"The Freak From Goose Creek" Smoak and Jays (28-29) @ The Oakland Triple-A's (24-31)

[Lateral Quicks]

So good to see Bautista has the arm back.

[dagger]

So seven runs thanks to home runs. Nice when you get them, but this kind of dependency is not very reassuring. Great work by the bullpen. Barnes, Smith, Tepera combine for four perfect innings with 6 K. Liriano, well, gave him a 4-1 lead and he dribbles it away a run per inning.

[ldnk]

So good to see Bautista has the arm back.

Nice to see that he's on a 30+ home run pace too. The Jays aren't out of the race by any means but the better their players perform, the better the trade deadline deals the team can make if they are sitting too far back to contend.

[vaff87]

What the hell is going on this year?

Last year, 15 guys had an OPS over .900 and one guy had an ISO power over .300(and he retired).
This year, 30 guys have an OPS over .900 and 11 guys have an ISO power over .300.

[Raps_Swingman]

So seven runs thanks to home runs. Nice when you get them, but this kind of dependency is not very reassuring. Great work by the bullpen. Barnes, Smith, Tepera combine for four perfect innings with 6 K. Liriano, well, gave him a 4-1 lead and he dribbles it away a run per inning.

Barnes is really good and I'm a real big Joe Smith fan. That arm slot presents a lot of problems for hitters when he comes in.

The bullpen seems to be sorting itself out. Osuna - Smith - Barnes/Tepera. Mix in Loup for lefties. Howell seems to be a lost cause so far and not sure what we get out of him once he returns from the DL. Grilli can't face the AL East, not sure what to do with him.

[Schad]

What the hell is going on this year?

Last year, 15 guys had an OPS over .900 and one guy had an ISO power over .300(and he retired).
This year, 30 guys have an OPS over .900 and 11 guys have an ISO power over .300.

Seems to be a part of it:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/sports/mlb-launch-angles-story/?utm_term=.0a2670df2706

[The_Hater]

I finally finished Jays in 30. What a horrific defensive outing yesterday. 3 of the first 4 runs should have never scored. Chris Coglan in LF needs to never happen again.

[Skin Blues]

What the hell is going on this year?

Last year, 15 guys had an OPS over .900 and one guy had an ISO power over .300(and he retired).
This year, 30 guys have an OPS over .900 and 11 guys have an ISO power over .300.

A mistake a lot of people make, especially baseball writers, is comparing results from a small sample size to results from a much larger sample size. There will be a lot of variance, both high and low, that will regress to the mean as the season goes on. Look at the first 2 months of the 2016 season and you'll probably see similar results. I'm on mobile so it's not easy to check two months combined, but in April 2016 there were 34 hitters with 900+ OPS, and 18 hitters with 300+ ISO, compared to 37 and 18 in April 2017, respectively. In other words: nothing has really changed.

[vaff87]

What the hell is going on this year?

Last year, 15 guys had an OPS over .900 and one guy had an ISO power over .300(and he retired).
This year, 30 guys have an OPS over .900 and 11 guys have an ISO power over .300.

A mistake a lot of people make, especially baseball writers, is comparing results from a small sample size to results from a much larger sample size. There will be a lot of variance, both high and low, that will regress to the mean as the season goes on. Look at the first 2 months of the 2016 season and you'll probably see similar results. I'm on mobile so it's not easy to check two months combined, but in April 2016 there were 34 hitters with 900+ OPS, and 18 hitters with 300+ ISO, compared to 37 and 18 in April 2017, respectively. In other words: nothing has really changed.

Yeah. I looked up until this point last year, and 34 guys had a 900+ OPS, and I think 6-7 had a 300+ ISO. I wouldn't have expected it to drop that much throughout the season.

It feels like offense is up, though. With so many random guys having career years. Smoak, Alonso, Dickerson, Cosart, Zimmerman, Morrison, Hicks, etc