Trov

Good article pointing out that our defense may not be as good as what some may think. In particular Urshela who has made some good looking plays, but he has had many plays that have not been made as well. Correa numbers are a little surprising. I do know some metrics do not take shifting into account, and some do. Really the only upgrade we could make overall would be at 3b. Either on defense, or on offense, but Urshella right now is replacement level in my opinion.

I respect the time and effort it takes to grade out how players are doing. However, I find how a player is doing, even more so when injuries play a roll like in Lewis, it is poor way to evaluate a draft. There are many factors that go into certain draft picks, like drafting a HS kid early because you expect he will sign under slot value, so you can use that money on an over slot value later on. Unless the guy had injury concerns in say college or during high school, it is hard to fault a draft of a player only to have an injury that no one saw coming. Also, without context of who else was available around that pick, and when is your next pick. You point out Jeffers was considered a huge reach. Okay, maybe, but we did not have a 3rd round pick. So our next pick was not until Round 4. Which was pick 124. Between those picks there was 4 catchers taken. 2 has made MLB but 1 has had very small sample size, with total of 25 games over 2 seasons, but his minor league numbers suggest the very small sample will not continue. The other has half the games as Jeffers but might have more power. I do not know the defenses to compare. There was then 3 more catchers in round four that would have been available and none have made majors. Being we have little to no catching prospects, and at the time Rortvelt was only prospect we had, a catcher was needed most likely. There is not a whole lot of MLB players that were drafted after Jeffers and before our next pick, not sure how many are still prospects, but no names clearly jumped out to me. I did not do deep dive so may have missed someone. My point is though that to say we were wrong on Jeffers or it was a poor pick may not be actually true under the context of the pick. One, he may not have been around the next pick, and there may not have been a better pick out there, at least not at the catching position. He may not be an all-star or anything, but he still may be just as good or on par with any others in that draft. I am not defending every pick by any means. I was not a fan of the Cavaio pick or Sabato pick. But to just see how your pick does does not do a true analysis without seeing how other options could have been and how they panned out. Unless you can point to someone you would have drafted, at the time not after seeing how they ended up, it is hard to say it was wrong pick, even more so when the pick makes the majors. I do not know your grading scale, but looks like a C is MLB player, which is pretty low grade when 66% of 1st round picks make majors, 49% of 2nd round make majors, and only 33% of rounds 3 thru 5 make it. I would say sometimes the 1st rounds only make it as the team invested the time and money into them. Is A+ MVP path, A all-star regular, B fringe all-star, C mlb player, D AAA regular with some MLB time, and F no MLB prospect?

This is very true, and there are many others like them. They are AAAA players. You see the minor league numbers and hope, but it never translates at the MLB level. That is one reason to never trust minor league numbers, but trust the organization to see what is really there. We see poor numbers and feel the player is a bust, and see great numbers and think they are on their way to stardom. However, there are reasons they get ranked where they are, and why they get moved up or not. Personally, I would not be surprised if Wallner gets dealt in a deadline deal. He is very redundant in our system. Left handed hitting bat first defense last corner outfielder. He does not have poor splits as many expect from lefty hitters, However, I think that is pretty common for good hitters in the minors and the splits really do not rise up until MLB level when they are facing the best of the best.

Base stealing has a lot of components to it. Runner, pitcher, catcher, hitter. Buck has been dealing with knee issue all year, so he has been not even attempting steals, but my guess he might in big situations if needed. However, I would much rather keep him at 1st and not risk further injury for 90 feet. The rest of the team no one is even been known as a great base stealer. Maybe because we do not do it, or maybe because they are just no good at it.

I fully agree he is good at what he does, as it pertains to framing. However, I think that skill will become obsolete sooner than later, and I think it should be obsolete. If we stick with human umps then keep on building the skill to trick umps into thinking a pitch is a strike, but when we go to robo umps, all that training and practice will go out the window as no one will care, because the computer will decide if the ball crossed in the right area.

If you want to compete this year you could trade any of the top 3 mentioned and still compete, however, depending on the return, I think you make the team worse. First, with Lewis out, we would have either Arraez, Miranda, Gordon, or call up Steer to play 3rd. Gordon offers less on offense, and most likely about same on defense. Arraez and Miranda are most likely upgrade on offense but both worse on defense. Steer is a wildcard as we only have minor numbers to go off of. Kepler is great on defense, and good enough on offense that putting Larnach or Alex into that stop would need big enough consistent steps forward at the plate to know what you got. It could work out, but not sure what Kepler nets in trade. Sano will net nothing in return as no rebuilding team will take him for a rental, and no competing teams will want to slot him in as everyday guy at this point. Maybe, a mid-rebuilding team may take a flyer on Sano for the rest of the year to see if they want to pick up option, but best we get is rental of pen arm, and we most likely will need to either eat the money Sano is owed, or give up a prospect to. No way does trading Correa this year help us this year. No competing team will give up enough MLB talent to help us this year. Outside of Yankees, I do not see anyone competing that needs a SS right now and has MLB talent ready to give up. Houston maybe, because their starting SS is injured, but doubt they would give up much. Toronto may be willing, but again, what do they send us that helps us this year? Then who plays SS? It would be huge downgrade there and really closes this year as a window to compete.

I am not going to think Bundy has turned anything around because of who he faced. That being said, great to see him save the pen a game and go deep into a game with still low amount of pitches overall. I did go to bed after we were up 9-0 so did not get to see much of the performance and he did get lucky with a few atom balls that a foot one way or another no hits. On the other hand Twins got a few hits on weak contact that found a hole, not all was weak but Arraez got one to squeeze through that a foot 1 way or another may have ended the big inning before it started.

I do think Jeffers has suffered a little from the mush ball. I think he has had several balls that were caught on warning track, if the ball was 2019 ball they are most likely HR and we have a very different story to tell. Now, can Jeffers start getting the ball to fall, who knows. The biggest issue I have is that he is not a top defender or a top hitter, which means we can upgrade. I know he is great at framing, which I expect in next 2 to 3 years will be pointless as there will be an electronic zone. Then he will not be able to "steal" strikes and unless he starts throwing out runners or hitting he will not bring much. I would expect after the change in electronic zone he may change his stance to get better at throwing out runners, as right now the team has worried much more about the framing. However, base stealing, at least by my eye test, seems to be up, and his lack of throwing guys out will hurt him in future when framing does not save him.

Although I agree we can get a much better bullpen, I find FIP, by itself, to be a terrible metric to measure a bullpen. Wins probability added is a much better metric if you are looking at a single stat. If you look even further, baseball reference has a "clutch" pitching stat, which takes the context of the leverage situation and how often they have done well in those situations. Which as a team we rank 4th at 1.9. I could not see how to break that down by just bullpen, but I would assume most of the "clutch" pitching comes from the pen. What that looks at is how do you when the game is close. Personally, if we are up or down large amounts and gives up a solo shot, that hurts a FIP a ton, but had no impact really on the game. However, when Smith comes in and get a 1 pitch inning ending double play with bases loaded in 1 run or tied game, we get no FIP change, but had a great outcome on the game. FIP can be an important stat in context with other stats, but with pen guys it tells very little story. I mean if you pitch the 9th inning of a 3 run game, you get 2 outs on balls in play, then give up a solo HR, and get the third with ball in play, the FIP goes off the chart, but you get the win and had no impact on the game. The revers is true as well. You come into a game down 5 strike out the side your FIP looks much better, but then in a different game you come in up 1 give up hard hit back to back doubles and then a single, giving up the lead, your FIP is the same. FIP needs context of when you are getting the strike outs, giving up walks, or HR. Without having the context if you use that one number to judge anyone you are missing a huge picture.

They seem to have issues getting hits with RISP. Last night they got unlucky for 1 run when Arraez hit the ground rule double, had it stayed in the park that is a run. It is a combination of stringing hits together, and in what order you get these hits, and with how many outs. Sometimes a runner does not score from 2nd on a double when there is less than 2 outs because they go back to tag on what might be a catch, then it just hits off the wall and runner gets to third, but the hitter gets to second. With 2 outs you do not worry about that. Same thing with like line drives, with 2 outs off at the crack, but with 0 or 1 out you need to make sure going to land. I could also be wrong but feel like we hit into a ton of double plays, which really hurts this as like last night we had bases loaded, then hit into inning ending DP. I am not too concerned about us scoring runs, but I do agree it could be better.

Yes the fans are the voter, and in theory it makes sense as the thought is the more votes for particular players will lead to more people wanting to watch the game to see the players they voted in. However, we all remember a few years ago when there was a huge push to vote in all KC players, some would deserve it, but many did not. Personally I never watch it anymore. I do not watch any all-star type game for any league though. Most pitchers opt out so they can be ready, the fact that each team needs 1 player is dumb too. Which generally ends up being the best pitcher on terrible teams, and half the time they do not even pitch. If you enjoy the game, good for you, I am not trying to convince anyone not to watch, for me it is not worth the 3 to 4 hours of time invested. Back when you would get to see superstars from the other league you never got to in regular season then it had some value to me.

Way too much season left to say losing or winning 6 of 8 now will make the difference. If we lose 6 of 8, even if the rest of the games over that time are the same, hopefully we win more than they do, then we would only be 2 games back, with about half a season to play. Much will happen over that time.

Cleveland had a stretch of easier games, but now other than playing us, they have Dodgers, Red Sox, and Yankees until July 4th. Where we will be playing below .500 teams, outside of them until July 12th when we face Brewers, who are not playing well, but that is a long way away. Just as it normally is, the head to head games will be huge over next stretch to see where we shake out. Hopefully we win at least 5 of the 8 to expand lead and we win if not sweep some of the other series while Cleveland starts losing now that they facing better teams. I believe Cleveland is 6-12 against teams currently above .500, and if you include Angels, who were at the time above .500 when Cleveland played them, but went on crazy long losing streak, they are 6-16. This next stretch will determine if Cleveland is actually a good team, or just better than the bad teams. We are 11-13 against teams currently above .500. Still not great, but much better than 6-12. I am not saying we are that much better than Cleveland, but we do need to pay attention to who they have been playing, and who they will be.

Planning for a pitcher and how they will approach you is key. Batting is such a chess match between pitcher and hitter. If you look back at the game against Guasman, they clearly had a plan that if they fell behind, any pitch starting near knees they would take, expecting the change up. It takes a strong hitter to take expecting it to drop and not get buzzed at the knees on a FB. Buck is famous for chasing sliders low and away, fearing it will be a FB and he strikes out looking, despite it being a slider 9 out of 10 times. Twins kept making Guasman pitch it in the zone. Now, when the pitcher changes it up and starts throwing FB when you expecting change ups, you may look foolish.

I think people undervalue Max's defense and only look at offense. I am not a fan of trading established MLB guys when you are competing for struggling guys or prospects. I am not saying I hate the trade idea, I am not sold on it either. If Padres think Campusano can stick behind the plate, I doubt they give him up for a RF, even by us taking on Snell's contract. Offensive catchers are hard to find. If we are taking building for future the deal could help us, but if we talking for this year, I do not think it helps us.

I doubt he nets either Montas or Castillo, without a couple more guys, but I would be more than willing to part with him. He looks like he can hit okay, but his defense is terrible so far.

I think the shutouts need to be taken in context. Who were they facing, who was in line up, what was the overall score, how many chances did they have to score, what kind of defense plays were made in those chances, ect. Leading in being shut out but still having winning record with positive run difference does not worry me at all. The first 3 shutout were early in season when other than Buxton, no one was hitting and he did not play in 2 of the 3. Either way the first couple weeks we looked a mess. The next game was against Verlander who was dealing, and we did not put out an A lineup for sure. The 5th game was against Houston as well, similar we had not a strong line up, left a lot on base with 9 going 0-7, it was poor game, but a couple of clutch hits would have turned it around. The 6th game was very disappointing against Detroit who's starter had huge ERA going into game, but after he was out of game in 4 innings the Tigers pen is very good. 7th was again against Tigers and Skubal was dealing, their best starter not many chances and again not our A lineup. 8th game was recently against Rays, We had a better lineup, but Rays marched out a series of pretty good pitchers all 2.15 ERA or below except 1. We had some chances leaving 8 on base. Finally game 9 was against Seattle and their best starter. We had a few chances with 5 left on base and 0-5 with RISP. To me a loss is a loss no matter 1-0 or 10-9. Both losses would be by 1 run and both something was not going right. One it was the offense, the other the pitching. If they lost a game 10-1 would it be any better than 10-0 because they were not shut out? The fact that many of the shutouts were either early when no one was hitting well for us, or with not our top line up, I think that makes things better because in must win games Buck, Correa, Polonco, Kepler, Arraez, and others will not be getting "rest" days. Sometimes you will just run into a guy who is dealing or your team is just not hitting holes.

So in 2020 when we were favored with better pitching staff than Houston, and better offense than Houston, why did we not win? How did Atlanta win last year? I was talking being hot for all of the playoffs, my comment about ALCS was back before 1996 there was no wild card round only ALCS and WS, so commented back those WS years of 87 and 91 we were not favored. I am not saying we would be expected to win if we stand pat, and agree upgrading team will improve chances, but it would not mean we will win, just as not doing something will not mean we will lose in playoffs. So often so much of playoff baseball is who is hot going into it. We could go out and get the 4 best starting pitchers and 8 best bull pen arms, and 9 top hitters, and we still may not win a playoff game. Sure, we should, but nothing is for sure. That is my point. I am no way saying the team would be, or should be, favored to win in the playoffs as they sit now. But any team can win in playoffs when they get their. Yes, we have not done it for long time, going 0-18 in last 18 games, and not winning a series in 20 years, but each team is different and each game is a new one.

If he can come back healthy and is effective, I would be willing to have him on postseason roster. However, I would not be expecting anything amazing, but recent guys have been coming back from TJ surgery much faster than before. I would not count on him but he could be a surprise.

I am not advocating for this, but I find it interesting that so many are calling to bring up Alex, which I would support, because he is hot, but no one is calling to bring up Beckem despite being just as hot.

I will agree we would benefit at increasing the pitching, in particular the pen. However, I disagree with the sentiment that without adding to starting pitching we cannot win. Both Ryan and Gray could win games in the post season. Also, you never know what you can get from others. If you improve the pen, you will not need 7 good innings from everyone, and we are not likely to ask anyone to do that anyways. Plenty of times teams have won series, despite having the lessor pitching staff, and lessor offense. Both WS we won we were under dogs in the ALCS and WS. Our win over Oakland no one gave us a chance because our best pitcher was the 4th best starter in the series, but yet we still won the series. Then 2020 we had the 2 best starters going into the Houston series, everyone had us the favorites because we had Cy candidate Maneada versus journeyman Greinke, backed up by end or rotation Valdez, then Berrios versus rookie Urquidy. Going into the series we were considered the better offense and better pitching staff, but yet we were completely outplayed. Last year Atlanta really had 2 starters you felt super good about going into playoffs, Fried and Morten, with 2 top high leverage guys, out of the pen. Their offense was not great either. They got hot for playoffs and went onto WS. No one expected it. Of course upgrading starting pitching, pen and offense, would help us win, but to say it is needed to win, or even greater to assume we will, just goes against evidence. Yes, you can point to plenty of teams that when they had the better pitching staff they won, I am not saying it does not help, but there is never a guarantee one way or other. We could go out trade away all prospects for Montas, and Castillo, the best two starting pitchers out there up for trade, and the top 2 pen pitchers, Contrees from Cubs, and some other top bat, and we still could get swept out of the first round. Being best on paper means nothing, it just makes fans feel better going into the games. In terms of the offense, every team offense is always up and down. You point out how we did against 4 top starters, but then struggled against some lessor pitching, but then assume we will struggle against top pitching in playoffs, ignoring how they did against top pitching just recently. To win in playoffs you need a few guys to step up and get hot, it is true for all teams. We know anyone can get into a slump or a hot streak, you just need the team to not be in slump in playoffs.

Mancini is a no for me dog, but the other two I would take, for the right price, but do not feel we need either to make the playoffs. I do agree upgrading the pen will help us the most. I am not for selling off the whole farm though to upgrade just for this season.

Kepler is the perfect example of guys you need on your team to have a winning season. He has quietly had a good year. His defense is very overlooked. He is not carrying the team at any point, but he has just been solid overall also not being a black hole. You can slot him in the second half the line up most games and you never really notice how he is helping. When he was lead off we would pay much more attention to him and what he is doing, but when he regularly hitting 5 or 6 and he is doing good but not great we just kind of not pay attention. I hope he keeps it up, and maybe gets on a hot streak where he can carry the team for a few weeks. Jax has been a huge lift to the pen. He is not doing the high leverage thing, but he is getting the job done regularly and can go more than 1 inning if needed. Most people were ready to DFA in off-season. He looks like he could be a solid pen guy for next few years. I get the point of view that Correa is overlooked a little as he has just been going about his work, hitting the ball hard all the time it seems, but not having too many big moments. Buck has been hitting the big HR both in distance and at times in importance, and Correa has not had one of those type of moments with a walk off or big hit that gets the game winner, but I do not think he has been presented with that chance either. He is just doing his thing and I am surprised we are not talking more about how he is hitting over .300 now, after his low BA start, mostly due to just hitting ball hard at people.

I could not stay up for full game, but when I look at boxscore I wonder why Archer would not go out for 5th. I assume it is because they were going into 3rd time round on line up and for whatever reason he will never get a chance to go a third time round. Maybe it is the right call every time, I mean we won, and none of the pitchers used threw a ton of pitches. I am glad to see both Ryan and Gray are slotted to pitch next two games.

I have like Arraez since he came up. Many have been down on him for lack of power, which makes him not a top prospect, but he brings something very important to a lineup. His approach reminds me more of Tony Gwynn than Carew, but both of them could hit lefties much better than Arraez. Maybe it is SSS for Arraez as this year is even lower numbers than career, but his career numbers are a large split. It does warrant sitting him against lefty starters and pinch hit later in game against a righty. As for the slugging, Arraez is right up with Carew normal year of slugging. Carew career was the .429, but he was normally closer to .400 or lower, he had a few big seasons in slugging to raise the career. Where Arraez does have a bit of drawback is his lack of speed and base stealing. Either way, I enjoy watching his at bats as he almost never gives anything away, and I have a feeling if defenses start to try and rob his line drives he might just start to increase his angle and try to drive it over their heads for those extra base hits.