Did you guys see that one of the Marlin's coaches stuck a wet piece of lettuce under his helmet in order to stay cool? That is pretty nifty.
Congrats touki. Dancing Emma and bouncing elephant will be along later to make this win official
Coppy
buck75 (08-13-2018)
Acuna's 133 WRC+ would currenetly rank him 8th as a 20 year old between Heyward and Griffey
So now we will see where he sustains his BABIP while only hitting 17% LDs and pulling the ball 45% of the time.
You think that batted ball profile will sustain a .340 BABIP. I disagree.
Will he end up being more like Rizzo or Freeman? I'll leave it up to others to decide based on looking at their batted ball profiles.
Pen is in pretty good shape for game 2.
Available: Minter, Winkler, Venters, Allard.
Try not to use: Brach, Biddle, Jackson, Sobotka.
Of course, Jackson, Sobotka and Allard are there to be "sacrificed" if the situation calls for it. In a high leverage situation, you go with Venters, Winkler and Minter. Winkler could give us two if necessary tonight.
"I am a victim, I will tell you. I am a victim."
"I am your retribution."
bravesfanMatt (08-13-2018), buck75 (08-13-2018), Garmel (08-13-2018)
I would think with 40 pitches that Sobotka won't be available tonight.
Forever Fredi
Tapate50 (08-13-2018)
Also of small note would be his infield hit percentage of 12.4%. He is awfully quick but I'm not sure he will be able to sustain that. Overall I think he will be able to hang around a .320-.330 BABIP given he is so fast and only has soft contact 12.8% of the time.
On a separate note, its kinda fun to compare the batted ball profiles of him and Soto. Acuna's profile is much better than Soto's in everything except his ability to go oppo. Soto has a pretty even distribution of balls. But Soto hits ground balls 52.8% of the time while Acuna only hits GBs 42.4% of the time. They have identical LD% of 17.4, but Acuna hits fly balls 10.4% more than Soto. They both have BABIPs in the .338-.339 range.
Soto makes soft contact 21.3% of the time to Acuna's 12.8%. Medium contact is 43.1 for Soto to 44.2 for Ronald. Acuna leads in hard contact 43% to Soto's 35.5%. Acuna's batted ball profile is much more impressive than Soto's, but the big equalizer is Soto's incredible plate discipline. He is carrying a 17% walk rate right now which is just absurd for a 19 year old. Can he sustain a walk rate that high? I'm skeptical of that and I'm betting that it comes down into the 12-13% range after a while in the bigs.
And the good news is....
We are seeing Acuna's LD% increase, and his wOBA increasing as a result.
Maybe he's morphing into a guy who hits 25%+ LDs and will sustain a .340 BABIP. I certainly hope so.
He appears to be improving faster than I ever imagined he could.
Last edited by Enscheff; 08-13-2018 at 04:05 PM.
TURBO (08-13-2018)
What eta on game 2?
IDK that Acuna keeps a .340 BABIP, but he probably also won't strike out 28.7% of the time going forward which should eventually get the BABIP lower anyway. I see more around the low to mid twenties. I think next year he's probably about around 8-10% BB and 22-24% K.
In 2017 he was a 21%+ LD hitter at all 3 levels and interestingly, at AA-AAA he was at 36.2% FB and 30.2% FB and yet he knocked 18 HR just at those levels. This year he's pretty steadily stayed around 40%. Considering that the power is very much real though, with him its not that big of a deal.
Aggression with prospects is fine, but being stupid is not. There should be a way to find a happy medium between a Pirates like idea of being overly cautious with prospects and going stupidly fast with prospects.