The Hardball Times: Jack Cust eats fastballs for lunch

• tangotiger

  +1

  Fantastic.

  Posted 3/31/2008 [reply] [flag]

• BJ & the Tear

  +1

  Agreed. This is impressive, and wonderfully informative. The list of hitters for which I'd like to see this analysis balloons... Why not try my man B.J. Upton next, since folks are so torn on him....?

  Posted 3/31/2008 [reply] [flag]

• mikefast

  +1

  Thank you both.

  An analysis of Upton is an interesting idea.

  Posted 3/31/2008 [reply] [flag]

• ummfada

  +1

  I want to see Mike Lowell's (up-n-inside fastball eater)

  Posted 3/31/2008 [reply] [flag]

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Links (6)

THT: Fast: Jack Cust eats fastballs for lunch
Published 3/31/2008 at BBTF's Baseball Primer Newsblog
THT: Fast: Jack Cust eats fastballs for lunch “Yeah wall to wall Door to door Hall to hall He’s gonna eat ‘em all” Why pitchers didn’t throw Jack Cust more curveballs, I don’t know. It’s true that a curveball is among the hardest pitches to throw for a strike, and that’s doubly true against a hitter like Cust who doesn’t chase many bad pitches at all, but he seems to have plenty of weaknesses against the curve. Left-handed pitchers appear to have tried to throw the curveball down and away, missing the strike zone for a ball 62 percent of the time. However, when they got ...

Jack Cust, Quadruple A hitter?
Published 3/31/2008 by Tangotiger (tangotiger@yahoo.com) at THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball
... You know, those guys who the “professionals” think feast on certain types of pitching that they can no longer leverage in the higher levels, those guys are called “Quadruple A” hitters.  I’m not suggesting that they don’t exist.  I’m sure they do.  Can scouts really pick them apart?  It’s possible.  Anyway, insofar as Jack Cust is concerned, the fabulous Mike Fast says: ...

Reassuring wins = fun in the neighborhood
Published 4/2/2008 by Dan Lamothe, Red Sox Monster at Red Sox Monster - MassLive.com
... is any indication, though... well, things just got a bit cheerier at Red Sox Monster headquarters. Facing the same team for the second time in a week, Matsuzaka shook off a second-inning home run by Oakland's Jack Cust (who apparently eats fastballs for lunch ) to frustrate the A's into the seventh inning. ...

Friday links
Published 4/4/2008 by MB at Friar Forecast
A bullet-point, abbreviated edition: Cust Eats Fastballs for Lunch — This is what happens when Mike Fast takes on hitters …. Tango’s Clutch project – Tango talks about his clutch project at HBT. How important is the narrative? – Great post on WPA and clutchness. Third Base coaches — The usual cool work from Pizza Cutter. MVP candidates — Melvin reports that the Pads have had a player in the top 10 of each MVP race since ‘04. Didn’t know that. ...

Advance Scout: Athletics, April 8-10
Published 4/8/2008 by Alex Obal at Batter's Box Interactive Magazine
... except taken to ridiculously outlandish extremes. So how do you get him out? My answer: throw breaking balls! Then I realized Mike Fast at the Hardball Times had already done it in absolutely amazing detail, so I'm just going to link to him and be done with it. ...

Catfish Stew: Optimizing the DH
Published 24 days ago at Baseball Toaster
The A's are 12-8 so far, despite getting almost no production out of their primary projected power source, Jack Cust. The A's are dead last the majors in hitting home runs--only seven combined homers for the entire team. The Blue Jays' release of Frank Thomas makes it worth a look to see if the A's can get better production out of their DH spot than they're getting from Cust. Perhaps Cust is just a one-year wonder--teams have figured out that Cust only hits fastballs , and are giving him nothing but soft stuff until he adjusts, and he might not adjust. So let's take a look at ...