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Shady typed ~ t8ball12, despite Burleson’s .375 BA in ST, you don’t seem to be too high on him. Do you feel Burleson deserves to start against the RHP in the opener?
That’s not what you asked or claimed. I answered/replied based off your question/claim if Burleson would be the DH against LHP going forward. Herrera’s timely HR seemed to help his own cause. Matt Carpenter even hit LHP pitching in ST, and out OPS’d Burleson in those meaningless Spring Training stats.
Burleson will get AB’s against someone in some situation, it won’t mean that he’s more special to Oli, than any other player. He’ll be 1 of 4 bench guys getting AB’s. Then 1 by 1, Carlson, Nootbaar, and Edman start to return….who stays? who goes? Will an AB in spring training really matter? No.
Only what is current, and what the current need is.
Cranny typed ~ In 2023, against LH starting pitchers, in 18 games Burleson slashed .056/.308/.111/.419.
Cranny you’re all over the place with Burleson, no disrpect intended. On one hand you quote 2023 stats from the Majors against Burleson, then you flip around and give an adamant defense by quoting 2022 Minor League stats with Memphis.
yeah….
Burleson’s defensive and base running limitations have held him back from a starting role despite injuries to 3 outfielders. This should have been his time.
He has a a solid spring and could help the team this season if he can hit with a bit more power. We’ll see.
The disrespect for Burleson’s hitting ability by many posters is astounding. I see a very talented hitter in Burleson. Especially, after having to see all those strikeout prone Cardinals hitters recently. To each their own.
When he hits .300 in the Big Leagues, I’ll proclaim him as the second coming of Kruk. Baseball couuld use another Kruk…Haha!
When he hits .300 in the Big Leagues, I’ll proclaim him as the second coming of Kruk. Baseball couuld use another Kruk…Haha!
1TD, I know you’re just joking, but Kruk had a career 14.1% BB-rate, .397 OBP, .341 BABIP, and 134 OPS+. He was a super-disciplined on-base machine. About the only thing he and Burleson have in common is they’re both a bit portly and don’t strike out a lot.
Yes, he was definitely a character. Just saying he was a lot more (ie, better) than just a .300 hitter. Historically underrated as a hitter.
Yep, a .397 career OBP demands attention. I always liked that ’93 Phillies team. They were loaded with characters. I even liked Dykstra. As a baseball player…
The main questions are whether Burleson can hit for power and if he can play an adequate left field.
The plate discipline issue/question is more fundamental and affects all of the other issues: BB%, OBP, power/ISO, barrel%, and even BABIP. Unfortunately, the defensive liabilities appear to be more of a given within some reasonable range of outcomes. He’s probably a DH/1B, and that raises the bar even higher on what he has to be as a hitter.
Burleson’s a member of my favorite team, so obviously I’d like to see him do good and produce. But at the end of the day he’s not one of the players on this ’24 roster that I feel is anywhere near a lynchpin to the team’s success. I don’t expect him to have an impact that could be termed pronounced. Judging from the length of this thread, I’d say I’m in the minority.
They should burn Burlesons gloves. But he’s earned the dh spot against rh sp going forward. He will need to keep his slug and ops up to retain that position.
Earlier I mentioned bent knee and longer through the zone, for Burly, and he had an AB like that in the last game.
It was an outside pitch and he was early, but he bought some time with the front knee and kept his hands back.
It was a let-off swing, out front, but he stayed on it long enough to keep it fair down the LF line. Out front was the accomplishment I liked. He bent his knee and drifted to make the out front timing work.
I am ice cold on his weak contact. Unless he starts to drive the ball, I am not sure he stays in the majors with STL (given his poor fielding) when the injured guys start coming back.
Fair points. With a fully healthy roster, and despite his good spring, Burly probably wasn’t going to make the team. The plan was for Carlson to be the fourth OF and the bench was filled up with the signings of Carpenter and Crawford.
As already mentioned, Burleson has another opportunity to change the plans.
I see these “weak contact” concerns regarding Burleson. What about the “rockets” that often come off his bat? Almost all MLB hitters have occasional “weak contact”. And many strike out at a much higher rate than Burleson.
Burleson has a 5.9% barrel rate, which is 26th percentile in MLB. That at least partially explains his low BABIP. Average EV plus bad launch angles generally result in outs.
And again, he sees 3.57 pitches per PA, which would have ranked him 6th from last in MLB among qualified players last year. It’s hard to strike out much when you swing early and often at bad pitches (35% O-swing%), have good contact skill, and therefore rarely get deep enough in the count to reach 2-strikes (and as a result rarely BB and rarely K). One has to bury one’s head pretty deep in the sand not to see the obvious interrelationships among these various metrics.
Shady typed ~ I see these “weak contact” concerns regarding Burleson. What about the “rockets” that often come off his bat? Almost all MLB hitters have occasional “weak contact”. And many strike out at a much higher rate than Burleson.
He ranked near the bottom of all Cardinals Regulars in Exit Velocity and Barrel Rate last year. He had more than the “occasional weak contact”. You can’t ignore the facts anymore.
Didn’t Burleson have some kind of a very high “bad luck” rate that was one of the hightest in MLB last season? Sorry, I don’t have the specifics. But what I gathered is, he hit a lot of hard hit balls that were at the defense. Sometimes, bad luck is involved in hitting.
If you just look at his batting average on balls in play, then yeah, you might conclude that he has bad luck. But the reality is that he makes a lot of poor contact by swinging at pitches he shouldn’t which causes a lot of outs. He also is a slow runner so he’s not beating out any poor contact slow rollers. TBall and RBK are right, he needs to make better swing decisions to stay up.
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