Sho Alli

included but I do think offensively you just you do need more from him right like I would never refer to myself as a I mean I would actually refer to myself as a nerd I think in a lot of other ways I do think in baseball I am guilty of not looking at analytics and some of the numbers but and I the reason I don't describe myself like that is primarily because I think Blake would be upset with me for co-opting his term but I was watching Vladdy pass

hound the ball into the dirt tonight, and I decided to take a look at launch angle, and I was looking back over some historic stats as far as the past years of Vladdy's career go.

If you go back to 2021, the MVP adjacent year for Vladdy, launch angles for his swings over the course of the whole season, okay, 9.4 degrees.

2024, for example, over the course of the whole year, 7.4.

Last year, 25, 7.8 in the regular season, right?

Coming into tonight,

Vladdy's launch angle, 1.7.

That is legitimately the worst of his entire career.

I mean, in his individual ABs tonight, he had launch angles of 428, which was a fly out on the Soroka cutter, I believe.

seven, and then of course, right, because this is the way baseball works, a sawed-off broken bat single is the one he scores a run on, scores a run from third, line shingle of 21, which is the pitch he goes down to get, so definitely a positive one.

It's just so odd for a guy who just didn't do that.

He just...

During the playoffs, he just decided not to do it, right?

He also didn't do it during the WBC either, at least not to this degree, no pun intended.

So I don't know.

The launch angle thing is so bizarre because it's, again, like we can complain that he's been a ground ball guy for most of his career.

And I do think that as we've gotten more and more and more looks at Vladdy as an offensive player over the course of his major league life,

You know, I do think, you know, you look at some of the scouting reports and he was like a billion tool player.

It felt like and he had the power and he had the eye and all these things.

And as his career has developed, I think I've I've come to the realization that Vladdy might just be like he's not going to hit 45 home runs as much as I would love that.