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OT: Raise the Jolly Roger: Congrats to the Houston Cheaters on their win

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Is it me, or does Vogelbach get more strike calls on pitches that aren't strikes than the rest of the team
 
Wonderful to face mediocre right-handed pitching. Rack it up against these guys. Makes up for the brutal stretch of video game righties and above-average lefties they have faced since early June.

A substantial portion of the MLB is still right-handed pitchers with 91-94 MPH fastballs and average breaking stuff. When you face that guy, you should win most of the time.
 
I expect pitchers to start attacking Cruz in different ways (if not already tonight, with the first decent pitcher he'll face) and even if not, I expect him to have some slumps in the same way that any player does when he translates to the league, but with those caveats out of the way, I think it's very likely that Cruz will enter and maybe win the ROY race.

It's a perfect storm of no real clear-cut favorite already out there and the obvious fact that when Cruz does things, they are often immediately highlight reel things. MLB has basically been live-blogging his appearances so far.

It is possible that the overall results won't totally be there (maybe he hits 20 HRs and swiped 15 bags, or maybe it's more like 10 and 10 with lots of ups and downs plus errors on defense), so I want to be somewhat cautious in terms of not getting ahead of myself, but as I mentioned the other day, Steamer already liked him a lot prior to this season, and it has a strong track record as a projection system. I saw a prorated ZiPS projection of about 3 WAR. The biggest competition is basically Donovan, Gore, Suzuki, and Suwinski, along with Harris, who also only recently came up.

The one thing you have to wonder is if the Pirates anticipated this. Probably from their calculation, the chance that he wouldn't would be at minimum worth waiting until the extra year would be gained (late April), but other than that, I guess the strongest arguments would be wanting to time any promotion with momentum + opportunity, and maybe at a certain point you just follow through with the decision you made and if he plays so well it negates it, you are fine with that and re-assess. Maybe they really did think he had things they wanted to see, but as I have spouted to great annoyance, I do not believe that at all.

Whatever the case, I certainly hope that the outcome here is another huge extension this winter. I could see a scenario where Cruz demands a lot of money, but I think it's still sort of a stretch to envision him as a long-term shortstop even if you are bullish on him in the short-term there. The difference between shortstop and right field in terms of a payday is pretty enormous, and there is also the overriding fact that a huge extension gives financial certainty and a big raise over even the highest possible earning potential during team control years. This would especially be true if he doesn't negate the extra year and is then a typical post-super two callup (like Hayes was).

We can cross this bridge when we actually get there, but I can't help but bring it up now. I think something between what Hayes got and what Wander Franco got would be the likely outcome, possibly with the term being more like the 8 years of Hayes rather than the 11 years of Franco. If he doesn't negate the service time manipulation, then 8 years would buy two UFA years, and if he does, maybe it's 7 and you still buy 2 UFA years and he can be a free agent when he's 30-31. However you game it out, there's only so much he can earn in arbitration, and even if you took a few UFA years at 20M per year, spread out over a whole contract it would be doable even under Nutting's approach and even assuming the payroll will only sniff 100M total for a season or two.
 
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DJ Spinoza said:
I expect pitchers to start attacking Cruz in different ways (if not already tonight, with the first decent pitcher he'll face) and even if not, I expect him to have some slumps in the same way that any player does when he translates to the league, but with those caveats out of the way, I think it's very likely that Cruz will enter and maybe win the ROY race.

It's a perfect storm of no real clear-cut favorite already out there and the obvious fact that when Cruz does things, they are often immediately highlight reel things. MLB has basically been live-blogging his appearances so far.

It is possible that the overall results won't totally be there (maybe he hits 20 HRs and swiped 15 bags, or maybe it's more like 10 and 10 with lots of ups and downs plus errors on defense), so I want to be somewhat cautious in terms of not getting ahead of myself, but as I mentioned the other day, Steamer already liked him a lot prior to this season, and it has a strong track record as a projection system. I saw a prorated ZiPS projection of about 3 WAR. The biggest competition is basically Donovan, Gore, Suzuki, and Suwinski, along with Harris, who also only recently came up.

The one thing you have to wonder is if the Pirates anticipated this. Probably from their calculation, the chance that he wouldn't would be at minimum worth waiting until the extra year would be gained (late April), but other than that, I guess the strongest arguments would be wanting to time any promotion with momentum + opportunity, and maybe at a certain point you just follow through with the decision you made and if he plays so well it negates it, you are fine with that and re-assess. Maybe they really did think he had things they wanted to see, but as I have spouted to great annoyance, I do not believe that at all.

Whatever the case, I certainly hope that the outcome here is another huge extension this winter. I could see a scenario where Cruz demands a lot of money, but I think it's still sort of a stretch to envision him as a long-term shortstop even if you are bullish on him in the short-term there. The difference between shortstop and right field in terms of a payday is pretty enormous, and there is also the overriding fact that a huge extension gives financial certainty and a big raise over even the highest possible earning potential during team control years. This would especially be true if he doesn't negate the extra year and is then a typical post-super two callup (like Hayes was).

We can cross this bridge when we actually get there, but I can't help but bring it up now. I think something between what Hayes got and what Wander Franco got would be the likely outcome, possibly with the term being more like the 8 years of Hayes rather than the 11 years of Franco. If he doesn't negate the service time manipulation, then 8 years would buy two UFA years, and if he does, maybe it's 7 and you still buy 2 UFA years and he can be a free agent when he's 30-31. However you game it out, there's only so much he can earn in arbitration, and even if you took a few UFA years at 20M per year, spread out over a whole contract it would be doable even under Nutting's approach and even assuming the payroll will only sniff 100M total for a season or two.
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Suwinski has a head start on him.
 
.227 is not going to get Jack into the ROTY conversation unless he cracks 40+ dingers...which he may do. Who knows.

He has hit much better in June. .298/.395/1.061. Still striking out waaaaay too much (40%).
 
Factorial said:
Suwinski has a head start on him.
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I think unless he is really up and down, it won't really matter that much. Donovan is having a great season too, but if Cruz is relatively smooth sailing, he's going to have these monstrous HRs and highlight reel plays in general, and it's as much of a popularity contest as anything else.

With Suwinski, I think he'd have to do something truly absurd like hit over 35 HRs and while I wouldn't be totally shocked, I think there's just more of a standout factor in Cruz's game. He's already jumped to the top in the sports books.

Honestly, I'd be fine with Suwinski winning it in whatever scenario, whether Cruz is in second or not. I would be happy if the Cruz show just continues relatively nonstop from now through September, because it will make a bad team a lot more tolerable to watch. And maybe it will crank up more pressure to avoid excuses this winter and look into making him a franchise player next to Hayes while also getting the payroll somewhere near respectability.
 
Let's bear in mind that we've faced absolute shit pitching the last couple of games.

We will struggle. Cruz will struggle especially as he faces lefties. He hasn't looked good against them at the ML level at all so far.

He could narrative-ize his way to the ROY I suppose. Hell I could even see it being a galvanizing thing for the media to stick it to Bob Nutting. Which would be hilarious.
 
I don't mean to suggest that it's totally a foregone conclusion, but really just that the race is open enough in the NL for him to quickly leap into it, if he isn't already there anyways. I absolutely think there will be some weeks where he scuffles, and maybe if the leveled off point isn't what it could be, then the later call-up will hurt him. I doubt he'd have a chance against JRod or Witt, for example.

But gun to my head today, even assuming he struggles in the way rookies always do, I think he'll be able to do something like 15 HRs and 10-15 SBs the rest of the way while continuously doing Statcast busting stuff. I think Harris is going to come on fairly strong as well and that they could finish 1-2 actually. Donovan's been really good, and if Gore stays healthy and stays on track, he's probably in the mix. Suwinski could still do it if he keeps hitting HRs at this pace, but I think that's more the profile that would be in the mix if there wasn't a stand out, attention grabber.
 
Cruz leading off is ideal, as is him playing shortstop even though Castillo is getting a start.

I interpret playing Park, Chang, and maybe to an extent Mitchell as a kind of audition for keeping the roster spot once players start needing to be activated (guess Castillo probably counts there too). I think the rest of it is a little bit overzealous -- seems like it could make more sense to give guys a rest tomorrow for the day game. Instead, I wouldn't be surprised if Cruz sits vs. the lefty and we see Chang again tomorrow.

Hopefully, Cruz again contributes tonight and Shelton is forced to keep him in there. He should simply rest whenever Shelton and the front office determine it's the standard rest day for him.
 
ImporterExporter said:
Cruz leading off is great. He's absolutely the type of guy you want at the plate as much as possible. Certainly until he proves he can't handle it.

Why do you pull Suwinski against the righty? Put Madris at 1B, Chang sits and Suwinski plays LF. Easy.

This Chang continuance is really baffling.
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I don't get maintenance days for Suwinski. He's like 23.

And we face the lefty tomorrow as you said.
 
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DocEmrickSkitters said:
I don't get maintenance days for Suwinski. He's like 23.

And we face the lefty tomorrow as you said.
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Like I said, this is the shit that really grinds my gears with Shelton and this is completely separate from Cherington who obviously has nothing to do w/the lineup card.

Suwinski has hit righties a lot better than lefties. It's a good RHP going tonight and you want the pop in your lineup, no?

And as you said, tomorrow is a LHP, so why sit Jack today and set him up for a tougher match up???

Not to mention, JS has been swinging the bat well lately, at least vs RHP.

Mind boggling, honestly.
 
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Yeah, I really don't get it. I like to see Mitchell get in there, but there are ways to do it without sitting Suwinski. One thing that gives me pause about throwing Madris at 1B is that you want a solid defender there in terms of Cruz, but HR and nice start notwithstanding, it makes a lot more sense to just kinda rotate Madris and Mitchell some instead of sitting Suwinski.

I'm not fully convinced Suwinski is an everyday player exactly, but right now there isn't really a viable other person to rotate him with. He's clearly the second best OF to Reynolds.
 
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