Batters picturing easier adjustments
In-game checks of video return with restrictions after ban in 2020
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Yuli Gurriel played 12 seasons in the Cuban National Series, ascending from a 17year-old kid to almost deified status in his baseballcrazed country. He had a 1.000 OPS in six of his 12 seasons. Three others ended with a .900 clip or better. Gurriel gained the title of Cuba’s best hitter with a basic approach better suited for a bygone era.
“We never watched video,” Gurriel said recently. “We saw the pitcher and said ‘OK, let’s go.’ ”
Upon arrival into America and the Astros organization, Gurriel got an introduction to more modern methods. The team loves video. Houston’s two hitting coaches use it frequently to diagnose mechanical flaws and better understand opposing pitch designs. Gurriel grew intrigued and was soon sold. He’s among a group of veteran Astros hitters who place a premium on ingame video study — a luxury taken away last season.
Without access to ingame video, Gurriel and the
Astros produced one of the worst offensive seasons during their golden era. Gurriel and Jose Altuve ended the regular season with an OPS below .630. Carlos Correa mustered a .709 mark. The team finished with a batting average, slugging percentage and OPS all below the major league average — almost inexcusable for a lineup littered with some of the sport’s most established
names.
Gurriel acknowledged earlier this spring that his contract situation and conditioning factored into his poor play. Altuve dealt with deaths in his family, according to manager Dusty Baker. Alex Bregman strained his hamstring in August and interrupted a nice season. Ascribing all of the Astros’ anemia to a lack of video is disingenuous, but the absence cannot be overstated.
“Of all the strange things that happened last year, it was one of the most important things I think I was without,” Gurriel said through an interpreter. “It had an impact on my performance. I’m not excusing what it was, but I think it definitely had an impact.”
Video will return to dugouts for the 2021 season, but the frustration surrounding its initial removal might always remain. Eliminating video in 2020 technically arrived as part of last season’s health and safety protocols, agreed upon by both Major League Baseball and the Players Association.
Players often congregate inside a cramped replay room to analyze their atbats between innings, not adhering to any social distancing standards. The league’s operations manual banned all players and staff from replay rooms. It suggested the rule promoted safety, but the measure had obvious deeper roots tied back to Houston.
The 2017 Astros and 2018 Red Sox engineered illegal sign-stealing schemes inside their replay rooms. The punishments commissioner Rob Manfred issued in January 2020 for the Astros’ wrongdoings led the sport to a crossroads about a growing problem that had long been either ignored or silently acknowledged. In a February 2020 interview with ESPN, Manfred vowed to “have really serious restrictions on player and player personnel access to video in-game” during the 2020 season.
Manfred’s words coalesced with COVID-19 health and safety protocols to form a narrative around baseball. In lamenting his lack of video last September, Cubs shortstop Javy Baez told reporters “we’re not cheating, and we have to pay for all this.” A month earlier, Rays manager Kevin Cash lambasted the league’s protocols, telling MLB Network Radio that in-game video “(has) been taken away from us because of one team, or a couple teams’, stupid choices.”
“It is asinine,” Cash told the radio station. “The entire protocol system, how they came up with that, it is wrong. They're doing an injustice to players.”
The league will bring video back to dugouts in 2021. The operations manual still prohibits any “communal video terminals” like replay rooms but will allow iPads inside the dugout. Video on the iPads will begin after a catcher displays his signs and run on a half-inning delay, a person with knowledge of the rules said.
In any form, the access will be welcomed by most hitters in baseball — especially the core of Astros veterans who struggled so mightily last season.
“We definitely like video,” third-year Astros hitting coach Troy Snitker said this week. “We don’t like to guess about things. We want to make sure that when we’re making adjustments, we’re making them for the right reasons. We have a lot of veteran players who know what they want to see. They know what they’re looking for, they know how to make adjustments, and sometimes one of the most important things is knowing which adjustment to make, because they’re capable of doing it often in a game.”
Last season, while his hitters struggled to sustain any rhythm, Snitker mentioned the lineup’s uncanny ability to make midgame adjustments. Video, he said, is crucial to it. Snitker described video as a validation of sorts, a way players can “bridge the gap” between what they’re thinking and what is actually occurring.
“Not being able to know things that you’re doing wrong mechanically with your swing — if you’re striding too long, striding too open, if you’re too closed off with your upper body — all those little things that you see on the video, you go out in the next at-bat and fix can’t be done without video,” said Correa, who slugged .383 last regular season before exploding in the playoffs.
“At the end of the day, you cannot see yourself when you’re out there swinging the bat. Having the video to rely on and make those adjustments is going to be huge.”
In spring training, Bregman can often be seen studying one of the Astros’ iPads after finishing a round of batting practice. He acknowledged Tuesday that he likes having ingame video available but doesn’t “get too much caught up” in it. Others, like former Astros outfielder George Springer, almost never use in-game video. Springer finished last season with a team-high .540 slugging percentage and .899 OPS. Kyle Tucker and Michael Brantley posted above average seasons, too, despite the dearth of video.
Players utilize the video for their own approach and a quick scouting report on the opposition. Houston hitters often gather around Snitker and hitting coach Alex Cintron while a new reliever throws his warmup tosses. All focus is on an iPad.
“It’s definitely helpful ingame to be able to see some pitch shapes and things that might be a little bit different than what you prepared for going in,” catcher Jason Castro said. “I think that was the biggest thing. Some days a guy might be throwing something that’s a little bit different than you’ve maybe seen in the past.
“Getting that feed ingame to be able to make some adjustments is really important, especially with guys coming out of the (bullpen) and being able to be on top of those things. It’s definitely something we’ll look forward to.”