GDT 7/21 - Season of The Purge

Acuna now at career high k rate. Throwing out 2020. I'm beginning to think the ones saying the braves were cheating somehow in 2023 may have been right...



What else explains this?

The short answer is, aberrations happen all the time. It also helps that the team overall hit much better, which means there were more people on base in front of him and great hitters hitting behind him. So teams couldn't afford to put him on base by pitching around him, which means more fastballs and pitches in the zone.

Ozuna had a great year in 2023 and proceeded to have a better year in 2024. So was he still cheating in 2024? TDA had a bad year in 2023 and had a much better year in 2024. Was he not allowed to cheat with the rest of the team in 2023?
 
The short answer is, aberrations happen all the time. It also helps that the team overall hit much better, which means there were more people on base in front of him and great hitters hitting behind him. So teams couldn't afford to put him on base by pitching around him, which means more fastballs and pitches in the zone.

Ozuna had a great year in 2023 and proceeded to have a better year in 2024. So was he still cheating in 2024? TDA had a bad year in 2023 and had a much better year in 2024. Was he not allowed to cheat with the rest of the team in 2023?

Can you come up with another example of a player cutting their k rate in half for a single season and then it immediately going back to normal range the following seasons. Certainly could be totally normal, but I didn't notice it bc it wasn't a brave. I just don't think it's out of the question that acuna following a bad season for him in 2022 juiced for 2023. To be honest though, I don't even know if that would help a player to cut his k rate in half
 
Can you come up with another example of a player cutting their k rate in half for a single season and then it immediately going back to normal range the following seasons. Certainly could be totally normal, but I didn't notice it bc it wasn't a brave. I just don't think it's out of the question that acuna following a bad season for him in 2022 juiced for 2023. To be honest though, I don't even know if that would help a player to cut his k rate in half
I'm sure I could. But you are also leaving out a pretty big caveat with the injury.
 
Any player can have a year worth of anomaly.. Chris Johnson had a full year of BaBip luck that landed him a good deal and then immediately went off the cliff... Acuna was not going to ever be a 12% K guy, just like I don't expect him to be a 28% K guy next year. I do expect his numbers to come down this year as he continues to play every game..
 
Any player can have a year worth of anomaly.. Chris Johnson had a full year of BaBip luck that landed him a good deal and then immediately went off the cliff... Acuna was not going to ever be a 12% K guy, just like I don't expect him to be a 28% K guy next year. I do expect his numbers to come down this year as he continues to play every game..
Again, who cares if he's just as productive, which he is?
 
Johnson's babip is a good example, but here's his 4 year stretch of babip: .354, .394, .345, .353. The peak difference in that period is 12.4%. Now with acuna in his peak is 51.7%, which is insane to me
 
Johnson's babip is a good example, but here's his 4 year stretch of babip: .354, .394, .345, .353. The peak difference in that period is 12.4%. Now with acuna in his peak is 51.7%, which is insane to me
But these are different situations as well. Acuna has a good eye and a good approach. He tweaked his knee in spring last year and was never right after that until he blew it out early in the season. He is just coming back now so his timing is expected to be off, and as he continues to play, the knee will probably bark and his numbers will suffer.. but if he can come out of this season healthy and have a full off season to rehab and condition, then I would expect his K% to drop back down into the low 20 to high teens..
 
But these are different situations as well. Acuna has a good eye and a good approach. He tweaked his knee in spring last year and was never right after that until he blew it out early in the season. He is just coming back now so his timing is expected to be off, and as he continues to play, the knee will probably bark and his numbers will suffer.. but if he can come out of this season healthy and have a full off season to rehab and condition, then I would expect his K% to drop back down into the low 20 to high teens..
Yeah but he took a lot more time to get healthy this time compared with the first time when he rushed back... you are right though... he needs to be rested
 
You can pick any season for acuna you want, and his 2023 k rate was more than half of it.

OK. Again, aberrations happen.

JP Crawford went from striking out around 25% early in his career all the way down to 13% in 2022. Then went back up to 22% last year and he's back down to 17% this year.

Gleyber Torres K rates the last 4 years: 22.6, 14.6, 20.5, and 13.4.

It may not be common, but it happens. And again, a serious knee injury happened between 2023 and now.
 
Acuna was juicing bc his k rate went down 😂😂😂
LOL yeah that is extremely silly.

On a rate basis, Acuna had a very similar year to 2020 and 2021, which were his best seasons up until 2023 (albeit those were shortened seasons with COVID and the first torn ACL). Only the K rate stands out as unusual from 2023 to those other seasons.

Honestly, he has played only 2 fully healthy seasons thus far. And 1 of them was his 2nd year in the league. He has missed so much time already that it's sort of impossible to know what his full season baseline actually is when he is completely healthy.
 
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Acuna was juicing bc his k rate went down 😂😂😂
i question everything. I'm a curious person. I even said that I'm not sure that would even explain it. I will say I think you guys are very naive if you don't think juicing is much more prevalent than the ones we hear about.

Just to see, I looked up profar's k rate last season, but it was basically in line with his career. Tatis' k rate was in line with career pre-suspension, although a little lower. So using these 2 examples, juicing doesn't appear to affect k rate drastically anyway
 
Steroids doesn't help with patience or pitch recognition. It does help keep you healthy and with strength. And if he has been taking steroids then he needs his money back bc it hasn't helped to keep him healthy. Sometimes you have blips like that in your career. Where it is now it'll come down some this year but not as low as 23.
 
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