Since the White Sox have their first off day of the season today, I figure I can wait for Baseball Savant to process all of Michael Kopech's pitches from his five-homer dud on Monday.
Considering Kopech surrendered homers on his fastball, slider and curveball during the fifth inning, it didn't surprise me that the idea of pitch-tipping surfaced after the game. Kopech made mistakes, sure, but the last two homers came on not-terrible locations. The Giants' anticipation was off-the-charts, which is why both Kopech and Pedro Grifol sounded open to the possibility:
“We’re going to look at it,” Grifol said. “We’re going to look at everything. We’re not going to leave any stone unturned. We’re going to get to work on it and just make sure we’re covering all facets of the game. And that’s a part of it, that’s a real thing in baseball. It doesn’t matter whether it’s him or whoever it is, every time somebody pitches for us, the next day we’re watching video to see if anything like that is happening. That’s just a part of our checklist.” [...]
“It’s a possibility,” Kopech said. “If it wasn’t necessarily a tip, there was something I was doing different, breaking ball to fastball. Just by the body language of the hitters, they were on everything. I have enough speed difference to throw guys off, a little bit. The fact they were on everything, they saw something. Whether it was a tip or just me presenting pitches differently, they put good swings on it and it showed.”
So I'll take a crack at it later today, and if I see something, I'll say something. If I don't, I'll write about something else and wait until Kopech pitches again for more data. Hopefully it'll be a study in contrast.
Let's talk about Luis Robert Jr. instead
It may strike some as tone-deaf to write about a positive development when the White Sox were booed off the field during their home opener, but Luis Robert made it possible by providing a defensive highlight for the third straight game.
Let's start back on Saturday, when he robbed Kyle Tucker of extra bases with a leaping catch at the wall.
Tucker tried the other gap in the ninth inning on Sunday, and Robert responded with a catch that might be even more impressive, because he was shaded the other way and had to process the wall behind him and Andrew Benintendi in front of him.
By comparison, his robbery of Joc Pederson before Monday's game got out of hand was a far simpler task, but it actually took away a home run.
This is a welcome development on two fronts, beyond the positive results. For one, he's reaching sprint speeds that various ailments prevented him from regularly accessing over the last two years.
Robert's Statcast page showed that his sprint speed dropped off after his first year:
- 2020: 29.1 feet per second (21st)
- 2021: 28.0 (170th)
- 2022: 27.9 (203rd)
And while that's still plenty fast, it was enough of a hit to make his defense closer to ordinary than superlative.
| Year | OAA | DRS | UZR |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | 6 | 8 | 2.6 |
| 2021 | 5 | -4 | -1 |
| 2022 | 3 | 2 | -6.3 |
While we don't have the exact sprint speed numbers from Statcast this season -- the leaderboard requires a certain minimum of qualifying efforts before it populates a leaderboard for 2023 -- it's giving us a hint of where his legs are at with his percentiles, and it confirms the early eye test:
When Robert's on top of his game, his combination of speed and power is too dynamic to suppress. Opponents can exploit his weaknesses if they execute, but he can turn the tables if they don't. You can look at the web gems in three consecutive games, or you can consider his homers in consecutive games -- one to left, and one to right.
But going back to his defense, these wall catches are important because they reflect tools refining into skills.
Sports Info Solutions tweeted that Robert's catch on Monday registered as his first official home run robbery. On one hand, it's surprising that it took this long. Yet going back to his Gold Glove season, his inability to come up with game-shifting catches by the wall over the final weeks of the season put the honors in doubt. Most of them came against the Twins.
It was something Robert vowed to improve, as James Fegan relayed:
There’s an unhurried gait to the way Robert gallops through the outfield now. His top speed is only employed when needed, which Rowand considers a coaching accomplishment. Robert thinks his timing on home-run robberies could be better, so he focuses his intensity on that and he has the athleticism and intention to pull it off.
It just took him a while. On the subject of rocky introductions at Guaranteed Rate Field, Liam Hendriks blew his first home save opportunity with the White Sox partially because Robert couldn't figure out his steps before the wall.
And whether there was reluctance to go all-out due to the hip flexor injury in 2021 or the bouts of vertigo in 2022, he's had other things to deal with. It's never been an issue with talent or mindset with Robert. It's always been a plain ol' lack of reps.
Now that Robert has his legs back underneath him, we're finally seeing the fruits of these intentions. Fingers crossed that nothing takes his legs out from under him. Benintendi leaping over him instead of barrelling into him is a promising start on that front.
