was exactly my concern about Ard. What can be done with aluminum bats (or BBCOR composite) is harder to do with wood. Would his swing translate?
Cape Cod results, 2010: 38 games, .263 average, .3 eye, one HR. 9 doubles.
Oof. Not the results you want from a power position, so I had doubts.
But through his first dozen games in Everett: .333 average, dead even eye, 7 of his 14 hits are XBH (2 HRs).
Which is the real Ard? I dunno. Maybe he learned how to make that simple swing into a powerfully effective wood bat approach too. I'll want to see more before I buy that, but I'd be thrilled to get the Everett version of Ard going forward.
BTW, that guy for me would the be a Mike-Sweeney type, another person for the comp list, who I would consider a power-with-low-leverage guy with the same 1.0 batting eye and good average. Sweeney went in the 10th round, right?
Ard has a long way to go to make me think that's his path, but he's been strong out of the gate, and that's all I can ask.
~G
Spec sez,
How about a quick video take on Taylor Ard (here)?
I love, love, love guys who generate plentiful power with very low strikeout rates -- that's this guy in spades. K% at WSU was 9.3% with .577 SLG. A 6-2, 225 horse with Pedroia eye, kinda.
Could be Vinnie, part 2, with a 7th round pick (Vinnie went in the 10th round), but I'm trying not to get carried away.
Churchill has a blurb take today, too.
Q. Why wasn't Ard taken higher than the 7th round?
A. I have no idea at all.
I don't mean, "he should have gone in the second." I mean, "the reasons that he dropped are beyond my perception." There are people who will say he has a "funky" swing, but I wouldn't agree.
Maybe it's just that clunky-big first basemen are easy to come by. :shrug: We saw one pre-2012 ranking that had him as the #52 college player, and then he had a great season.
Would be very interested to hear why he dropped. While somebody's at it, they could tell us why Vinnie Catricala dropped, too.
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Q. Okay, what's aiki-Doc see in the swing?
A. Two things: first, that he overpowers the ball with upper-body strength. If you study Spec's video -- along with the other vids on the net -- you'll see that although he picks his front foot up and releases his front hip, he's not actually getting much power from his lower half.
For example, run Spec's vid to the 0:54 mark and you'll see that, on a mammoth HR over the CF batter's eye, the hip releases after the shoulders are gone. Run it six or eight times until you grok it: Ard uses his chest muscles to explode on the ball. After you grok that particular swing, the other swings make sense.
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Second, Ard has a fused "hitter's box" in the triangle formed by his chest and arms.
Most hitters -- Edgar Martinez was a reductio ad absurdum, and Ichiro is as well -- release their weight without respect to the pitch, then hold their hands back while reading the pitch, and then release their hands in a three-step process. A few hitters can keep their weight back, read the pitch, and then throw the front shoulder at the pitch in a late explosion. Ard is the latter.
Watch the HR over the CF batter's eye again. You'll see the pitch travel most of the way to home plate, and then Ard lets the front shoulder go at the time most hitters are releasing their hands. This Jim Thome-like fused "hitter's box" is great if you can get away with it.
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Q. What are the advantages and disadvantages to this?
A. Dr. D is partial to freakish athletes who can play without leverage. We saw some remark that Ard "generates good leverage" but my own opinion is that Ard's swing is the opposite of levered. Like Thome, he's using muscle to overpower the ball.
This swing has fewer moving parts and is unquestionably quicker. Hey, that's essentially what hitters do with two strikes or against 95+ velocity: shorten up and arm-swing.
The disadvantage is that most guys can't hit the ball very far without leverage.
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Comments
Would be my leading comp right now.
Sorry for the icewater bath.
Doc,
The homer at the 54 second mark appears to be on a top-of-the-zone, off-the-plate outside, fastball. If he released his hips early on that one there is no chance he could get good wood----er, composite on it. He almost hit and runs that pitch.
On the first homer, which appears to be on an inside curve ball, Ard does a bit of a power squat and then the hips fly earlier and quicker than in the 54 sec. shot.
Or at leat that's the way I see it.
Do me a favor, examine please. Let me know if I'm completely off base.
Thanks.
moe
Is that Ard missed his entire sophomore year (at community college) with a fractured wrist (after hitting .409 .490 with 12 HR and just 14 K as a freshman).
So his "sophomore" year at WSU was his "junior" year age-wise due to the redshirt season. He was drafted by the RedSox after said "sophomore" year (in the 25th round), but didn't like the money offered, so he came back for his "junior" year (when he was "senior" age-wise).
Point being, he's a year older than most college draftees, and limited to 1b, and had that uninspiring tour of the Cape Cod league that Gordon mentions, and that's apparently why he was available in the 7th round.
As for Catricala, apparently the home park at the U. of Hawaii is both spacious and windy and deflates the power stats, and the long travel for away games makes it hard to put up consistent numbers -- that's my recollection of the explanation (although Vinnie put up .349/.447/.596 his junior year, so I'm not sure why that wouldn't get someone's attention).
Churchill with a great write up on Romero today. Looks like another solid mid-round pick putting it together in the batter's box.
Well, Poythress anyway. The righty thing matters.
But I didn't see Ard the last half of this season, so if he's made tweaks or growth I dunno about it. I don't think he has crazy power, just potentially good power, and more of a doubles guy topping out around 20 HRs. Nothing wrong with that, and again if he can make Sweeney contact he'll be legit.
But he's gotta prove that first. Nice couple weeks from Ard, but he needs to move to a park with a video feed so I can see what he's doing out there that should raise my expections from the low-side of his skillset to the high-side. The fact that we're even mentioning his high-side early in his career is either a mark of blind optimism in Jack or indicative of our desperate need for corner power.
Rose colored glasses rock either way, though, and I'm glad some of our earlier picks are showing well so far.
~G
Trust me, I live in Hawaii--I go to Bows games on occasion, though I never saw Vinnie play there. I did see Kolten Wong a couple of times, though. Anyways, it has that same Safeco crossbreeze blowing from left field to right field with the trade winds, which floats all the fly balls. The park has acres of foul territory and fairly deep fences to boot--paradise is pitcher-exclusive at UH. They recently changed to Astroturf, too.
Login problems; won't happen again hopefully.
The double post is probably more our fault than yours. :- ) Let it fly and mahalo.
Not a word of your post I'd disagree with mate...
You will see Billy Butler and Kevin Youkilis and everybody, I think, clear their front hips on inside pitches, even drive off the back leg at times... as you mention though, the tape-measure shot over CF is practically a hit-and-run swing...
Supposing that Ard gets knee leverage on inside pitches he sees coming down 6th Avenue, and uses the Bluto arms when he's late on the pitch, that's fine by me. :- ) He's going to be late a whooolllllle lot, once he moves up through the ranks...
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There aren't tons of swings to go off, admittedly. But to my eye, the lower-body action in Ard's swing is relatively supplemental. From my point of view, this is a good thing.
Hey, if a golfer could go 300 yards taking the club back to his knees, good on him, right?