Jake

Pirates have more young MLB talent, but worse ownership and weaker market to compensate for the bad ownership.

I'm thinking the plan vs RHP is Vargas 1B, Rojas 3B.

Ballsy 3-2 pitch that will pay dividends later when it gets into the scouting reports

I'm happy that Booser got out of it tonight, but tbh I'm still pretty irritated that he walked Crawford on 4 pitches

Nobody involved in that inning had a strong grasp of the strike zone

Do you think Sox marketing comped the level of photoshopping they did on the Flo Rida picture or did they bill him for it?

These are clearly famous last words, but I think Eisert is at least in the top 3 most trustworthy relievers on this team. Not that the bar is very high

FWIW, he's got "bad luck" xwOBA as a LHH and "good luck" xwOBA as a RHH in the majors so far [xwOBA as a RHH is only slightly higher than as LHH] so maybe the numbers converge a bit going forward. But besides the track record I think there's some hints that he's a little less natural as a lefty hitter

Extra note from new Statcast swing data: Quero is a major oddball so far. Swing pretty slow and he makes contact very deep into his body while standing further back in the box than almost anyone in the league. Not coincidentally, his bat is angled to the opposite field more than anyone else in the league at contact. While none of that may sound good, a lot of the guys on those extremes tend to be good hitters...but the specific combo from Quero would likely put a lid on just how good he can be. Not going to do a lot of power hitting if you're pushing everything off your back leg with a slow-moving bat. On the other hand, giving yourself all that time to see the pitch probably helps make better decisions.

New Statcast swing metrics look interesting for Vargas IMO. Meets the ball on the right part of the swing at an elite level despite having a pretty strong uppercut and hitting the ball way out in front of his body with a pull-oriented bat. Seems to achieve that via a relatively slow swing along with presumably some natural talent ("good hands") Vaughn a little more conventional "let the ball get deep, then swing slow and flat to maximize likelihood of solid contact." Well conventional in one sense but probably unconventional for a 1B

I'm not saying I want Palacios on the team but I will concede that I can see how somebody could have talked themselves into wanting to give him a spin

I do feel like having the guy absolutely blow it out in 1 inning outings may not be *that* much easier on his arm than short, well-paced starts

as we all were saying in the other thread, the Houser signing was obviously a stroke of brilliance

I've made a few snipes at Elko's bat so it's only fair for me to give him props for what looks like solid D over at first base.

our team leader in xwOBA probably won't be sent to camp Arizona [whether you agree with that line of reasoning or not, I think it's becoming clear the front office puts a lot of weight into it]

Seems to be a move made for the purpose of Korey Lee's imminent optioning to the team.

Far too early to say whether Colson has turned the corner towards a MLB promotion, but I think it's fair to say that his trip to Arizona changed something for the better. On one hand, the bar was set very low by his early season play. On the other hand, there's no doubt other things were being tried to get him to snap out of it and they weren't working. Nice job to those involved in the unorthodox decisionmaking.

If Gowens can have a nice little run of starts, I bet he goes to AAA. Seems to me that he's got a chance to make it. He's been extremely consistent across levels at generating strikeouts and limiting the walks. Would like to see how he does at the AAA level where he'd finally be age-appropriate and he'd see some serious punishment for giving up hard contact. I think he's had some tough breaks in AA this year that make the ERA inflated relative to what he deserves.

I'm going to be annoying and point out that Wolkow has struck out in 44% of his plate appearances during this short run of power hitting. Not really showing that he can find a way to generate enough contact without giving up his power. I hope he figures it out as he seems like a nice kid and of course I enjoy the aesthetic of a giant dude playing baseball.

Yeah his splits certainly pointed that way, which tbh is true for most guys who ever swing back and forth between those roles. Benefit out of the pen is if you start getting lit up you can usually get taken out before it gets very bad. I am not super optimistic that Wilson will pitch well enough to stick in the pen the whole season either but it seems like McKinven loves these ex-Brewers so maybe he gets a very long leash.

My positive spin for Baldwin is that although I think his defense in the infield has looked a bit worse than I expected, he ended up getting thrust into the outfield where he showed flashes of potential. Yes, we saw the bad plays that are frankly unsurprising for a guy who is not an outfielder — struggled with the wind, struggled at the wall and going back — but he also made some rather nice catches. Too rough around the edges to feel comfortable using him in the MLB right now, but maybe if you give him a couple months of reps in the minors he can build on the good and iron out the bad. Then you have a really multi-positional bench piece. Brooks also showed more pop (as a LHH) than I expected to see so I think there's a chance he's a MLB bat, even if it's fairly marginal in the long run. You need depth pieces. He didn't have much time in AAA before his call-up last year so it's reasonable to think IMO that he can genuinely benefit from consistent ABs in the minors right now. Josh Rojas and Vinny Capra may not be around for all that long; same could be said for the trio of veteran outfielders (Slater/Tauchman/Benny). There will likely be more opportunities for Brooks to show whether he's learned something from this experience.

Well, Bryse Wilson looks like a disaster so I'm open to trying someone new to hold down those innings. Seems like there's a chance Houser will also be a disaster and basically no chance that he does a great job, so it's hard to get too excited. And our internal options to take a rotation spot are looking truly horrific, which is unfortunate. You would have hoped that a guy like Nick Nastrini or Jairo Iriarte might be ready to get MLB starts but they really, really aren't.

The pitching situation in AAA looks like a serious s%*# show. I acknowledge that many of the guys showing command problems down there are guys who have always struggled with walks...but some guys have gotten worse and I don't think a single significant one has improved. For instance, I would have assumed that somebody out of Nastrini, Iriarte, White, Wikelman, and maybe Dunn would have pitched well enough to get consideration to get some MLB starts in the case of injury (e.g. Martin Perez) or ineffectiveness (e.g. Bryse Wilson). But none of them look remotely ready even for emergency duty. I'm not sure if Nastrini is even being considered as a starter anymore and it looks like Wikelman has been demoted to bullpen duty as well.

Deliver me my Benny and Tauchman ASAP

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