M's Lighting Up AFL
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Doesn't bother to use his thumbs for the swat. That's funny raht there.
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Another ballgame Thursday nite, another tater for Rutgers legend Patrick Kivlehan. He tossed in a double and walk for good measure. Here's a link to a pretty cool little report.
Kivlehan is at .292/.414/.750. That's in six games, so yeah. But there's a punch line: Kivelehan's EYE ratio is the best in the AFL, except for one other guy's.
| Imminent Superduperstar | BB | K | EYE |
| Patrick Kivlehan | 4 | 2 | 2.0 |
| D.J. Peterson | 7 | 2 | 3.5 |
| Corey Seager | 4 | 10 | 0.4 |
That's as funny as the Thing's arms blowing back in the wind. The one knock on Kivlehan was "his EYE ratios are going to be grisly." His trends on that, you could use the phrase "Happy Totals" and Dr. D's stomach wouldn't do its usual slow roll to the left.
Small sample (sic): it hasn't occurred to saberdweebs that you can get a read on EYE ratio in a very small number of AB's. True, the league might adjust and destroy a player's EYE ratio. But that doesn't mean the EYE ratio was originally random. It means that first the player was winning, and now the pitchers are winning.
That Kivlehan would run an (early) nice EYE ratio in the AFL, while leading the league in homers, that's cool.
Here is the MILB.com article with a video of Kivlehan's shot out into the night. Lots of interesting stuff from Chris Gwynn also.
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Bob Dutton -- the go-to "access" guy for you as an alert SSI denizen -- had a remark on Taijuan Walker a few days ago, that it would be a "major disappointment" if he failed to open the 2015 season in the rotation. That kinda surprises, because of the "risky" (sic) rotation that it leaves us with. He has also remarked that Roenis Elias' elbow should be fine. :: ulp ::
Let's see :: ticking off on his fingers ::
- The Felix
- WBC-San
- James Paxton
- Roenis Elias
- Taijuan Walker
Taijuan, as you might have noticed, used a comically-reduced motion to throw blizzards of strikes in MLB last month. He's doing something in Arizona to throw strikes still: he has got 2 BB against 11 K's in 9 innings. Taijuan maintains velo with that tiny motion, and he maintains it deep into games. Hey, if a 1-inch punch works, no point in pulling your elbow back.
He's a single functional offspeed pitch away...
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Dutton had another remark here: that Paxton figures to be the #2 starter in 2014. Wait, what? You're aware of who our first two are?
In scout-speak, which is reporter-speak, "#2 starter after a dozen games in the bigs" means this: from ground level, James Paxton's stuff looked like bloody death from above.
Blowers used to laugh about how Paxton was always standing on the rubber waiting for the hitter, like Bob Gibson used to, "C'mon meat. Get in there." And he just wound up, pinwheeled it forward, and nobody could deal with it. It's hard to get across how unusual James Paxton is.
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Oh, we were talking AFL. D.J. Peterson is running the 7:2 EYE. That would be a really interesting evolution in D.J.'s game. Some guys do that, jell and start walking a ton.
Other M's in the AFL, if you're not a minors fanatic (as I'm not): Ji-Man Choi, John Hicks, Gabriel Noriega, and a bunch of pitchers who have gone two innings each. Hold it, does the Venezuelan league count as the Arizona league? Hey, if ESPN can count Missouri as Wyoming, I don' see why not.
BABVA,
Dr D