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

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It makes some amount of sense given that AAA is off today and Mitchell was probably ticketed to go down sooner or later anyways.

I guess we're going with a kind of bullpen game today, since Yajure has been making short appearances all year. Not sure there's much in the way of other options. Hopefully the offense shows up in Washington.
 
They're not f***ing around playing Cruz at SS and giving him a lot of playing time. This is why I have hope once the big chess pieces start arriving.

We really need to start damaging right handed pitching. That simple given the hitting make up currently on the roster.
 
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ImporterExporter said:
They're not f***ing around playing Cruz at SS and giving him a lot of playing time. This is why I have hope once the big chess pieces start arriving.

We really need to start damaging right handed pitching. That simple given the hitting make up currently on the roster.
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What chess pieces are bigger than Cruz? I’m glad they are playing him everyday at SS (or close thereto) but that’s the bare minimum they need to do with their top prospect.
 
Yeah, it's a low bar so far but one we're clearing. That's a ton of lefties, as everyone has been noting, so I actually wonder if the other eventual shoe dropping is something like Marcano staying in the minors for a while with Chang surviving. Then Shelton can role out an extremely LH heavy lineup and have multiple RH bench bats to counter with as needed.

I hope that isn't what happens, but especially if they want to see Castillo stick with everyday playing time more or less, then I think it's within the realm of possibility. I'm also not 100% sure I would hate it as much as it appears hatable on paper, since at least in theory, we're talking about the last or second to last spot on the bench, whereas maybe it's fine for Marcano to get more regular time in AAA for a few weeks and come back when we've shuffled a few guys off via trade or DFA.

I don't mean to open a can of worms with that speculation. We just have to see what happens. Presumably Newman and Gamel are coming back in short order, and I bet it's probably more likely that we'll just swap Newman and Chang, as RH infielders. I don't exactly see a path for Marcano unless it's at Castillo's expense.

My gut feeling for what would be best is if we have a pretty steady diet of VanMeter over the next 1-2 weeks and he's playing not to be DFA'd. Ultimately even though he had a strong surge there, I don't see a spot for him. Not really sure why we need to be messing around with him, Chang, Yoshi, or even to a certain extent Vogelbach at this point. Any way you slice it, there are younger and more controllable bats that could get playing time, and I'd rather see what's there and then have the outcome decide the kind of FA additions we target in the winter.
 
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DJ Spinoza said:
Yeah, it's a low bar so far but one we're clearing. That's a ton of lefties, as everyone has been noting, so I actually wonder if the other eventual shoe dropping is something like Marcano staying in the minors for a while with Chang surviving. Then Shelton can role out an extremely LH heavy lineup and have multiple RH bench bats to counter with as needed.

I hope that isn't what happens, but especially if they want to see Castillo stick with everyday playing time more or less, then I think it's within the realm of possibility. I'm also not 100% sure I would hate it as much as it appears hatable on paper, since at least in theory, we're talking about the last or second to last spot on the bench, whereas maybe it's fine for Marcano to get more regular time in AAA for a few weeks and come back when we've shuffled a few guys off via trade or DFA.

I don't mean to open a can of worms with that speculation. We just have to see what happens. Presumably Newman and Gamel are coming back in short order, and I bet it's probably more likely that we'll just swap Newman and Chang, as RH infielders. I don't exactly see a path for Marcano unless it's at Castillo's expense.

My gut feeling for what would be best is if we have a pretty steady diet of VanMeter over the next 1-2 weeks and he's playing not to be DFA'd. Ultimately even though he had a strong surge there, I don't see a spot for him. Not really sure why we need to be messing around with him, Chang, Yoshi, or even to a certain extent Vogelbach at this point. Any way you slice it, there are younger and more controllable bats that could get playing time, and I'd rather see what's there and then have the outcome decide the kind of FA additions we target in the winter.
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Keep in mind that outside of Bae, nearly every significant hitting prospect we could expect to see in Pittsburgh over the next 13 months is right handed.....
 
I don't read much of Peter Gammons these days, but he's a real brand out there in the Sports Media world. He just published a quite lengthy series of thoughts on various teams, and right in the middle was a long enlightening discussion about the Pirates and the serious talent they're assembling and developing. I can't recommend this article enough.

One of the many paragraphs:

"In the first 10 days of June, I had a longtime baseball coach and organizational instructor now working in the Pittsburgh organization say the Pirates “will win it all in the next five years. Their talent base from Double-A up is championship quality. Oneil Cruz may be one of the most talented players I’ve ever seen. They have a ton of young pitching. The people running the organization are the most thoughtful, the most creative and the best people I’ve ever been around. Cruz needs time to develop polish and learn the everyday game, but it’s unbelievable how hard he hits the ball, how well he throws.”

So this is a veteran coach fairly new to the Bucs that Gammons has known a long time from what I can make out. It's a great read, and I'm quite hopeful it's not a puff peice.

theathletic.com

Gammons: As big fish circle, teams like Pirates and Diamondbacks figure out where they stand

The buyers must figure out what they want. Teams in the middle? They need to decide the best way to sell while preparing for what's next.
theathletic.com theathletic.com
 
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Yajure's fastball has a lot more juice today than in the past. He just hit 94 MPH with one of his pitches, I thought he was only in the 90-92 range in the past.

I think he becomes much more viable in the MLB if he's throwing 94 instead of 91.
 
I almost forgot how brutal Fedde is to watch. He's gotta be towards the top of length between pitches.

Yajure looks solid for the most part. I wonder if the velo is part of his appearances being so short this year, and if that could be the plan for him going forward? Multi-inning relievers can be pretty useful, or a kind of hybrid opener / length-guy / whatever Rays term you want to use.

I would assume he isn't going to go super far in this one, but maybe it's a pitch count thing. Looks like he's starting to miss his spots a bit more now.
 
Needless to say, I'm stoked to see a discussion about the Bucs having a ton of promising arms, cuz that's how I see it. And I catch grief in here regularly about it. Although I got to admit quite a number of those guys are going backwards statistically at the moment. I'm certainly not 100% you guys aren't right. I just see more possibility than y'all.

But there's quite a few making slow slow progress refining tools and how to use them, not putting up good stats, not making evaluation easy.

In my world, there's going to be multiple nice bullpen pieces coming, and a solid back of the rotation guy or 2 over the next 24 months. I'm talking about pitchers you likely don't think much of right now, or only recently. The Brubaker's, Bolton's, Florencio's & Chen's of the system. And Pitchers like Yury De Los Santos - one of the guys I had on that list 24 months ago BTW. He's nothing super special, but he's going to be a useful bullpen piece IMO. I see those kind of guys. And a lot of players like that make it to the Major's and do okay, pedigree be damned.

Hopefully we also hit on some of the higher-upside guys like Priester, Burrows, Jones, Solometo, Chandler, & Jimenez as well. This organization has now shown it's not afraid to call players up to The Show if the tools are there. It wouldn't shock me either to see a few Pitchers come up through the Minors way faster than we thought.
 
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It's weird, Fedde has not pitched particularly well at all, but he's also managed to paint some perfect pitches on the lower outside corner when he needed them. I don't think there's any way they'll let it happen, but I'd love to see Cruz face him one more time.
 
Good lord, that was even more of a miracle than the inning before. Please bank the 4 IP and throw someone else in there for the 5th.
 
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