How Trevor Story can get better

Story aims to sharpen shortcomings this winter | Rockies.com

Thomas Harding reviews Trevor Story’s 2019 season and looks ahead to 2020. Story has established himself as one of the best players in the National League, through his improvements at the plate and major strides at shortstop. Like all players though, Story can still get better. The major area he can improve is the one that led many people to think he’d struggle hitting major league pitching in general: strikeouts. After his first couple of seasons, Story managed to reduce his strikeouts to around 25%. That was progress from the 30% he was at, but still not great. Compare that to Nolan Arenado, whose career high strikeout rate in a single season was 18%.

Things can change, but it seems like strikeouts will always be a part of Trevor’s offensive game. Reducing strikeouts is a way for him to get better, but it’s not exactly a big problem right now.

Saunders: A salute to Yankees’ DJ LeMahieu, baseball’s fierce gentleman | Denver Post ($)

DJ LeMahieu hit one of the most dramatic home runs of the postseason on Saturday, tying the game in the ninth inning of an elimination game. Alas, it ended up as the second most dramatic home run of the evening, as José Altuve’s walk-off sent the Astros to the World Series in the bottom half of the ninth.

Patrick Saunders talks about his experience with DJ, his understated competitiveness, and the discussions that were involved from the Yankees’ side about signing DJ in the first place. Apparently, Yankees’ GM Brian Cashman had to be convinced to sign LeMahieu. He’s obviously glad that he did. Here’s what Cashman told MLB.com:: “It worked out extremely well, and to our benefit, and so I thank those individuals for pushing it — and I’ll pat myself on the back for hiring people smarter than me.”

Here’s what Rockies fans get: