. How powerful birds must have seemed to ancient man, able to free themselves from the constraints of the ground. Joyous was the starling, dancing and warbling through the air. Terrifying was the hawk, diving for a kill. To fly is to move in ways unimaginable for those trapped on the surface. We stared at the sky, the last frontier to be conquered, and dreamed. We told stories of magical heroes and gods who could fly. We sought any way possible to experience it, from the Dark Ages to Da Vinci and on.

By the time we came up with hot-air balloons and gliders and airplanes and helicopters so that we could join the birds in the sky, perhaps we lost a little bit of that wonder. Generations have now grown up with intercontinental flight as a simple fact of life. We still dream of joining the birds in the skies, of flying like Superman. But we no longer wonder if it’s possible. We know that we can fly with mechanical aid. But we’ll never truly join the birds. At least not for more than a few seconds.

It’s a small stroke of genius that the gods put Chris Coghlan on a team named after a bird. And indeed, last night’s Blue Jays came in St. Louis against the Cardinals, who are also named for birds. Teams named for birds play each other all the time, of course. The Jays play in the same division as the Orioles. Almost none of those games, if none at all, have featured a moment like this.

We can’t earnestly call what Coghlan accomplishes here flight. If anything, it’s falling with style. It’s a leap and a near-perfect handspring. It’s something out of a gymnastics exhibition, except Coghlan is wearing cleats and a helmet instead of a unitard. It’s the closest anyone’s come to real, honest-to-goodness flight on a baseball field since Ben Revere achieved liftoff in 2013.

Coghlan didn’t plan on springing over the head of Yadier Molina. Like the most satisfying superhero origin stories, he didn’t know he had the power inside of him. He jumped because instinct told him to, because years upon years of baseball conditioning told him to score that run. Humans are capable of great physical feats when fueled by adrenaline and instinct. They can lift cars, run faster than they ever have before. For a few precious seconds, they can fly. If they’re lucky, they can even stick the landing, like Coghlan did.

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To start, we might as well revisit the difference between command and control, or at least the accepted version of that difference: control is the ability to throw the ball into the strike zone, while command is the ability to throw the ball to a particular location. While we can easily measure the first by looking at strike-zone percentage, it’s also immediately apparent that the second skill is more interesting. A pitcher often wants to throw the ball outside of the zone, after all.

We’ve tried to put a number on command many different ways. I’m not sure we’ve succeeded, despite significant and interesting advances.

You could consider strikeout minus walk rate (K-BB%) an attempt, but it also captures way too much “stuff” to be a reliable command metric — a dominant pitch, thrown into the strike zone with no command, could still earn a lot of strikeouts and limit walks.

COMMANDf/x represented a valiant attempt towards solving this problem by tracking how far the catcher’s glove moved from the original target to the actual location at which it acquired the ball. But there were problems with that method of analysis. For one, the stat was never made public. Even if it were, however, catchers don’t all show the target the same way. Chris Iannetta, for example, told me once that his relaxation moment, between showing a target and then trying to frame the ball, was something he had to monitor to become a better framer. Watch him receive this low pitch: does it seem like we could reliably affix the word “target” to one of these moments, and then judge the pitch by how far the glove traveled after that moment?

How about all those times when the catcher is basically just indicating inside vs. outside, and it’s up to the pitcher to determine degree? What happens when the catcher pats the ground to tell him to throw it low, or exaggerates his high target? There are more than a few questions about an approach affixed to a piece of equipment, sometimes haphazardly used.

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