Talkin' Baseball (MLB Podcast) - Alek Manoah is Missing & Harper vs. Raisel Iglesias (Jimmy's Three Things)

Episode Date: September 12, 2023

Timestamps:0:00 Intro00:38 Alek Manoah07:24 Harper vs Iglesias15:12 Harpers fav release point Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hello and good morning. Welcome to Jimmy's Three Things. I've got to tell you guys, I just was so lost in the weeds of doing research that I don't know if it's going to amount to anything at all, but I just kept going and going. And I had to snap out of it and say, record the stupid show, Jimmy. So here we are. We got two topics and then Jimmy Liddix and the second topic fell into the Jimmy Liddix, which was a crazy deep dive. The first one is it's not really pressing. But I guess that's what this show is. The recap shows are going to tell you what's going on in baseball of the, you know, what's going on and the games and all that. The Alec Manoa situation is the first topic that I started looking at. And it's really bizarre. For those that don't know, Manoa came back.

They sent him down to minorly complex to, like, work on his form and stuff. Then he came back up to the majors. Let's pull up his baseball reference game log. so I don't mess this up. I believe his last outing was in Houston, where he pitched really poorly. So they sent him down for performance reasons, right? Wrong.

Wrong. The first time was Houston. They sent him down. He came back up in July. So it was like a month. He went down to the minor league facility. And then he pitched. in one, two, three, four, five, six games since coming back up.

In those six games, he had a 491 ERA, a five FIP. And I don't know, they won four of the six. But yeah, he wasn't the best option. So they sent him down. He never report. And then the story just got lost, almost like a missing person. Like the Blue Jays didn't report it. He didn't say anything, but they sent him down to Buffalo.

And he never pitched. He hasn't appeared in a game. Everyone was like, what's going on? This is very odd. And then they put him on the inactive list, I believe. Not the injured list. So it's like, what's all this? Recently yesterday on the Blair and Barker podcast,

I'm going to shut the door real quick. Shutting the door, running, shutting. On the Blair and Barker podcast, who they work for, Sportsnet, Toronto, is that what it's called? One of them is the announcers for the Blue Jays. You know, Wagner's the play-by-play guy, and all three work for Sportsnet, which is owned by the Rogers, shown the Jays.

But, you know, we do Yes Network stuff, and I've become pretty aware of how hands-off they can be at times. With us, they're incredibly hands-off. They don't do anything. But, like, you know, monitor us at all. Obviously, we had the Orioles news earlier in the year where they monitored the announcer a lot. So who knows?

Anyway, this is the Blue J's side of the story. But these guys hop on the mic. I'm just going to dance around and just get right into it. Give me the latest on Alec Manoa. Right out the gate. Right out the gate. Now, Ben Nicholson Smith reporting that basically Alec Manoa's 2023 as a pitcher is, but I mean, it's essentially done, which is probably not.

It's done. Okay. It's done. So go ahead. I Ben's right And to be honest I saw some of the the bullet points on this story

I've not actually gone to sportsnet.com and Reddit wire to wire here I for weeks have witnessed this from a major league level to in between Alec being optioned failing to report to AAA Buffalo

and then eventually working things out what was the window like two weeks before he actually even got to Buffalo and there was never a timeline that I'm led to believe talking with people within the organization, a timeline to get him back on the mound, even where he could start pitching competitively. And now we have gotten to this point. One, he's not going to be able to ramp back up to help the Major League team in any capacity at this point. He was taking a roster spot in AAA for a very depleted bullpen and pitching staff to begin with.

So they had to make a move. and putting him on the temporary and active list was just what it needed, what needed to be done on paper so they could round out the roster in Buffalo. He's still in Buffalo. Six. But you didn't fit. So he'd never reported for two weeks, they're saying, and then the Buffalo team was just short a man for two weeks.

It feels like if that's the actual thing that happened, like it feels like a quick way to lose some friends down there. You didn't finish runner up for Sall. What are you done for me lately? you're trying to get in the playoffs. Like you're struggling to do that because offensively you can't get anything going. And the best, Ben, the best part of your game is your pitchers. It's not fair to them.

I mean, they've done enough around you to try and give you enough opportunities to figure it out for whatever reason you didn't. I just don't know what he's got to stand on. I don't know how he's throwing his hands in the air and going, how are you sending me down? That's confusing. I don't get it. Yeah.

They're basically saying Manoa and his team threw like a hissy fit and didn't want to report so he didn't report. Now, the opposite side, I think, is that Manoa is trying to get doctors to look at his knee because his knee has been bothering him. And that at one point they're saying that it's better just to like get healthy, take the rest of the year off and get healthy. It's weird because we're finally starting to get some signs of what's happening here. But it's also like, I don't know, maybe Manoa and the Blue Jays are going to part ways. they kind of get into that in that podcast a little later if you want to go listen to it. It's called the Blair and Barker. Just go listen to it anyway because I only played you a snippet.

It's pretty interesting. I don't know. I'm talking about a picture that had a lot of bravado and a lot of ego. And if it's, if this case is true that he is just, I'm going to say words that I don't want to say because it might not be true. If it's true that this is emotional response, not physical. that's a really bad look. But it could be physical. We got to hear from his side.

But two weeks before reporting and then not going on the I.L. If it was physical, like, you know, I don't know. That situation is bizarre. Got finished second and Cy Young. Talked a lot of trash. Had a lot of fun. Brought a lot of energy to games and stuff like that. One of those guys that, like, baseball needs guys,

that you root for their to beat him, right? Like Bryce Harper was that way for a long time. People hated Bryce Harper. They wanted to beat him. I think he's won kind of everyone over. But it's still fun to have a bad guy. But you don't want to relish in like this. Like, no, dude, be on the mound and let's beat you there.

This isn't fun for anyone, if that's what's happening. Anyway, all right, next topic I got is Bryce Harper has four homers in his last five Fat Bats versus Riceel Iglesias, which is crazy. And let me pull this up. Let's watch all the homers or listen to them if you're on the podcast app. I had them up. But then this sent me on a rabbit hole that is the third topic, which involves Bryce Harper. Baseball savant.

So I'm going to go pitcher, racel, glacial, Reissel, and batter, Bryce Harper. because I want to see what all these pitches were. I want to sort it by player and game and see how many at bats we have. We could also go to baseball reference and do Bryce Harper. Is this the most homer she has off a single pitcher? And we're going to go versus pitcher. And home runs. Harper has nine home runs off Julio, Tehran, Teheron.

God, I used to know names better. Oglacius, he has eight, eight at, eight played appearances, eight at bats, five hits, four of them are homers, one strikeout. Damn, let's click. I am a subscriber, baseball reference. Why do you log everyone out every second of the day? Remember me one time, always forgetting who I am, always logging me out. So here are the at-bats Starts in 2016 with a deep fly ball out one pitch

Then a single Then a strikeout Then home run Home run Home run Lineout I wonder what the exit Vee though on that was And then a home run

That's nuts So we have Wait that's just this year I have the videos here I want to go, yeah. So in 20, the first one is 2016. We have video.

Let's watch it. Out on a rocket. Bryce faces him for the first time in a 2-2 game. High fly ball. Right field didn't get it. Bruce coming in now. High pop up to right field. Exit Vila was 98.5.

Not bad. So then the next time he faced, that was the first picture saw, the next time he faces him, It goes ball, foul ball, ball, foul ball hitting to play. These foul balls are squared up or, you know, hard hit foul balls. Oh, loading and we're loading in. We're loading and we're loading.

No. Bottom 10th. Those are both outside fastballs. Eventually, in that at bat, he singles. Bottom 10, so is a game-winning walk-off single? Harper to Ryan. No. That's a game winner.

Oh, okay. All right. Holy shit. So he's got five hits off Iglesias, four home runs, and one walk-off single. I did air quotes. It would be a double. It was absolutely a bomb. I thought it was going to be a homer.

It was 109.3 exit Velo. So that's the single. The lowly single of the five hits is a, walk off bullet on a 3-2 sinker. Like bullet to the edge of the warning track. Okay, that's the single. Good job, Bryce. His next at-bat, he strikes out.

I'm kind of interested in this again. I'm going to watch every pitch. We're going to go through it quick. So a nice change-up to start him off. Then an 0-1 sinker. He fouls it back. 02. He goes slider.

Bryce fouls that. Everything's in, down and in, all these pitches. Now he goes four-seam fastball, high and away. Fowled back. O-2, he's going back to the four-seam, high and away. Get some. All right. Okay.

So then after that, here's another homer. This is on the sinker. Oh, was he was going back to the bullpen. I guess I should have said. said more accurately he was no longer going to be in contention to be a starting pitcher. This ball is killed. Another 109.4 exit velo like, you know, not oppo, but center. So left center.

A pair of home runs today for Bryce. Second home run of the game, I guess. All right. So that was in 2018. Another 2018 homer here on a first pitch of the at bat. Bryce is a homer to our. This is an exit below of 111. Oh my goodness.

437 feet second deck. No way, all right. And then we have bases loaded. And we go to a full count. This is in 22. Oh my goodness. another second deck shot, a three-two change-up that Bryce does not care about. Listen to the announcers.

Yeah, baby. Right away. That's funny. Let's listen to the away announcers. I bet it's not, yeah, baby. Ballpark is as loud as it's been all weekend. Three, two to heart. He did it.

Santa Maria. Okay, that was a bomb. I mean, we haven't gotten a cheapie. Even the single was an absolute bomb. In 2023, this year, another full count pitch. This time it was a full count fastball. Looks like they're setting up for a change-up again. And a line drive out toward right-center field, Harris on the run.

Oh, that's an out. Okay. 108 mile per hour exit velo out fastball force him and then yesterday first pitch of the at bat 572 on their feet that one's out to left center field Harris first pitch change up he hit it the opposite way to tie the game he's just clobbered him every which way damn good for you Bryce all right so that was the the second topic. And the third topic,

I don't even, this is, I went too deep into spider web of my brain. Um, with like no real end result here. But anyway, here's what the thinking was. He crushes Iglesias.

Feels very comfortable. I wanted to see if there's, first, first thing I did was I saw Aglazius's, um, release points where his, his arm is when the ball is released. And then I was like, maybe, maybe what if, like, Bryce, what if I go look in this information

and Bryce just loves all pitchers that release it from that point, right? And so I was dabbling around there. And then that led me to just being like, well, what's the release point that Harper crushes the most? and I think what I found, I think I'm going to backtrack into just the most common release point, which is why I think this was probably useless. But I started it and I got deep into it.

So let's just take a look. And then I think it's, I don't know if it's worthwhile. Where's the start? Okay, so this is the first one. So first I did horizontal release point. So righties and lefties will obviously be with. different. So I'm doing righty pitchers horizontal release point. So, you know, sidewinder, um, above their head, lefty horizontal, the horizon, right? If you're,

I did from, uh, negative five to zero in inches. I don't know. I don't, and then I just did every half the rest of the way. So I searched horizontal release point of over negative point five under zero. And he's got three homers off pitchers. with that horizontal release point. And then if I keep... These are out of order. These are out. You're out of order.

If I keep going up the chain, the most common chunk. So negative 5 to 0, three homers. To give you an example of pitchers to throw from that arm slot, I can't because all of those homers happened before video got invented. 15 homers off negative 1 to negative 5,

41 homers off negative 1.5 to negative 1. 65, negative 2 to negative 1.5. 69, so that's our most common horizontal so far, negative 2.5, negative 2. And then it starts going down again. So I think I'm just finding the most popular arm slots, which is why I was like, stop doing this, Jimmy, but then I could not stop.

So horizontally, the biggest chunk is negative 2.5 to negative 2 horizontal. I'll bring up one video to show you that slot off of like, all right, here's Kevin Gossman and here's Kyle Gibson. Two guys that throw sinker ballers. So look at his arm and it's pretty standard right there. if we look at Gibby, it should be pretty similar, you know, at release. So they're all the righties, so it's going to be over there. Gossman looks a little, well, Gossman looks lower, but that's vertical, not horizontal. So that's where it would be different.

So that's where I was going to then weed it out. This is the most common horizontal, so releasing. And then I brought up on the other tab here. Okay, which is the, what section does he have the most home runs? Vertical. He's got one home run off a dude who's over three and a half inches vertical, but under four. So that's probably a sidewinder or a real short pitcher. It's Darren O'Day, sidewinder.

And not a real short pitcher, yeah. So he is, that is, his release there is, what did I say? Like 3.7 feet from the ground or something like that because O'Day's a sicko. So obviously that's not common. So that's why, as I was doing this, I was like, you're just finding the most common release point, Jimmy. This is worthless. But you're in the shit now.

You can't stop. Four and a half feet to five feet. I guess this is feet for the vertical. Well, maybe we can really fine tune it then. All right, let's do that. It's eight homers. From five feet to five and a half feet is 40 homers. From five and a half feet to six feet is 75 homers.

So that's our most popular. Oh, nope. Six feet to six and a half feet is 83. And then six and a half feet to seven is 25 and nothing over that. So what was our most common? Six to six point five. All right. Let's dial that down even more.

Let's go six. to 6.1 here. And I'm going to just copy and paste the search. And on this one, we're going to do 6.1 to 6.2. And on this one, we're going to do 6.2 to 6.3. And on this tab, we're going to do 6.3 to 6.4. And on this tab, we're going to do 6.4 to 6.5. So six feet to 6.1 is 25.

61 to 62 is also 25. 62 to 63 is only 11. 63 to 64 is 16. And 64 to 65 is 9. So we got a tie. So 61 to 62. is 25. Let's see which pitchers land in that area. We have Hulis Chasin and Mitch White and Bud Norris and Yvonne Nova and let's see, the hardest exit villa was Hunter Strickland. Oh my goodness,

old friends, Bryce Harper, Hunter Strickland's video of them fighting. Breakdown I did is like the most popular video we've ever posted on Facebook ever. Oh, clobbered. I forgot these were all home run highlights. So a lot of this has to do with like your arm slot, but also just how tall you are as a pitcher. So I guess I just got to choose one here. Six point change included stats. Let's see.

Let's include vertical pitch release. There's more. That's pretty balanced, huh? 6.12 has three. Oh, no, I'll change it to six foot. to 6.2 and then we'll really dial it in. We'll really find the most common

vertical height. 6.03 that's we've got four homers oh 606 is common oh one two three four five six six

feet six inches is the most common so far. Yeah. All right. So we're going six feet vertical release point six feet six inches. So and then what was the most common horizontal? I'm going to put that aside. We're going to find the pitcher that's fucked when they face Bryce Harper. The most common, now we're trying to find the horizontal. So the most common section was minus 2.5 through minus I'm going to change the included stats to include the horizontal release.

And we're going to search to see within that range. Who's the most common Homer? That's a pretty wide range. More of them fall in the 30s, it looks like. Looks like the 2. let's say 2.2 to 2.5. All right. And then now we're going to add.

I can't even keep up with my own brain. What the fuck am I doing? This is nothing. This is what I get lost in, guys. I'll do this for like an hour and then I'll just like come out of it and be like, what are you doing? What are you doing?

This is nothing. We're in it. We can't stop. This is nothing. So we're fine. this comes up just fucking blank. Pitchers who have a vertical release point of six feet, six inches, and a horizontal release point of negative 2.4, whatever that means.

And I'm going to take away the Bryce Harper aspect and take away the home run aspect. And I'm going to make it just this year. And I can take away the handedness because it's only going to give us varieties because of the horizontal release point. All right, so which pitchers fall into Bryce Harper's hottest spot of release? Kevin Ginkle, good luck. He's thrown eight pitches out of that very specific spot. Same with Miles Michaels. Now I'm going to get rid of all the other tabs besides this, because they're all nothing.

And now we're going to go see if Bryce Harper has faced these guys and what he's done against him. So Kevin Ginkle is all around that area. So let's go Bryce Harper versus pitcher. He's ever faced Kevin Ginkle? I doubt it. I don't really know Kevin Ginkle. Gink. Harper has faced Kevin Ginkle.

Yes. I think we did it. He's two for three with a homer. Of course he is. I fucking reverse engineered that. I know Harper's arm slot. Let's go watch that. What are they from?

The homers in 2019. They'll have footage of that. Batters. Harper. Pitchers. Ginkle. I can't believe that led to, you know,

very small sample size. But a homer in three at bats? Yeah. Harper's hotspot, man. Can't be coming there throwing from a negative 2.2 to negative 2.5 horizontal release and a 6.6 vertical release. This Harper's fucking hotspot. So this year he grounded out, but all years.

13 pitches. What was the other hit? Oh, my God. The other hit was a 44 mile per hour exit velo single. Real oddity here, all four of those batters hit the same. Same baseball. Swinging bun down the third base line. Get it done, Harper.

The next one, here's the Homer. Oh, my goodness, Ginkl. What are you all about? Look at this. Look at this. I hate this motion. Like when Dr. Evil petting his cat, the old Mike Messina,

kind of like half toilet squat and like in a ball, like you're very uncomfortable with yourself. And then he just tilts up like a teapot. What is this motion? Eh. Sounds rickety. 95 mile per hour pitch. Harper goes,

Apo. I think what we found, to be honest, is what Trevor Plouf told me baseball players consider your AWR, average white righty, and that's the arm slot.

Just like stock standard release and Harper's going to crush people with stock standard arm slot releases. I think if we reverse engineered it, that's what happened. Let's go see Harper's stats against Miles. Uh-oh. Don't know what I just did.

Minimized everything. Miles McAless. Oh, he also hits him pretty well. He's got a 385 batting average and a one dot slugging against him. He's got 13 played appearances, one double, one home run, five hits. It's strikeout, home run, flyball, double, single, ground out, single, double play, ground out, strikeout. So recently, Michaelis has got the best of them. Let's go watch those at bats.

And then we're out of here. Miles. McAleuze. Played appearance, pitch result, in play, batter, Harper. There we go. Bound. Do do da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da harper Fries out 105 exit velo

Harper singles 91 Harper ground Harper lines into double play 101 exit velo Harper singles 110 exit Velo Harper doubles 100 Harper flies out to right field 103 103 Harper homers 108 save the best for last

let's watch some of these whoa green shoes green gloves big hole looping curbs ball. Deep flyout, big old looping curball from Miles. Harper just missed it. Same game. Change up this time.

Line drive. It's a nice piece of hitting. Okay. Now we're in 2019. Oh, shit. That's a, that sucks. That was an 02 down and in fastball. A really nice pitch, and Harper gets there, beats him to the spot.

but hits it right to the second basement, who doubles off the runner. This is a 2-1 sinker in 2018. Hit some hard again. DeYoung knocks it down. Doesn't do too much with it. Hot shot to short, knocked it down. 2018 again, another 2-1 slider. Harper's all over that to right field.

Harper's pretty good, huh? It just goes wherever he wants. 3-2 slider here. Not a good 3-2 slider. Harper hits that far, but not far enough. And let's see the home run. It's a 3-2 pitch. It's going to throw a little cutter.

That is a curveball, sorry. And Harper hits a home run. So I don't know what we've done here, but you guys witnessed it. The ginkl stuff was pretty funny. See it later. Goodbye. Bye. Morning stretch.