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A series of swing changes have led to Vilade’s current “toe twist” stride, a very simple cut that leans into his great natural bat control and strength-derived pop. He can make contact with pitches all over the zone but typically does his damage slugging pitches on the inner half, especially wayward lefty fastballs in there. Watch how his groundball rate trends in 2021. The 2019 swing that may have helped bring his groundball rate closer to average (50% previously, down to 42% in ’19) has again been changed, so it’s hard to say how much damage he’s going to be capable of now.
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As the Rockies community has just experienced, things can change quickly. Seeing a team that lacks identity and doesn’t really have a clear path forward, there could be many more changes before the 2021 season starts and up until the trade deadline. So all we can do is look at what we have right now, knowing that everything could change again.
As Dick Monfort explained in last Tuesday’s press conference, Nolan Arenado wanted out and so they traded him. When a reporter asked if Arenado said he would opt out of his contract at the end of 2021 if he didn’t get that trade, Monfort said, “To be quite honest, in all our conversations with him, he never said it was this or that or whatever. We had the choice of waiting until the end of the year and letting him opt out … but the result was the same. So in dealing with this, we tried to find a way to get the greatest return possible.”