M's 4-1
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PROPS TO Guillermo Heredia and his new approach to pull the ball. All the M's crew were on talking points memo - radio, postgame, all the folks. Heredia is now to get the bat head out in front and pull the ball, and he is to take fewer pitches.
Sherm had earlier provided the brilliant observation that Heredia's tilted-gyro swing doesn't match his inside-out intentions, nor his intentions to lift the ball to right-center. Servais noted this on SSI :- ) and came up with the simple fix. In this case by "simple" we don't mean "unintelligent;" we mean "shortest path to an objective with the fewest moving parts."
I do like the fix' chances to work for Heredia; if your bat head is going to be high quickly anyway, get it in front of the plate where it will meet the pitch plane better. As Sherm notes, it's still not KBIZLT but at least two ideas synch up for him now.
Servais' fix resulted in (1) a double and (2) a screaming double. Perhaps not a chainsaw but if he can trim a few edges it'll be just fine by us. Thank you, Scott Servais and Sherminator.
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PROPS TO a series win over the pesky rodent Angels. Remember the last fifteen years? Remember being -10 games back, and visiting the leaders, and dimly hoping for a sweep?
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SLOPS TO Marc-O's first two innings. Servais also said "I've been around this game a long time. He just didn't have it. But I've seen some 6-7 year veterans just panic in that situation." Marc-O finished with a 6 IP, 1 ER, 7K result -- despite throwing most "fastballs" at 86 MPH following his complete game last time out.
Marco is now 9-5, 3.64 with 94 strikeouts in 106.1 innings. That's a lot of K's for what kinda pitcher he is, doncha think
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PROPS TO Dee Gordon's defensive play. That is all, to follow a hackneyed turn of phrase.
BTW, Servais also pointedly spoke in the postgame to insist that Heredia is a plus defender, if you had any remaining doubts about his preferred pre-game reading material. After reviewing every 2018 Heredia play on StatCast, following Matty, I'd agree with average-solid to BTA.
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PROPS TO Chris Hermann who stepped in and had a big game at the plate.... but
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SLOPS TO Marc-O's pitch mix. It was 54-29-19 if you combo fastballs & cutters, and the 29 is curves. Marc-O I thought was nibbling and picking early BECAUSE he was throwing too many fastballs; for instance, all of his 5 pitches to Mike Trout were fastballs. In that situation of course Marc-O is going to nibble. He misses bats front-to-back of the zone, not side-to-side.
Still, the pitch mix is debatable. Valle thought the blizzard of cutters "are what is working for him tonight" and later in the game he did go back to the curve, innings 5-6.
Which, according to Hermann, were exactly the innings in which "we started to click" having no background together. So, Dr. D will revert to 1st paragraph.
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PROPS TO HERMANN for hitting left-handed. Edit to add to original post:
Great Q from Hannibal in the comments, anybody see why the M's like a guy with dreary minors stats? Yes, Servais was quoted postgame, the M's like:
1) Left-handed
2) Power
3) Doesn't swing at balls; takes a walk
4) Left-handed
"Any time you get those three things from your backup C, he's going to be around the league for a while."
Dr. D adds his three cents: anytime you can pick platoon spots to rest your regular, that's big. Real big. And I'm not super sure how lukewarm his stats actually are, after you adjust for defense first age-arc and emphasize the HR and BB. Open to discussion. I took a 3-second glance at baseballcube.com and his age-arc looked fine to me for a C.
This article's getting disjointed. I think I'll bail pretty quickly here ....
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PROPS TO twin closers. Look, would Scott Servais enjoy it if he started next game as bench coach? Would Steph Curry enjoy it if he were asked to do the 6th man for 2019?
Alex Colome' can't be happy about not closing. But he comes in and throws the 95-97 and throws the weirdly hard 93 MPH slider, and the Mariners are the beneficiaries.
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SLOPS TO Mitch Haniger's knee. But it sounds day-to-day, in the sense of really day-to-day. We were in the club section tonight and the offense provided little hope for "traffic" it seemed like, with three stars* out again.
As it turned out we got some traffic, especially after their starter left, to the tune of 9 hits, 5 walks, and 4 XBH.
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PROPS TO SSI DENIZENS who took Dr. D's jostling in good nature and provided him even more reason to hit the site in the morning. Thanks to all who have taken an extra minute to kick a comment in. And ain't it nice to have the Think Tank up and runnin'?
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Enjoy,
Jeff