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Know your Rays: swinging at the breaking ball (Saturday)

A very fun game.

Raymond Ochieng
Raymond Ochieng
Lars Baron

Monday (Matt Joyce); Tuesday (David DeJesus, an Evan Longoria lookalike); Wednesday (Wil Myers); Thursday (Ben Zobrist, a James Loney lookalike)

Friday: Once you decided that he was a righty, yesterday's mystery Ray was easy. Same-handed breaking ball low and away out of the zone? He's going to swing. Same-handed breaking ball in the zone? He's not going to swing. Few players struggle with their approach more against same-handed pitching. This was Sean Rodriguez.

Everybody got it right.

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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. lefty breaking balls:

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via www.baseballheatmaps.com

Mystery Ray vs. righty breaking balls:

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via www.baseballheatmaps.com