The dog days of August will soon give way to the postseason races of September. Entering play on Tuesday, 21 of the 30 teams were within five games of a postseason spot, and 16 of the 30 teams were within two games of a postseason spot. It's too bad MLB and the MLBPA agreed to do away with Game 163 tiebreakers a few years ago.
We could've had some tiebreaker chaos this season. As we await pennant race baseball, here now are three trends going on around the league to keep an eye on as the regular season begins to wind down. In these very internet pages on May 20, we asked and attempted to answer the "what's wrong with Fernando Tatis Jr.?" question.
At the time, the Padres star was hitting .237/.308/.277 on the season, and had yet to hit a home run. The contact quality numbers were very strong. Tatis was near the top of the league in exit velocity, hard-hit rate, etc.
Ten days later, Tatis hit his first home run of the season, and it was a bomb: 451 feet to left field. He has been one of the best hitters in baseball since that day, either because he unlocked something mechanically or because he finally got the monkey off his back (or both). In 75 games since May 30, Tatis is a .300/.367/.545 hitter with 17 home runs, the ninth most in baseball.
During his homer drought earlier this year, we noted that Tatis had closed his batted stance after hitting from an open stance for years, and he was also pushing the ball the other way too often. We all love those "nice piece of hitting" opposite field singles, but pulling the ball in the air produces the most damage, and Tatis wasn't doing it early on, partly because he closed his stance. Tatis' offensive surge since May 30 is tied to (yep) opening up his stance, making contact further in front of the plate, and pulling it in the air way more often.
Easy to write and explain, much more difficult to put into practice on the field. Here are the before and after shots: To put numbers on it, Tatis went from 12 degrees open in April and May (roughly league average) to 37 degrees open since June 1. That is one of the most open stances in baseball (11th most open, to be precise) and right in line with Tatis in previous years.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
