ASU 55 Notre Dame 31 DJ Foster 130 all purpose yds

Sun Devils beat Irish on the big stage

Ross DunhamDevilsDigest.com Staff Writer

It was a roller coaster of emotions for the Arizona State faithful on Saturday, but the Devils eventually pulled out the win over Notre Dame in front of 65,870 raucous fans at Sun Devil Stadium.

In a game with plenty of hype leading up to kickoff, No. 9 Arizona State bent, didn’t break, and turned it on in the final minutes of the game to win 55-31 over No. 10 Notre Dame.
The last time ASU beat a top-ten opponent was all the way back in 2002, when the Devils went into Eugene and edged out No. 6 Oregon 45-42.
“It’s huge getting a win on the national stage; that’s big time for this program and where it is headed,” quarterback Taylor Kelly said. “Guys are doing a tremendous job getting better each week in practice, trusting the coaches, watching film and making the sacrifices. We came together as a family tonight even more.”
Added D.J. Foster: “I think that we knew that this was the hump that we needed to get over to make our name nationally. We knew that we needed to get this win to impress some people.”
The Sun Devils (8-1, 5-1) took a 24-point lead into half, only to see Notre Dame (7-2) charge back and get it to a three-point ball game with just under seven minutes to play in the fourth quarter.
With all of the momentum on the Irish’s sideline, Taylor Kelly and the Sun Devil offense drove 75 yards in five plays, scoring on a rollout pass from Kelly to freshman Demario Richard to extend the lead back to 10.
“Our captains on offense just kept on talking, saying we needed to have our defense’s back,” ASU running back D.J. Foster said. “As you can see the defense battled the entire game so we needed to have their back and show up for them. We kept talking, ‘We have got to put together a drive, this is it,’ and we did.”
The Devils dominated the remaining four minutes, scoring two more times – the first coming on an electrifying 58-yard pick-six from Lloyd Carrington, and the second on a fourth down Kelly bootleg from two yards out.
“Nobody flinched,” Kelly said. “Our defense had our back and we had theirs. Our coaches just kept telling us to trust our eyes, and trust the fundamentals and our leaders stepped up and we made some big plays when we needed to.”
The story of the first half – and the game as a whole – was the ability of the ASU defense to generate turnovers, and force Notre Dame signal caller Everett Golson into mistakes. Golson threw four interceptions, and had one fumble on the day. The ASU defense easily had its most impressive game of the year with seven sacks, pressuring Golson seemingly all afternoon long.
“We just knew that we had to get a lot of pressure against them because he is very mobile,” safety Damarious Randall said. “And we knew in his last five games that they’ve turned the ball over 12 times so we just wanted to take advantage of that.”
After the ASU offense turned a Marcus Hardison interception into points off a Richard one-yard touchdown run, the Sun Devil defense stepped up once again on the ensuing Notre Dame drive.
The Irish had driven into ASU territory, and on a second down play, Hardison reached up and tipped a pass from Golson, only to see it land into the waiting hands of Randall, who promptly took it the other way for six.
“We were in man-to-man coverage, and I was guarding the inside guy,” Randall said. “My guy went to run a slant but the ball was tipped and I just saw the ball up in the air and went up and got it, and touchdown.”
Down 34-10, Notre Dame wouldn’t go easy in the second half. The Irish were moving the ball with ease, and would’ve scored more than just seven in the third quarter had Golson not thrown an interception to corner Kweishi Brown in the red zone.
Yet, to start the second half, Notre Dame scored 21 unanswered points and pulled within three. ASU then matched that with a 21-point run of its own to close out the game.
In the fourth quarter alone, D.J. Foster had 50 yards of rushing on eight carries, and Richard spelled him with 16 yards on four to go along with his 44 yards receiving.
“He’s the yin to my yang,” Foster said of the 17-year-old Richard. “I’m proud of that kid. I’ve seen him grow so much since he’s gotten here. It’s unbelievable to see his growth and what he’s doing for this team.”
Richard has developed into the lead back when offensive coordinator Mike Norvell calls for Foster to line up as a receiver in the slot. With two touchdowns on the day, the freshman is proving his worth.
“He’s added a lot,” Kelly said. “With how deadly we are at receiver, and you add one more with D.J. out there with the speed. With (Richard) in the backfield, he’s just a little pinball and he keeps trusting his hole and runs super hard. You have to account for him, for D.J., Jaelen and all those playmakers.”
The Devils’ offense did what it needed to do on a day where the defense shined in order to secure the win. The victory is arguably one of the biggest at Sun Devil Stadium since the shutout of No. 1 Nebraska in 1996. ASU is earning the attention that is sure to come, and the players are relishing in it, even approaching things with a bit of swagger.
“I don’t think I would want to play ASU up in Tempe,” Randall said.
Added Foster: “All the pieces of the puzzle are coming together and it’s just a sight to see.”

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Alex Dopp Gammons Daily The Brewers Jean Segura

Jean Segura Can Succeed in 2015, and Here’s How

November 7, 2014 by Alec Dopp 1 Comment

What’s up with Jean Segura?
That’s the question many Milwaukee Brewers fans have asked over the past year and a half with respect to the offensive production of their club’s starting shortstop, and understandably so. The centerpiece to the deal that shipped Zack Greinke to Los Angeles in July of 2012, Segura, touted by Baseball Prospectus as the Angels’ No. 2 prospect behind Mike Trout three Februarys ago, has undergone significant offensive setbacks since the All-Star break of 2013, which has subsequently placed doubt among many as to whether or not the organization would be wise to commit to him long-term.
But what caliber of regressions are we talking about here? As has already been stated (and can’t really be stated enough), massive ones. Value-wise, Segura has accrued a win probability added of -1.92 since representing the National League in the Big Apple two summers ago, which was no doubt a product of his .244/.283/.322 line and weighted runs created plus of 64 in that span. To put it bluntly, that’s bad. It was an entirely different story offensively for Segura prior to that, as you may have anticipated, slashing .325/.363/.487 en route to a team-high 2.30 WPA and wRC+ of 133 — numbers that made him the most valuable shortstop in baseball over the first half of 2013.
If we’re looking for a reason behind these regressions, it would be irresponsible for us not to take into consideration the unimaginable hardships that have befallen Segura of late. This past April, the 24-year-old was struck in the head by the bat of Ryan Braun in Milwaukee’s dugout — a freak accident that required stitches and probably unnerved the young infielder during the weeks that followed. Then, in July, Segura’s 9-month-old son tragically passed away in the Dominican Republic. Devoting 100% of your thoughts and physical efforts to baseball after events like these seems next to impossible.
Still, there are concrete explanations for Segura’s relapse at the dish, though not the ones that typically come along with such levels of regression. For one, his walk-to-strikeout ratio prior to the 2013 All-Star break (0.35) has remained steady since (0.34). Secondly, he’s hit only a slightly fewer amount of frozen ropes (17.6% line-drive rate since July 18, 2013, down from 19.2% prior), and thirdly, his ground-ball rate has increased by less than one percent (58.2% to 59.1%). When I try to understand a hitters’ success or failure over an extended period of playing time, numbers like these carry weight over most others, for me.
Maybe we need to simplify things. Let’s get back to the basics and see where Segura hit the baseball.

Jean Segura Outfield Spray Chart Comparison

Bill Schroeder, a longtime Brewers television color commentator for FOX Sports, receives flack from time to time for the things he says. But one thing he’s absolutely right about is the importance of hitting the ball to the opposite field. “You know he’s seeing the ball well when he takes it to right field,” Schroeder says every time — and I do mean every time — a right-handed batter (or left-handed, for that matter) goes oppo for a base knock. If you take in those words as much as I have over the years, their value might begin to subside. But in Segura’s case, they’re one of the root causes behind his recent struggles. And here’s why.
Exactly 25.5% of Segura’s balls hit in play prior to the 2013 All-Star game were to right field, which is to say, the ‘opposite’ field. His batting average on those balls in play was .415. Meanwhile, 55.2% of his balls in play were located to center field, and only 19.2% were to his pull side (i.e. left field). Since the 2013 All-Star game, though, his opposite field percentage has decreased to 21.5% and his average on those balls in play has been .200. Concurrently, his center field rate his diminished to 49.2%, though his pull rate has increased to 29.2% — a healthy 10% increase in the frequency of pitches he’s yanked to left field.
Though these numbers are concerning, they are not in and of themselves the most worrisome aspect of his lagging production over the past year and a half. Rather, for me, the biggest reason for is his quality of contact. Overall, Segura’s hard-hit average has fallen from .163 prior to the 2013 All-Star break to .124 since. These are both well below league average, which is .200 for righties over the past two seasons. These problems have been exacerbated on pitches hit to the opposite field, though, as his opposite-field hard-hit average has nearly halved from .188 to .101. I suppose we now know the reason of why his opposite-field batting average has dropped so considerably.
Now that we understand some of the tendencies and subsequent statistical regressions behind Segura’s lack of offense over the past year and a half, let’s focus on the root cause of everything: The outer third portion of the strike zone. It is here were Segura’s quality of contact has most suffered of late, posted a hard-hit average of .071 — yikes — since the All-Star break of 2013, which placed him among the bottom 7% of qualifiers in this respect. Squaring up outer-third pitches hadn’t been an issue for him before; his .146 hard-hit average prior to the 2013 midsummer classic was essentially league average, which was .150 in that span, to be precise.
Like everything else, these struggles can be explained through video review.




Nothing significant or even noticeable has changed about Segura’s pre-swing mechanics over both spans, which is somewhat good news. So often hitters’ struggles (or successes) are born out of foot placement, bend at the knees, hand positioning, bat angle, etc., all things that transpire prior to the pitch. Thus, identifying such usually says why a hitter has failed (or succeeded) in certain situations — i.e., fix this simple mechanical issue, and you’ll do better.
But there’s also bad news. Because we’ve discerned consistent pre-swing mechanics for Segura over these past two seasons, his struggles, particularly with the outer-third of the plate, lead me to believe that he is struggling mightily with pitch recognition. The two pictures above help illustrate the point I’m trying to make here.
The first picture shows ideal mechanics at the point of contact with an outer-third offering. Segura keeps his roughly 60% of his weight on his back foot, maintains a stiff front leg, bends his back knee nearly to the ground and explodes through the hips en route to an opposite-field home run. Beautiful mechanics. Beautiful.
As for the second image, a few things have changed. Namely, Segura is attempting to muscle a clearly outside pitch to the opposite field — and to his credit, he managed a home run to left center. Indeed, the box score said he accrued four total bases on that swing. Awesome! Well, maybe not so much. What happened to dropping that back knee down? What about keeping your weight back and clearing the hips?
I hope these numbers and images have helped illuminate my make point: Segura has struggled immensely with pitch recognition since the All-Star break two years ago. Yes, his overall plate discipline numbers have been consistent and, yes, his line drive rate has dropped only minimally.
But for Segura to be a cornerstone to Milwaukee’s future, he must work diligently on his ability to recognize different offerings, cover the outer third of the plate and drive the ball to the opposite field with force.
Heck, he did it once, so who’s to say he can’t do it again?
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Statistics courtesy of TruMedia Networks LLC and FanGraphs.com.
Alec Dopp is a contributor to Gammons Daily and also covers the Green Bay Gamblers of the United States Hockey League. Connect with him on LinkedIn and give him a follow on Twitter @alecdopp