Welcome to the annual Over The Monster One Big Question season preview series. Over the next 40 days, we will be running through every player on the 40-man roster and identifying a key question for them pertaining to the coming season. This should run us up to the start of the season, at least as it is scheduled now. We will go through the roster in alphabetical order. For the most part, these will run Monday through Friday every week running up to the week before Opening Day
https://www.bostonpets...Connor_Wong_Dog_Jersey-20, though expect some weekend posts mixed in as well as the 40-man is expected to continue to be altered before the start of the season. You can catch up with every post by following . Today we take a look at Phillips Valdez.The Question: Can Phillips Valdez get by with his changeup-led approach for a second straight yearAs Chaim Bloom was looking to remake a But as we say here all the time when we talk about specific pitches: Nothing happens in a vacuum. In this case, what I mean is that Valdez approach being so unorthodox could have had a big part in the changeup being so effective. Batters aren typically looking for a barrage of changeups, particularly against a reliever. And remember, Valdez was not a top prospect nor did he have much of a major-league track record, so there wasn a whole lot of advanced scouting on him
Adam Ottavino Pet Jersey. It not unreasonable to think that he had that success from catching batters off guard, but coming at them again with the same approach in the next season could have much worse results.And so he kind of left with two choices. One is to keep rolling like this and hoping that his changeup really is good enough to keep throwing nearly half the time
https://www.bostonpets...Jimmie_Foxx_Dog_Jersey-39. There aren a whole lot of relievers in my lifetime I can remember who succeeded with that approach. The other option would be to turn more to his other pitches, which is mainly a sinker. The issue is his sinker is not really a lead pitch either, as it gets some weak contact and ground balls but he doesn miss many bats with it.Valdez deserves another chance in the majors after being one of the few pitchers who actually was competent on this team a year ago, and he get it. It may not be to start the season, but he get his chance before too long, and I suspect we going to see a whole lot of changeups yet again
Connor Wong Dog Jersey. That the reason I skeptical even after that performance last year, though. It a good pitch, and it certainly not impossible I proven wrong here, but it seems like a lot of the success was based on just how rare it is to throw it at such a high rate. Trying that again in a full season just seems like pushing your luck.
