Orgfiller

7-game hit streak incoming. I can't believe you've done this. He's gonna evolve into Joe Morgan when Orelvis is called up in less than a month.

As many as you'd expect. There's hope though, the Molina brothers combined for 94 steals between the three of them! 3 for Bengie, 20 for Jose and 71 for Yadi.

Yeah I've seen promise offensively in that he hits the ball hard when he connects, but he hasn't walked and his range and reads on defense at both third and the outfield have been beyond horrible. He has a lot to improve defensively, and he needs to hit to make up for it.

While you're right, and not to discredit the effects of catcher framing, the only reason Salvador Perez looks so incredibly unremarkable by fWAR is his framing has been historically bad for a guy with his kind of workload behind the plate. By bWAR he's at a much more respectable 34.5 WAR through age 33. As mentioned along with the accolades and the legitimately pretty strong hitting resume for a catcher, if he lived in another era like the 90s to early 2000s pre-framing metrics, we would look back at him as a slightly overrated stud in a small market that stayed loyal to his original team whom he brought lots of glory for. He's a big guy with pretty good blocking given his size, excellent at throwing out runners, plays all the time and is respected by pitchers, and has rare power for a catcher. Unfortunately he never learned how to walk so his OBP was always unremarkable, is likely overrated as a blocker just because he's a big guy, and has been woeful as a framer for years in part due to his size being a disadvantage at the bottom of the zone, not to mention his exceptional workload is actually a net negative here since it gives him more chances to accrue negative value there.

This is literally incorrect and a misunderstanding of statistics and what regression to the mean means. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regression_toward_the_mean There is no concept of "underperformance" or "overperformance" when talking about regression to the mean. It's just random samples which may deviate from the mean by whichever measurement is being used for a particular sample, which are expected to be closer to the actual relative mean on future samples due to randomness.

It's fun seeing how legit of a hitter Davis Schneider actually is. Sitting at a modest 24% K-rate, 10% BB rate with a .213 ISO. BABIP at a reasonable .293 and he's actually underperforming his xWOBA slightly so the batted ball numbers are legit. He has an insane 97th percentile barrel rate to go with a 94th percentile chase rate. xWOBA in the 85th percentile of hitters, 80th percentile hard hit rate and 82nd percentile avg exit velo. For all the cliches, the man legitimately just knows how to hit. He's not swinging at garbage, whiffs only on pitches in the zone and when he connects more often than not he's putting a very good swing on it. He could legitimately be our team's hitting coach, he's making the most out of his physical profile and then some.

Regress to their mean, which is to say, you expect them to be better than they've been so far. Varsho on the other hand will regress in the opposite direction since he's likely been playing above his true talent mean.

CJ Abrams is a legit power hitter now.

Defense not doing Yariel any favours whatsoever. Barger in particular.

First of all, nobody is offering Kirk a 10-year contract any time soon, lol. I don't think it's fair to expect him or any catcher for that matter to be able to sustain the workload that he was given to begin the season. Most teams will start their main catcher something like 2/3 games, maybe 3/4 or slightly higher for those rare ones that have proven they can handle the extra workload (JT Realmuto, Yadier Molina, Salvador Perez). Kirk likely falls somewhere below the min. threshold, where he's probably a max 90-100 games catcher, but if his offense rebounds, you can still rest his legs while using him by utilizing the DH spot, as they did in his breakout 2022 where he still appeared in 140 games. Most teams don't have a secondary catcher as good as Danny Jansen, but a lot do have one much better than Brian Serven, who allows you to rest your top catcher while at least getting some value from offense or defense.

I'm like 90% confident that this is a result of the A's cheaping out so that the announcers aren't traveling with the team on the road. Add a bit of a tape delay/sync issues with the announcer's own view of the play and you get this horrendous call where she sounds like she has no idea what's going on. Granted, it was a poor call anyway from what sounds like a rookie PBP person, but I have to think these factors played a large hand in it sounding like a high school broadcast call.

Obviously his body type isn't helping, but even for a more athletic catcher he got ridden pretty hard to start the season with Serven looking horrendous as the alternative. To start the year he played in 12 out of 14 possible days, so 6/7 days a week. Add in the effort he's already putting in as one of baseball's best defensive catchers, and his legs/knees must have been toast. Easy to see how his power would have suffered greatly when he isn't able to put his lower half into swings, and for someone with his stature especially, he's definitely the kind of hitter that's using all of his body to drive the ball.

First time I’ve really seen Barger overmatched. It seemed like he was loading up big time to pounce on Kelly’s fastball but he was behind every time. Then of course he gets the breaking ball dropped on him as he’s waiting for another one and has no answer for it.

Kikuchi getting squeezed to hell this inning.

They had enough of Barger in LF lol.

Fun fact about Vlad, he actually has reverse splits in his career. 118 wRC+ against LHP, 131 wRC+ against RHP. So I probably wouldn't put Varsho right next to Vlad/behind to avoid them bringing in a lefty for the pair. I'd probably put Bo after Varsho so if they bring in a lefty they have to deal with his superior platoon splits after. Turner has exactly equal splits so he can go anywhere.

There's no way Barger is better than Springer defensively right now, if his first game LF adventures are anything to go by.

Springer's OBP is also poor right now but he's underperforming his xStats quite a bit. If he was closer to his xWOBA he'd probably have like a 120 wRC+ with an OBP more in the ~.340-.350 range. He's been walking a decent amount and not swinging and missing much, there's been encouraging signs from him as a leadoff hitter this season. His BABIP won't be .230 all year.

Varsho's profile is more of a slugger (not that I'm calling him a slugger) who doesn't walk a ton. Even if you wanted to move him up I don't know that leadoff would be the optimal spot for him. Probably more of a cleanup/5 hitter with the power and ability to not hit into many DPs.

Good reads/jumps is like exactly the opposite of what Pillar was good at. He was fearless in throwing his body out in the outfield, and a big reason why he did that so often is he got poor reads so he made up for it in athleticism and highlight reel dives.

I think they like having Biggio as a "second leadoff" guy at the bottom of the lineup with his propensity to get on base over doing damage.

Not to mention people complaining about John Schneider and the FO rotating 2B/3B too much and not playing enough of Davis Schneider and Clement, but here we are. JS has been squeezing all the juice out of the 2B/3B timeshare to perfection thus far.

Elly De La Cruz is tied 3rd for the league in HR with 7, and tied for the lead in steals with 12. So far he's walking a lot more and striking out at similar elevated rates. BABIP is high and the xStats think he's overperforming but would be a great hitter even if he regressed to that number. His defense at SS has been woeful thus far however. Nonetheless, the electric talent is having an exciting start to the season.

Bit weird that he literally has yet to play an inning at LF in his career, but assuming this isn't actually some weird mental hurdle: Against RHP: LF / CF / RF: Barger(Biggio) / Varsho / Springer 2B/3B: IFK/Biggio(Barger), Schneider filling in on advantageous matchups (pitchers that don't use high heat too much) Against LHP: LF / CF / RF: Schneider / Varsho / Springer 2B/3B: IFK/Clement, Biggio sometimes

Offense could’ve done more, but having Vlad going 0-5 with 2 Ks and a GIDP right in the middle sure doesn’t f***ing help when he also makes an error that turned a 2-0 lead to a 3-2 deficit. I’m f***ing sick of him.