Pirates (Chandler) vs Brewers (Sproat): 8/3/26, 6:40pm

[Jim French Stepstool]

5 hours ago, Brian said:

You mentioned bat speed, if that's a for real issue try a torpedo bat. Any small change won't hurt at this point.  All you can do is review recent at-bats compared to before they were slumping.  Bat path, stride, head movement changes, whatever. 

I think it definitely is bat speed with Yelich, and he realizes it. He's been hitting a lot of balls to the left side while mostly getting jammed on the pull side. So it looks like he's made the adjustment by trying to go oppo more often than not. The problem is like I said---he can get pitched inside effectively, and I think he's so locked into going the other way that it exacerbates the chasing on balls that are outside & off the plate.

He also at times chases down & in. Why he's doing that I have no idea because it appears the days of getting the head out on that---even if it IS a strike---are mostly over. If you watch his ABs closely, if the chasing were somehow curtailed he'd probably have a decent enough OBP to at least still be leading off, which is probably the only place in the order where he might be of use.

[yourout]

6 hours ago, adambr2 said:

I also want to counter a point that was made yesterday about the Brewers not caring about power. I actually get a little bit of a chuckle about this because it wasn’t that long ago that the biggest complaint about the Brewers offense is that they couldn’t score unless they hit home runs, that was all they did. 

The Brewers very much care about hitting the ball over the fence. I don’t think they expected Yelich to go from 29 HR to 7. I don’t think they expected Vaughn to have 4 HR at this point this year. The plan was not for William Contreras to have the worst slugging percentage of his career. Garrett Mitchell is another, I think if fully healthy they expected him to be well into the double digit by now. Circumstantially, they have not hit well for power this year. That was not the plan and it’s a little absurd to suggest it was. 

They also have numerous top prospects (Made, Adamczewski, Fischer, Payne, Adams, Burke) with anywhere from very good power to amazing power. They absolutely do care about it.

I think they made a mistake with hiring Vogy as hitting coach.