Vladdy Jr. now knows what The Show players go through when we hit the ball right on the barrel and its an out.

Griffey refused to ever play for the Yankees, as well. He said something like "if the Yankees were the only team left, he'd retire..."

Well he was raised by Vlad Sr who famously said "see ball hit ball run like crazy" I'm not surprised he's not concerned with launch angle etc.

As a jays fan, I want to see him do so well so badly, especially because we are in the race right now and we need him. Sure we’re having rookies step up but with no guarantee how long that will last, we need more stability with our stars.

Blue Jays hitting strategist Dave Hudgens worked with Vlad to change his plate approach for some reason. It's not working. Considering the down year several players are having, Hudgens is probably doing more harm than good as hitting strategist.

Vladdy is 24, players like harper, machado, semien, betts, lindor who also had struggles had them later on in their careers so to count him out now is a bit ridiculous

I remember when he an Bo Bichette were in AAA on the cusp of cracking the big leagues, Bo said something to the affect of Vlad didn't know how to hit home runs, he just hits the ball hard. It's interesting and a little disappointing as a Jays fan (mostly because of the drop of in performance) that it's still true 4 years later. Great players make adjustments and there has to be some made with Vladdy

Most great hitters deal with 3 adjustments in their career: 1) batter adjusts to pitchers 2) pitchers adjust to batter 3) batters adjust to pitching adjustments The first adjustment is when they figure out major league pitching. This usually happens within the first 4-5 years of their career. It’s that Aha moment where everything clicks and they’ve seen enough pitchers to figure out how to hit. This is usually when they have the highest batting average of their careers. If you’ll notice, most legendary hitters have their highest batting average season very early in their careers. For Alex Rodriguez, his highest batting average was his rookie season. For Mike Trout it was his second, Pujols his 3rd, Ken Griffey his 3rd, etc. The second adjustment is when pitchers see the hitter as a new superstar and spend time trying to get him out. They pay special attention to him and devise strategies to discover his weaknesses. When pitchers discover the weaknesses the whole league notices and other pitchers pick up the scouting report. When pitchers notice a new superstar, it makes it hard for hitters to ever reach their previous high batting average because now pitchers are focused on them and try harder to beat them. Some hitters struggle to ever overcome this newfound attention and is often why some players only ever become one-hit wonders with one great season and a bunch of mediocre seasons afterwards even when there was no injury. This is where Vlad Jr. is at now. After he broke out as a superstar in 2021, pitchers adjusted to him by figuring out his weaknesses. The third adjustment is when batters adjust to the newfound attention and pitching strategies from the pitchers after the batter’s breakout season. They change their approach and/or fix their weaknesses. Players like Trout and Arod realized they wouldn’t get as many good pitches to hit anymore and started trying to hit for more power. This is when hitters become baseball legends. Ohtani is a great recent example. He broke out in 2021 and battled Vlad for the mvp. Vlad was clearly the better hitter. Now 2 years later, they’ve completely reversed positions in hitting where Ohtani was the best hitter in baseball in 2023 while Vlad had a down year. Pitchers had figured out in the second half of 2021 that Ohtani couldn’t hit changeups. He would chase bad pitches a lot because he was trying to carry a horrible Angels team instead of just drawing walks. In 2023, he learned how to mash changeups and he started letting himself be walked. This led Ohtani to be the best hitter in baseball in 2023. For Vlad Jr. to be effective, he has to figure out how to adjust back to the newfound pitching attention he’s getting now that he emerged as a superstar in 2021. The narrative that he changed something or that he’s in a slump is incorrect. What’s happening is perfectly normal and happens to every hitter who has a breakout season. Opposing pitchers see him as a threat and work extra hard to scout him and pick apart his weaknesses. For most hitters, this takes time to figure out and fix their weaknesses. Some never figure it out. Some like Ohtani, do figure it out.

The issue is when ppl quote barrels they don’t realize there’s a wide gap of about 20 points to Vlad’s max exit velo. Same with hard hit %. The reason he’s getting “barrels” but not every the home runs is simply down being just underneath that sweet spot as his launch angle is above 10 for the first time in his career and his average exit velo is back to 92 compared to 2021 95. This has led to a big jump in in field fly balls as well . The biggest delta is his hr/fb rate- 2023 is literally half of what it was in 2021. He’s getting 5 points more of sliders which i think is what’s going on. This is his second worst exit velo by pitch and helping pitchings disrupt his swing just enough to dilute his exit velo and avoid a dinger. He went from +3 to -4.4 slider runs above average (fangraphs) as a benchmark reference that’s a good piece of confirming data . On top of that he seen a 5 point jump in pitches outside the strike zone. The good news based on how close he is to turning these pitches over back to his 2021 numbers, it only takes a few adjustments

Thank you I’ve been waiting for someone to make this

I find it funny that for barreled outs theres a comically wide gap between Acuña and literally everybody else. Almost everything Ronnie makes contact with is a barrel it seems like.

He ain't getting enough backspin on his hits.

You forgot one thing. The hitting coaches the team has suck

People forget how young Vlad is. He’s gonna have plenty of huge seasons in the coming years.

The problem with vladdy is his approach. He swings at bad pitches, doesn't work counts and tries to do too much. You can hit the ball hard, but if you keep hitting groundballs, your not good

I feel like he does better when he’s having fun

Great analysis . Love watching the combination of great editing, great script and great analysis and knowing of ball.

Amazing content!

Yea his batting has been frustrating this season but he's been pretty damn good on the defensive side. But as you said at the end He's still very young. I'm sure he'll get back to it

Traded away his pals, pitch clock got added and they put him on a leash. All the players were saying at the start of the season was its about getting on base and passing it to the next guy, problem is no one is doing damage or cashing in. Vladdy is a big kid, he plays best when he is loose. Disciplined approaches are great but they don't work for Vlad. At this point I don't think he enjoys playing for the Jays and is putting in minimal effort. Needs to be traded.

Vladdy has become expert at grounding to short. Which makes all these other swing stats meaningless.

the fact that ronald has 25 barreled outs should terrify everyone

I remember being a kid and watching an Albert Pujols interview where he talked about putting “backspin” on the ball to create lift. We don’t have a way of measuring that yet unfortunately but my theory would be that he creates below average backspin or even top spin. How or why idk, something about his swing path id assume.

Love the Videos

He's got a lower BWar than 849th draft pick David Schneider, sums up his season.

As a Blue Jays fan they have the best team but the worst performance

As a Jays fan, I swear he’s about to break the record for the most ground balls in a season. This guy REFUSES to make adjustments! You want to scream watching him hit. The past 2 seasons have been infuriating to watch him hit. Never thought his best attribute would be his defence

Just a thought on why his barrels aren’t going as far is possibly not producing enough backspin on the baseball and thus the ball doesn’t travel as far

Vladdy and Juan Soto both had such amazing 2021 seasons. now both have had 2 bad years in a row I feel both will be fine in the long run.

The special bouncy ball is gone

Given the stadium dimensions, can you name the stats of what hits would be fly ball outs compared to what hits would be home runs

I don’t remember where I saw this but I remember seeing some stats where Vladdy 1. isn’t pulling the ball as much and 2. is pretty much just hitting the ball hard right at defenders. Idk if someone knows what I’m talking about or has those stats but I think it’s interesting how these things could potentially impact his stats.

This has taught me that Acuña is the unluckiest player in the league

Judge doesn't compete in home run derbies since he won in his rookie year and slumped for a month after. Sometimes they have an advserse affect.

it’s wild watching this and seeing why Vlad’s season looks so mediocre but then seeing every graph shown with Acuna jr at the top and he’s having an all world season 😂

The HR derby is a curse - completely screws with guys’ swings

Thanks for the shoutout! ❤

Vlady seems really unhappy these days. His at bats in the last couple of games looked clownish, swinging at bad pitches and not seeing the pitch. I don't know if the team came down on him for some of his antics, but that spark that was there last year just seems gone. Maybe it was the trade of Lourdis and Teoscar that had an effect on him. Perhaps it's time to consider trading him after the season while he has some value. I wouldn't be surprised if that thought hasn't been considered in the organization. He does put "bums in seats" but eventually, that effect goes away with bad performance.

Looking at the distance stats makes it painfully obvious that he isn't hitting baseballs with enough backspin. It's such an important part of hitting the ball further. Forget topspin, the difference in distance of a 2800 to 500 rpm backspin hit is crazy.

Does this video seem slowed down for other people too? I can’t tell if the drugs are bad or just technical issues with the video.

I played 7 years pro baseball & coached 3 years in the minor leagues. All this analysis is great…but the simple answer to why his HR #s have dropped is in his explanation to Harold Reynolds. His approach is to go gap to gap ( left centre to Right centre). Look at the best HR hitters of all time - virtually all them were dead pull hitters. Yank one down the line 330 ft for a bomb or hit dead centre 395 ft for an out

0:56 As a side note, it sucks that Joe Buck isn't doing baseball anymore. He'd gotten so much better over the last decade and IMO should've been the voice of SNB (I know there were some family reasons why he didn't want that job but still). Instead we're stuck with the current crap on ESPN.

10:00 as a Little League Pitcher the hardest hit ball i ever gave up was a line out to CF, the ball had top spin and dive bombed right into the CF mitt... had the ball had back spin with the same exit velocity it might have landed, or it might have gone into orbit... I was a fan of his father's, and thus got into Jr even though i no longer watch MLB, his lack of dominance has been a suprise--i was suspecting a Albert Pujols/Frank Thomas run where you start comparing the guy to to Ted Williams as his approach to hitting appeared to be perfect... Jr was more disciplined then his father, but with the same explosive swing once it was go time; an absolute joy to watch... (youtube) his groundout v Chapman as a youth is elite baseball, he falls behind 0-2 then grinds out like 10 pitches before grounding out, the number of age 20 guys that could fall behind 0-2 to Chapman THEN make the at bat competitive is pretty small)... fax!!!

Good stuff

Remember that the Rogers centre has undergone massive change since all his other numbers, it’s no longer a home run ball park it’s now a pitcher’s park, the air circulation has been changed, it’s all together a different environment 😢.

Vladdy is showing me that he is a Batting Practise player, he refuses to make the opposing Pitcher work, swing at first pitch, ground out, Pop out, pretty soon when someone asks,"who's up after Vladdy?", the Universel answer will be,"the other Team!"

Wow, with all this stats and metrics, being a batters has become hard. he just need to continue hitting the ball, and eventually hits and HRs will come.

I can't wait to see how he'll tackle the Padres season.

Physics, I love it.

his biggest issue is he's so late on fastballs, he has hit his homeruns off breaking balls

they took him off the sauce. hes no longer juicing. they changed his hgh formula. hes got more hemeroid then steroids in his system this year.

Trust me, we’re all a little concerned, turning into anger in Canada right now regarding the Jays. ESPECIALLY here in Toronto.

Hey MLB The Show developers at SDS; is it too hard to get fan graphs in the game? 2K gives players (in franchise mode) to create charts based off a choice we decide (for example: points per 100 possessions during road games by let’s say PGs); you can view more analytics than the game offers in the box score, etc. why can’t we see barrel %, exit velocity %, OPS+, Launch Angle, sweet spot percentage, xAvg, xSLG, etc. why can’t we get these things to compare years with our players, determine who to keep on our team due to actual talent or luckiness, etc. bring more immersion.

The hitting coach had the jays sitting on breaking pitches this year so that could have something to do with the fastball percentage

He reflects the team as a whole the 2023 blue jays don't make sense this season

I'd be real careful offering him a mega contract.

Let's look at 2022 we had Hernendez and Gurriel here and Vladdy had friends and he had fun. We traded those guys away and suddenly Vladdy wasn't having fun anymore, to boot you get rid of the "Home Run Jacket". There was an attempt at the trade deadline to bring back Teoscar but they couldn't put a deal together in time. When you have fun at work work isn't work when it becomes work it's not fun.

Pitchers made adjustments to his swings. Now he needs to make the adjustment to show something different

He didn’t hit a homerun at home until June 23rd? That’s actually crazy

Gotta do a vid on acuna hes 1st in barreled outs

Also" He is only 24 years old.

Good report, now why hasn't their hitting coach not figured this out?

Good lord acuña

Of course it makes sense. He is a 10 year old. He sat at the end of the dugout for the 2022 season giggling with Teoscar and Lourdes. The three of them demonstrated their lack of maturity. Because the BJ's were so invested in their supposed super hero, they had to dump Lourdes and Teoscar in a hope that Vlad would grow up and focus on his career. Clearly, the strategy did not work. We have had three poor field managers in a row. Gibbons, Montoyo, and now Schneider. While I am sure they have an understanding of baseball, they fail in their real job....managing people. Its up to the players to win or lose ball games...its up to the manager to get performance from the players. The blue jays play up to their capability....but way below the expectation from the sports writers and commentators who had the Blue Jays winning the World Series in April. Thanks to the sports "industry" in Toronto, the same suckers who have been buying Leaf tickets for years are now buying BJ tickets for nought.

He needs to aim under or right on ball it if he wants better liners and let the ball get deeper into the zone

his mom has been sick all season, hes tryin to do it all at the plate, hes essentially distracted

When Vladdy calms down and accepts himself as a pure contact hitter, and not trying to swing for the fences....he does great. That's where he was at the beginning of the season. We'll see....he has some years..

V.Jr. has one hell of a Golf swing. Come on coaches get his left foot down and keep his shoulders square.

He's just not pulling the ball enough. He's constantly blasting fly balls to the deepest parts of the park.

Acuña having so many barreled outs is insane

MLB has been doctoring baseballs for years now. 2021 saw the ALL-TIME records for home runs hit by a Catcher, Pitcher, 2nd Baseman, and player 22 or younger. Stop and think about how unlikely that is. I mean Salvador Perez hit 48 home runs!! C'mon people. Clearly they took their experiment a little too far and have tried to reign it in a bit. You're wondering why Vladdy is having a down season?? He's not. He's simply not getting fed juiced baseballs. This video represents a complicated approach to a simple problem. If someone is absolutely mashing the ball and it's not traveling as far as expected, maybe you should look at the ball folks.

Well he went on TV and said 'I just try to hit straight line drives.' Is anyone surprised pitchers adjusted by pitching him lower in the zone? The result is more top spin and less distance. More outs.

And now, he’s gotten even worse. I don’t know what broke him, but he’s almost beyond repair at this point.

For the second half of 2022 (last 300abs) he and Kirk were at the bottom of the league in WRC+. Double plays this issue for Vladdy and Kirk is just an average player - at best. He just had a 2 month hot streak. (Really, really hot) They both swing at garbage. Good contact doesn't do much when you swing at pitches designed to induce grounders. (Jays pitchers do the same thing to hitters). He's not hitting it too hard that it creates too much too spin..that's wrong. This doesn't surprise me at all, but it's enough - barely lol Also, Vlad has a negative OPS+ at all but 4 AL parks and is about 85 for his home park. That terrible. He tore up Buffalo and Dunedin in 2021 (40+hr pace at home).. he's always been exactly what he is now in MLB parks. I love Vladdy BTW lol Go Jays

needs more time in the gym and less time at the buffet table. personally, from what i've seen i wonder if it might be something with his eyes. he's swinging late which explains a lot of the opposite field issues as he doesn't seem to be picking up the ball as easily as he used to. this could be explained by need for glasses or contacts. i had similar issues when i played. i eventually had such bad eyes i could no longer pick up the ball and had to quit playing. i went from a mostly pull power hitting to a single to opposite field hitter as my eyes got worse.

we need this guy on the jays roster

Wonder what Gary sheffields exit velocity would have been

Send him down. He doesn't care anymore.

Sounds like the game theory guy

It makes sense that his injuries slowed him down. Why would that be a surprise?

6:43 The top 4 are all Jr. what are the odds of that lol

Why do we pinpoint avg and slg on the walls being taller? That would only inhibit homers not avg. He probably is creating way too much top spin by swinging for line drives. Not much of a point in hitting the ball hard, if it's right to a fielder

How about measuring his bat vel? Hitting to the opposite field usually means late comtact to the ball. Exit vel takes into account ball vel .

He’s too big. He’s about to be the next Prince Fielder.

He’ll be fine i mean he tattoos the ball still and has a great swing

There’s an additional stat that’s needed. Outs over 350 feet to centre field. Anywhere else in the ball park, these are home runs. With the Hays emphasis on gap to gap hitting, my educated guess is that these kind of outs to centre field are up significantly. When you don’t elevate the ball, this same approach turns into the ungodly number of double plays. Gap to gap is great for guys with lower launch angles. In the case of Vladdy, and several other Jays, it’s counterproductive.

Can we notice that Acuna is a the top of all these lists??? He’s also only 25! His xBA is .363!

Vladdy needs to be able to take the ball the other way or he'll fall victim to outside corner and outside off the plate stuff his whole career. You'd think with such high exitV and low launch angle his batting average would be higher but not so if it's always to the same side. 3 Years with declining numbers is not the trajectory to be on. I hope he can turn it around but if next year is sub this year, trade him while there is some stock left. He's young yes, but can't be given a massive deal on hype.

Sounds like he might need a different bat

Kinda weird. His stats are only a little worse than last year, but WAR is less than 50% of last year

While all this sucks for vladdy its wild that Acuna is on the top of all those charts you showed for 110+ mph outs and barreled balls.

Do you keep reposting this?

Good video

Dude just needs to change his approach and figure out what works for him, obviously he is hitting the ball extremely hard. He will come around soon

Man there’s too much numbers in baseball deciding players from good and bad and eventually deciding games. Just play ball.

acuna just causally beating him in all the stats lol

It's gotta be the top spin, there's no other way it makes sense

Baseball is hard.

The guy is one of the best defensive first basemen in the league which evens out his struggles at the plate a bit. An amazing glove, he's improved constantly there. The power will come back. He just needs to trim down some of the extra body fat he came with this year

It's crazy. All of those clips of him flying out are mistake pitches.