Reviews

Yanks Live by Launch Angle, Die by Launch Angle

10/10/2018

It is a pleasure to watch post-season baseball -- if only to observe a better brand of ball than the wretched grade I have been following during the season.

I am referring to my twisted loyalty to the Mets. (Long retired, I can openly admit this sick little tendency.)

In the post-season, outfielders can track a ball and get in position to throw home. Infielders don’t always double clutch before throwing to first. First basemen scoop up bad throws. Catchers block errant pitches.

And throwback of all throwbacks, the occasional hitter can make the occasional adjustment and swat an outside pitch to the opposite field.

I love watching Houston play (Altuve!) and I love watching the Red Sox play (Betts!) – the ultimate truism; what’s not to love? – and I am only sorry one of them must go down in the American League series.

Even the Yankees were admitting the better team won in their concluded series, which is gracious but also blatantly evident.

The Yankees were built for their latter-day Ruthville and Marisville in right field. They also seemed totally committed to the Cult of the Launch Angle, which has taken over baseball in recent years like killer algae on the seashore.

Take-a-hack has informed the formation of teams. Sluggers slug with permission from the analytics bunch in the Bat Cave of baseball. No shame in striking out.

However, the Red Sox also have retro skills in making contact and stealing bases successfully, when strategically needed.

The smart ones adjust. Jacob DeGrom of the now mercifully hibernating Mets had an epic season because he figured out that hitters were swinging from their butts in arcs approved by the new breed of baseball – Pak Man baseball.

Hitters were hacking at pitches from ankles to waist to produce that beloved launch arc. DeGrom fooled them by pitching strikes up near the letters.

Imagine if DeGrom had a team behind him.
Sorry, it’s been a long season.

The Yankees went out and acquired Giancarlo Stanton, from their good pal Cap’n Jeter in Miami, and Stanton had a rocky Red Sox series.

This is quite enough to earn the nickname Mister December from a Yankee-fan friend of mine. (Stanton came to the Yankees last December.) The fans were booing Stanton as he struck out in the final failed rally Tuesday evening, and it may carry over.

(Imagine what the Boss would do about the snafu involving Luis Severino's rushed warmup on Monday or the whiffing of Stanton. You know which Boss.)

Now I get to watch George Springer of the Astros and some of those spirited, interchangeable Red Sox.

Plus, I confess, I still get a charge out of seeing “Dodgers” on a baseball jerseyI plan to enjoy good baseball the next couple of weeks.

Mets fans deserve it.

Ed Washuta

10/10/2018 10:20:58 am

Nice insight

George Vecsey

10/10/2018 12:23:43 pm

Thank you. A new name on the site. Nice to see you. GV

Altenir Silva

10/10/2018 11:19:14 am

Dear George,
As a Yankee’s fan from Brazil, now, I’m rooting for Justin Verlander, and after that, I’ll with the Dodgers.
Best. Altenir

George Vecsey

10/10/2018 12:22:56 pm

Muito obrigado, amigo minho

Elliot Podhorzer

10/10/2018 06:20:38 pm

Thanks for this. It sounds sort of romantic - "long suffering Mets fan", but is there really any other way to be a Mets fan? Your "rant" as you described this piece in your Tweet was sweet and helped me to realize what I miss about baseball when all I watch is the Mets. Sure Keith and Ron and Gary are fine, and I can take solace in the wonderfulness of De Grom, but your piece made me realize what I'm missing about well played baseball when all I watch is the Mets. And Michael Powell helps get me from day to day.

I've been a fan since the beginning, from Kanehl to Hunt to Kranepool Swoboda and then the glee of 1969 and '86, but it's been mostly just years of plain old lousy baseball. No fundamentals no learning curve, no nothin'.

The other day a group of us were sitting around trying to name all of the good (great?) serviceable position players developed in the Mets system since '62. There are sadly very very few. Fifty odd years and there are few.

So, I'll continue to watch the Astros and the Red Sox and there should be some pretty good baseball coming. Then a long winter and the Wilpons will make whatever deals small market teams make and I'll be ready for spring training again.

Sorry for the length of my "rant", but thanks for yours. I really enjoyed it.

George Vecsey

10/10/2018 10:48:25 pm

Hi, another new name on the site. Great.
I go back to 1962....have been in touch with Joe Christopher, and from a few years later, Bill Wakefield and Swoboda.
You're right about development but to be fair, they did emphasize pitching, from Johnny Murphy to Cashen and even now. On the theory that there will be a Clendenon or Ray Knight out there. Or Cespedes, to be fair. They did spend for him.
But middling signings in the age of post-Madoff. Yeah.
GV

Hansen Alexander

10/10/2018 07:24:35 pm

My dear George,

I enjoyed your succinct little essay on the advancement of the Red Sox at the expense of the Yankees, and partly because your usual thirst for beating up on the Pinstripes seemed rather satiated, perhaps by the prospect of the Dodgers rising to the World Series title?

Yet I also have trouble understanding the commitment to home runs, many of them solo, at the expense of on base hitters, that is, as you observe, all the rage. Of course, it's not new. Earl Weaver was an early practitioner of this witch craft in the late 1960s.

What is strange is that this new obsession comes on the heels of years of teams such as the Yankees and Red Sox making pitchers work by disciplined hitting, fighting off unfavorable pitches, making the poor hurler go deep into pitch counts. In fact, that IS still happening at the same time as the Yankees decided to dig up Earl Weaver.

And yet, as a Yankees fan who watches a lot of their games, it does not appear to me that the Yankees actually set out to go away from the timely hitting that defined the championship years of Joe Torre and his student Joe Girardi. What it looks like to me is that Brett Boone inherited Judge, Greg Bird, Sanchez, and Stanton, and just went with those power hitters as they were. And having never managed before, he knew nothing different.

I remember having a discussion with a boyhood friend of mine who is a Red Sox fan and both of us scratching our heads why the Yankees traded for Stanton when they already had a good deal of power in the middle of the lineup.

It will make a lot more sense when the Yankees trade approximately 10 top prospects later this winter to the Mets for de Grom.

Cheers,
Hansen

George Vecsey

10/10/2018 10:51:04 pm

Hansen, historically you have me right, but I came to peace with the Yankees during the Bernie-Jeter-Posada-Pettitte-Rivera age.
And just the other day, my older daughter and I traded emails that it is impossible to not like a team with Aaron Judge on it. He is one of the more compelling players in NY in a long time.
Best, GV

Brian Savin

10/10/2018 07:51:45 pm

This is beyond insight. It’s absolutely brilliant analysis. Thoroughly enjoyable.

George Vecsey

10/10/2018 10:51:33 pm

Brian, thanks. GV

bruce

10/10/2018 09:52:45 pm

george,

nice piece.

i'm just as jaundiced as you are about much of the analytics stuff.

you might recall i emailed a while back that judge would pass yogi in career strikeouts well before the 2018 season ended.

i was wrong.....missing so many games thru injury means judge is 12 Ks behind him. 402/414. of course, berra only played all or part of 20 seasons.

as i've opined countless times, berra's 1950 season stats stagger me.

656 plate appearances: 28 homers, 124 ribbies and 12, 12!! Ks.

amazin'.

i'll check the locals in paris friday and see if they're picken the astros or sox.

bruce

George Vecsey

10/10/2018 10:54:26 pm

Bruce, bon voyage.
I got a stat for you:
Joe D career: 369 K. 361 home runs.
Wonder what launch angle he had?
GV

bruce

10/10/2018 11:05:46 pm

george,

thanks.

if my hotel room doesn't explode and catch fire; if my pilot doesn't fall on the tarmac and break her wrists and if i don't lose my passport, i think i'll have a fine time.

knew the dimaggio stat. it is a great one. berra had a pretty good one too with 358 homers and 414 k's.

i remember him as a catcher when i was very young, but more as a left fielder when howard took over behind the plate.

bruce

Joshua Rubin

10/11/2018 10:50:55 am

George writes : "Imagine if DeGrom had a team behind him. Sorry, it’s been a long season."

That's an understatement. They really found a new and more sinister way to mess with their fans, this year. First they elevate our hopes with a 12-2 start. Then they instantly nose dive, with more wheels coming off the bus than we knew the bus had. Then, just when we settle into the conclusion that this team is just not built for anything good and needs to be blown up -- weak hitting, no speed, disorganized defense, too-tender arms on a vaunted pitching staff that will never reach its potential -- they get good again, the rotation falls into place, some of the young guys star\t to hit and they finish strong. So now I think we are fixing to do it all again next year with some variant of this year's model, maybe with a new free agent or two to convince us it is finally going to work for real this time. Here guys, here's my heart for 2019. Just give me back all the remaining pieces when you are done with it. Ugh.

Alan D. Levine

10/14/2018 04:26:39 pm

Georgr--Back in the 1970s, I read a book written by an MIT professor in which he used statistical studies to propose radical changes to baseball. The one that stands out was his recommendation that relievers start and pitch several innings and that starters come in to pitch multiple innings later in the game. The book was a cult success among mathematicians and statisticians and (of course) was studiously ignored by anyone connected to organized baseball. (Bill James was probably still in high school.) Now, lo and behold, what the prof suggested seems to have been discovered. Do you have any recollection of this book?

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Yanks Live by Launch Angle, Die by Launch Angle

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