Article: Oswaldo Arcia Is Very Good (But He's Not Quite There Yet)

[Parker Hageman]

You can view the page at http://twinsdaily.com/content.php/3084-Oswaldo-Arcia-Is-Very-Good-(But-He-s-Not-Quite-There-Yet)

[lightfoot789]

ARCIA

SANO (except he does take a BB)

ABW II

[jimbo92107]

It's remarkable to me how similar Oswaldo Arcia's swing is to a lefty version of Harmon Killebrew. Same powerful hip turn, same massive thrust of powerful forearms. Almost the same extension on the follow through. With a little better zone management, he's got a chance to be a great one.

[Dman]

Yeah this lineup is going to have some serious speed and power once we get the young guys up and adjusted.

[DK]

Ted Williams once had a similar hitch in his swing. His adjustment was to lower his hands in his stance so that as he would make his stride his hands would naturally come up. Arcia needs to become more of a student of the game and make these adjustments. Sometimes simple adjustments will bring great results.

[abnormal_1]

Love watching Arcia swing. His power is awesome. To truly help Arcia and upcoming prospects such as Sano achieve their potential I think the Twins need to get a coach on the staff that has Latin American roots to help them more rapidly adjust to the bigs.

 

Cant wait to have the Twins with a powerful lineup and a stocked pitching rotation. Meyer, May, etc....

[Monkeypaws]

Yeah, that gif of his swing is impressive, even if he did miss. No wonder this guy hits bombs when he connects.

[jimbo92107]

Ted Williams once had a similar hitch in his swing. His adjustment was to lower his hands in his stance so that as he would make his stride his hands would naturally come up. Arcia needs to become more of a student of the game and make these adjustments. Sometimes simple adjustments will bring great results.

 

True. Williams held his hands where Arcia does after his hitch, about even with his ribs. Not currently kosher, but whatever works. Adjusting to the high pitch must be easier if you start with your hands in the upper third of the strike zone. Still easier to adjust down, but you have a chance to meet the chest high ones.

[Richie the Rally Goat]

The theme with Arcia's next step in his maturation as a hitter seems to fit well with Bruno's M.O.

1) Identify the pitch you want.

2) look for said pitch in hitters counts

3) don't swing at pitches that aren't 1

4) mash the mistake

[Dantes929]

Here's the thing I don't care for. His homerun rate is higher in the majors than it was in the minors. When he was coming up what I really liked was his mix of hitting for average and power but now it looks like he is going for it all on every pitch. When I see him swing I think does he really need to go max effort? A 380 foot homer counts just as much as a 440 foot homer and I would like to see more of the .314 average he had in the minors even if it means a couple fewer homers.

[lightfoot789]

Here's the thing I don't care for. His homerun rate is higher in the majors than it was in the minors. When he was coming up what I really liked was his mix of hitting for average and power but now it looks like he is going for it all on every pitch. When I see him swing I think does he really need to go max effort? A 380 foot homer counts just as much as a 440 foot homer and I would like to see more of the .314 average he had in the minors even if it means a couple fewer homers.

 

The fact is: The HR rate in the MLB is much higher than the FSL; Eastern League; or International League. MLB parks as a whole are smaller in demensions I guess. Meaning if you can play - You should hit more in the MLB than some of the parks you play in at the MiLB level (minors). Maybe he's just doing Oswaldo and having more success with HRs as opposed to balls in the gap that MLB fielders can get to?

http://www.milb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20140205&content_id=66911570&fext=.jsp&vkey=news_milb&sid=milb

[Dantes929]

Thanks lightfoot. That could be and certainly time will tell but has anyone seen him in the minors over the years? Is he swinging harder now? Reminds be a little of Hrbek. Don't get me wrong. He was a great player but he had such a good swing I always thought that if he had settled on one stance and used the whole park he could have been much more like Muguel Cabrerra and had a shot at the HOF. He hit moon shots for home runs that were fun to watch but he was the original guy that made me think clearing the fence by 100 feet wasn't really necessary. On the topic of current Twins reminding me of former Twins I was happy to hear Santana say we shouldn't expect many more homers out of him since that is not his game. I often wondered if Nick Punto could have been much better except for the fact that when he hit a rare home run he spent the next couple of months trying to hit another one. He just seemed way more concerned with his home run total than his batting average by how hard he would swing.

[70charger]

The fact is: The HR rate in the MLB is much higher than the FSL; Eastern League; or International League. MLB parks as a whole are smaller in demensions I guess. Meaning if you can play - You should hit more in the MLB than some of the parks you play in at the MiLB level (minors). Maybe he's just doing Oswaldo and having more success with HRs as opposed to balls in the gap that MLB fielders can get to?

http://www.milb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20140205&content_id=66911570&fext=.jsp&vkey=news_milb&sid=milb

 

 

I'm not an expert on park dimensions or anything, but it seems to me that the more likely explanation for a higher HR rate in the majors than in the minors is simple survivorship bias. Only the best hitters ever make it to the bigs, but you'll see guys playing in the Florida State League whose next stop will be town ball.

 

Of course that doesn't explain Ozzie's bump, but I'd think that this early in his career it's more of a statistical anomaly than anything. If he kept up this home run rate, he'd hit 100 every year.