The Never Weres

Emerson Hancock struck Triston Casas out on a sinker last night in the 2nd inning. There wasn’t anything special about it other than it being a nasty sinker that caught the inside edge. But it made a man start to think, is this what has been biting Casas in the ass to start the year?

So now I’m thinking about it and need to look at his baseball savant page. Sure enough, he has multiple strikeouts on the edge of the zone, especially low.

The beauty of baseball savant is that after you make this nifty graphic you can actually click on the dots and it shows you a video of the pitch. (ATTENTION DO NOT ATTEMPT TO CLICK THESE DOTS. YOU NEED TO BE ON THE BASEBALL SAVANT SITE)

Looking at the image I was bummed because it didn’t seem as bad as I thought it would. But you mustn’t fear I click the dots and got the answers.

Here Casas strikes out on a 3-2 count (this will be a trend) on a slider that is quite obviously low.

Here Casas strikesout, again, on a 3-2 pitch. This time a fastball well in.

Casas doesn’t have an excuse for this one. 3-2 cutter that freezes him. Too cautious in this instance. You need to foul it off here. Or as my high school baseball coach, Neil Greenwald would say you gotta “Boggs” it.

Here is another borderline 3-2 pitch that could go either way. Imagine if there was a system out there where we could check this in 10 seconds or less…

Same old story here. 3-2 count, a cutter touches the bottom of the zone. Again maybe TCTT™ (Too close too take).

So here are 5 pitches. It doesn’t seem like much. Casas has the following stat line:

.171/.253/.317 8.8% walk rate, 24.2% K rate

Four of those strikeouts could have been walks. If that is the case the numbers change slightly.

.171/.296/.317 13.1% walk rate, 19.7% K rate

This doesn’t seem drastic and it doesn’t help the slash line much but it makes a difference in where he ranks in the league. Currently 115th in K rate, 85th in walk rate, and 146th in OBP.

Doing my little exercise Casas moves to 77th in K rate, 37th in walk rate and his OBP, still not great, would put him 108th.

This is not me saying the world is out to get Triston Casas. He certainly could have boggsied (another way to say foul off a pitch back in the day) off a couple of those pitches to stay alive. All I’m saying is that a couple pitches, some more egregious than others, have made his numbers look horrendous thus far.

Casas has hit two three-run home runs in the last two games. Has taken some walks and has hit the ball hard throughout April. Maybe he is coming out of his slump.

There is no need to mention his 14 hard-hit field outs, 7 of which had an exit velocity of over 100 mph, because you heard about that on the latest episode of the Never Weres Podcast.

Casas looks like he is turning things around. A couple things may have to break his way to even things out.

Photo by Brett Phelps