GDT 8/28/19 Pittsburgh Pirates (Keller) @ Philadelphia Phillies (Velasquez)

[Austinfan]

Rhys finally listened to me, shortened his stroke, stop trying to hit 5 run HRs, and was blasting it around the park.
Now if we just get Harper to do the same.

These guys have to understand if Kingery with his short stroke, and Haseley with his balanced approach, can both hit 400+ foot HRs, they don't have to try to kill every ball. The big swing made sense in the day of the 85-90 MPH fastball, but not in today's game. Now you need a compact swing that allows you to wait an extra tenth of a second to try to pick up the spin on the ball.

In the same way, the launch angle approach did make sense against yesterday's "paint the bottom of the zone with FBs" pitchers, but now the approach has become high FBs and breaking balls away, you combat that with spitting on high FBs out of the zone, a flat swing on ones in the zone, and taking the breaking ball away to the opposite field.

It's a game of adjustments, it looks like the Philly hitters are starting to adjust.

[zambonir]

Bryce has an .983 OPS and 10 HRs in the last 28 days, he probably doesn't need your help.

[Lawman]

I was at the game last night. I was also at the Nola/Hamels game two weeks ago. A couple of thought and two questions:

1) $15 tickets in Section 132? Sweet.

2) You can see the difference between Nola and VV. Nola's pitches had more movement, for lack of a better term, on them.

3) Cubs fans travel more then Pirates fans. They were there last night, but not as much as the Cubs fans were two weeks ago.

4) After a check swing appeal to 3B/1B, is that challengable? I assume not, but it should be easy to see one way or another if a team really thinks the umpire was wrong.

5) When teams are in the shift, do pitchers pitch differently, to try to force the batter to make it more difficult to hit away from the shift?

[Philsmania]

Not dissimilar to the Red Sox, the Cubs have long had a national following beyond Chicago. Part of it is people with personal or family ties to Chicago (strangely, that doesn't carry over to the White Sox). Part of it is the appeal of the heroic quality of rooting for the team that until 2016 couldn't win it all. Part of it goes back to 1984 when every Cubs game was televised nationally on WGN and people in all corners of the country got swept up in their charming surprise season and became Cub fans for life.

[Lawman]

One other random thought.

I like the 6:05 start time.

[bkeich]

4) After a check swing appeal to 3B/1B, is that challengable? I assume not, but it should be easy to see one way or another if a team really thinks the umpire was wrong.

5) When teams are in the shift, do pitchers pitch differently, to try to force the batter to make it more difficult to hit away from the shift?

I agree, that decision should be challengeable, but under the same rules, if you challenge once and are wrong, no more challenges.

I suspect pitchers do pay attention to the shift. If you know the guy pulls and your teammates are rotated over to the pull side, throw him pitches he can pull. Just makes sense. Of course the flaw with that is if a dead pull hitter gets a pitch inside sometimes he pulls it right out of the park.