Arden Zwelling

Talk to you next time on At The Letters.

uh not bad so far we uh we just got here it's gonna be four games uh in a small ballpark between uh two teams i think you could say are our rivals i don't know if you'd say like bitter rivals i don't know if there's a ton of recent history of these teams having uh spirited backs back and forth but just by uh just by playing each other as often as as they do there's a lot of familiarity there a lot of good young players a lot of power uh could be a lot of runs scored we'll see

Yeah, this is going to be pretty interesting.

He's had a really, he's had a cool year at AAA because this guy who's always had a lot of power, he's always like had big bat speed and a ton of exit velo.

But the big difference this year is he's really cut down on his width.

swing and miss and he's really upped his contact ability without sacrificing too much power so it's a little bit of a best of both worlds situation there and it's a credit to the work that he did and you know my understanding is this began last year when he went on the development list I think it was in May or June that he went out there and did some work in the hitting lab and

Dunedin I think he had just gotten way too closed off to the pitcher at the plate and maybe that was limiting his ability just to recognize pitches and to see them deep and you know I was told that he was just flying open too often which obviously is going to impact your ability to to make solid contact so sounds like he really dove into some of that work and made some meaningful adjustments and we're really seeing it show up this year and it's not like he's

As far as I know, it's not like he's coming up to replace an injured player.

It seems like he's just earned this call up and the Blue Jays are calling him up because he's going to be better than what they currently have, not because someone's gone on the IL and they need to replace them.

Yeah, I don't know that any of these guys are ever going to be superstars or even all stars.

We'll see.

I don't want to put it past any of them.

But I think the good thing the Blue Jays did at that trade deadline was they really restocked the upper depth in the Meyer leagues like they weren't going after this kid's 19 from the Dominican Summer League and maybe he'll be something in the

2034 like they got guys who were close to the majors and who just kind of needed some finishing school and who had shown tools and ability to this point and clearly were valued for for a reason but maybe they had a flaw here or something they could get better at there and the Blue Jays put their development staff to work with them and

said, all right, can we help Johendrik Pignango improve his defense?

Which, like, I know how it's looked in the big leagues, but this is the improved version.

Can we help Charles McAdoo make some more contact and strike out less?

And lo and behold, you know, last year McAdoo had a 28% strikeout rate.

This year it's 20%.

9% walk rate last year.