Baseball IQ

This One Moment Defines Your Pitch

"If you tell them the truth, they're going to hate you for a day. If you lie to them, they're going to hate you forever." Pirates manager Don Kelly shared some advice he got from Hall of Fame manager Jim Leyland on being transparent and truthful with players.

Paul Skenes the quarterback warming up with Andy Pettitte as the relay man 🔥

As a ballplayer, this will give you goosebumps Taking dry swings in the hotel room and laying out your uniform like you were in 12u again Love this reply from Judge!

Direction tendencies. Tells you bat bath and approach. What do I mean? 1. If they are peppering the opposite field with low line drives throughout their round, and it lines up with their analytic data, they can probably hit very well. Good hitters go opposite field on command. Miggy Cabrera 3 yr RHP analytic example attached. We all know that dude raked. Take note of his spray chart. Adrian Beltre example attached as well. Once again, spray chart. His is more middle of field. Take note on both their pull percentages. These numbers were from 2013-2016. 2. If you see a lot of homers from a hitter during BP during all their rounds, chances are he is a less of a pure hitter and more of a mistake hitter. BP is meat FBs right down the middle. Pure hitters (for the first several rounds) pepper the opposite field to get their path locked then usually last round they let their swing eat for some extension and distance. Adrian Beltre (whom I played with and hit with in same group 2017) would hit line drives at second baseman/RCF first 3 rounds. 3. If a BP hitter is rolling over, meaning top spin ground balls to pull side, and flaring balls to the opposite field, then you know that you can stay away with movement down. Sinkers, sliders, CBs, SLs. These guys are pulling off the ball. The hitters that were the toughest were the ones that controlled the strike zone and weren’t afraid to get beat but could still go to the opposite field. Miggy Cabrera was so good at taking that FB down in and going oppo. It’s really hard to do and he was one of the best. That’s why he was so good and a future HOF. Hope this gives some context.