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Chapter 1: What are the recent performance issues with George Springer?
Well, you heard it there coming in. Jay's Yankees, 7-0-7 tonight. Ryan Weathers against Trey Savage. We assume the Jays weirdly haven't actually mentioned who their probables are, but we're pretty sure it's Trey Savage against Ryan Weathers, which surely the Yankees aren't happy to hear, given how Trey Savage has performed against them. What a sports weekend.
This is shaping up to be, you'll have game six of the Stanley cup finals. You'll have game five of the NBA finals. Canada is playing a world cup game today in the city, which is a very, very cool. Um, the Marley's are in the final. There's all sorts of stuff going on. There's a UFC on the white house lawn, which I'm morbidly curious about. And, uh, You know, the Monster Energy drink.
I'm a guy who likes a Monster Energy drink. That kind of laying out over the White House is very amusing to me.
Chapter 2: How is Brendon Little performing with the Bisons?
Lots of fun sports stuff. And a Jays-Yankees series, which is always fun. Three set down at Rogers Center. 7.07 tonight, 3.07 on Saturday, 1.37 on Sunday. Let's get into it. On the line, we're joined by Sports Set producer and King of the Threads at Down to Black on Twitter. It's Chris Black. Chris, how we doing, buddy? How's it going, Blake? I'm doing well.
That's a bit of an eye roll with the king of the threads. You don't like that? I don't know how else to push people there. I'm never comfortable with praise, specifically public praise, but I appreciate it nonetheless. Well, praise you'll get here because I appreciate you coming on. It's always great stuff.
Chapter 3: What challenges are the Yankees facing without Aaron Judge?
Lots of Jay's stuff to talk about. I want to start with kind of a... More of a work process question. So earlier this week, Mike Petriello and the fine people at StatCast released a new batch of baseball savant tools for us to play with. If you were watching Blue Jay Central early in the week, you might have saw Mike Petriello explaining even more ways in which Tyler Rogers stands out.
You may have heard him on our show last week kind of hinting at some of the stuff that was to come. Chris, we can get into some of it. We can look at a Patrick Corbin or Vladimir Guerrero Jr. with some of these new bat tracking tools that StatCast has laid out.
But before that, what is your process for like diving into that, talking to Petrielle and the people at MLB, trying to figure out like what of this is usable for broadcast? What of this is usable for Blake's show or thread? Like it's a lot of good stuff that takes a little bit to parse. What's your process for kind of diving into it?
Well, first and foremost, I think while it takes a bit of time, like you said, to parse out and, like, what can be translated to viewers as a whole and what translates well to television or radio or, as you said, whatever medium you want to talk about, I think what I really like about this stuff is it's very easily conveyed and easily measurable, meaning...
you know, it's not an abstract formula. It's not, you know, it's not some weird acronym. It's not ex-Wobicon. It's not, it's literally, you know, the things that they seem to have tried to add over the last couple of years is like, Where are people making contact in terms of the plate?
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Chapter 4: What updates are there on CBA negotiations and the Athletics in Vegas?
Where are they making contact on their bat? How fast do people run? What kind of jumps do people get? How fast do their pitches go? How much do their pitches move? These are all very basic things. That can really help tell stories and can really help explain certain things.
And they were the types of things, you know, that back 20 years ago, 30 years ago, you know, people would say only a scout could notice or measure. But, you know, this latest batch of stuff, you know, funny enough, I think it was three, four days ago, I texted Petriello kind of out of the blue or as I'm allowed to do from time to time during a Blue Jays game.
And I was like, hey, is there a way of measuring how often a guy gets jammed on a sinker, like thrown inside kind of thing? Not that I was talking about anyone in particular, but he's like, you're kidding, right? And I'm like, no. He's like, don't you remember I told you that something like this is coming out? He's like, it actually just dropped quietly online like 20 minutes ago or something.
Yeah. That took up the next couple hours of my life digging into that website. But yeah, just a lot of cool stuff to dig into. And it did. The first two things I looked at were kind of where Vladdy's making contact against certain pitches and where George Springer's making contact against certain pitches. And they told stories right away. Yeah, and it's helpful.
Anytime the tool is, well, it can measure something that we've been talking about or theorizing about. One thing that I think we're going to get eventually, and I've asked them about this and we're not all the way there yet, is the spin batters are able to put on the ball off the bat.
That was something that like Jose Batista has referenced as part of, you know, what helped him take the jump or whatever. It's still not quite a measurable.
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Chapter 5: How does Blake respond to listener texts about the Blue Jays?
But yeah, when you look at Rodgers, it's like, how does this work? Why does it look so awkward? And now we can be like, well, here's why. And we can kind of, you know, shape that a little bit better and explain it a little bit better. Even if it is something that like you could get with your eye test, you can't with your eye test, tell the difference between this swing and that swing necessarily.
So we have these new bat tracking tools and I know you wrote about it and posted about it on Twitter at down to black. What did you, you mentioned the first thing you looked at was Vlad and there's a lot going on with Vladimir Guerrero Jr. Right now, including a trial in the leadoff spot for one game.
What were you able to kind of, or where did your research go when it came to Vlad and some of these new metrics as far as trying to figure out where things aren't right for Vladimir Guerrero Jr. right now? Two things. One, simply enough, he was, you know, something Kevin Barker's been saying a lot recently. He's got to be on time for the fastball.
He was, again, they can measure, are you late or early against certain pitches?
Chapter 6: What insights does Jorge Castillo share about the Yankees' lineup?
And generally speaking, last month in May, he was later on fastballs a little bit compared to previous years, compared to previous months. So you could argue he needs to be on time for fastballs a little bit more. So I think that's kind of a notch there. For Bark.
And the other thing that stood out against non-fastballs, he was working under the baseball, making contact or whiffing under the ball way more than he has in previous years. So to me, when you look at, when you mix in eye test stuff, with batted ball profile in terms of where the ball is going, especially with those types of pitches.
To me, what it suggested is he was chasing power in the month of May. We heard, we heard Popkins on the radio. I'm not sure. I think it was on Blair Barker, maybe a month or so ago, talking about Vladdy, how he eases his way into a season. Doesn't necessarily chase power early. And then it comes, the power comes just kind of naturally after he's kind of racked up some hits early and,
I think when the power didn't naturally kind of start he kind of started chasing it. What this bat tracking stuff suggests is that, especially when he saw a curve ball in the zone, a breaking ball in the zone or an off speed pitch in the zone, he was really working more of an uppercut than he normally does and getting working under the ball more than he ever has.
And I think he's just kind of lost his way a bit. Don Mattingly was on Blair and Barker as well recently. And he mentioned something about direction with Guerrero. And I think that all ties in to what the data is saying as well. So he's a, He's an extra gifted hitter. We all know how good October was.
This is the worst stretch of his career, extended stretch by OPS or by extra base hits, that kind of stuff. It is a bad stretch for him. I do think he's going to find his way out, and they need him one way or another. I don't think the answer with either him or Springer is like, you know, reducing, certainly not with Vlad, you're not reducing playing time.
But even like, you're going to need these guys to hit if you're going to want to go where you need to go this season. Yeah, there's no way around that, and particularly with Vladimir Guerrero Jr.
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Chapter 7: What are the implications of the new stadium for the Athletics in Vegas?
And this is stuff that I'm sure they're looking at. I actually talked to David Scheider a little bit yesterday about...
his work and it's like okay they'll give me this from a data perspective with my swing and then i take that and look at it in the video which i know you did as well showed some of those vlad kind of uppercut swings where it's like that doesn't even if people have historically asked for more power out of vlad that's not what it's supposed to look like when he's uh going the way he is
With respect to George Springer, I know that you've dug in on him a little bit as well, and there's been, you know, it's in the text line every day of, you know, should George Springer not be leading off anymore? And my answer is usually, like, probably, but it also requires someone to be hitting well enough to be leading off.
So batting order stuff aside, he comes into this Yankee series with a weighted runs created plus of 80, so about 20% below league average, and that's worse than he was in 2024 from a results perspective. What were you able to find when you dug in on George Springer, not just from these new metrics, but when you look at what is troubling him on the whole so far this year?
Well, I think the biggest thing to keep in mind is he's 36 years old or somewhere around there, right? Like he's an older player and he had one of the best age 35 seasons ever last year. Like literally we're talking top 10 and the other guys in that list are, you know, we're talking McGuire, Bonds, you know, like the greatest hitters of all time. The only one of recent vintage is,
to be either ahead of him or right around him as Victor Martinez from around 10, 11 years ago. So it was an amazing, amazing season last year for Springer. But right now he's back on the aging curve that we saw. And there's two kind of primary stories to tell. There's two big year-over-year drops, one in bat speed and one in sprint speed.
Sprint speed's pretty kind of clear what the implications are. he's been a great base runner his whole career. And he's just not this year because he's not fast enough. He's dropped from like 66 to 34th percentile in sprint speed.
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Chapter 8: How does the conversation shift towards the Women's Pro Baseball League?
Um, the other implication of that is defense, right? There's been some talk about, do you move him into the infield or into the outfield, uh, to find some DH time for other players. Um, You know, his defense struggled last year. He only played 54 games in the outfield last year, and only 10 of them came after the All-Star break. So combine that with the big sprint speed drop.
You know, he wasn't a super effective outfielder. He's a great athlete. So if anyone could figure it out, I think he could. But I don't know how often that's going to happen. And then the other big thing is that bat speed drop. Now, they measure bat speed in miles per hour. I think it's almost more relevant in terms of the swing to be feet per second.
So one mile per hour drop is about 1.5 feet per second of a drop. So that's, you know, that's the difference between catching something out front or being late on it, right? That's the difference between catching something on the label or getting jammed. And that's what we've seen. So...
you know as his bat speeds kind of declined we've also seen him kind of move back to one of the furthest points in the batter's box he's ever been uh we saw swing decisions kind of his chase rate was kind of as high as it's ever been as well at the start of this year i think he was trying to effort that bat speed and his swing decisions suffered so we've seen his bat speed go down we've seen his swing decisions kind of improve as the year has gone along
But the other big thing about this bat speed decline is the other kind of revolution that's happening right now in the league is kind of a sinker resurgence. They're throwing more sinkers than ever. Most sorry, most in like 10 years. And George is seeing more of them than he has in 10 or 11 years. And he's really struggling against them.
And if we've seen anywhere, it's that sinker busting into his hands. Again, when you combine, that makes sense. An older guy, bat speed declining. And this pitch, that's kind of, it's been the most effective pitch in baseball the last couple of years. Usage is going back up. Springer's seeing more of them. He's not, he hasn't been as effective against them.
He's always been a great fastball hitter. As this bat speed is going down, it hasn't really happened yet this year. So I think it's, I think like the combination of bat speed, sprint speed, the struggling against fastballs, which has always been his bread and butter. He's just a little bit slower than he used to be.
But having said all that, he was a guy who kind of heated up as the year went along as well last year, kind of like Vladdy. And I'm always about like, yes, he's had a bad year, but like, what are you projecting? What's most likely to happen over the next two months, three months? And, you know, you said 80 or 85 WRC. Like, I don't know what,
I don't know where, you know, who's going to be most productive. Like right now, do we think Brandon Valzuela will be a better hitter than George Springer over the next two months? Like, you know, the way he's been attacked with sinkers, sinkers in, it's been, they've really attacked him with those pitches and with fastballs up.
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