Jomboy is going over the most interesting things he noticed around baseball this week!
Jimmy’s Three Things is a production of Dan Patrick Productions, Jomboy Media and Workhouse Media. You can view every episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TalkinBaseball
0:00 Intro
0:57 Alvarez fooled the umpire
10:55 Best hitters vs. Paul Skenes
26:03 Worst swing and misses of the season
#dpshow
Hello, and welcome to Jimmy's Three Things. Thank you very much for joining me today. I am excited about this one. I spent a lot of time on these three things, and I think you're gonna find what I found interesting. We got Alvarez versus Tom Payne, umpire, he got got this catcher got him, the Mets got him Paul skeins. I wanted to look in at some of his splits, some of his batter matchups. I found some things I find interesting, and then we're gonna find the worst balls that I've been swung and missed at first pitch of the at bat. Those are the three Things. This is Jimmy's Three Things. It's a production of Dan Patrick Productions, John Boy Media and Workhouse Media. Thank you very much for tuning in. All right, thing number one, Thank you very much for joining. If you find yourself watching the show, please subscribe, Tell your friends share like all that stuff.
Thank you.
Tom Payne. He's an umpire. He's had some games recently. I feel like he's had some bad games. I always remember him good games. Anyway, he got got by Alvarez on the Mets. The catcher just he got got I mean catching The job of a catcher is to trick the umpire. They're friendly, they share the same space, they look out for each other.
But the catcher's job is.
To make him look dumb. That's what catchers want to do. And in this game against the Orioles, Frankie Alvarez, who also went on to hit the walk off home run. If you didn't know, I typed in Frankie Alvarez, Mets Alvarez, Francisco Alvarez. What a picture? What a picture? Yeah, he hit the walk off home run. I wonder if I.
Whatever? All right?
So back to the point, he had a walk off home run. He had a good game. He stole so many strikes below the zone. Now I have this set up here so you can see it. Oh, oh my goodness, Jimmy, okay, I have this set up. If it's red, you see all the pitches I have below. Red means it was a strike. Green means it was called the ball. These are all pitches that were below the zone. They were within left and right of the strike zone, but they were below the zone. According to Baseball Savant, the Mets got a lot of these called strikes.
I'll roll this for you, right here.
So on the bottom right of the screen it says how much they were off the ground. So this was one foot one point one four feet off the ground. And that's so low. That is so low, and it gets called a strike. This is one point three ball, and that's Rushman behind the plate. Now Alvarez gets that for the strike. He gets that for the strike. This one that's low, and it's a strike. Three punch out. Now one point five, that's the ball. One point five. Again, that's the ball, one point three ball.
Okay.
Now albare is behind the dish and we go back to strikes under the zone strikes. Okay, here's one more with Adlee behind the dish, and.
That is called a ball.
It was.
The catchers, that's all this was.
This wasn't the batter's knees, which I'll show you in the second. There are similar heights. This wasn't favoritism because if he's choosing one side over the other side, he thinks he's calling the game the same, but he's seeing the game differently, and the catchers are stealing strikes. It's very cool. I love the way catchers work. Now, is this the best part of baseball? I don't know, should they go to Roebomps and this is gonna be gone, you know, consistency would be good. It's cool when you have a skill set. These are the two pitches that were very very close. The one on the left to Jackson Holliday is one point three seven feet off the ground. The one on the right to Alonso is one point three to nine. So the one on the right to Alonso is a little bit bigger, which is good. To Alonso's a little bit taller, but not really. Their eye levels the same, their shoulders the same, their belt is pretty much the same, their knees are the same. So similar strikes. So and it should be for the two of them, and I'll make it big and we'll just go through this. That's live speed. One is a strike, one is a ball. You can't see that much difference from that angle, all right, So what if I go like this and separate them. Here's a big difference. Alvarez is off to the side, letting Tom Paine see he sees the whole lane. Nothing's in his way where you got Adley is kind of blocking him a little bit. Adley is holding the target up the whole time. So Adley's glove starts up right, alvarez glove starts down, and that means that Alvarez is letting the umpire see the ball the entire time on the left, because his glove just comes up and then comes up quickly even more and then he drops the ball. Meanwhile, on the right, what Adley's doing is his glove goes up and then he's gonna his glove goes down. So if the umpire sees him means he might not I hit his spot. Well, the new catching style I've made videos on this before is don't let him see where you're intending to throw it, so the umpire doesn't have any preconceived notions. And what Adli does is he holds the glove there for a long time, jerks it up, holds it there to try and get the call. Alvarez doesn't do that. He just flashes it up real quick. Okay, still not convinced that that's that much of a difference to be making such a difference in the way the umpire calls it. Well, here is overlay of the side view, and look how much further up Alvarez is than Adlie Rushman. He's setting up so much closer, and the pitch is coming. And now they both reach their gloves out, and now look at their glove difference. Where Alvarezes is Alvarez is this line right here? No, no, sorry, that's ADLEI. Alvarez is here. He's so much closer to home plate. He's bringing it up into the line of vision, much closer to home plate. The more a ball travels, the lower it gets, right, gravity and all that good stuff. You want to catch it at its before it gets too low and flash it up real quick. And one of them gets to strike and the other does not. And they're both similar.
If anything.
The pitch that was called the ball was higher by you know, a tiny bit, and there's a big difference there. Now look at where the umpire's head is. Because Alvarez is getting closer. Tom Paine's head is much closer. Look, here's Tom Payin's head for Alvarez right there. Here's Tom Payne's mask for Adley. So he's getting a completely different look, right He's he's getting to see more because he's closer, and he can see the bottom a little bit better. And he's just getting closer. You get closer, you get a better look at everything right, So and your angles are all different.
That's what it is.
It's just the catcher just stealing strikes. Let's watch another one on the left. Here we've got one point four to nine feet off the ground. On the right one point five. Again, the pitch to Lindor is actually higher than the pitch to I don't know who the batter is for the Orioles in this one. Oh, it's Rush, It's it's Adley. Here's the overlay, so if I go slow on it. By the time they cross, you can see one is a little bit higher than the other. Both catchers catch it, and one gets to strike and one gets ball four.
Here it is again.
Now they both flash the target at the start, very similar. Right, Adley's gonna hold his there or actually okay, So Adley brings his down this time, but not that quick. You're not that quick. And Alvarez brings it all the way to the dirt. And then when they come up, Adley holds it and the other The new style is don't hold it and try to like frame it, keep it moving, keep it moving the umpstone like when you do that. So here it is from the side again and again you can see the difference in where the catcher's head is where the catcher's glove is. Now, I talk to a catching coach in Major League Baseball about this when Contrero's got hurt, and he was telling me that this is very advanced. For some teams, they know each hitter's tendency, how long a hitter's swing is, to avoid getting into getting catchers interference that for some pitches, like breaking pitches on this batter, they can be here, and breaking pitches on this batter they can't be there. Fastballs, they have a ton of data points. And I went to a Yankees game and I watched the two catchers and you can see that they're setting up in different places all the time. So some teams are really really really smart about this to steal strikes. And look at Tom Payn's head again, they're just it's just so much closer. The glove is so much closer, doesn't let it travel as much. The frame job is way out, like the frame job is so much further. This is where Alvarez's glove is, and this is where Adley's glove is. That's so it's like two feet closer, which helps get that strike because it never gets that low. You catch it right there, you put it up in the zone, you flash it, you drop it. Umpire loves it. Look again and look at the heads. That's Tom paying there, that's Tom paying. There these pink lines I'm putting on screen. So I love this stuff. And it was a huge difference in this game. They got Alfred's got so many calls, so many, and Adley got none, none low. He laid a couple left and right of the zone. Man, look at blows my mind how close catcher's getting out. When you go to a game, watch for that. Watch for how close the catchers is getting He's like right up on the player.
It's nuts.
And the umpire follow suit. It's way closer. So I thought that was interesting. I love that stuff. Thought i'd share that with you. That was topic number one. Topic number two. I just wanted to catch you up on. I wanted to catch up on Paul Skeens a little bit right. I wanted to see what he was all about. Obviously, best pitcher in baseball started the All Star Game. How's he been going? He just had six things pitch tour in runs against the Mariners. He's got a two three era on the season. I mean the most hits he's given up in the game six. He's gotten better of late. As far as hits go, he's doing really well. Let me see what I ran into. I ran into some fun stats about him that I wanted you guys to know about.
What were they? What were they?
I forget Paul skiings Baseball Savant. I like looking at this stuff. I like looking at the Baseball Savant page. Just see if he's changed his pitch mix at all. So I'll bring that up real quick, show you how I do at Baseball Savant. I want to look at the season, and I want to look at the game by game graph of all his different pitches, and you can see recently, the four team has been his most used pitch. There have been a couple of games where the sinker is more than the four team, like this one. The Force team got dropped a lot, and the sinker was higher on July twenty ninth. Over here on June twenty ninth, the sinker was higher, the Force team went down a little bit and then back up. Was there ever a game where there was a pitch? Okay, here, right here here On July twenty third. His slider was his second most used pitch July twenty third. Slider. Well, yep, look at this line right here. He zero hits on it, through it pretty well.
Let's see.
To the lefties, I think he uses a smattering of pitches and yeah, he'll throw the change up and slider to lefties. It's getting more and more. Four seemer curveball comes out to lefties as well as the sinker, slider and change up. Not that much to lefties, but it's there to right He's he's a lot of times just throwing, you know, the two fastballs in the slider. Pretty basic, don't need that much. I guess which is interesting. Sometimes it's the no, No, that's what it is. No, you know, that's what it is.
That's what it is. That's what it is, all right.
So what I found interesting and I prepped was a couple of fun stats. So Taoscar Hernandez has the most pitches scene without a swing and miss against Paul Skeens. He's got the most pitches scene without a swing and miss. He's swung eight times in his six played appearances. He's got zero swing and misses. He's got three called strikes.
This says two. It's wrong.
He's got three called strikes on him, but two of them got changes. Two of those three were not strikes, and I'll show you that. So I don't really count those against him. So that would that put him at eight out of nine. I think I think he's got eight out of pitches in the zone he's swung at. He's got nine pitches in the zone, he's swung at eight of them. So ta Oscar's pitch recognition against Schmes is great. He doesn't really fall for the sliders. The breaking stuff he sees them really well is at bats have gone like this. In Game one he went flyball, walk, ground out, and then game number two ground rule double single home run. So the second time he saw him got even better. Aeronado has zero whiffs and nineteen swings, but he has swung at pitches out of the zone, and he has taken strikes in the zone. And Matt Vierling has also never swung and missed fourteen swings for veelings. So those three have seen him the best. They've all homered off of them. So not only do they see him the best, they don't chase the most. They don't swing and miss when they do swing, and they have all homered against him. I got all of their I got all of this footage, shear. So if you're looking at the color coding, well that doesn't matter. He'll figure it out if you want to figure that out.
Here we go.
This is Tasker's first at bat against him, and the first pitch that's nasty ninety nine on the edge called strike. I think that's the only in the zone called strike. Tasker is seen against him. After that scheme, tries to go slider away and then he tries to go fastball up, both out of the zone. Tasker doesn't flinch, fastball in the zone and he flies out, but no swinging miss and he's out.
Now.
His next at bat, he opens him up with a strike, looking again on a breaking ball that that's out of the zone. I think that's good pitch recognition by Tasker, not bad. But the umpire disagreed. He called it. He called it a strike. Then he throws ball oh ninety nine on the black. Tasker swings and fouls the back and now he's gonna flirt on that outside end edge more and Taskar's not biting sees him too well, and eventually change up inside draws a walk. So he sees him well. Now third time through the order. This is a theme against Skens.
You just swing.
So he got a first pitch sinker and he swung at it and he grounded out. They got the force out at third. So that's the first time he goes zero for two with a walk. Now the next time he sees him, it gets better, lucky but good. First pitch, that's a sinker that runs in a ton. Next pitch is that first one of forcing that ran well anyway, sinker in the zone. He swings at it, recognizes it, it drops it in for a double. This is it again, just a little flare job, you know, babbit gods got him, just drops it in on the zone. At bat number two, opened up with another called strike.
That's not a.
Strike, never a strike. A crazy call from the umpire on that one. So I'm not counting against him. And then now because Kein's got that outside with the fastball, he's like, yeah, let's go over there and fuck around over there. Tries to go outside again with a changeup, doesn't have it. Then sinker in the zone fouled away above the zone ball ooh ninety eight, top of the zone, fastball filed back. He wanted that one good pitch recognition and then.
I guess that pitch was out of the zone.
I don't know why it says he didn't. So he did chase one out of the zone. It was a three to two pitch. And guess what this is?
Another single.
So both the hits by Task are kind of bloopy until you get to his the third at bat again, which again swings at the first pitch. He remembered, oh, last time, my third at bat, he opened me up with a sinker. If he does that again, I'm a tattoo it. Guess what does that again? Guess what throws it over the wall for a homer? Task or sees him well, also swings early third that bat both times gets a homer. Now Aeronatto also has a first pitch homer against him, also has some good at bats. This that bat cracked me up because the first pitch here Tarnado, they say it's inside. Umpire says it's to strike. Eronado didn't like it. On the inside, gets the call. Next he goes on the outside. That's a nice pitch, gets the call. So Aeronaut's like, what, I don't know what the zone is. I'm just gonna swing at whatever. This next pitch is breaking ball off the plate, ground out kind of That's how that a bat went got done in a little bit. Next that bat, first pitch again, strike right in there, and Aeronauta was taking fastball ball, breaking ball ball, fastball ball three and ones the count. The pitch sinker low and away fouled back. Now, this is a great piece of hitting by Aeronato. Three to two schemes, makes.
The perfect pitch exactly.
What he wants to do, one hundred miles per hour on the black, and Aeronauto just takes it and drives it into center really nice. So he sees him well spoiled, some stayed on, some got himself a single third at bat ever, opens him up sinker and he was ready for it again, swinging huge in the third at bat, then slider her away to get the X team for a ball strike looking perfect pitch. Now he's won two and smashes that and I even smash that. He pulls it ninety nine inside, pulls it for a hustle double from Aeronauto, So he's two for three versus Skeens in this first game against him. His next game, he says, I'm gonna do more of that.
I like it.
Skeen says, all right, well hit this one hundred on the black. He did hit it last game.
Takes it. Next pitch ball, tried to play off. It didn't work.
And then the one to one one hundred on the outside edge ground out comes up again. And now Aeronado says, I'm a hunt early. So another Homer on the first pitch, breaking ball must have just guessed it was coming, or I don't know if he reacted. But first pitch breaking ball, aeronaut O, Homer's pops it out of the stadium comes up for the third time. Does he swing first pitch Ooh no, So we all look at Aeronauto's face. He must have been really contemplating sitting breaking ball again, or maybe he didn't like the call.
He didn't like the call.
He's looking at the end, be like, damn really, oh one, next pitch. I think every time you get a called strike on you from Skiens, the next pitch you swing. That's what I've learned. Fly out, third at bat? Oh no, that was the third at bat. All right, So the next one, this is funny Veerling his first at bat, nasty pitch by Skins. Next pitch eighty seven miles per hour, grounds out. This at bat is awesome, is Veerling versus Skeens. First pitch, you're gonna get a strike. Looking on the two seat, it seems he starts a lot of guys out with the two seamer.
Oh and one next pitch for seam. That's cool. Let's see if I can do a quick see if I can do a quick overlay of these.
Two editing and overlays really quickly, if I can gonna see because it's his two seamer and his four seamer and they're both fast balls, and I want to see what they do. Okay, Wow, that's weird. She's the four seam. That's the two seam, So the four seam starts lower, then the two seam goes up and comes down and the four seams so it starts and lands in the same place, and the speed is ninety five and ninety nine.
God damn, that's cool. It's good pitching, all right.
So anyway, so he's O two when he's gotten both fastballs, and when we looked at the scouting report. He throws his slider to rities and both fastballs kind of what he throws, well, Verling wasn't even messing with the slider. He didn't even care about it. That's the little slider off. And then that's a fastball in that he stays alive. Fouls it back, sinker one two again, another slider off. Doesn't even think about it. Veling sees this guy, well, sinker in just gotta hit him. There's one thing to see him and the other hit him. Fouls that off two to two, force him up, and in foules that off another two to two, sinker down, and in fouls that off. Skemes goes to a curveball there, which he doesn't usually throw to rieties, but this guy's annoying him. He sees the breaking ball, says, nope, I'm good. One hundred miles per hour.
Up it.
In fouls that off to stay alive, and I think Vierling at this point thinks he's gonna go back to a breaking ball here. I'm actually gonna hit it this time, and he gets the two seamen gets frozen and he shruck out that or he thought that pitch was gonna be outside.
Thought it was the four seam.
Either way, he gets frozen after a great battle. So what's he doing the next time he comes up? He says, I don't want to do all that again. I'm just gonna swing. First pitch, He's gonna throw the breaking ball. Boom gets the breaking ball. Third time through, swing at the first pitch in homers. That's what these three guys have in common, that all see Skins well the other guy. I wonder if I got these videos. I don't know if I did. Let me see if I got them. Let me see if I got them. Let me shoot Buck got these videos. Let me shoot Buck got the videos.
Dune dude.
Yeah, this is another situation I just wanted everyone to be aware of. This is just kind of a PSA Trey Cabbage and Paul Skins. There's been two played appearances. Strike strike, strike, strike, strike strike. So the next time Skins faces the Astros and Trey Cabbage probably next year. Uh, there's an immaculate inning. So speak on the line if you go strike, strike strike, Because versus Trey Cabbage and their first ever at bat, it was outside slider that the ump gave him the call. Thanks Blue sweeper away. Oh one, Now he goes sweeper inside, gets the swing and a miss, and then oh to two, he's gonna go another one down and in that stinks. He didn't throw a pitch in the zone. And then the next at bat, Oh, no, is it's all the same pitch on won to one on slider again, Oh again? Whoa is this gonna be six for six sliders? Holy cow, I didn't know it was that. I didn't realize that. I didn't realize that. Did you guys realize that? Paul Skins? I mean, I don't know what they label those, So I'm gonna look at it. But two played appearances, two strikeouts, six pitches thrown one looking, so five swings, five swing and miss. I don't know if he's thrown them a pitch in the zone. That's that's wild. I'm trying to look it up real quick player name, pitch chart, curveball and slider. So they're different breaking balls, and three of them they say have the zone here, pitch results, pitch description called strike up here, and then look at this all swing strikes. So the next time they face it's gonna be three of those. See if cabbage you can figure it out. Otherwise he's gonna get immaculated. I don't know if anyone keeps track of that, but I just did immaculated. We're on watch, Okay, you guys are on watch there next up. Last week, I looked at the most outside, most inside, most high, most low pitches to be hit, to be hit for hits, and then I looked up to be hit for Homer's. I wanted to look at a similar thing, but I want to look at swing and miss, and I just want to look at first pitch of the at bat, because what I'm looking at here is guys that.
Had in their head.
They had in their minds, I'm gonna swing, like I'm gonna go up there and I'm gonna swing. I wanna, you know, jump the first fastball or I think he's they were guessing. You would think, you would think, so, this is the highest pitch swung at. First pitch, so it's an O count. This is four feet four point forty nine feet off the ground. Boom, swing and a miss there. Now, this is the lowest pitch swung at. Oh and it's bottom ninth two on no out's. Harper's up and he thinks he's to give me something to hit. He doesn't want to walk me and load the bases with no outs. I'm gonnattack this first pitch and that he tries to do and it's a it's a slider that's in the dirt, well in the dirt. It bounces well before. But Harper, you know he had to go. If that pitch was there, he was he was gonna be a hero. Negative one foot, negative one foot that's the lowest pitch on an OER account that's been swung out. Now let's take a look at Rioty's. This is the most egregious one.
You have.
Salvi perez up, who's good for these a good amount of time and the first pitch slider and I don't know if he gets fooled here. He must have just chose to swing. And that is that is h two point seven four feet off the center of the plate and it is way away, but Salvi had to go. Now you're looking at a righty batter here. You got walker, Christian Walker versus sail and this is gonna be almost two feet in side and it actually hits him, but he's swinging, So get hit by pitch sails nasty sails.
Nasty as far.
As lefties go. You got wall on the braves at bat Walker pitching. This is just under two feet inside and then it's a it's a big old slider. And did he get fooled that one? Maybe he got fooled or maybe he was just like, I'm gonna swing, I'm gonna swing.
I'm a swing.
I don't know, but first pitch not the best way to start that bat will Smith for the Royals. It's Seeger for the Rangers, and it is lo and a way breaking bath. That one doesn't look that egregious. So those are the farthest off the plate. Swung at to start in that bat, swung and missedat to start in that bat. This was Jimmy's three things. Thank you very much for watching. Appreciate you as always share the episode. The catcher thing is so cool. I'm post on the main channel is its own thing because I like it.
Goodbye,