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

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I don't see how you can objectively look at Keller and not see mental weakness.

Why do his results suck, time and again? Why does one baserunner seemingly always lead to a crooked number?

He doesn't have it between the ears.
 
He's toast here. He simply can't locate pitches. That's his biggest problem, beyond the easy to hit FB. Sucks but we're at the end of

Gamel continues to impress. He's just a really solid pro. All business.

Hayes will eventually find the very small tweak that gets some balls out of the yard. Either way he's been super impressive as a contact heavy hitter. Outside the week where he had I believe 3 errors, he's been exceeding his contract comfortably.

Cal Mitchell really deserves a shot. Big night for him with a pair of dingers. He's 312/.934 and his K rate is crazy low. Look at his splits as well. They're fantastic.

I'm surprised with how much Suwinski (happy of course) is providing and without a long term injury, I don't see them adding Cal to the 40 man. Hope I'm wrong. He made headway last year.
 
I think from last night it said that Keller only got 2 whiffs on his fastball.

That dog just aint gonna hunt from a guy who in theory is supposed to be a power pitcher.
 
Damn, Stephenson takes a foul ball right off the mask. It felled him. He's out of the game.

Hopefully he's ok.
 
Only saw the end. Pretty shambolic offensively, but loved what I saw from Thompson, Stratton and Bednar.

Another dismal night for the minors, despite employing qualified player development people.
 
Thompson's looked great the last 2 times out. Encouraging and hoping it's something he can build off of. We really need a 2nd plus(ish) arm after Quintana as the other guys (Brubaker, Keller, Wilson) looked like 5-6 runs every night out which is 5-6 runs in 4-5 innings.

Bullpen back to earth over the last handful of days a bit, but Bednar continues to look absolutely dominant.

If you want a case study on guys throwing the same velocity yet having significantly different fastballs in terms of quality/movement, Bednar and Keller are it.

Cruz continues to go hitless. 0-4 with 3 more K's tonight. I would really like to see Cal Mitchell up at some point. He's really the most deserving guy at Indy right now as far as position players go.

Yajure is a great case in getting hopes up too early. I was in that boat.
 
ImporterExporter said:
Thompson's looked great the last 2 times out. Encouraging and hoping it's something he can build off of. We really need a 2nd plus(ish) arm after Quintana as the other guys (Brubaker, Keller, Wilson) looked like 5-6 runs every night out which is 5-6 runs in 4-5 innings.

Bullpen back to earth over the last handful of days a bit, but Bednar continues to look absolutely dominant.

If you want a case study on guys throwing the same velocity yet having significantly different fastballs in terms of quality/movement, Bednar and Keller are it.

Cruz continues to go hitless. 0-4 with 3 more K's tonight. I would really like to see Cal Mitchell up at some point. He's really the most deserving guy at Indy right now as far as position players go.

Yajure is a great case in getting hopes up too early. I was in that boat.
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Re: Yajure...he and the team seemed to push the eject button on making him a crafty, control/location/off speed artist. Ala Trevor Williams when he was good here or Gant with the Cards. Kind of an indictment on the state of baseball when a righty who can't touch mid-nineties is no longer viable.
 
DocEmrickSkitters said:
It's okay. But I would also say that in the early Searage years, Searage/Benedict and the shift were considered our competitive edge.

I also think some of this is availability bias on your part. You're reading these great pieces on PP and such about the development guys we have staffing the lower levels of the organization. I'm not saying these are or aren't great people/hires, but don't you think that similar positions and people existed beforehand? I read a lot of PP in the 2011-2014 years. It was glowing about the organization, top to bottom. Then it went subscription and I'm cheap/already have a million others, so I stopped. Maybe I'll start again. I need to drop ESPN+, so I could swap it out.

I'm very optimistic about the Pirates and the farm system. I just don't like retconning. It's a personal thing. I don't like it on the Penguins side when posters will say stuff like "I knew Bylsma was a bozo from the beginning" and I don't like it here. I don't think there's any shame in saying - this worked but didn't evolve with the times, this worked but there was some luck and then luck ran out, or I thought this worked but I was wrong. Maybe even "this worked only with certain types of players."
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I get info from a ton of different sources, Twitter surprisingly provides as much as Tim Williams & Co.

Yeah the argument you're making is basically what they're saying over at PP:

Huntington did some things really well, he hired a good scouting department, even a decent front office. They had a lot of the pieces of the puzzle. But the Analytics Dept fell hopelessly behind, and they just never did figure out a prospect Development Program, then fell hopelessly behind when the player driven development revolution came.

Bucs were always top-down on developmental plans & strategies, players had zero input. 1970's type mindsets reigned, but the new crew goes completely opposite now, maybe to a fault.

The thing that's so encouraging for me about Cherrington is how he's been doubling down on the shit Huntington was good at, while attempting to fix his very very poor performing departments.

As I understand it, the rest of the League finally stopped laughing at our Analytics, which may be approching average someday soon.

They were lifelong buds too - BC & NH. Ben knew what he was walking into here.

DJ Spinoza said:
I don't really like endlessly relitigating Huntington on his own or Huntington vs. Cherington, but I'm not sure I fully follow everything that's being said.

When Huntington was hired, he quite literally had to invent the wheel from scratch. There was no analytics department at all, nor was there much of an international scouting presence.

I do think it's early to write Cherington off, and that the obvious main problem remains Nutting. But outside of a franchise which had clearly stagnated and was handicapped in terms of its commitment to the MLB payroll (again a Nutting issue: Huntington had a mandate to win in MLB but didn't have the ability to take the payroll back up), Cherington did not really inherit some dire situation. And outside of certain positions, the front office largely remains the same. Cherington brought in Sanders, hired Marin, and appointed Baker and now recently Robinson. The amateur scouts who pulled off the vaunted 2021 draft are all the same guys that were here under Huntington.

I don't think the situations at the time of hire are very comparable, to say nothing about the state of the league at either time. It's too early to say how a number of things will turn out, but I'm not sure I see much of a plan besides continuing to kick the can down the road. I think that's a Nutting problem as well as a Cherington one, but maybe things will shift as the wave of talent starts arriving. Cherington's MO so far has been to bide his time for long stretches but not back down from decisiveness in short spurts.
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So you're of the opinion the Bucs leading the rest of MLB combined in external scouting, development, and front office hires during the pandemic didn't change a thing?
 
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ImporterExporter said:
I do think Gonzales needs a swing adjustment in the sense he needs to take a more Hayes like approach and that's contact first, oppo/up the middle. He's got the wrists and bat speed certainly. He seems like he's trying to drive the ball on the regular and as you advance, obviously pitching quality increases. Though the idea that he can't see spin or catch up to speed is a non starter given his dominance last year at A+ and more importantly the AFL. Plenty of guys are throwing better than the level pitches and he hit extremely well, yes K'ing a bit too much, but still producing great average and power, while taking a solid amount of walks.

His bat speed can produce some EV on its own, but I think he needs to take a bit off the power meter and look to drive the ball up the middle on a lower plane, at least in terms of getting back on track over the season.

You have to think he's probably in his head a little bit given this is the first semi extended struggle of this magnitude. It has to be unsettling for anyone, especially a guy who's dominated every level he's played up until this point.

We need to exercise patience on him. And Cruz certainly. The issue I have with the latter is he continues to struggle in the field and that was the one place I really wanted to see progress and as far as playing SS goes, he's simply botching too many routine plays to stick.

We can be upset that he got sent down for financial reasons, but at the same time, you cannot simply write off his pretty awful struggles to this point. He's not deserving of a call up hitting .190 and producing an error every 4ish games. Maybe he'd be an outlier, a guy who looks like crap against lesser pitching and then hammers MLB guys, but the historical precedent is not in his favor there.

I'd like to see at least a couple of weeks of him hitting like a stud before he transitions up. If nothing more than it should have his confidence in a better place.

But I simply don't think he's a SS long term. I've said as much for a few years now. It's not an athletic question. It's more of a mental issue as the errors he's making are focus oriented.

Let's wait and see what we can do once some of our top 10-15 prospects get up to the ML level. We need to practice patience.
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Nailed it on Nick.

I think he invested his off-season working on the wrong things. Now he has to pivot back to what everyone thought he was at the draft - a solid defensive 2B that can go for something like 300/390/460/850.

That's what his skills say he could be IMO. If he keeps insisting on being a Slugger, the pains gonna be long and hard for this one. Hopefully he comes to his senses this month.

I think you finally connected all the dots on Cruz for me. It's that Focus thing, he's got the physical skills to be a dominant defensive shortstop honestly, but the brain ain't quite there.

Yet.

And we're probably seeing some of that this year at the plate. Just not focused.
 
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DJ Spinoza said:
We definitely can't have a 40 error shortstop, and Cruz has a ton to prove at the MLB level, whenever it is that he arrives. But I think that letting him play his position and seeing how it unfolds is what makes the most sense for the maximum number of ABs this season. We've already played games for service time reasons and now have a less than desirable start to the season.

I don't think Cruz's performance can simply be written off, or that only management is to blame for his slow start, but I do think it needs to be contextualized and that the eye test tells you a lot more about his readiness and performance than his batting average. My read on that is that he had a slower start, but didn't look bad at the plate, bouncing between games cancelled for snow and some hits not falling. Then the Ks spiked and he looked out of sorts, and now he's turned things back around.

The other indicators are fine, so all that I'm looking for to end the AAA experiment as quickly as possible, because I think even if he adjusts to the inconsistent level of pitching in AAA, it's not going to correlate to immediate MLB success. His best chance for that is to be promoted when he's been locked in at the plate. Everything else will be a struggle, including once he has success for a few weeks in MLB and pitchers start to attack him differently.

My overriding concern has been to see us get to that point as quickly as is feasible, which is why I have been so insistent in thinking that the service time games were a big waste. The current team seems very likely to drop 95-100 games again, so I don't think maximizing Cruz's MLB plate appearances in order to have a better idea of where to slot him in 2023 and beyond is a big deal. Maybe he will come up and be error prone while dealing with a huge K spike, needing some reinvention and a new full-time position.
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Thank you for fully explaining your reasons. I now find my disagreements with you on Cruz to be reduced a notch. Not saying I agree, but I now see the logic by which you are fueling your opinions.
 
Tremendous pitching duel so far.

Zeroes through 6.

Pirates with no hits though.

Edit: 0-0 through 7

Still no hits for Pirates.
 
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