Phillies prospect Scott Kingery may be snapping out of his slump, as SB Nation blog The Good Phight explains, using TruMedia imagery…

“First, let’s set the baseline. For the first three weeks in May, Kingery continued to struggle to put a good bat on the ball. Just look at the spray chart.

There is exactly ONE ball that made it into left field for three weeks, and that came on May 19 against St. Louis, near the tail end of that stretch. Every single other ball on the left side of the infield was a grounder, save for one pop-up just to the left of second base. There was just no good contact whatsoever.

In the last six games, however, Kingery has already had five line drives off the bat; one more than he had in the previous three weeks.

Not swinging and missing at pitches over the plate has helped. He’s probably still leaking and reaching over the plate a bit too much, but at least the empty flails haven’t been as prevalent.”

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The struggles of Phillies pitcher Tommy Hunter stem in part from more hittable pitches, as his heatmaps show in this SB Nation article…

“Take a look at the heat maps for Hunter from 2017 and 2018. You can see that in 2018, there is a noticeable amount of pitches that are located in more hittable places the hitting zone than there were last year. In 2017, you see that the red is showing up more often below the belt and down against righties, whereas this year, there is more in the middle and up. Seeing pitches in those places helps jive with the numbers that hitters are producing against Hunter.”

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On SB Nation's Phillies blog, Paul Boyé looks at Rhys Hoskins' struggles against the changeup.

"Entering Saturday afternoon’s game, Hoskins had seen exactly 100 changeups in all counts, according to TruMedia. ...

In 2-1 counts, Hoskins is being baited. He’s waiting for a fastball, and instead he’s getting the string pulled on him fairly frequently. And when that string gets pulled, well, you see what’s been happening.

Now, that’s not an AB-ender. A 2-1 whiff gives you another shot, and Hoskins has been more than capable of handling himself in two-strike counts. Lately, though, the changeup has been used with incredible effectiveness against him in those two-strike counts."

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On SB Nation's Phillies blog, Paul Boyé uses TruMedia's platform and graphics to show how Aaron Nola is succeeding by pitching to bad contact.

"Let’s start with the recently resurgent changeup, which Nola threw a career-high-matching 28 times Friday. He’s thrown 104 of them on the year now, and given up exactly five hits.

The above TruMedia heatmaps represent Nola’s changeup locations and SLG allowed, respectively. He’s locating it exceptionally well, and hitters are doing squat with it. The spots are in line with how he’s normally located the pitch, but he’s hung fewer over the heart of the plate and, as a result, been victimized less. That’s usually a pretty good recipe for success, and the contact rates bear that out so far."

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