2018: The Year Of The Venezuelan Trout

I've said over and over again that Acuna's rapid improvement to his plate discipline is the most impressive thing to me about his rookie season. Sullivan at FG agrees: https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/ronald-acuna-is-one-of-the-best-players-in-baseball/

"In the first half of the season, Acuna swung at 31% of pitches out of the strike zone. That’s nothing awful, but it was still below average. Over just the past 30 days, Acuna has swung at 20% of pitches out of the strike zone. That ranks him 11th-lowest, out of 169 players. "

What do you get when you combine a Top 20% average FB/LD exit velocity with a 40% FB rate, a 10% walk rate, 20%-25% K rate, and a .330+ BABIP over 600 PAs?

You get a .900+ OPS monster with a chance at 40 HRs...and you don't bat him leadoff...
 
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bravesfanMatt said:
But can he throw strikes.
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The kids and I were pondering an even bigger question on the way home from baseball practice earlier this evening.

Can Acuna beat The Freeze?

I took Ozzie over Acuna to beat The Freeze.

The other idea they had was Acuna and Soto race The Freeze for ROY
 
Enscheff said:
I've said over and over again that Acuna's rapid improvement to his plate discipline is the most impressive thing to me about his rookie season. Sullivan at FG agrees: https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/ronald-acuna-is-one-of-the-best-players-in-baseball/

"In the first half of the season, Acuna swung at 31% of pitches out of the strike zone. That’s nothing awful, but it was still below average. Over just the past 30 days, Acuna has swung at 20% of pitches out of the strike zone. That ranks him 11th-lowest, out of 169 players. "

What do you get when you combine a Top 20% average FB/LD exit velocity with a 40% FB rate, a 10% walk rate, 20%-25% K rate, and a .330+ BABIP over 600 PAs?

You get a .900+ OPS monster with a chance at 40 HRs...and you don't bat him leadoff...
Click to expand...

For me the most impressive thing about Acuna is the eagerness to change his approach which would theoretically lead to more patience at the plate as you described. He quasi radically changed his swing which gave him the ability to wait on the ball a bit more, which allows him to see pitches a fraction longer then he used to. He doesn't need to start his swing as early as he used to. The fact that he's mature enough to welcome such a significant change at such a young age and so early in his career is pretty exciting to witness. It's also just so much fun to watch his energy and apparent love for the game.
 
weso1 said:
For me the most impressive thing about Acuna is the eagerness to change his approach which would theoretically lead to more patience at the plate as you described. He quasi radically changed his swing which gave him the ability to wait on the ball a bit more, which allows him to see pitches a fraction longer then he used to. He doesn't need to start his swing as early as he used to. The fact that he's mature enough to welcome such a significant change at such a young age and so early in his career is pretty exciting to witness. It's also just so much fun to watch his energy and apparent love for the game.
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Can you "quasi" an adverb? Never seen it done
 
jpx7 said:
It’s used as an adverb in many other languages—though in Latin (its etymological source) it actually functions as a conjunction. And English is pretty malleable: pretty much any adjective can be deployed adverbially.



English is pretty malleable.
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quasi extent is not acceptable
 
One amazing sign that you see with Acuna is how he intentionally goes to opposite field if he makes several routine outs or starts grounding out to left side of the infield. This is the way hitters get back into sequence and stay "inside" the ball. Acuna does this exceptionally well and shows great awareness and willingness to make adjustments. Hopefully that will rub off on Ozzie once he has an off season to assess.
 
Diesel said:
One amazing sign that you see with Acuna is how he intentionally goes to opposite field if he makes several routine outs or starts grounding out to left side of the infield. This is the way hitters get back into sequence and stay "inside" the ball. Acuna does this exceptionally well and shows great awareness and willingness to make adjustments. Hopefully that will rub off on Ozzie once he has an off season to assess.
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Ozzie is not afraid to go the other way or up the middle.

His problem is he hasn't shown any ability to do it with much authority lefty and his swing that way is either a medium hit flyball or a chopper as this is his contact swing, unlike Freddie where his contact swing is a liner over SS. And those usually find gloves. Not every fly ball by him is trying to pull, a lot of them since the break are actually him trying to hit the ball up the middle, but because of how upper cutty he is it goes in the air usually instead of being a line drive and becomes an easily playable ball.
 
Diesel said:
One amazing sign that you see with Acuna is how he intentionally goes to opposite field if he makes several routine outs or starts grounding out to left side of the infield. This is the way hitters get back into sequence and stay "inside" the ball. Acuna does this exceptionally well and shows great awareness and willingness to make adjustments. Hopefully that will rub off on Ozzie once he has an off season to assess.
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Absolutely agree with this. I said it about two weeks ago, and though I was partially serious and partially joking, I think Acuna will be a top 5 hitter in baseball within the next year or two. Dude is THAT good.
 
Ozzie's issue is simple to identify, but more challenging to correct: over aggressiveness out of the strike zone.

We are currently seeing 2 young players with good/improving plate discipline in the NL East with Soto and Acuna, and that makes it easy to forget that young players don't typically have the discipline and/or make the adjustments those 2 guys have at such a young age. Ozzie is a special young player, but Soto and Acuna are on another level entirely.

I'm confident Ozzie will learn to hunt pitches he can do more damage with as he gains more reps. He just won't improve week to week like Acuna has.
 
Enscheff said:
Ozzie's issue is simple to identify, but more challenging to correct: over aggressiveness out of the strike zone.

We are currently seeing 2 young players with good/improving plate discipline in the NL East with Soto and Acuna, and that makes it easy to forget that young players don't typically have the discipline and/or make the adjustments those 2 guys have at such a young age. Ozzie is a special young player, but Soto and Acuna are on another level entirely.

I'm confident Ozzie will learn to hunt pitches he can do more damage with as he gains more reps. He just won't improve week to week like Acuna has.
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My desire is for Ozzie to have more awareness and willingness to make an adjustment. I know it's got to be frustrating for him to continuously get himself out by swinging at pitches near the zone that he has little chance to do any damage with. I'm hoping....seriously hoping that Ozzie isn't of the mindset of, "well, that's just the way I hit....I have to be aggressive and that's just my approach".

We all know that Ozzie's approach needs to be tweaked and he needs to spit on those pitchers' pitches. But lately, he's even struggling against pitches in his hot zone. Here's to hoping that a season of adversity will help him develop into a complete hitter in the future.
 
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