Ricky Vaughn, Dept.

...............

So it turns out that Trayvon couldn't see that picture of Ken Griffey Jr. hanging behind the manager... "Take Junior there." :: jerks thumb back over shoulder :: "He had to work through some things too... um, well, ::shrug:: actually he didn't. But you do."

Another engaging ST article, Geoffy.

Q. Could the new glasses matter, like, enough to change his stats?

A. Am sure that as soon as we go into this, an SSI reader will surface who is a national-class eye surgeon, but we'll carry on until he speaks up :- )

For those who don't wear contact lenses, start by understanding that contact lenses aren't flat and aren't close to flat. They are actually cup-shaped. Imagine trying to stick a window cling onto a basketball, and you'll get the idea why they are shaped that way...

Trayvon has astigmatism. So does Dr. D. This means that his eye is shaped differently than most people's. Imagine trying to stick a basketball-shaped cling onto a football, and you'll get the idea again.

If Trayvon just now found out that he has astigmatism, then certainly his optometrist was not prescribing the football-shaped window clings. (You have to special-order the astigmatism contact lenses and they're expensive.)

Wearing normal contacts in a football-shaped eye (yowch) makes the lens uncomfortable in his eye at ALL times. And yes, it creates constant, and unpredictable, problems with your vision when you are running around trying to track flying objects such as basketballs, footballs, and baseballs.

The puzzling thing is why a pro baseball player would slip through the cracks, as it were, and get a lousy contact prescription. I guess the major league staff caught it, right?

Q. Do eyeglasses work well in sports?

A. They do, yes, if they're on your head right and after you adapt to them. In a best-case scenario they can give you an advantage over people with 20-20 sight. Your eyes feel protected, giving a feel like you're wearing a helmet kind of, and of course the vision can be corrected to better than 20-20.

You'll notice that a lot of MLB hitters actually do wear glasses, of some kind or other, when hitting.

Q. Is Trayvon likely to stop swinging over the top of low offspeed pitches?

A. As SSI complained last year, he has one huge hole in his strike zone, that being sub-85 mph pitches at the knees and below them, from the left side.

Assuming that the astigmatism is in his right eye (as mine is), well, sure, the lower the pitch is, the less it's in his horizontal line of sight. I could easily imagine myself able to see high, straight-angled pitches okay with the R eye, but losing clarity as it came in at an angle, around my knees. For what it's worth.

LASIK is an epidemic among baseball hitters, though it's not easy to think of examples in which a hitter (1) had his vision corrected in offseason A and then (2) started crushing the ball in offseason B.

...................

Q. Is eyesight the most important thing?

A. It ain't THAT important. If only the gangstas could see him now, eh?

One more thing for the hardcore M's fan to watch. Whether Trayvon starts checking his LH swing on the low changeup. If he does, won't that be something?

BABVA,

Dr D

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Trayvon Robinson

Ricky Vaughn

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Hmmm

I'm always skeptical that something so simple could lead to a dramatic improvement in performance, but in this case there may be reason to think so.

What I have heard from people who had LASIK done is that it is a huge improvement and very exciting. However, it doesn't seem to help baseball players. I think the reason for that is simply because it doesn't represent an improvement over wearing contacts since the contacts were correcting their vision. So the surgery is just about the convenience of never needing contacts again.

But if a person didn't have the proper contacts/eyeglasses, then their vision actually wasn't being corrected which means they could see an improvement once they do get the right equipment. I'd say this makes Robinson worth watching.

Casey Kotchman

rather famously had eye surgery performed before the 2011 season (although I would have sworn he had it before the 2010 season) and had a dramatic (though BABiP driven) resurgence. He walked a little more, struck out a little less, but otherwise, all of his stats were almost identical to the previous year from ISO (.118/.116) to Whiff % (4.8%/4.9%) to xPX[hard contact measure] (72/74 - 100=Average).

Still, googling "Casey Kotchman LASIK" give you several news stories where Kotchman credits it for his turnaround and the very first (non-advertisement) hit is an advertisement for NVision Surgery centers. Could it be that.

It could be that improved vision (and in Casey Kotchman's case there was some sort of tear duct infection that corrupted his vision so this isn't a case where contacts would have worked I'm assuming) allowed Kotchman to more consistantly get the sweet spot of the bat on the ball and not necessarily hit the ball harder but maybe more firmly? As in; instead of grounding the ball 5 feet in front of the plate, hitting it 30 feet so that it maintained most of it's velocity. Or instead of parachute line drives that are only line drives because they only get 25 feet in the air, having them fly a little lower and get more distance or hit the ground before the shortstop or second baseman can get under them. Hopefully that's clear enough to understand, this is a case where a picture would be worth so many words.

The point is, that's what I would picture for Trayvon, seeing the ball a little clearer than a blur and hitting it with more consistency. That's a long way of saying, I think the quality of his contact will improve and maybe how much contact (Kotchman was probably too high % of contact to improve), or maybe Kotchman was just lucky.

Of all the "this player made X change and will be awesome!"

type of stories that we get this time of year, like this one on Saunders, Trayvon's glasses might actually change something.

Contacts suck with astigmatism. I'm glad Trayvon got a partial big-league check and could afford to invest in some spectacles - it actually might make a difference.

He has power, and a good swing from both sides of the plate, and significant speed. He has a noodle arm (or at least bad throwing mechanics), but that's not the worst thing. Trayvon's a good prospect with multiple WAR potential in CF with one glaring issue: contact.

He doesn't have to shave off a lot of Ks to up his potential dramatically, but that's not all. More contact makes him incredibly interesting.

LL had a great piece on him a couple of weeks ago. From that piece:

Robinson didn't chase a whole lot up high. He didn't chase a whole lot to either side. Then you look down. Robinson chased down low. He chased down low and whiffed almost every time...

And, of course, there are the misses within the zone. It's not impossible to succeed as a hitter with Robinson's 2011 in-zone contact rate. Mark Reynolds, for example, posted a lower in-zone contact rate. But Trayvon Robinson doesn't have Mark Reynolds' power. Robinson's power potential is real but limited, only increasing his need to make more contact.

When you have a guy who has a good EYE for pitches in the zone and a swing with batspeed that can cover all parts but is just unable to make the contact he should be making (one of the worst in the league at it)...

And then you tell me, "Oh yeah, his vision was warped, so we gave him a better correction for it..." My expectations for him go through the roof.

I was always amazed that Gar could hit like he did with the eye problems he had. There are no exercises for astigmatism, though - with a properly ground corrective lens maybe Trayvon can fix his one major deficiency as a player and turn into the player that everyone believed he had the capability to be.

Who needs Wells in CF again? Looking forward to seeing Guti and Trayvon in Spring Training.

Right now

ESPN's Depth Chart Lists Michael Saunders as 3rd in line in Center and 5th in Left. Now, ESPN's Depth Chart leaves a lot to be desired (it lists Wells 3rd in line in Left and Trayvon First and the recently DFA'd Mike Wilson as the only backup to Ichiro in Right) but as far as Michael Saunders goes, most people that read this blog, or Lookout Landing, or USS Mariner, or just the newspaper would probably agree that's about where Saunders belongs, there or out of the organization.

I know it's easy to scoff at his latest swing iteration, but here's the thing, Zduriencik hasn't given up. He hasn't DFA'd him like Wilson and Gimenez, but then, they're both older without any significant defensive skills and Saunders is still just 25 with the ability to play a quality Center Field, sot there's still trade value there right? But there were reasonable change of scenery guys like Drew Butera or Reid Brignac, he didn't get packaged in with or instead of Lueke to acquire Jaso, and he wasn't moved in the trade that brought Trayvon here, he didn't sell him to Japan. So obviously Jack sees some value in a left handed hitter with some power that can handle Center, but virtually the entire blogging community (and honestly I had all but forgotten he existed) has edited him out of the Major League picture and securely labeled him AAAA quality emergency depth. Among players who have been as bad as Michael Saunders has been in extended opportunities, I can find only Willie Harris who eventually overcame it and turned out as a quality 3.5th outfielder. Maybe that's Saunders eventual plateu, but that's still useful, especially to this season's Mariners that have a Right Handed Center and Left Fielder, Mike Carp as a defensively awkward alternerative, and Trayvon Robinson who struck out 30% of the time in a hitter's park in AAA with glasses instead of inferior contacts.

I know the pitcher level batting line posted last year is hard to forget, and the static swing and the terrible splits at the ML level and how often he's been hurt, and it's hard to get behind a guy who's overhauled his swing half a dozen times on the 7th try, but Michael Saunders hasn't given up. He's a physically gifted athlete with the tenacity to go with yet another off-season trying to make drastic changes to his game and work to impress his team. Jack Zduriencik likes baseball rats that never stop working. I think that might be why Saunders is one of the last Bavasi-era hold overs.

All of the above.

Teacher: OK class, raise you hand if you've worn contacts for terrible vision, had an astigmatism, and had a LASIK procedure done.

Moe (raising his hand): That's me, Teach. All of the above!

Contacts and astigmatism don't mix. Or at least they didn't way back in the 70's when I gave it a go. I'll regard it as a real possibility that Trayvon may have had some vision problems because of it. I'll be skeptical, however, that this was the reason for the mile-wide hole in his swing, down and in.

He certainly wouldn't be the only otherwise gifted player who wailed away at 58 ft curve balls.

Let me see the checked swings, Doc. Then I might jump on board this one.

moe

Picking out a curve ball in flight

Remember seeing a baseball guy on tv many years ago, don't recall who, talking about how the top axis of a curve ball points slightly toward the batter and the laces spinning around this axis create a spot. He stated that some major leaguers can actually see this spot on the ball and tell a curve ball long before it breaks.

Any truth to this?

Matthew

I heard that at some point

I heard that at some point too, but I though it was a slider rather than a CB.

spotting spinners

Since the spin axis of a slider is coming towards the batter, you can see the "pole" as a reddish/pinkish spot (depending on the grip). It can vary in size - a tight one is often referred to as a "dime", while a looser one is a "nickel". A dime will break later and harder. Depending on the exact grip and snap when thrown, the spot is usually on the upper face as seen from the batter's box. Because of this, a very tall pitcher can throw a slider that is recognized later by a short batter because of the angle of flight relative to the plate. (I'm 5'7'' and couldn't see a slider spin initially from a pitcher taller than about 6'2" throwing from the old 14" mound) I believe this is why some shorter batters have such trouble seeing the slider (think Jose Lopez). A curve's spin is more perpendicular to its travel and so is seen as a more general pinkish blur. The rate of spin can be judged, and its angle, but if a fastball is expected, adjusting is very difficult. However, a shorter batter with good eyesight can often see that a curve isn't spinning fast enough to break hard and punch it (again think Jose Lopez). Adair's "the Physics of Baseball" and several websites have better graphical explanations, but that's the basics.

holy cow. im logged in!!!!!!!

wooohooo!!!!!!!! for the first time in maybe 2 years, i don't have to browse through the cached pages just to see doc's writing! good job doc!

Good to see you Mabs :- )

But the credit goes to the admins - hope you chime in often -

testing

holy cow.

David Dellucci

My fav eye surgery success story would be David Dellucci who had the surgery in November of 2004.

His career line up to that point was: .261/.339/.418 (.757)

Then at age 31 and 32, he posted these lines:

.251/.367/.513 (.879)

.292/.369/.530 (.899)

He then reverted back to career norm and retired shortly thereafter. Was is causal? Impossible to tell. Too many variables in play. But it's intriguing. How much is better vision and how much is increased confidence?

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