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

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Nicolas pitching a 1 hitter through 5. Solo homer, otherwise clean w/4 K's. Having a decent year, hanging in there as a prospect. Still think he ends up in the pen but he's got some projectable stuff.
 
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Setting aside this stupid corporate-speak that is everywhere now (one nice thing about Hurdle is that he'd never talk like this...), this is an interesting option with Beede. I think having him in a kind of opener/hybrid role could provide some real value, maybe more than a traditional one inning role.

I don't like Shelton's seeming insistence on getting multiple innings out of guys whenever he can, though I'm not so stubborn as to insist that everyone has to have an exactly defined role (7th, 8th, 9th inning, fireman, mop up/swingman, etc). Assuming health and lack of regression, which are major assumptions for relievers, Bednar, Crowe, and some combo of Yerry and Holderman looks solid on paper for handling the end of games.

Beede's stuff has flashed well for us so far, and he has the starter's history, so having him in a more amorphous middle relief role might not be the best use of him. We'll see how it continues to unfold, but I'm almost tempted to think that the idea of an opener is essentially just an evolved middle relief role, where instead of the middle of the game, you get the innings to start the game. If he can give you 3-4 good ones, you take them, though I don't really know how this strategy is fully employed over a long season without something of a carousel between AAA and MLB. TB has had success with it but those guys tend to get injured for them and they also have a fully "optimized" 40-man in this sense. We have some intriguing options emerging out of the pen, but we're nowhere near that yet.
 
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Speed kills.

I also want to say Mitch Keller looks like knows he belongs. Night and day in terms of confidence. Of course he'll probably get shelled on the 4th here.

Props to @DJ Spinoza on sticking with the kid!

Marin is the only guy you could argue retaining his job next year.
 
@Gallatin was most insistently banging the drum on Keller even when he looked really dire. My confidence in him got tested this year, and I think he really turned a corner when he started living up to more old school pitching truisms vs. simply his stuff.

How he finishes will be a decent test today. We need the W and he can still get 6IP, 2R. Leadoff runner on here, but it's the bottom of the order. He needs to execute and put up a 0, especially in this inning.
 
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DJ Spinoza said:
@Gallatin was most insistently banging the drum on Keller even when he looked really dire. My confidence in him got tested this year, and I think he really turned a corner when he started living up to more old school pitching truisms vs. simply his stuff.

How he finishes will be a decent test today. We need the W and he can still get 6IP, 2R. Leadoff runner on here, but it's the bottom of the order. He needs to execute and put up a 0, especially in this inning.
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Yeah. I was able to identify pitchability with Keller this Spring. He don't need no monster fastball if he chooses to pitch old school.

Pitch to contact. He's a spin monster, and may end up throwing 6 pitches at some point in his career. With a diverse toolbox, he can get over his lack of command. He just needed to grow confidence and learn how to actually be a pitcher.

I felt strongly Perez would get him there with a year and no pressure. Turns out Mitch didn't desperately need it, and figured it out early season without the veteran leader Catcher.
 
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Kelly just beat him with a good pitch, one that he couldn't locate early in the game.

It's almost astonishing how Brown and Walk can just sit with their feet up and completely shit all over broadcasting a game, and then do nothing but whine and nitpick about the team's exciting players in a key moment. They are beyond unwatchable -- it's like they have hostility for the viewers or something. It's my own fault, I don't know why I continue to watch them. Block and Wehner are the only palatable combo and they are boring.
 
De Jong has thrown 30 pitches and can't hit the strike zone if his life depended on it and yet Shelton is just sitting there allowing him to face the top of the order. His obsession with multiple innings from relievers is impressive.

We should have won this one, but bad teams find a way to lose.
 
I think Cruz is seeing the ball a lot better lately, as the walks ticking up over time will be a very good indication that things are clicking for him. One of the less-talked about things with him this year is that his walk rate was very strong in AAA, and the K-rate really nosedived after the rough start to the season (37.8% in April, 20.8% until the callup. Over the long haul, if his BB% ticks up to 8-10%, that's the difference between a really big impact bat and a good one.

Of course, we have to face Rodon and Wood this weekend, as well as Webb on the non-LHP day. I think it was pretty stupid and shortsighted to sit him vs. Bumgarner. There's no way around how bad he's looked against LHPs at times, but Bumgarner isn't as good as he once was and most importantly, Cruz needs the reps. I do not think he's the kind of player who gets in his own head when he struggles, so excessively protecting him just seems like it's not making the best use of the time we have this season (which has been effectively the model for how the management of key players has been handled, IMO, starting with him but including others).

In any case it's just a recent upswing, but it would be nice to see it continue here for the next month+. Even with the struggles, his current 35% K-rate is palatable in the sense that he was always going to have an adjustment period. It will be interesting to take a look at selective stats on the MLB season once he finishes it. Knock on wood, but at least unlike basically all the other upside guys in the system, he's had a fully healthy year.
 
I'm officially taking Oscar Marin off my "must-be-fired" list. Too many good things happening with the pitching staff this year.

Quinn Priester had another good outing with 8k's & 2bb's in 5ip. Pitched for the first time this year on 5 days rest, 55 of 81 were strikes.

 
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Good catch that he hadn't pitched on 5 days of rest yet. He seems to vacillate slightly to me, where he's more carry the load, get innings some nights and strike a bunch of guys out on others. I think the pitch mix has been better since he returned from injury and have a high degree of confidence he's headed for the middle of a rotation. Not really sure he's in line to be any kind of rotation ace, but he's certainly trending towards a kind of anchor guy, which is valuable in a different way.

Also probably worth pointing to how some pitchers tend to get better and better as they are pros, instead of just being some kind of elite guy immediately. Cole was like this, even accounting for all the noise about how he was molded into something he's not by Searange. Wheeler is another guy, Musgrove, and hopefully for us, Keller as he continues to get reps.

Another pitching related thing I was thinking recently is that it might actually make some sense to jump Thomas from AA to the bullpen in September for some innings. He threw 60 innings last year, so he should still have plenty in the tank to finish the Altoona season and then get a taste of the big leagues. I say this in part from an evaluation perspective -- he's Rule 5 eligible, so even if you think he will need a touch more time in the minors, it's not bad to get him some looks this year, so that you can be more confident in him as a depth pen option. I think we all tend to get overfixated on the Rule 5 draft, when in reality, hardly anyone is taken, much less kept for good, and certainly not from very bad teams like ours.

So I would expect Thomas to have worked his way back into a spot, simply because he's a young pitcher who has had good stuff and now solid success in AA. He's now much more the type that another bad team or really any team that likes him enough could take him and have him pitching mop up duty in the big leagues next season, so better to get a jump on things and see how he looks this year. Hopefully he can kind of be a similar player for us next year that Yerry was for us this year.
 
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Encouraging albeit frustrating game so far. Cruz and Castro have both looked great, as has Marcano. Cruz made a terrific defensive play and has seen the ball well all night, basically spitting on a bunch of offspeed stuff, especially the first AB vs. Rodon. Castro has really been locked in and made some good defensive plays -- we might end up losing in large part because we took the bat out of his hands for him to lay down a perfect bunt and who else but JVM to be thrown out at 3rd.

Marcano made another really head's up defensive play to essentially negate a pretty easy double back into a single.

Disappointing that Yerry's season has ended, though Brice is at least a little intriguing with the delivery + slider (though he was DFA'd and went unclaimed before).

Edit: Bad game on the whole, couldn't really execute in situations and take what was an unlikely winnable game -- really, a very winnable game, which no one had down for a Rodon vs. Wilson matchup. But solid performances from these three. Cruz really seems to be seeing the ball much better now.
 
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DJ Spinoza said:
Good catch that he hadn't pitched on 5 days of rest yet. He seems to vacillate slightly to me, where he's more carry the load, get innings some nights and strike a bunch of guys out on others. I think the pitch mix has been better since he returned from injury and have a high degree of confidence he's headed for the middle of a rotation. Not really sure he's in line to be any kind of rotation ace, but he's certainly trending towards a kind of anchor guy, which is valuable in a different way.

Also probably worth pointing to how some pitchers tend to get better and better as they are pros, instead of just being some kind of elite guy immediately. Cole was like this, even accounting for all the noise about how he was molded into something he's not by Searange. Wheeler is another guy, Musgrove, and hopefully for us, Keller as he continues to get reps.

Another pitching related thing I was thinking recently is that it might actually make some sense to jump Thomas from AA to the bullpen in September for some innings. He threw 60 innings last year, so he should still have plenty in the tank to finish the Altoona season and then get a taste of the big leagues. I say this in part from an evaluation perspective -- he's Rule 5 eligible, so even if you think he will need a touch more time in the minors, it's not bad to get him some looks this year, so that you can be more confident in him as a depth pen option. I think we all tend to get overfixated on the Rule 5 draft, when in reality, hardly anyone is taken, much less kept for good, and certainly not from very bad teams like ours.

So I would expect Thomas to have worked his way back into a spot, simply because he's a young pitcher who has had good stuff and now solid success in AA. He's now much more the type that another bad team or really any team that likes him enough could take him and have him pitching mop up duty in the big leagues next season, so better to get a jump on things and see how he looks this year. Hopefully he can kind of be a similar player for us next year that Yerry was for us this year.
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Quinn Priester is another Pirate with high makeup and good tools. I don't think he's that guy at the top any time soon, but he's the kind of pitcher that could turn himself into one over time. Most likely a 2 or 3 once he's had a couple seasons in the Show IMO.

I've hauled back real hard on expectations for Tanaj Thomas since he changed his game up and lowered velocity in order to throw strikes. I'm skeptical a 93 mph fastball will get it done in PGH. That said, he is performing much better in AA so who knows.
 
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