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

[wheelz87]

And it’s gone

 

[DanielPlainview]

Stratton hasn’t been good at all

 

[dogthateats]

Raise it!

 

[wheelz87]

Two out of three from those d!cks. Nice!

 

[ChaosAgent]

Suwinski is an interesting guy for me because BR really likes his defensive play, which is surprising because Fangraphs described him as a "positionless defender" and only gave him a 20 rating fielding. He was at +4 defensive runs saved in 69 innings in RF earlier this week.

I think that is one where Fangraphs screwed up or maybe like mixed him up with someone else. It is obviously wrong. And it discredits FG a little. Guy is a functional/average defender at corner OF.

 

[Empoleon8771]

 

[ImporterExporter]

How many times this year have we had a chance to run Bednar out for 2 innings instead of 1, and ended up losing? I think twice. If the dude is on 8-12 pitches in the 8th, there is absolutely no reason he shouldn't be back out for the 9th.

Really nice seeing our 30 something million dollar payroll just take 2 of 3 from the Dodgers.

 

[ImporterExporter]

Shelton is the issue at the ML level folks. I'm convinced of it. His constant shuffling of the lineup, mixing players in and out on a whim. There is absolutely no consistency with him. One series he's got Hayes leading off, then he's 2nd, then he's 3rd. We're playing bums like VanMeeter and Tucker over and over and over and that's on him. That's on Shelton, point blank.

And his usage of the pitching staff is strange, to say the least. Why Bednar isn't pitching every single time we've had a save opportunity is beyond me. It's not like it's a nightly occurrence so don't mention workload. I really loathe where baseball has gone in some respects. Pitching relievers early, putting your lockdown guy in the 7th or 8th, simply because the other team has the top/middle of the order up.

Cherington has found ML contributors (Gamel, Anderson, Quintana, Vogelbach, etc, etc) over the past 2 years. Sure, there are some misses, but let's not act like he's had any money to work with. At least his predecessor got to operate with a 75-100 million dollar payroll for multiple seasons.

Our ML issues are largely on Shelton and his staff IMHO. I have zero confidence in him to operate a winner based on how he operates with a subpar roster.

When Cruz comes up is he going to hit 7th or 8th for weeks on end, regardless of production? Will someone like Henry Davis get an early shot at the 4 hole, playing regularly, or be sitting twice every f***ing series? Will Contreras actually start games or pitch the middle innings?

Just not a fan of Shelton at all.

 

[ChaosAgent]

Shelton is the issue at the ML level folks. I'm convinced of it. His constant shuffling of the lineup, mixing players in and out on a whim. There is absolutely no consistency with him. One series he's got Hayes leading off, then he's 2nd, then he's 3rd. We're playing bums like VanMeeter and Tucker over and over and over and that's on him. That's on Shelton, point blank.

And his usage of the pitching staff is strange, to say the least. Why Bednar isn't pitching every single time we've had a save opportunity is beyond me. It's not like it's a nightly occurrence so don't mention workload. I really loathe where baseball has gone in some respects. Pitching relievers early, putting your lockdown guy in the 7th or 8th, simply because the other team has the top/middle of the order up.

Cherington has found ML contributors (Gamel, Anderson, Quintana, Vogelbach, etc, etc) over the past 2 years. Sure, there are some misses, but let's not act like he's had any money to work with. At least his predecessor got to operate with a 75-100 million dollar payroll for multiple seasons.

I don't like Shelton, but "some misses?"

Riddle
Dyson
Evans
Alford
Fowler
Howard
Del Pozo
Erlin
Park
Ka'ai Tom
Todd Frazier
Stokes, Jr.
Marisnick
Underwood
Overton
Cahill
Kyle Keller
Vanmeter

You don't expect a good average on the ML scrap heap. But even with that said, Cherington's average-to-date is very poor.

 

[ImporterExporter]

I don't like Shelton, but "some misses?"

Riddle
Dyson
Evans
Alford
Fowler
Howard
Del Pozo
Erlin
Park
Ka'ai Tom
Todd Frazier
Stokes, Jr.
Marisnick
Underwood
Overton
Cahill
Kyle Keller
Vanmeter

You don't expect a good average on the ML scrap heap. But even with that said, Cherington's average-to-date is very poor.

2nd lowest payroll in baseball since he got here. He's operating so far below what Huntington had. You need to take into consideration the money he has to spend on players coming via FA. Has he been allowed to sign a Lirianio (I think he was a 3/40 contract) yet? Nope. Not even close. And yet Quintana is doing Liriano type stuff right now for us on a 2 million dollar deal. That's about the max he's been allowed to fork over for a FA player.

I don't care about FA signings and nobody else should either. Not until Nutting opens up his wallet. If you continue missing when the owner gives you 70, 80, 90 million, fine. There is room for distress. Right now it's about the talent we're bringing on trades and the draft and IMO, there is a lot more positive than negative in that realm. At least on paper.

Blaming Cherington for lack of FA success is illogical.

Shelton's management of our ML rosters has been awful by and large IMO. And I don't think much of Marin either.

 

[ChaosAgent]

2nd lowest payroll in baseball since he got here. He's operating so far below what Huntington had. You need to take into consideration the money he has to spend on players coming via FA. Has he been allowed to sign a Lirianio (I think he was a 3/40 contract) yet? Nope. Not even close. And yet Quintana is doing Liriano type stuff right now for us on a 2 million dollar deal. That's about the max he's been allowed to fork over for a FA player.

I don't care about FA signings and nobody else should either. Not until Nutting opens up his wallet. If you continue missing when the owner gives you 70, 80, 90 million, fine. There is room for distress. Right now it's about the talent we're bringing on trades and the draft and IMO, there is a lot more positive than negative in that realm. At least on paper.

Blaming Cherington for lack of FA success is illogical.

Shelton's management of our ML rosters has been awful by and large IMO. And I don't think much of Marin either.

The Quintana and Anderson moves are the most encouraging things Cherington has done at an MLB level.

In this franchise you are invariably going to need to find some pieces where external mid-tier guys are going to have to provide major production. And a couple of shoestring guys are going to have to come up big.
Cherington's track record of finding that here isn't good so far. 3/4 losing seasons in Boston with top-5 payrolls doesn't fill me with confidence either at his track record at the ML level.

I'm glad he's here for the teardown and start of the buildup. I have my reservations about him as the guy at the ML level once the focus shifts there.

 

[ImporterExporter]

The Quintana and Anderson moves are the most encouraging things Cherington has done at an MLB level.

In this franchise you are invariably going to need to find some pieces where external mid-tier guys are going to have to provide major production. And a couple of shoestring guys are going to have to come up big.
Cherington's track record of finding that here isn't good so far. 3/4 losing seasons in Boston with top-5 payrolls doesn't fill me with confidence either at his track record at the ML level.

I'm glad he's here for the teardown and start of the buildup. I have my reservations about him as the guy at the ML level once the focus shifts there.

Again, what are you expecting when you can't spend more than min wage or 2/3 million per year on a guy? And you want players to come up big a few times?

Anderson did that for us. Quintana is doing that for us. And again, these are near minimum wage players. Not 3 years 40 million dollar offerings. Or even 5-7 million per.

Ben Gamel has been a good signing. 1.8 million for this year and he's already put up near a full WAR in 5 weeks of baseball.

Dan Vogelbach has been a solid signing. 1 million dollars. Above replacement for that figure is fantastic value.

David Bednar anyone? Guy looks like one of the premier closers in baseball. Diego Castillo and Jack Suwinksi haven't looked like bums to this point and they were both lotto ticket trade acquisitions. They're helping us, at least on a small level.

I'm sorry but bitching about guys like Alford and other minimum wage bodies not impacting the ML roster makes no sense to me. None. If you want him to hit on a few players at those rates, he's done that.

The test is going to be his draft picks and traded for players impacting the ML team starting this year and beyond.

If those falter, then you can blame him, mostly, though Shelton instills no confidence in me to this point. Until then, the lack of an ML roster is on Nutting fielding a team with a payroll that is astronomically low and vastly lower than Huntington's tenure.

 

[NewAgeOutlaw]

Since I have a vacation week this week I decided to take in the game today from the left field bleachers.

I had a great time aside from the price of concessions and the idiot in the left field bleachers who wouldn't stop yelling at Gavin Lux.

Vogey's bomb looked like a golf drive. What a shot.

 

[ChaosAgent]

Again, what are you expecting when you can't spend more than min wage or 2/3 million per year on a guy? And you want players to come up big a few times?

Anderson did that for us. Quintana is doing that for us. And again, these are near minimum wage players. Not 3 years 40 million dollar offerings. Or even 5-7 million per.

Ben Gamel has been a good signing. 1.8 million for this year and he's already put up near a full WAR in 5 weeks of baseball.

Dan Vogelbach has been a solid signing. 1 million dollars. Above replacement for that figure is fantastic value.

David Bednar anyone? Guy looks like one of the premier closers in baseball. Diego Castillo and Jack Suwinksi haven't looked like bums to this point and they were both lotto ticket trade acquisitions. They're helping us, at least on a small level.

I'm sorry but bitching about guys like Alford and other minimum wage bodies not impacting the ML roster makes no sense to me. None. If you want him to hit on a few players at those rates, he's done that.

The test is going to be his draft picks and traded for players impacting the ML team starting this year and beyond.

If those falter, then you can blame him, mostly, though Shelton instills no confidence in me to this point. Until then, the lack of an ML roster is on Nutting fielding a team with a payroll that is astronomically low and vastly lower than Huntington's tenure.

Just putting it to you this way.

Cherington has done the easy part of the job pretty well - tearing down the roster, drafting with high picks, etc. Bringing Huntington's best assets to the ML level - Hayes and Reynolds. Getting a good return for Huntington's pitchers. Whatever crazy stuff with Cruz they are doing like putting him in AAA.

Hopefully when it's time for the hard part he does better than Hanley Ramirez and Pablo Sandoval. He has done a better job with the scrap heap this year than before. Maybe his ML player evaluation is improving.

 

[Empoleon8771]

 

[ChaosAgent]

Not sure if this is legit, but it would make sense to make the Castro --> Tucker swap now.

LF Gamel
CF Reynolds
3B Hayes
DH Vogey
1B Yosh/Chavis
2B Castro
SS Castillo
RF Suwinski
C A Guy

 

[DJ Spinoza]

Looks like it's official per Mackey. No word on the corresponding move, but the obvious here is that Castro really needs to play, especially since Newman is probably not too far from returning. This is probably a bit reading the tea leaves, but I wonder if it's partly a bit of a mini-trial for a job between him and Castillo? Assuming Newman comes back and reclaims the SS job, you can probably still keep both of them, given that they both can play SS or 3B, but both should play pretty regularly.

The bench is a little thin, so it wouldn't be too surprising if it was a reliever who goes down. At the same time, it makes sense to just pull the plug on Tucker in MLB right now. Let him go down to AAA and hit left handed every day and see if he gets in a groove or something -- none of us think he'll amount to anything, but there's no need to make a 40-man move with him right now, so might as well just do it instead of having him clutter the bench.

 

[ImporterExporter]

I'm out on Cruz until he gets his head on straight. I seriously think he's got some attitude/maturity issues and that is the prime reason for his struggles at Indy. I don't share the same "he's not been that bad" overview that some have thrown up in his defense. While his BA is a bit artificially low based on batted data (and eye test) I'm mostly not impressed with the games that I've tuned into. At some point, you need to start hitting AAA pitching. If you can't do that, there is little chance you're going to hit MLB pitchers. I do like that he's been walking more lately and in the most recent games he does seem to have settled down in terms of not chasing crap as pitchers have tried to stay away and get him to chase.

People are freaking out over Nick Gonzales having a rough first 5 weeks in AA, despite the fact it's the first time he's struggled in pro ball/AFL/college, yet Cruz get a larger pass, despite K'ing a lot and carrying a sub .200 average, like Gonzales. I won't worry on Nick until the struggles continue much deeper into summer. He's crushed the ball at every level before this one.

The other, beaten to death, problem with Cruz is he continues to f*** up in the field. He's averaging an error every 4-5 games, both fielding and throwing, and his consistency is just not good. He looks the part, he's far more athletic than Polanco was, given their roughly similar heights, builds at the same age, but he continues to make too many errors and we're not talking borderline, harder than average plays. I've personally seen 3 of his errors on the year live.

You cannot like/want a guy who's going to cost you an error at SS every 4-5 games out there. MAYBE you stomach it if you A, have a player who's destroying the baseball, and we cannot say whether Oneil will do that, and B, have a lineup that can make up for errors at the most important position on the field.

On to other news.

Jim Callis just dropped a new mock: 2022 mock draft: Position players pack Top 10

Jackson Holliday has risen to the point that the most reputable experts out there all have him as a top 5 guy now. Termarr Johnson is at 7, which seems low, though there are rumblings people have questioned the compeition as he's not facing the same quality that players like Green/Jones are as far as the HS bats go. I still think Johnson is the guy I most hope for at 4, if we go the HS route.

Callis has us taking Brooks Lee, which would fit the Cherington model since he's arrived, and I like what little I have seen of him + his numbers are incredibly good, especially as a switch hitter. Can stick at SS and obviously, you can never have enough top talent capable of playing there. He's only struck out 21 times in nearly 200 AB's with a ridiculous 42 walks and an OPS of 1.136. He's pretty much the top college bat/position player available across the industry.

 

[ChaosAgent]

People are freaking out over Nick Gonzales having a rough first 5 weeks in AA, despite the fact it's the first time he's struggled in pro ball/AFL/college, yet Cruz get a larger pass, despite K'ing a lot and carrying a sub .200 average, like Gonzales. I won't worry on Nick until the struggles continue much deeper into summer. He's crushed the ball at every level before this one.

It's the trend line on the Ks. 29% of plate appearance last year (just doing K/(AB+BB)). 37% this year.


Then you look at his comp, Hiura.

Keston Hiura Stats, Fantasy & News

Keston Hiura Stats, Fantasy & News

www.milb.com

His H-A and AA year he was at 20%. Then he jumps up to 27% in the PCL. Now he's a fringe-MLBer pushed out by a small-ball, batted ball player in Wong - speaking of whom we should pay Wong $5M next year just to not play against us.

Much in the same way as the results of Keller affect our perception of Priester and Polanco affects our perception of Cruz, so too will Hiura affect our perception of Gonzales. Fair or unfair.

 

[DJ Spinoza]

It always strikes me as absurd and baseless when people start to speculate about a player's psychology. I don't think it's that hard to just watch the games and form a judgment about him, and how his season has been going. There have been ups and downs against very uneven competition. The next week or two should give an even firmer sense if the two weeks of bad approach were a blip or something more. I'm not too worried from the eye test of watching him on a regular basis, but I have almost no confidence in the overall player development direction of the organization.

Gonzales is a pretty alarming case, if you ask me. Maybe the Pirates PR machine is right and he's an adjustment away, but it doesn't look like he can recognize spin or catch up to velocity, which are the reddest of red flags given the rest of his profile.

 

[Empoleon8771]

Bye bye Tucker

 

[NewAgeOutlaw]

I don't know how many times I need to advocate for not making huge value judgements on any player over a sample of a month of at-bats.

Failure is a part of baseball. Call me when Cruz is hitting .200 in august, then we can talk about him not having it.

 

[ImporterExporter]

What's Swaggerty up to these days?

Over under on Kellers ERA? 6....

 

[ChaosAgent]

I don't know how many times I need to advocate for not making huge value judgements on any player over a sample of a month of at-bats.

Failure is a part of baseball. Call me when Cruz is hitting .200 in august, then we can talk about him not having it.

Cruz won't be hitting .200 in August. But if he's triple-slashing .220/.340/.400 and making throwing errors constantly at short it's fair to question whether or not his basketball small-forward size/speed actually equates to being a winning baseball player in the MLB.

 

[NewAgeOutlaw]

Cruz won't be hitting .200 in August. But if he's triple-slashing .220/.340/.400 and making throwing errors constantly at short it's fair to question whether or not his basketball small-forward size/speed actually equates to being a winning baseball player in the MLB.

Again I request to be contacted if he is still bad after 3 months of hitting in summer weather.