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Otto von Ballpark

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Everything posted by Otto von Ballpark

  1. Otto von Ballpark
    Both teams should have pitched their respective Austin Adamses.
  2. Otto von Ballpark
    Actually, a player can be recalled within 10 days of being optioned if he's replacing a player going on the DL IL, so Cave was also an option. He's been ice cold all year, though. Torreyes too. And Wade hasn't done much at AAA but draw walks, even with the juiced ball. And we're already at 13 pitchers. Not that Arraez isn't interesting in his own right!
  3. Otto von Ballpark
    Not sure we'll see much of Arraez, with Sano back and the rest of the MLB infield at full strength. Maybe we'll see him late in a lopsided game, or starting in the Sunday game?
  4. Otto von Ballpark
    Interesting. Sorting by "Brls/BBE %", it looks like Castro is 3rd in MLB. Gary Sanchez leads at 29.9%. Some other odd names near the top are Gordon Beckham and Brandon Dixon. https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/statcast_leaderboard?year=2019&abs=25&player_type=resp_batter_id Last year's leader was at 22.7%, with only 3 guys above 17.2%, so I'd expect it to come down? Austin was 11th in MLB with 15.8% last year, and Cave and Palka were 17th and 18th, respectively. Cruz was 25th last year, 21st this year.
  5. Otto von Ballpark
    My theory: they hope that Arraez can cut down on his strikeouts by working with Astudillo. Arraez has a 8.4% K% in his minor league career. Sort of a less extreme, pre-power version of Astudillo. Arraez's career minor league stat line is like Zack Granite's, but about +40 points of AVG. He's been able to more consistently keep a .350+ BABIP.
  6. Otto von Ballpark
    I'd guess Adrianza is hurt, or maybe Schoop (he did have that shoulder issue a few days ago, and was 0-for-5 last night with 3 K's). edit: or Cruz, he hasn't played since May 12th, so if they plan to keep him out through May 22nd anyway, they might as well make a move?
  7. Otto von Ballpark
    I swear I just checked yesterday and it said he was 1.3 fWAR for the season, which is about a 5 WAR full season pace. I guess he did increase his season total of wRAA (weighted runs above average) by almost 30% last night. Was there anything special about his 5 putouts in the field?
  8. Otto von Ballpark
    League non-pitcher BA is .249 this year. I don't think "regressing below .250" is all that meaningful, especially when you're still picking up walks and XBH. Buxton's only once had consecutive hitless starts this season, when the whole lineup was cold vs Houston (and he only had 3 PA in each of those games, by virtue of batting 9th). I don't think he's been particularly streaky this year at all.
  9. Otto von Ballpark
    The pitcher didn't really "argue" -- just did the standard appeal while walking off the mound. The manager did the arguing to back him up, although he probably took it too far after his own ejection. Maybe they were just claiming the pitch was an inside joke to his teammates, about how the pitcher needs to get his vision checked...
  10. Otto von Ballpark
    I'm not into retaliatory anything, but at the same time, I don't want my players pulling up short at second base and doing push-ups (while they ball's still in play, no less).
  11. Otto von Ballpark
    Well, not Pressly, of course. And I'd be careful about saying "the players we all wanted" among FA -- I'm not sure there was any kind of consensus. There have been successful FA relievers thus far in 2019 too: Ottavino, Britton, Holland, Kelley, Diekman, and more. (Parker is among this group too.)
  12. Otto von Ballpark
    You don't have to debate it if you don't want to, but it's not helpful to pretend like it didn't happen.
  13. Otto von Ballpark
    Respond to those posts and posters if you want. Please don't take it out on the rest of this community just trying to have a discussion.
  14. Otto von Ballpark
    If someone's approach seems invalid to you, please pause to consider that it's not actually their approach? You're actually the one who is restricting the scope of this question to trade or FA signings. Retaining Pressly required no such commitment of significant resources. And trading Pressly without the resources available to replace him in 2019 is worthy of debate.
  15. Otto von Ballpark
    Please, we are talking specifically about the bullpen. "27-15" shouldn't be employed as a discussion ender, in that context. And we all know that priorities exist. But I think we've been through this, that trading Pressly was arguably a questionable choice of priorities (it certainly didn't free up notable resources for winning in 2019). And despite the record, given the current bullpen composition, I think that choice is still very much an open question. I mean, I agree with your earlier point -- I think Chief went too far in calling the bullpen an "abysmal situation" (even if some of the names have indeed been pulled from the minor league abyss ) because the performance has been solid enough, so far. But I think it's also fair to express concern about it going forward, and question the front office's approach in that area.
  16. Otto von Ballpark
    Yes, theoretically most young international signees are in position to potentially have 4 option years. Although if he's good enough, he might not even use 3 options before he has 5 "full" (90+ day) professional seasons.
  17. Otto von Ballpark
    To be fair, Hughes was still owed a lot more, so it was understandably a harder bullet to bite.
  18. Otto von Ballpark
  19. Otto von Ballpark
    Not sure about "in uniform" -- they may have run out of his "husky" jersey size.
  20. Otto von Ballpark
    If the plan has us turning to Harper, Morin, Magill, Duffey, and Adams by mid-May, I think it's fair to question it. Although I agree, I'd stop short of saying it's an "abysmal situation" quite yet. As others have noted, there's some evidence that the pen's weaknesses have been shielded so far. Our pen ranks 21st in wOBA in high leverage situations, but we're also only 20th in high leverage innings pitched. (Interestingly, we rank 1st in medium leverage performance, and 24th in low leverage... fortunately most of our innings qualify as medium leverage!) Also, some people thought perhaps the bullpen could have been a potential strength, if they had kept Pressly or added another reliever of that caliber. I'm not sure if we should credit the front office for aiming lower than that.
  21. Otto von Ballpark
    I don't think anyone is under-performing that much, compared to preseason expectations. Hildy was bad to finish 2018. Reed was pretty iffy in 2018 too. Parker and Rogers have probably been better than expected. Guys like Romero, Moya, Vasquez, Harper, etc. -- they're largely wild cards, and I wouldn't expect all of them to do well. I think the point of the criticism here is that the front office has been leaning a lot on these wild cards, and if they don't perform, that brings the front office's judgement into question.
  22. Otto von Ballpark
    But they've largely already known that, and we've never seen many Duke types dealt early. Buyers likely don't want to buy the Duke types, even at reduced prices, until they know they can't get better players.
  23. Otto von Ballpark
    I don't know if this is a productive line of debate, but the front office's actions have suggested they believed in their internal bullpen options, arguably more than they should have.
  24. Otto von Ballpark
    I'm not sure what cerveza has to do with Andrew Cabezas, unless you think of him as foam on top of your pours.
  25. Otto von Ballpark
    It's been an uninspiring journey so far -- we got lucky with a half season of effective Belisle, but we also spun our wheels with Breslow and some Rule 5 picks (and another, not effective season of Belisle). Then Reed, Rodney, and Duke last year. Parker looks good so far. But they've got a fair amount riding on Magill, Harper, Morin, and Adams now too. Those are the external moves. We've gotten good results from inherited pen assets like Rogers and Pressly, although we've already cashed the latter in. Mixed to bad results on a few more inherited assets so far -- May, Hildy, Duffey, Moya, etc.
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