Daniele Franceschi

Like the ball, the old cliche, it just sounds different.

Vladi's one of those guys, okay?

Now, in saying all that, here's the however.

Here's the but.

Kevin Barker, our pal, Barks talks about this all the time.

Vladi's got so many moving parts to the swing.

It is flat.

It doesn't have enough loft to it.

he doesn't have a plan B. Always talks about you need a plan B, right?

Bo Bichette finally mastered a plan B over the last few years when he was a member of the Toronto Blue Jays.

Vladdy, when he's going well,

looks like an all-world talent.

But when you get a version of Vladimir Guerrero Jr.

that is just consistently kind of topping the ball and hitting it hard into the ground, he's so darn naturally gifted that he's going to inevitably rack up his hits.

But that is going to somewhat, I think, masquerade with the ultimate ceiling of the player can be.

That's kind of where I'm at.

Like, it's hard to look at the raw numbers and say...

how can we criticize the guy he's hitting almost 330 that is crazy that's absurd but then dig a little deeper and i'll give you one number as an example ground ball rate this year is north of 55 now it was even higher about a week and a half ago it's it's actually dropped a little bit but it's 55 show he's i'm looking at it right now he's never had a number that high in his entire big league career

So clearly, there is something to, hey, you've got to make a more concerted effort of trying to lift the ball and put it in the air.

Because I'm sorry, home runs and extra base hits do matter.