Orgfiller

Edit: give me Schneider now that I know he's starting.

I mean it's just generally unheard of for a bullpen to not have even one guy who isn't a "hard thrower" these days. In ours we have Fisher who was acquired for a DFA'd Cavan Biggio, Nance who was picked off the scrap heap, and Miles who was a rule 5 pick all meeting the 94+ avg velo criteria. Half the Rockies' bullpen averages 97+. The White Sox have a number of these guys as well.

Is the one that got away in the room with us right now?

Unless you think his .538 BABIP is sustainable then I don't know what to tell you, it's not all up to him whether the few balls in play he's allowing at the moment are falling. He's striking out almost every other hitter lol. If that's not enough because he's also not preventing the other guys from aiming their line drives then nothing he does can ever be enough.

A's 1-hit shutout the Yankees on the back of a 7 IP dominant performance from Springs.

It's so early that it's hard to make conclusions on if things like his command are sustainable, but I've definitely noticed his command of the splitter is night and day compared to last season. He's using it pretty aggressively against lefties, unsurprisingly, but where he's spotting it is huge. Seeing a lot of down or down and away and significantly fewer hangers. Combine that with the regained fastball velo and everything plays up. He froze Ohtani yesterday on a fastball down the middle lol, that doesn't happen if they're not respecting the splitter. With Freeman he went down and away with the fastball, with a splitter mixed in there, and then went up and away for the whiff. This kind of sequencing and command of his stuff should mean he's hopefully closer to 23-24 Hoffman that last season's version. I'm also hopeful that having Varland and Rogers to lengthen out the bullpen and cover some of those high leverage innings means he's not as overused as he was to begin last season. He notably started strong last year, but was being used so often that I wouldn't be surprised if this led to his stuff and location both backing up as the year progressed.

The game he "lost" and got his second blown save on is when Heineman got subbed in following Kirk's injury and promptly blew the game for him. He's striking out 48% of hitters, I guess "swing and miss is king" only for guys you like eh?

Multiple hits with RISP? In this economy?

His Zone rate sits at 43% which is 10 points lower than it was last season. Unsurprisingly, his O-Swing% has skyrocketed, from 31% to 48%. It hasn't led to a huge jump in K rate because he makes contact often, in fact his O-Contact% has also gone up, but this leads directly to making worse contact. Swinging at bad pitches and making contact -> less walks, more weak contact. He needs to cut down on the chase and force pitchers to give him hittable pitches.

He's way too chase prone unfortunately. 65-70 grade power on its own just won't cut it if you can't even play a good enough 1B, lose value on the basepaths, and chase so much that your OBP isn't cracking .300. He's also right handed so he's on the weak side of the platoon. Weak side platoon 1B are essentially worthless.

April 8 versus Shohei Springer (1) - mphenhef Varsho (1) Vlad (1) - Landry jesus (2) Kaz (2) - jonn Clement (3) Lukes (4) Gimenez (3) Heineman (5) - Orgfiller Bench (10)

Jesus Sanchez I guess idk

Our run differential is in the shitter. We got the rest of the league right where we want them. First place team with a -50 run differential coming up. Michael Kay's head will explode. The World Series will be easy to make.

Wrobleski is a lefty and Barger would be getting a day off regardless following his removal from yesterday's game.

Seems about right to me. Voth being signed and recalled along with Mantiply in favour of a guy like Chase Lee definitely signaled they wanted him to eat some innings and then they'd DFA one. Mantiply at least has decent projections and is a lefty so he's not going anywhere right now.

Okamoto.

My rough assumption based on no info is he's a pop up, lab grown guy. 23 years old and not even being in the NPB minor leagues while throwing 97 raises some serious eyebrows. I'm just going to assume he was barely cracking 90 a year and a half ago, then decided to invest in himself and went to these newfangled pitching labs and reinvented himself from scratch. He may even have declined offers from NPB teams in order to transition to the MLB more quickly. Once guys are in the NPB they need to play a minimum of 9 seasons to be able to become international FAs without restrictions, or go the Roki Sasaki route where you have to beg your team to post you. This opens up a path for him to make the MLB while still in his prime.

I don't know about being back lol. His fastball velo is down to 94.7, which is down from 95.4 last season and 96.6 from the one before that. The slider is unsurprisingly following a similar trend. The fangraphs Stuff+ on his fastball is 102 which for a reliever might be below average, and his slider Stuff+ is at 92. He also has a brutal Location+ of 80. He's cooked.

Maybe? In his first start the Stuff+ on fangraphs had it as a 124 offering, with all offerings above 123 for a total Stuff+ rating of 127. The location was very poor though. TJStats gave his fastball a 115 tjStuff+ in start #1, overall stuff+ a 110, both better than any previous year. In start #2 thus far, the fastball had a 113 rating and the overall stuff 111. The whiff rate was horrible on it though, only 1 in 32 swings against. The swings and misses came on the cutter (slider?) and splitter. Two starts might be around enough pitches to be able to make some conclusions relative to previous years, although I don't know if there's a factor of keeping up that stuff as the season progresses to really make proper conclusions on if he's gotten better overall.

Taj Bradley is firing bullets for the Twins. Fastball averaging 97 with a nasty looking splitter. Swing and miss not too noteworthy in this game, but the conditions at Kauffman are not great with a ton of wind. Only just turned 25, notable former prospect who's gotten Ks before but mediocre results. Could this be the year he finally breaks out, or is he another guy in the mold of Shane Baz who can only pitch 4-5 effective innings before it all unravels with a third look by the hitters?

He now has 10 strikeouts on 16 batters faced so the K-rate is now 62.5%. He also unsurprisingly has a negative xFIP.

Pretty obvious that Varland isn't available, so Little was the only real option with Estrada being more of an innings eater. Nance being s*** is what screwed us in this game.

This middle infield duo is magical. What a play.

Ugh, Kirk's been a groundball machine to begin the year. Rough start for him offensively.

What the hell was that challenge from Kirk. That was obvious and only on the first pitch of the AB. Baffling.