Batting

PHOENIX —  As he threw batting practice to Shohei Ohtani on Friday, Dodgers third base coach Dino Ebel learned more about the superstar slugger based on what he did with bad pitches, not good ones.Plenty of players, Ebel noted, can launch towering drive after towering drive at soft throws over the middle of the plate.But on pitches that missed the heart of the zone Friday, Ohtani either laid off — a rare trait Ebel said spoke to the hitter’s efficient approach and purposeful work ethic — or made a quick and powerful…

Hi, and welcome to another edition of Dodgers Dugout. My name is Houston Mitchell. The Padres made a terrible mistake putting the “Cryin’ Kershaw” meme on their scoreboard after the first game of the three-game series. Let’s hope the Dodgers don’t retaliate and save their message for the field of play. This is why the Padres come across as a bunch of whiners. I’ll take the rivalry with the Giants any time.This is going to be one of those newsletters that focuses heavily on stats. I know some of you hate that, so you may…

When creating your own custom player in MLB The Show 23, you are quickly presented with numerous choices regarding how your player will look and act--one of the most important being your batting stance. Aside from the overall appearance of your player, which can look just like you using the facescan option, the more important choices like this one lie in the other options on the "Create a Player" screen. After you are done customizing how your player will look, you are immediately given the option to…

On the surface, it’s an easy comparison. The classic animated show Avatar: The Last Airbender features characters that manipulate air, wind, earth and fire. The characters in the upcoming Pixar movie Elemental features characters that represent air, wind, earth and fire. However, Director Peter Sohn said that’s where the comparisons end. People started making the connections between the two when Pixar released a teaser trailer about the film. Sohn said despite the similarities, Avatar never influenced what he was doing.…

In this article, we explore how the importance of batting statistics such as OBP, SLG, and AVG varied with respect to player salaries from the pre to post-Moneyball eraImage by Jimmy Conover on UnsplashIn Michael Lewis’ Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, Billy Beane - the general manager of the Oakland Athletics - is credited with identifying the inefficiencies in the market for baseball players. One story that comes up again and again in the award-winning book is around walks in baseball.Traditionally,…