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

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I think today's game was actually mostly luck, but sometimes that will happen when you are a bad team facing a better team and can't cash in on some opportunities. Keller was dominant, other than Tellez somehow getting to that ball, and going forward that's a good temporary W. Yajure had two bad luck singles before giving up the bomb, and we lost.

Maybe things break differently if Reynolds or Tsutsugo were better at the plate. Hopefully we can stop the bleeding and turn things around vs. the Cubs, and then maybe get some revenge against the Brewers next week. At least on paper, we are a pretty even matchup with the Cubs, in terms of pretty bad pitching and a lineup that really only features a couple of dangerous players. We should at least be aiming for the split, and if we can sneak 3-1, we're back to .500.
 
Another not-very-good night for the minors. Cruz continues to scuffle and justify the decision to send him down unfortunately.

No one talks about Omar Cruz for some reason, but his being lefty increases his projection. He is having a great, great early season and could find himself in our rotation by the end of the year.
 
DocEmrickSkitters said:
Another not-very-good night for the minors. Cruz continues to scuffle and justify the decision to send him down unfortunately.

No one talks about Omar Cruz for some reason, but his being lefty increases his projection. He is having a great, great early season and could find himself in our rotation by the end of the year.
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Tim Williams at pirates prospect.com brings him up a lot lol
 
DocEmrickSkitters said:
Another not-very-good night for the minors. Cruz continues to scuffle and justify the decision to send him down unfortunately.

No one talks about Omar Cruz for some reason, but his being lefty increases his projection. He is having a great, great early season and could find himself in our rotation by the end of the year.
Click to expand...
Over at PP they believe Cruz's extra velocity out of the Pen is key. Their not sure he's a starter, but William's has been bringing him up quite often this Spring.
 
DocEmrickSkitters said:
Another not-very-good night for the minors. Cruz continues to scuffle and justify the decision to send him down unfortunately.

No one talks about Omar Cruz for some reason, but his being lefty increases his projection. He is having a great, great early season and could find himself in our rotation by the end of the year.
Click to expand...

I expected Cruz to struggle early. He missed a lot of training this Spring, and still swings at too many pitches, which that hasn't changed much in recent seasons. If he could bump his walk-rate into double digits, sky's the limit IMO. But until he does, I'm fine letting him continue his attempts to conquer Shortstop in AAA for another half season rather than watching him OPS something like 240/290/500 on a terribad Pirate team.

But that's just me. More patient than most. Despite our terrible owners, I still understand the Bucs have to play Moneyball if they want to sustain any kind of success. So I stand by those principles against the average angry indignation at exercising one of the only advantages the Pirates have in mlb - manipulating service time.

Maybe this will shut up some of the peeps around Bucs fandom that insisted we waste a potential All-Star type season in 29 when we're likely contending, on this last lost season before things turn....

But I doubt it.
 
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Gallatin said:
Over at PP they believe Cruz's extra velocity out of the Pen is key. Their not sure he's a starter, but William's has been bringing him up quite often this Spring.
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At this point if you are throwing 3-4 innings every 5 days you are a quasi-starter. I'm not fussed about Roansy piggy-backing Brubaker's starts for this reason.
 
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I'm probably a broken record at this point, but I'm not worried about Cruz at all. I think there's an argument to be made that the Pirates really botched things by shying away from giving him spring training ABs and batting him higher in the order. Even if we accept the obvious that he had no chance to make the team no matter what, the result of not giving him ABs is that we are getting longer looks at real long shots to do much of anything.

I think at the end of the day, the reality is that the MLB team would be significantly better off by just committing to the talented player, making room for him (*gasp* benching the player who is a bench player, Newman), and letting him get his reps in. He could fail at the MLB level, but the AAA thing is just an excuse.

Concretely, I don't think he's really had a series of bad ABs until the most recent games. I'll be slightly worried if we see three bad weeks out of him, but right now it's just a small sample and a few bad games. His early season Ks were the product of so-so called strikes in counts and pitches that he couldn't really do anything with. It's only been the past couple of games where I've seen him get out of his approach and chase bad pitches.
 
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Cruz always has a hole in his swing he struggles mightily with hard stuff inside.they are batting him 2nd but n Indy which is where he should be when he is up here
 
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DJ Spinoza said:
I'm probably a broken record at this point, but I'm not worried about Cruz at all. I think there's an argument to be made that the Pirates really botched things by shying away from giving him spring training ABs and batting him higher in the order. Even if we accept the obvious that he had no chance to make the team no matter what, the result of not giving him ABs is that we are getting longer looks at real long shots to do much of anything.

I think at the end of the day, the reality is that the MLB team would be significantly better off by just committing to the talented player, making room for him (*gasp* benching the player who is a bench player, Newman), and letting him get his reps in. He could fail at the MLB level, but the AAA thing is just an excuse.

Concretely, I don't think he's really had a series of bad ABs until the most recent games. I'll be slightly worried if we see three bad weeks out of him, but right now it's just a small sample and a few bad games. His early season Ks were the product of so-so called strikes in counts and pitches that he couldn't really do anything with. It's only been the past couple of games where I've seen him get out of his approach and chase bad pitches.
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I think people overlook the elements along with the mental side of things as well. Kid probably thought he had a shot at starting in the Majors after his spring; it's natural to have a letdown for a few weeks.
 


No surprise, as it was a matter of when, not if. I'm not sure I like the timing of it, as I think it could have made more sense to keep slowly bringing his innings along in the bullpen for a few more weeks vs MLB hitters.

The one thing I hope is that we don't mess around in terms of really dragging our feet. Short of gaining the extra year of control, he needs to throw the maximum proportion of his innings this year against MLB hitters as possible, IMO. Maybe this timing buys them some extra calendar days (=service clock) by either having him do a short start in his next one, or just some kind of side session/bullpen to then be stretched out over 3 weeks, which in Altoona is really 21 days and not 15, due to their being one series of 6 games per week.

There are pitchers who start twice in a series, but I'd rather see them work around it so that Contreras doesn't do that. Get him stretched out, take the time it takes, and get our best pitcher back in MLB.
 
USS FJB said:
I think people overlook the elements along with the mental side of things as well. Kid probably thought he had a shot at starting in the Majors after his spring; it's natural to have a letdown for a few weeks.
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Yeah, I think with the recent couple of games, that might be part of it. It can't be great to get a big league debut, do things right, succeed in limited opportunities during spring training, and then go directly to playing in rain/snow/sleet in Indianapolis and St. Paul during early April.

I think we've botched things a little bit with him. We should have let it rip during spring training, and then made room for him if he made the team. If the talent plays, then he wins ROY and you look into a longer-term extension in the winter, which makes the excessively narrow focus on service time clocks redundant. If he struggles like many rookies do, then you send him back for a couple months and get the extra year of control anyways.

It's a separate discussion, but I would argue that the focus on service time for small market teams is more relevant when the MLB payroll is actually going to be somewhere close to what we don't want to exceed. As it stands, we could extend Reynolds at market value and then either extend Cruz or end up paying him arbitration a year earlier than we want to, and it still wouldn't in itself matter for pushing the payroll "too high." What would maybe come into consideration is something like next year, having Davis or some pitching prospects look like they could be ready, but still able to use a few weeks in AAA to gain the year on them. Right now, as it stands, there are 0 payroll commitments besides Hayes, who will barely make anything relatively speaking, and so the focus on service clocks as a rule is more of an indication that we'll aim for payrolls around 65M or whatever in future years. And if we do that, we're just counting down the days until we "rebuild" again.
 
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DJ Spinoza said:


No surprise, as it was a matter of when, not if. I'm not sure I like the timing of it, as I think it could have made more sense to keep slowly bringing his innings along in the bullpen for a few more weeks vs MLB hitters.

The one thing I hope is that we don't mess around in terms of really dragging our feet. Short of gaining the extra year of control, he needs to throw the maximum proportion of his innings this year against MLB hitters as possible, IMO. Maybe this timing buys them some extra calendar days (=service clock) by either having him do a short start in his next one, or just some kind of side session/bullpen to then be stretched out over 3 weeks, which in Altoona is really 21 days and not 15, due to their being one series of 6 games per week.

There are pitchers who start twice in a series, but I'd rather see them work around it so that Contreras doesn't do that. Get him stretched out, take the time it takes, and get our best pitcher back in MLB.
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He needs 20 days in the minors to save a year of service. They could keep him down longer and have 2 bites at mlb rookie of the year for that comp pick
 
That fly ball fooled the cameraman, but not Tucker.

(wind might have kept that in)
 
would be a nice spot for Reynolds to break out of slump.

1st and 2nd, 1 out, down by 1 run.

And he K's looking.

Passed ball, and runners advance, 2nd and 3rd, 2 out.

Hayes, great eye, walks. Bases loaded.
 
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Good job by Crowe, 5 k's in 2.1 IP.

Good lord this HP ump is awful at balls and strikes.
 
Nice!!!

That might be the spark that gets Reynolds going.

Triple!

One of the more unusual triples you will ever see.

Soft grounder to third, but with shift on, no one was there, so the ball goes down the left field line, and still no one covers third. Throw goes to 2nd to get Reynolds its a bit late, but Reynolds see there is no one on 3rd and just doesn't stop. And gets to third safely.
 
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