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The Athletic | Eno Sarris: Covering the plate is a valueable skill in of itself, and it can be measured by the number of wOBA hot zones. Some players with the most hot zones include Nick Williams, Josh Bell, Carlos Correa, Aaron Judge, and Corey Seager.
Baseball Prospectus | Jonathan Judge: This was the talk of the town yesterday, so to speak. The long and short of it is: the “x” stats that have been introduced via Statcast may not be as helpful as we think. xwOBA, for example, may have a decent descriptive quality, answering “what should have happened,“ but has about the same predictive power of FIP at predicting the following year’s wOBA. The lesson is that while Statcast information is interesting, it’s usefulness is not fully realized, and in the wrong setting can dangerously represent as much noise as our previous, flawed metrics did.
FanGraphs | Craig Edwards: Odubel Herrera is having a fantastic year, and he is catching up to one of Derek Jeter’s records: consecutive games on base to start a season.
MLB.com | Mike Petriello: Speaking of which: here’s a piece on Teoscar Hernandez’s hit velocity, which has been off the charts, so take that with a slight grain of salt. The Blue Jays in general have been hitting the ball very hard. We now know the caveats, but it’s definitely something to keep an eye on.