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

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I'm at the Mariners game right now and I was surprised to see how poorly Rodriguez has been doing so far. He's hitting .113 and has struck out 13 times in 26 at bats, with striking out looking earlier.

I saw some people criticize the Pirates for not calling up Cruz by pointing at the Mariners did it with Rodriguez, but it looks like Rodriguez is going back to AAA sooner than later.
 
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I think it still depends on the specific player, and at the end of the day, for me there's no non-service manipulation justification for why Cruz isn't one of the best 26 players in the organization who is also ready for MLB pitching. Castillo should be playing every day and Cruz should be up with the team. I've made my peace with it, but I just hope we aren't doing what I assume and aiming for mid-June no matter what.

But fundamentally, you can promote the player and then readjust depending on the results. Witt has also struggled a bit in the early going and what distinguishes him is that he crushed AAA pitching.
 
td_ice said:
Some interesting items in MLB this week.

Kershaw gets pulled after 7, while in the midst of a perfect game. Kershaw agreed with the decision. Lack of enough reps in spring training.

Angels walk Cory Seager intentionally with the bases loaded. Only 3rd time that has happened in MLB history.

Vlad Guerrero Jr. with 3 dingers in the same game.
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I remember Bonds ( Giants) getting walked intentionally with the bases loaded.
 
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DJ Spinoza said:
I think it still depends on the specific player, and at the end of the day, for me there's no non-service manipulation justification for why Cruz isn't one of the best 26 players in the organization who is also ready for MLB pitching. Castillo should be playing every day and Cruz should be up with the team. I've made my peace with it, but I just hope we aren't doing what I assume and aiming for mid-June no matter what.

But fundamentally, you can promote the player and then readjust depending on the results. Witt has also struggled a bit in the early going and what distinguishes him is that he crushed AAA pitching.
Click to expand...

Personally, I think players should get sent down to AAA and then get called up when they're on a hot run. That's what the Pirates did with Reynolds iirc, he had something absurd like a 1.200 OPS in Indianapolis in 2019 and got called up then.

Cruz is doing exactly what you want him to do to get called up at the same time Reynolds got called up in 2019.
 
Empoleon8771 said:
Personally, I think players should get sent down to AAA and then get called up when they're on a hot run. That's what the Pirates did with Reynolds iirc, he had something absurd like a 1.200 OPS in Indianapolis in 2019 and got called up then.

Cruz is doing exactly what you want him to do to get called up at the same time Reynolds got called up in 2019.
Click to expand...

Would we even be having this whole discussion if the Pirates didn't call him up for 3 games last year? Honestly he was always supposed to not come up before mid-this year.
 
Empoleon8771 said:
Personally, I think players should get sent down to AAA and then get called up when they're on a hot run. That's what the Pirates did with Reynolds iirc, he had something absurd like a 1.200 OPS in Indianapolis in 2019 and got called up then.

Cruz is doing exactly what you want him to do to get called up at the same time Reynolds got called up in 2019.
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I don't totally disagree, I just think it depends on the specific player. No matter the circumstance, it's relatively rare for young players to hit the ground running, even if they have setbacks eventually anyways. What I didn't like this year in particular was how he was buried in spring training despite having lots of good performances.

I'm skeptical of one-size-fits-all solutions, which is not to say that you or anyone else are suggesting them. You can take the approach that a player needs X number of ABs at different levels, but that doesn't seem to go anywhere. After that, it's a pretty inexact science.

Setting all that aside, I do think it comes down to performance now. If Cruz hits well in AAA, then it won't look great to leave him there until the second or third week of June, especially if the team is able to hang around .500 or something. If he's more up and down, then this all becomes less of a pressing question.


Edit: Just one other contextual note that due to the shorter spring training, offense seems to be down in general in the early weeks.
 
Now that Hayes is signed long term, I felt comfortable enough to buy this off of ebay:

s-l400.jpg


I was planning on just buying an authentic jersey instead of some crappy Chinese knockoff from DHGate, but I saw an autographed Hayes jersey on Ebay for $110 that looks authentic, so I went for that instead.
 
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Maybe we'll catch a break and get a real Sunday lineup without Soto.

Probably no point in saying this since we all agree, but Castillo had better be stapled to the lineup now. His defense is arguably the second best among the middle infield options, and is at least not a downgrade from Tucker, and we've seen him stay dialed in at the plate. He deserves and needs to get regular ABs now to see what he has.

To @Empoleon8771's point yesterday about AAA players performing well before they get put into the lineup, if Shelton continues to rotate Castillo, then we'll approach the territory of the opposite: a situation where he was red hot and then lack of consistent playing time helped cool him off or get him out of his rhythm. With him, I think it is as open and shut as "if he isn't playing 6 days a week, he should be in Indy".

While I still don't agree with how Shelton has handled lineups so far, I can see the logic to spreading out ABs and keeping the bench very involved early in the season. Yesterday I was starting to think that if Castillo had an 0- day at the plate, he'd be back to the bench for a couple of nights, but he had an impactful play in the field and a big AB later in the game. He needs to be playing. I'm hoping that Newman being slightly dinged up will force the issue a little bit and he'll just stay locked in at the plate. Shelton has seemingly rotated the SS job around with Newman out, so it makes sense to get Castillo in there today.
 
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Not surprising... pretty annoying when we have the chance to cap off the homestand above .500, but we'll probably see this kind of conservative rest management all season, especially with Hayes and Reynolds. It's becoming standard across the league and days like this are where it would really pay to have one more bat in the lineup that can instantly impact the game.
 
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This game has been a snooze fest, but that is to be expected with the quality of lineup.

Quintana had a rough 2nd inning but looked really solid outside of that. He got a bit unlucky in that 2nd inning with some seeing eye singles and popups that dropped for hits, every hit he gave up was a single and none of them were particularly hard hit.
 
Dammit, this would be shaping up into an even bigger inning had Marisnick didn't get picked off at the beginning of this inning. 2 runs in the inning, only down 3-2 now.
 
The Nationals are somehow even worse than the Pirates :laugh:

Marisnick laid down an excellent bunt, so they walked Vogelbach and then immediately threw a wild pitch
 
Really fun game so far.

@ImporterExporter, Jared Jones dealing today. I assume the stuff was filthy? At this point he has passed Priester for me as our top non-Roansy pitching prospect.
 
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