Tweet
http://www.nydailynews.com/amp/sport...mpression=true
https://nypost.com/2018/03/08/hittin...mpression=true
Other things are brewing.
Thanks to all who have continued to support the cause.
There is another article on theathletic.com. This is it....
How Scott Kingery, with his remade swing, could be in the majors as soon as April
By Matt Gelb 33 minutes ago
PORT CHARLOTTE, Fla. — The play will forever be lost to the Grapefruit League ether — witnessed Friday by the 3,560 fans in attendance at Charlotte Sports Park and no one else because, even in 2018, baseball games can exist without television. It was recorded like this: Kean Wong grounds out, second baseman Scott Kingery to first baseman Ryan Flaherty.
“I don't know how many other — if any — second baseman make that play,” Gabe Kapler said.
The runner on first base dashed for second when Aaron Nola began his motion. Kingery did not have coverage; he was deeper in the hole, near first base. Wong hit the ball hard. It was a sharp one-hopper that rocketed toward the middle of the diamond. It looked like a run-scoring single.
“I wasn't sure,” Kingery said. “I think I took a couple steps before I knew: 'All right, maybe if I lay out fully, I can get my glove on it.'”
Kingery lunged. His entire body was parallel to the ground with full extension when the ball popped into his glove. He hopped to his feet and fired a strike to first for the final out.
“There are very few if any second baseman that can make that play, get that jump, have that extension, have the composure and wherewithal to get up and make that throw,” Kapler said. “That floored us all. The dugout was sort of open mouthed. It was, 'Whoa, what just happened?'”
Then, three batters into the next inning, Kingery blasted an opposite-field home run.
A few hours later, after Nola finished jogging around the warning track of a back field, he fiddled with his phone at a table inside the clubhouse. Someone asked about Kingery, the 23-year-old second baseman who has generated every possible superlative this spring but one.
And Nola ended that debate with five words.
“He is a big leaguer,” Nola said. “The guy's a baller, man. He does it at the plate. He hits for power. He does it in the field. That ball he saved for me today, that was awesome. He laid out. It saved a run.
“He's humble, too. An all-around player, if you ask me.”
The Phillies have been in Florida for three weeks. There is no more salient conclusion than this: Scott Kingery will play a meaningful role in the majors this season, and it could be sooner than everyone thinks.
Scott Kingery will not break camp with the Phillies. For that to happen, it would take an unforeseen scenario. The Phillies have their legitimate baseball reasons for starting Kingery at Triple-A Lehigh Valley beyond the unstated truth that they do not want to sacrifice a year of club control on him. Kingery has just 286 plate appearances in the International League. His strikeout rate last season ballooned to 20.3 percent from 16.1 percent. His walk rate dipped to 4.5 percent from 8.8 percent. Cesar Hernandez, the current second baseman, was worth 3.3 WAR in 2017 and he is a productive player.
These are all decent reasons.
There are also legitimate baseball reasons for Kingery to be the second baseman on March 29 in Atlanta. He has That Look. He has impressed his teammates and his coaches and anyone around the Phillies this spring with his acumen. He is gifted, no doubt, but it extends beyond that. There is a feeling about Kingery that excites both hardened baseball men and fresh-faced analytical thinkers.
It is why the Phillies have searched for outside-the-box solutions this spring. Kingery played center field Saturday. It was his first time at the position since his sophomore year at the University of Arizona. He played some third base and shortstop while at Lehigh Valley to end last season. The Phillies view him as their future second baseman, period, but they are open to different ideas for 2018.
Kingery could force those creative solutions into action before April ends.
The dynamic is fascinating. The Phillies, already, will attempt to squeeze four outfielders into three spots. If Kingery is added to the infield equation, the constant shuffling and playing-time balance will be complex. That has not worried Kapler, the rookie manager.
Kapler, instead, has hinted at how Kingery could help his team.
“He can play in the big leagues at many different positions,” Kapler said. “He can play second base, he can play shortstop, he can play centerfield. There's no doubt in my mind that he can handle third base. He can handle both corners. In theory, that's an exciting role for Scott.
“I don't know how this all plays out, but what I can tell you is that his mindset is the right mindset. It is: 'I'm a major-league player right this minute.' And that's the only way we can all think about it. It's very similar to the way we think about winning every baseball game. You're not going to win 162, but you think about winning every baseball game. Scott Kingery has to be thinking about himself as a major leaguer today and going forward. And he should be. He’s clearly that level of talented.”
(Mike McGinnis/Getty Images)
Here's the thing lost in the service-time banter: The Phillies can have Kingery in the majors for almost all of the season and still delay his free agency until after the 2024 season. A year of service time is 172 days. Major League Baseball has elongated the 2018 schedule; the Phillies will play their 162-game season in 186 days. Kingery, in theory, could come to the majors on April 13 — for the Phillies' 13th game of the season. He would then spend 171 days in the majors, one day shy of a full year of service time.
There are potential barriers to that. For one, the players' union could have a strong objection to a club manipulating the service-time rules in such an obvious manner. Kingery, who has said all of the right things this spring about his financial future, could file a grievance against the Phillies. (Maikel Franco, whose free-agent clock was delayed by a full year because he was two days short of 172, did that.)
But those negative vibes are not apparent.
The Phillies have a blueprint from Kapler's previous employer, the Los Angeles Dodgers, who summoned top prospect Cody Bellinger last April 25 because of injuries at the major-league level. Bellinger stuck for the season. He played a bunch of left field before assuming his natural position, first base. He accrued 160 days of service time. Bellinger and Kingery are friends; they attended rival high schools in the Phoenix area.
There are other scenarios to make everyone whole: The Tampa Bay Rays delayed Evan Longoria's major-league debut in 2008 by 13 days but then signed him to a six-year contract just six games into his career. That deal guaranteed Longoria $17.5 million but was worth up to $44.5 million. The two sides later agreed to another extension, before the first deal expired.
That initial contract was struck in 2008, when pre-arb deals gained popularity across the game. There are other examples of players with less than a year of service time who signed long-term extensions — Tim Anderson, Salvador Perez, Matt Moore and Jonathan Singleton — but they have become less prevalent in recent years. The current tension between the league and players' union could discourage Kingery's camp from exploring a similar pact. To be clear, this is a hypothetical, and it is not known whether such an idea has even been broached.
“I understand, you have the business side of it, how it works where I get an extra year of control,” Kingery said. “I understand all that stuff.”
The story of how Kingery, 5-foot-10 and 180 pounds, went from a hitter with a .388 slugging percentage in 2016 to one capable of producing prodigious opposite-field homers started 12 years ago when a former Division II baseball player in his early 50s went to his basement in St. Louis and tried to recreate Barry Bonds' swing.
Richard Schenck had two boys who played baseball. In 2006, he scoured the internet for answers to questions about hitting technique. They tried everything. Nothing stuck.
“My wife says I'm obsessive compulsive,” Schenck said. “I went to my basement with my bat and a ball and a tee and a camera. My goal was to duplicate Barry Bonds' swing. I'm a left-handed hitter. He's the best hitter in the game. My theory was, if I could make my swing look like Barry's, I would feel what Barry feels. I would know where his load is. I would know what part of his body is getting stretched to help him swing like he swings.”
What Schenck, who played baseball at Northeast Missouri State (now known as Truman State University), noticed was the amount of speed Bonds' barrel had going backward before moving forward. He began to dissect the complexities of what was, in essence, a simple answer to a difficult question.
“The big thing is to get your barrel up to speed, instantly, before the hands travel,” Schenck, now 63, said. “The hands are going to travel. You can't keep them from traveling forward. But you have to get the barrel up to speed instantly. What I teach, basically, is quickness of the launch. Everybody talks about exit velocity and launch angle. Those things are great. But every slow-pitch softball player in the country that hits home runs has both exit velocity and launch angle. That doesn't mean they can hit a 95-mph fastball.
“So your ability to get your bat up to speed, instantly, is what I taught Scott.”
Kingery met Schenck in January 2017 because the two men share an important acquaintance. Schenck's first client (after his sons) was a minor-league player named David Matranga. He saw immediate results, but it was too late in his career. Matranga retired. He stayed in the game as an agent for PSI Sports Management. Kingery is one of his clients.
Matranga swore by Schenck's ideas. He told his clients they did not have to listen to Schenck, but he offered him as a resource. Kingery went to California, specifically to meet Schenck, because he was frustrated after a 2016 season in which everything he hit had top spin. He could not drive the ball. Schenck showed the players videos of Bonds, Manny Ramirez and George Brett.
“He showed video of Rafael Nadal hitting a forehand, on one leg,” Kingery said. “He's all about staying on that back leg.”
Kingery listened.
“He talked about how quick you can be from the decision to swing to the time you actually swing,” Kingery said. “He said there is a lot of slack in people's swings that throws you off a split second. It decreases your chance of hitting the ball. The way he teaches a swing is you have that split second longer where you can wait to decide if you want to swing and still be able to get the barrel on the ball.”
The first time he tried it, Kingery said, “What is going on?” It did not make sense. Then …
“When I work with a hitter for the first time, within a half hour, he's going to feel something he's never felt before,” Schenck said. “And he's going to love it. It's easy to do, but all of the details to make it happen are hard to understand. Until you get all of the details, you struggle. You have a tendency to revert back when that 95 mph fastball comes at you.”
How does a hitter like Kingery regain that split-second of decision time?
“Here's a good way of summarizing it: When your mind says, 'swing,' that bat has to swing instantly,” Schenck said. “It has to be up to speed as quickly as if you pushed the pinball flipper button and the flipper flipped. Instant. What most hitters do — including many, many big leaguers — is when they say, 'swing,' they still have a little bit of loading left to do. They have to time both the load and the swing. My hitters just time the swing.”
The onus is on the player to stick to the adjustment. It is hard to change habits. Kingery did.
“His season last year,” Schenck said, “was amazing.”
“After the season I had, I was like, why doesn't everyone hit this way?” Kingery said. “You have to buy into it. It's just so different. If you don't buy into it, you can't fully understand it. You can't get it. It feels weird. It feels uncomfortable. But if you make it your natural swing, you start to realize it might be the way people should always hit.”
Schenck employs a radical approach. He has worked with dozens and dozens of hitters. Kingery, he said, was a quick learner. The two men worked together again last October and in January, a few weeks before Kingery arrived at Phillies camp.
“He carries himself real well,” Schenck said. “He has a confidence in his ability. I think he knows something. You know what I mean?”
(Jonathan Dyer/USA TODAY Sports)
When position players are removed from Grapefruit League games, they are permitted to return to the clubhouse in the middle of the game. Almost every player does that. Kingery has opted to stay in the dugout to watch the entire game. That has not gone unnoticed within the Phillies organization.
Opposing scouts have tried to draw comparisons, in both playing style and attitude. Ian Kinsler is one. Chase Utley is another. One National League scout went as far to proclaim this: “Scott Kingery will be a legend in Philadelphia.” These are lofty and, perhaps, unattainable labels. Prospects are hyped more than ever. Projections are wrong more often than not.
But, this spring, Kingery has at least forced the Phillies to think about his immediate future. He has been that impressive.
“He's just got that unique, special makeup that you don't find very often,” Kapler said. “I do think he's a smart kid and he understands a lot of what's going on around him. Nothing discourages him. He's got laser-sharp focus on the step right in front of him — and that is the at-bat or the play in the field.
“He just wants an opportunity to shine. We're giving him an opportunity to shine and he's shining.”
--
https://nypost.com/2018/03/08/hittin...mpression=true
Other things are brewing.
Thanks to all who have continued to support the cause.
There is another article on theathletic.com. This is it....
How Scott Kingery, with his remade swing, could be in the majors as soon as April
By Matt Gelb 33 minutes ago
PORT CHARLOTTE, Fla. — The play will forever be lost to the Grapefruit League ether — witnessed Friday by the 3,560 fans in attendance at Charlotte Sports Park and no one else because, even in 2018, baseball games can exist without television. It was recorded like this: Kean Wong grounds out, second baseman Scott Kingery to first baseman Ryan Flaherty.
“I don't know how many other — if any — second baseman make that play,” Gabe Kapler said.
The runner on first base dashed for second when Aaron Nola began his motion. Kingery did not have coverage; he was deeper in the hole, near first base. Wong hit the ball hard. It was a sharp one-hopper that rocketed toward the middle of the diamond. It looked like a run-scoring single.
“I wasn't sure,” Kingery said. “I think I took a couple steps before I knew: 'All right, maybe if I lay out fully, I can get my glove on it.'”
Kingery lunged. His entire body was parallel to the ground with full extension when the ball popped into his glove. He hopped to his feet and fired a strike to first for the final out.
“There are very few if any second baseman that can make that play, get that jump, have that extension, have the composure and wherewithal to get up and make that throw,” Kapler said. “That floored us all. The dugout was sort of open mouthed. It was, 'Whoa, what just happened?'”
Then, three batters into the next inning, Kingery blasted an opposite-field home run.
A few hours later, after Nola finished jogging around the warning track of a back field, he fiddled with his phone at a table inside the clubhouse. Someone asked about Kingery, the 23-year-old second baseman who has generated every possible superlative this spring but one.
And Nola ended that debate with five words.
“He is a big leaguer,” Nola said. “The guy's a baller, man. He does it at the plate. He hits for power. He does it in the field. That ball he saved for me today, that was awesome. He laid out. It saved a run.
“He's humble, too. An all-around player, if you ask me.”
The Phillies have been in Florida for three weeks. There is no more salient conclusion than this: Scott Kingery will play a meaningful role in the majors this season, and it could be sooner than everyone thinks.
Scott Kingery will not break camp with the Phillies. For that to happen, it would take an unforeseen scenario. The Phillies have their legitimate baseball reasons for starting Kingery at Triple-A Lehigh Valley beyond the unstated truth that they do not want to sacrifice a year of club control on him. Kingery has just 286 plate appearances in the International League. His strikeout rate last season ballooned to 20.3 percent from 16.1 percent. His walk rate dipped to 4.5 percent from 8.8 percent. Cesar Hernandez, the current second baseman, was worth 3.3 WAR in 2017 and he is a productive player.
These are all decent reasons.
There are also legitimate baseball reasons for Kingery to be the second baseman on March 29 in Atlanta. He has That Look. He has impressed his teammates and his coaches and anyone around the Phillies this spring with his acumen. He is gifted, no doubt, but it extends beyond that. There is a feeling about Kingery that excites both hardened baseball men and fresh-faced analytical thinkers.
It is why the Phillies have searched for outside-the-box solutions this spring. Kingery played center field Saturday. It was his first time at the position since his sophomore year at the University of Arizona. He played some third base and shortstop while at Lehigh Valley to end last season. The Phillies view him as their future second baseman, period, but they are open to different ideas for 2018.
Kingery could force those creative solutions into action before April ends.
The dynamic is fascinating. The Phillies, already, will attempt to squeeze four outfielders into three spots. If Kingery is added to the infield equation, the constant shuffling and playing-time balance will be complex. That has not worried Kapler, the rookie manager.
Kapler, instead, has hinted at how Kingery could help his team.
“He can play in the big leagues at many different positions,” Kapler said. “He can play second base, he can play shortstop, he can play centerfield. There's no doubt in my mind that he can handle third base. He can handle both corners. In theory, that's an exciting role for Scott.
“I don't know how this all plays out, but what I can tell you is that his mindset is the right mindset. It is: 'I'm a major-league player right this minute.' And that's the only way we can all think about it. It's very similar to the way we think about winning every baseball game. You're not going to win 162, but you think about winning every baseball game. Scott Kingery has to be thinking about himself as a major leaguer today and going forward. And he should be. He’s clearly that level of talented.”
(Mike McGinnis/Getty Images)
Here's the thing lost in the service-time banter: The Phillies can have Kingery in the majors for almost all of the season and still delay his free agency until after the 2024 season. A year of service time is 172 days. Major League Baseball has elongated the 2018 schedule; the Phillies will play their 162-game season in 186 days. Kingery, in theory, could come to the majors on April 13 — for the Phillies' 13th game of the season. He would then spend 171 days in the majors, one day shy of a full year of service time.
There are potential barriers to that. For one, the players' union could have a strong objection to a club manipulating the service-time rules in such an obvious manner. Kingery, who has said all of the right things this spring about his financial future, could file a grievance against the Phillies. (Maikel Franco, whose free-agent clock was delayed by a full year because he was two days short of 172, did that.)
But those negative vibes are not apparent.
The Phillies have a blueprint from Kapler's previous employer, the Los Angeles Dodgers, who summoned top prospect Cody Bellinger last April 25 because of injuries at the major-league level. Bellinger stuck for the season. He played a bunch of left field before assuming his natural position, first base. He accrued 160 days of service time. Bellinger and Kingery are friends; they attended rival high schools in the Phoenix area.
There are other scenarios to make everyone whole: The Tampa Bay Rays delayed Evan Longoria's major-league debut in 2008 by 13 days but then signed him to a six-year contract just six games into his career. That deal guaranteed Longoria $17.5 million but was worth up to $44.5 million. The two sides later agreed to another extension, before the first deal expired.
That initial contract was struck in 2008, when pre-arb deals gained popularity across the game. There are other examples of players with less than a year of service time who signed long-term extensions — Tim Anderson, Salvador Perez, Matt Moore and Jonathan Singleton — but they have become less prevalent in recent years. The current tension between the league and players' union could discourage Kingery's camp from exploring a similar pact. To be clear, this is a hypothetical, and it is not known whether such an idea has even been broached.
“I understand, you have the business side of it, how it works where I get an extra year of control,” Kingery said. “I understand all that stuff.”
The story of how Kingery, 5-foot-10 and 180 pounds, went from a hitter with a .388 slugging percentage in 2016 to one capable of producing prodigious opposite-field homers started 12 years ago when a former Division II baseball player in his early 50s went to his basement in St. Louis and tried to recreate Barry Bonds' swing.
Richard Schenck had two boys who played baseball. In 2006, he scoured the internet for answers to questions about hitting technique. They tried everything. Nothing stuck.
“My wife says I'm obsessive compulsive,” Schenck said. “I went to my basement with my bat and a ball and a tee and a camera. My goal was to duplicate Barry Bonds' swing. I'm a left-handed hitter. He's the best hitter in the game. My theory was, if I could make my swing look like Barry's, I would feel what Barry feels. I would know where his load is. I would know what part of his body is getting stretched to help him swing like he swings.”
What Schenck, who played baseball at Northeast Missouri State (now known as Truman State University), noticed was the amount of speed Bonds' barrel had going backward before moving forward. He began to dissect the complexities of what was, in essence, a simple answer to a difficult question.
“The big thing is to get your barrel up to speed, instantly, before the hands travel,” Schenck, now 63, said. “The hands are going to travel. You can't keep them from traveling forward. But you have to get the barrel up to speed instantly. What I teach, basically, is quickness of the launch. Everybody talks about exit velocity and launch angle. Those things are great. But every slow-pitch softball player in the country that hits home runs has both exit velocity and launch angle. That doesn't mean they can hit a 95-mph fastball.
“So your ability to get your bat up to speed, instantly, is what I taught Scott.”
Kingery met Schenck in January 2017 because the two men share an important acquaintance. Schenck's first client (after his sons) was a minor-league player named David Matranga. He saw immediate results, but it was too late in his career. Matranga retired. He stayed in the game as an agent for PSI Sports Management. Kingery is one of his clients.
Matranga swore by Schenck's ideas. He told his clients they did not have to listen to Schenck, but he offered him as a resource. Kingery went to California, specifically to meet Schenck, because he was frustrated after a 2016 season in which everything he hit had top spin. He could not drive the ball. Schenck showed the players videos of Bonds, Manny Ramirez and George Brett.
“He showed video of Rafael Nadal hitting a forehand, on one leg,” Kingery said. “He's all about staying on that back leg.”
Kingery listened.
“He talked about how quick you can be from the decision to swing to the time you actually swing,” Kingery said. “He said there is a lot of slack in people's swings that throws you off a split second. It decreases your chance of hitting the ball. The way he teaches a swing is you have that split second longer where you can wait to decide if you want to swing and still be able to get the barrel on the ball.”
The first time he tried it, Kingery said, “What is going on?” It did not make sense. Then …
“When I work with a hitter for the first time, within a half hour, he's going to feel something he's never felt before,” Schenck said. “And he's going to love it. It's easy to do, but all of the details to make it happen are hard to understand. Until you get all of the details, you struggle. You have a tendency to revert back when that 95 mph fastball comes at you.”
How does a hitter like Kingery regain that split-second of decision time?
“Here's a good way of summarizing it: When your mind says, 'swing,' that bat has to swing instantly,” Schenck said. “It has to be up to speed as quickly as if you pushed the pinball flipper button and the flipper flipped. Instant. What most hitters do — including many, many big leaguers — is when they say, 'swing,' they still have a little bit of loading left to do. They have to time both the load and the swing. My hitters just time the swing.”
The onus is on the player to stick to the adjustment. It is hard to change habits. Kingery did.
“His season last year,” Schenck said, “was amazing.”
“After the season I had, I was like, why doesn't everyone hit this way?” Kingery said. “You have to buy into it. It's just so different. If you don't buy into it, you can't fully understand it. You can't get it. It feels weird. It feels uncomfortable. But if you make it your natural swing, you start to realize it might be the way people should always hit.”
Schenck employs a radical approach. He has worked with dozens and dozens of hitters. Kingery, he said, was a quick learner. The two men worked together again last October and in January, a few weeks before Kingery arrived at Phillies camp.
“He carries himself real well,” Schenck said. “He has a confidence in his ability. I think he knows something. You know what I mean?”
(Jonathan Dyer/USA TODAY Sports)
When position players are removed from Grapefruit League games, they are permitted to return to the clubhouse in the middle of the game. Almost every player does that. Kingery has opted to stay in the dugout to watch the entire game. That has not gone unnoticed within the Phillies organization.
Opposing scouts have tried to draw comparisons, in both playing style and attitude. Ian Kinsler is one. Chase Utley is another. One National League scout went as far to proclaim this: “Scott Kingery will be a legend in Philadelphia.” These are lofty and, perhaps, unattainable labels. Prospects are hyped more than ever. Projections are wrong more often than not.
But, this spring, Kingery has at least forced the Phillies to think about his immediate future. He has been that impressive.
“He's just got that unique, special makeup that you don't find very often,” Kapler said. “I do think he's a smart kid and he understands a lot of what's going on around him. Nothing discourages him. He's got laser-sharp focus on the step right in front of him — and that is the at-bat or the play in the field.
“He just wants an opportunity to shine. We're giving him an opportunity to shine and he's shining.”
--
Comment