Q. How hot is he?
A. He's not, actually. From the middle of June, through Tuesday night, he'd been hitting .156 with a 1:9 EYE.
(By the way, did you get a load of b-ref.com's new SUM function? Click on any two rows of a player's gamelog and it will calculate the period's stats for you.)
However, we do note that the Mariners' current hot streak -- 6 in a row, then 9-of-12 -- coincided exactly with Saunders being put into the starting lineup.
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Q. What's the excitement?
A. Saunders is showing 35-homer power. Not 25-homer power; 35-homer power. Not flashes of power; sustained, applied power.
And he's doing it on the pitches that used to fricasee him to a crackly crunch: fastballs way in, and offspeed down low. Wednesday's two homers came on:
- An 83 pitch low, which used to be underneath his swing when his snaketongue, hi-lo-hi-looping bat got too far in front, and
- A 92 fastball right on the black and at the knees
The imperturbable Mike Blowers was virtually frantic. "And he was really putting on a show in batting practice today," Blow said. "Shows you the confidence he has in his swing right now."
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We will guarantee you that the real pro's, the people working with Saunders, are beside themselves.
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Q. Has SSI figured out his swing yet?
A. We finally figured out what is so weird about his swing: he does the Thome Topple but with real long arms. LOL. The weird finish adds to the vertigo effect on the analyst, but that was just a distraction.
Jim Thome, of course, as the pitch came in, he moved his head into the pitch to get a better look at it, exactly as Milton Bradley does. For Thome this means bending over at the waist as he swings. For Bradley it usually means sinking his knees and leaning his head forward.
For Saunders it means radically bending over. Of course for Thome and Bradley this means they have to awkwardly catch their weight as they step on the plate.
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Q. How does a hitter with long arms cover an up-and-in pitch if he bends at the waist?
A. He throws his caboose back into the dugout, as illustrated above in the "Origami" swing. Tell me that's not hilarious.
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Q. What's with the stiff right arm on followthrough?
A. Saunders has always contorted his shoulder weirdly because he long-arms the followthrough high. Doesn't matter any more if he's going to launch the bat through on a consistent loop.
The extended arm does mean a bigger loop and more throughspeed. ARod has an Andy Warhol type stylization of this wide loop at ARod.com, he's so proud of it.
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Q. Is he pulling the ball any less?
A. Michael Saunders may have a quicker bat even than Jose Lopez. You throw it 98 mph, he's going to let the bat fly and he's going to rip it down the RF line.
It's a bit easier for LH'ers to get away with this. There have been many, many extreme pull lefties, such as Teddy Ballgame, Willie Stargell, Willie McCovey, etc. For some reason there aren't as many Juan Gonzalezes.
Still, Saunders pulls the ball so much that it's disconcerting to watch. We saw him shifted like in his 5th game this year. The shift is going to be a huge problem for him.
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Part 2