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Mucho info-tainment at Prospect Insider this month.  He's playing Home Run Derby with the fun names out there on the baseball landscape, and it's a target-rich environment.  He's got Stanton in there, Hamilton, lately Anibal Sanchez, Asdrubal Cabrera (HEH!) and now here comes Jay Bruce.

I know jack squat about the National League and in fact am not sure I've ever seen Jay Bruce play.  As you know, Dr. D doesn't let a little thing like complete ignorance hold him back.  Give 'im 5 years' worth of results to look at, and a game's worth of aiki mechanics analysis, and he'll be only too glad to play a Doctor.  He sleeps at Holiday Inn Expresses, so.  Yes, really.

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=== Let's Go To!  the Video! Tape! ===

You cue up Bruce on the trusty ol' MLB.com and .... whaaaa?  Hang on a second.  We've seen this shtick before.  Watch the video and tell me who this is. 

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You guessed it.  Michael Saunders.

All of the component skills line up too, like a shadow on the wall at high noon.  60 walks and 150 whiffs per season, .250 batting average, tall guy, falls over the plate, 30+ homers, Bruce runs fairly well, is long to the ball and short throught it, yada yada yada ... sort of a topswing finish to the followthrough.  Both Jay Bruce, and Michael Saunders, have high-torque swings even based on upper-body levers alone.

(In fairness, Bruce looks visibly like Saunders only on his disorganized swings.  On other swings, such as these, he mirrors Saunders' dynamics in a more subtle way.  Bruce does have better plate coverage, high and low, than Saunders has had so far.  There isn't any question that Bruce has been a Saunders v2.0, at least to date.)

... which tells us what?  Okay, Jay Bruce is Michael Saunders if Saunders got his pitch sequences together, kept his lower body quiet, and stayed agile high-to-low in the strike zone.  Bruce got it together much sooner than Saunders is doing.  You learn what from that?

I dunno.  That Bruce would be superfluous to the M's?  That Michael Saunders is headed for a 7 WAR season shortly (Bruce had a 5.4 and wasn't a fast CF)?  Neither?  Both?

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=== Dr's R/X ===

If you look at Bradley Woodrum's fine side-by-side of Bruce crushing high and low pitches, you can't help but admire Bruce's smooth, natural solution to the Saunders Plate Coverage Problemo.

Hitters bunt the ball by setting their bats at the top of the strike zone and then they either (1) let higher pitches go by, or (2) lower the bat down to anything below that.  Of course, this also promotes contact with the higher half of the ball.

Bruce stands nice and tall, and if a high pitch comes in he whacks it comfortably.  If a low pitch comes in, he uses his natural fall-over-the-plate mechanic to fall down on top of it.  Brilliant!  ::guinness::

If I'm Michael Saunders, I'm grokking this idea for use in my own thought organization.

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