http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news?slug=ge-fullcount060209&prov=yhoo&type=lgns

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Acknowledging anxiety made Greinke a torchbearer

Gordon Edes

By Gordon Edes, Yahoo! Sports June 3

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HITTING THE CORNERS

Ari on Geovany: Sabermetrics analyst Ari Kaplan of AriBall.com on what the numbers tell us about Cubs catcher Geovany Soto(notes), who won the National League Rookie of the Year in 2008 after a season in which he hit 23 home runs and drove in 86 runs while batting .285, but this season was batting just .216 in his first 40 games, with one home run and 12 RBIs.

• Soto’s hit spray chart shows him pulling the ball more this season, with only a handful of hits to center field.

• Soto is swinging at similar pitches in the strike zone, but his isolated power is down 71 percent (isolated power is calculated by subtracting batting average from slugging percentage, which leaves you with a percentage of a hitter’s extra-base hits).

• Soto is hitting line drives 4 percent less often (18 percent vs 22 percent), and “creates” fewer than half as many runs per game (.267 vs .642). He is getting into hitters’ counts less often (18 percent vs 23 percent).

PhotoThe Cubs’ Geovany Soto has struggled this season.

(Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images)

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