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Monday (Matt Joyce)
Tuesday: So, there were two ways to interpret this player. Perhaps it was a righty, who gets a good view of left-handed breaking balls coming towards him, and even if they're breaking down and in on him, trusts his hands and lowers the bat head. Sometimes he misses, but sometimes he clobbers them.
Or, you could interpret it as a lefty who can't lay off the breaking balls low and away. That would be a lefty who would struggle with same-handed pitching, and would have a large platoon split.
When I assigned this puzzle, I didn't know it, but those two things look pretty much the same. Basically identical. Most of you went with the dangerous righty, and chose Evan Longoria. Only BeantownRaysFan went the other way with it and chose the over-matched lefty, David DeJesus.
BeantownRaysFan takes our lead, but really, this is pretty weird. Check it out:
David DeJesus vs. LHP:
Evan Longoria vs. LHP:
David DeJesus vs. RHP:
Evan Longoria vs. RHP:
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I thought yesterday's puzzle was easy, but it turns out it was diabolical. How about this one?
Once again, these are swing/take heat maps from Jeff Zimmerman's site, www.baseballheatmaps.com. I'm including all curves, sliders, and knuckle curves (according to the MLBAM classifications) thrown since 2007, and comparing a player's swing tendencies to the league average swing tendencies, so a hot color means that the player swung more than average at a pitch in that location. A cool color means he swung less often than average.
Mystery Ray vs. LHP breaking balls:
Mystery Ray vs. RHP breaking balls:
