This article is part of our Collette Calls series.
I also don't care much for the All-Star Game. I normally watch it because it is still baseball and there is nothing else worth watching at the time, but I can't even do that this year because I will be flying home from Florida after a business trip and won't get on the ground until 11 p.m. Even if I could watch it, I may have sat it out in protest because Jake Lamb is not there. After all, ESPN's Boog Sciambi pointed out the following:
Last 6 years 42 guys have had first half OPS of 960+...41 have made the All Star Team, Jake Lamb the only to miss out--per Az notes. Wow.
— Jon Sciambi (@BoogSciambi) July 10, 2016
Wow, indeed.
I have no personal
I also don't care much for the All-Star Game. I normally watch it because it is still baseball and there is nothing else worth watching at the time, but I can't even do that this year because I will be flying home from Florida after a business trip and won't get on the ground until 11 p.m. Even if I could watch it, I may have sat it out in protest because Jake Lamb is not there. After all, ESPN's Boog Sciambi pointed out the following:
Last 6 years 42 guys have had first half OPS of 960+...41 have made the All Star Team, Jake Lamb the only to miss out--per Az notes. Wow.
— Jon Sciambi (@BoogSciambi) July 10, 2016
Wow, indeed.
I have no personal attachment to Lamb, and I get that there's a log jam at his position on the roster, but it is a damn shame that his awesome season won't get the national recognition that comes with going to the All-Star Game. As play began Sunday, Lamb was hitting .290/.371/.615 and as I type this, he just busted up Madison Bumgarner's no-hit bid in the 8th inning with a clean single to right field. The season's effort has been so good, that a Twitter follower asked the following:
@sporer@jasoncollette@enosarris Anything to indicate J. Lamb not for real? I'm thinking about dealing the Frazier name value. Do it?
— Joshua N. Canavan (@JNCvan) July 9, 2016
Flash back to March, and the thought of trading Todd Frazier for Jake Lamb would have been laughed at. Now, it doesn't look so funny. While Frazier may have five more homers, Lamb smokes him in batting average by 75 points and by 63 points in OBP. What's crazy about what Lamb is doing is that a lot of his statistics do not look much different than what he did last year. In terms of taking pitches, making contact and putting pitches into play, 2016 looks a lot like 2015:
| STAT | 2015 | 2016 |
| K% | 25% | 25% |
| BB% | 9% | 11% |
| GB% | 45% | 46% |
| FB% | 32% | 34% |
What is different with Lamb is that he is pulling the ball more frequently this season and when he gets the ball in the air, it has been leaving the yard four times as much as it was last year.
| STAT | 2015 | 2016 |
| HR/FB | 7% | 29% |
| PULL% | 39% | 50% |
The reason that has happened is Lamb has overhauled his swing, something FanGraphs' Eno Sarris mentioned in mid-March as he was doing his tour of the Cactus League. Eno made the following prediction as one of his 10 bold fantasy predictions for 2016 (just overlook the one about Shelby Miller):
4) Jake Lamb will hit 20 home runs.Call me Jesus because I love the Lambs. Jake Lamb is on the same list of potential young surgers as Marcell Ozuna, but that's not the only reason I like him. He's put a year of adjustments behind him, but that's not even it. He played with a hurt left foot last year, and that tends to depress production and future projections, and we're getting closer now. What I really like is that Lamb hit too many ground balls last year, took a look inward, and decided to change. He's currently working on more of an upper cut swing that will fit better with this league's focus on the low strike, and will give him more power in a good park for power. He's not going to cost you much to find out, too.
We know that Lamb is not hitting fewer groundballs, but he is doing a lot more with the ones he does elevate based on the changes he made to his swing. The changes were not as much about an upper cut as much as him staying in the hitting zone longer, something he wanted to do after watching A.J. Pollock break out in 2015. We know this from a story by AZCentral.com's Nick Piecoro on March 20 where he quotes Lamb on why he was doing what he was doing and included this bit:
Last year, Lamb started his hands higher, up around his head, and when he swung they angled down before his bat began moving directly forward. This year, his hands are lower, so when he begins his swing he's cutting a straighter line through the zone.
ESPN.com's Mark Simon has pictures of what that change looks like from the side view for Lamb in an article that went up over the weekend. If a batter wants to keep his swing in the zone longer, getting the bat there quicker allows that to happen. Lamb, having his hands up high, was taking an indirect route through the strike zone that limited his window of success. With his hands lowered, his path has become more direct.
Along with that, he has also incorporated a leg kick. This was something he did working with a former college teammate, team hitting coach Dave Magadan, as well as private hitting guru Bob Tewksbary. If that name is not familiar to you, perhaps you know his most famous pupil – Josh Donaldson. The video below is done by Tewksbary as he explains the benefit of the leg lift to the swing:
Lamb is getting different results in 2016 because he is not the same hitter at the plate he was in 2015. He was reworked his swing to eliminate wasted hand movement and allow him to get to the zone quicker and keep his bat in the zone longer while balanced on the leg kick. This recipe has worked out very well for Donaldson and at 25, Lamb is having a breakout that people (Eno) saw as his bold prediction for 2016 when in fact, Lamb is already there in fewer than 90 games.
Lamb continues to have a friendly home park to enhance his newfound power stroke and has Coors Field a few times a year too. This is not a fluke; this is a process change that is leading to better results. It's a shame he is not in San Diego to showcase his talents to a national audience, but there are certainly many fantasy owners who are appreciative of the value he has produced this season.
