Autumn Dreamin

Their first two series were the Royals and A's.

It's uncanny. You can tell that he's trying to work on his approach, but the umps do him no favors.

Yeah, but guys are gonna make physical misplays sometimes. It's not a "get this guy off the roster" moment.

Hanser making some folks look reeeeeal silly.

Nice D in that inning from Elvis.

Yeah, it really sucks. At the same time, I'm seeing a ton of Pirates fans and beat writers acting like Seby was wildly out of line, and it's baffling to me. Was it in poor taste for him to chirp at Cruz? I guess. But in the immediate aftermath, I think he was pissed about Cruz making a play that was dangerous for both players and didn't realize the injury situation. Seby's play itself was clean. I don't know, the reactions have just been wild to me.

Nice to see the pitching be able to contain the bats of a hot team today. The offense has shown that they will score more often than not. Tough task to handle this umpiring though, feels like every time we got close to getting something going there was a trash call to swing things.

Elvis juuust missed that.

Can't catch a break with these umps. I feel like that one wasn't even "too close to take."

If this isn't overturned, then I don't know what to make of this umping...

Clean play by Seby. Hope Cruz is okay, but if anyone was reckless there, it's him, no? Edit: Also, all of this is kind of an indirect result of that shift violation. Weird to think about.

He didn't go, he just flinched at the contact?

He already said he would be available off the bench if needed.

After 4 straight Ks, Tanner Banks gives up a solo shot to Jhonkensy Noel. "It's Easter, not Christmas, but that was the first Noel home run!" was a great call by the broadcast.

If resting Luis on a Sunday in early April is part of a plan to have him play 140+, I'll deal with it. This is like a 13 games/14 days stretch with this being the shortest turnaround of the bunch.

Graveman took that violation personally, I guess.

I will never get tired of watching Yo glove it at 3rd, man.

My RotY ?

That strike call on Luis was ridiculous. Again. But he hits a double down the line to numb the pain.

Benny's steal ended up being a key play. Prevented the Moncada groundout from ending the inning, and led to tacking on these 2-out runs.

Wild sequence of events.

I was going to joke about you jinxing him as he proceeded to give up a few, but then I looked at his previous start where he gave up 8ER in 2.1IP to the Angels. His ERA on the season is higher than any of our starters, his WHIP is 2.25, and he's only managed 6.2IP through two starts. Of course, a small sample size doesn't say much about what he'll be for the season...but presumably, if Hahn had signed him for that price, everyone would currently be accusing the org of trying to cheap out on the international market or something rather than complimenting the scouting department.

Some notes and speculation on post-Katz lab Clevinger, based on pitch data from his first start: His velocity is up. After averaging 95.5mph in 2019, the fastball was down to 93.6mph last year. Against Houston, it was back up to 94.7mph and might still gain a tick or two. The slider has ticked up slightly from 79.9mph last year to 80.5mph. It averaged 80.7mph in 2019. The most interesting thing? It's possible he's changed the shape of his fastball to more closely resemble what it was back then too: 2019 Fastball: 12.2in drop, 5.3in break 2022 Fastball: 14.2in drop, 8.7in break 2023 Fastball: 11.9in drop, 5.7in break With the old shape, the combo was very effective and both pitches had a negative run value. Last year, the fastball was a neutral 0 RV and the slider was his worst pitch (6 RV). Katz is a big fastball/slider tunneling guy, and I suspect the 2019/2023 fastball shape tunnels better with the slider (which hasn’t actually changed too much), making both more effective (negative RV on both through the obviously small 2023 sample). Remains to be seen how it holds up and how/if/when they work in his other pitches, but the numbers stood out to me and I assume this was at least one of the potential fixes the team thought they could make. Another interesting tidbit: 2018-9 Clevinger was a much faster worker, averaging the now standard pace of ~15 seconds between pitches. Last year, he was at 19 seconds. Maybe that was impacted by the TJ/knee recovery, but it’ll be interesting to see if he’s also a “helped by the pitch clock” candidate.

Thompson through 4IP scoreless, 1H, 2BB, 5K. At 72 pitches, I wonder if he gets another inning.