Worrying trend with Acuna

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atl717

Well-known member
Not worried in the long haul, because this kid is too freakishly gifted. But his whiffs have been creeping up, and he's noticeably late on every fastball. Not ones up in the zone, but balls down the pipe as well. He has insane bat speed, so it's not that. He has been crushing breaking balls. Almost all of his homers lately are on offspeed pitches except for the opposite field homer off Urena. Would be nice to see him start pulling fastballs again and hitting them with authority.

Do we think he's just sitting offspeed most of the time and trusting he's quick enough to react to fastballs? I have no other explanation.
 
atl717 said:
Not worried in the long haul, because this kid is too freakishly gifted. But his whiffs have been creeping up, and he's noticeably late on every fastball. Not ones up in the zone, but balls down the pipe as well. He has insane bat speed, so it's not that. He has been crushing breaking balls. Almost all of his homers lately are on offspeed pitches except for the opposite field homer off Urena. Would be nice to see him start pulling fastballs again and hitting them with authority.

Do we think he's just sitting offspeed most of the time and trusting he's quick enough to react to fastballs? I have no other explanation.
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He gets big. Needs to stay quick.
 
CyYoung31 said:
Acuna’s last 2 weeks: .323/.397/.618/.1012

Last month: .296/.356/.509/.865
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I'm not talking about the numbers. And his strikeouts are going up, those numbers will fall. He will adjust. It's just an observation that he's mostly doing damage on offspeed.
 
atl717 said:
I'm not talking about the numbers. And his strikeouts are going up, those numbers will fall. He will adjust. It's just an observation that he's mostly doing damage on offspeed.
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There are really no studies I’ve seen saying a slight increase in K’s will drag all your other stats down if you’re doing everything else right. Much ado about nothing
 
I don’t see him as being late on fastballs. His barrel path is a bit off, seems when he tries to launch pullside that he’s cutting off the strike zone, not staying through it. It’s amazing he’s been as successful as he continues to be with his swing being a bit off. Lesser talent would completely tank when their barrel path drifts askew.
 
Diesel said:
I don’t see him as being late on fastballs. His barrel path is a bit off, seems when he tries to launch pullside that he’s cutting off the strike zone, not staying through it. It’s amazing he’s been as successful as he continues to be with his swing being a bit off. Lesser talent would completely tank when their barrel path drifts askew.
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How do you 'fix' that? Stay down on your front side for longer?
 
zbhargrove said:
There are really no studies I’ve seen saying a slight increase in K’s will drag all your other stats down if you’re doing everything else right. Much ado about nothing
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Yeah the reality is the strikeout will always be a part of his game. It was obvious before he came up, and it's still obvious now. Would I like for it to be lower? Yes, but it's not all that likely that he's going to ever be better than around 20-22% as an overall.

Although there's problems with the other guy involved here, while Acuna was the Braves best position prospect since Heyward, he was not viewed as the best pure "hit" in the system, like a Freddie. That guy that was viewed as the best pure "hit" is Ozzie Albies.
 
Enscheff said:
Almost all stats for players fluctuate above and below their true talent level.

https://www.fangraphs.com/graphs.as...tArray=&start=2018&end=2019&rtype=mult&gt1=15

This 15 game rolling average chart shows Acuna is in the middle of a stretch where his K rate is at a local maximum. There is nothing else to read into. He has Kd this often before, and he will K this often again.

Acuna is fine. Acuna will be fine. I have zero worry about Acuna.
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On balance opposite field hr .... just gorgeous.
 
I remember the expressions of concern last year when he couldn't catch up to Kimbrel's fastball...we all know what happened the next day
 
Dude I am not worried about his production. I just made the observation that he is killing offspeed and missing fastballs. Nothing has changed. He's still a stud.
 
mqt said:
On the other hand, only one of his 4 hits today was on a FB. OP is vindicated!
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The hit on the fastball was a blooper where he was late. He's seeing offspeed so well right now I really think he's just looking for it until he is in a favorable count.

It's just an observation. Maybe worry is the wrong word. He has been missing fastballs for the last month and yet he's still killing. That's how good he is.
 
To be clear...

Based on the small sample size of a month or less, even further made smaller by looking at an even smaller subset of data, are we worried about Acuna being able to hit fastballs?

No. I don’t think anyone is worried about Acuna based on the eye test about fastballs this month.
 
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