Orgfiller

Kikuchi rocks.

Convinced DS' walk in his first PA was the catalyst in this game. Bradish was flashing plus stuff until that point until Babe decided to just foul s*** off and not swing at the borderline pitches. Bradish has been rattled ever since.

We're pretty spoiled from a pitching defense POV having both Berrios and Kikuchi. Phenomenal athletes on and off the mound.

Almost seems like Bradish used up all his bullets in the first inning. From the second onwards they've been fouling stuff off and making him work, no longer hitting 97 or 98. He only hit 96 once or twice total that inning.

Excellent ABs from Springer onwards. Long ABs, good swings. Bradish is getting tired and the stuff is visibly suffering.

Robbed of bases loaded, 1 out. Now robbed of a K resulting in a double the next pitch.

Vogelbach is basically just fat Biggio. In classic fashion, he also gets hosed by the ump.

Schneider is so good. Just spitting all over the borderline outside breaking balls, while fouling off the fastball.

Bradish is pumping 97-98 like it's nothing. Up 1.9 mph from last season. Lovely.

Who would've thought the Marlins of all teams would be the ones to unlock Otto Lopez.

I saw I think in fangraphs' comment section that Ohtani has the heaviest bat in the MLB, which kind of adds up as to why he's able to produce so much more power despite a lower avg swing speed and squared up% as Juan Soto who is in a league of his own in those two categories combined.

I can tell you for a fact that John Schneider did not use Garcia and Romano yesterday as a showcase. He used his top two arms in the highest leverage possible, end of story.

You summarized it a lot better than I did. But in all seriousness, I really do think it's all down to the personnel and/or the info being fed to them from the FO/coaching stuff. Cito aside, nobody was telling those studs on the 15 and 16 teams what to do, they just knew how to prepare and execute every night. And they did regrettably have a weakness against the Cleveland softballers in the playoffs, so it's not like they were prepared for everything. On these teams, if Vlad and Bo sucks there's nothing the rest of the team can do to make up for your middle of the order hitters not contributing. You can even get away with Kirk just being a defensive savant and Springer being average (not that he has been this season), but the bulk needs to come from somewhere.

I feel like this is a bit of backwards way of looking at things, IMO. It's not revisionist to say that the 2015 and 16 offenses were better than this group, but that's because they had three monsters in JD, Bautista and EE in the middle of the lineup. I think the fact they were all mostly - JD wasn't your typical pull guy - dead pull hitters is gonna skew those results to make it seem like the only way/most effective way to build an elite offense is by putting in a bunch of pull hitters in there. Of course there's something to be said to have a team identity and philosophy that's conducive to good hitting, but at the end of the day you gotta have elite talent carrying the production. If the lineup had an Acuna, Miguel Cabrera, Manny Ramirez, JD Martinez (the prime version), even a Kevin Youkilis, it wouldn't matter that those guys aren't pulling the ball all the time to get to their power because they're overall monsters. Just look at the Yankees with Soto and Judge as an example. Or the Dodgers monster combo of Betts-Ohtani-Freeman-Smith, neither of those guys are dead pull hitters. The Dodgers are 23rd in pull% lol, the Yankees 27th, one spot ahead of the Jays. Of course, it's a different story when you factor in hard hit %. Naturally, you want the guys like Varsho and Schneider pulling the ball since they don't have the bat control or physical tools to make strong contact the other way, and the best way to get to their power is selling out in front. Someone like Bo perhaps could try a bit harder to pull the ball, but it's not like his all-fields approach hasn't been effective throughout his career, this season notwithstanding. For Vlad it's the same issues he's had since he was a 20 year old, save for one miracle season in 2021: he just doesn't know how to lift the ball effectively despite having top of the charts power. It's a personnel issue more than a philosophy issue IMO. Maybe the FO and coaches aren't good enough at providing hitters with the best info to get the most out of them, or the players are too stupid or stubborn to adjust to what they're being fed. It's fine that Varsho, Schneider and Jansen have success in a different way than how Bo, Vlad and Kirk would. It's just that the latter three have cratered and are having none, which is killing the team.

One year of service time is deemed as 172 days, so 43 is a quarter of that.

It’s definitely easier said than done to just battle the two elite pitches that Romano throws. They look identical out of the hand with like a 10 mph difference, and he’s throwing them at 100% effort every time. Sometimes your best bet is just to sit on one and pray you guessed right, or get lucky that you’re sitting heater and he throws a cement mixer down the pipe. Hitting is really hard. 8/10 times if Romano throws a pitch that appears like it’s middle-middle out of the hand, it drops below the zone for a whiff.

Respecting the elite slider that Romano throws like 60% of the time.

Yimi Garcia is an animal.

Knowing Jansen he's probably nursing some undisclosed injury.

Don Mattingly played in an era where the average fastball was probably barely faster than the average breaking ball in 2024. That tells us a lot. Snide aside, not every prospect has to be a 65 FV. Nimmala is clearly very raw, if he gets the warts out I'll certainly take a 50 FV prospect, something like Paul DeJong in his good years.

Stuff+ be damned, Manoah actually got pretty decent results on his pitches, 15 whiffs overall on 78 pitches will certainly play. Importantly, every pitch of his got whiffs, fastball which he threw the most got 6 on 31 pitches/17 swings, changeup 4 out of 19 thrown/17 swung at, slider 3 out of 8/14, sinker 2 out of 7/14. Lefty heavy lineup so he relied on his change a lot more, and there was enough of a pitch mix to try out different "weapons" for different hitters. If we compare him to his counterpart Bailey Ober who on paper was more dominant (10 K), he had the same amount of whiffs in 26 more pitches.

107 mph for an 18 year old is extremely promising. That’s like 60 raw power at least if not more given the age.

The changeup against lefties could actually be a decent pitch if he has the feel to command it. Looks almost exactly like his sinker but 7 mph slower.

If you don't think there's a certain level of depression in the Rays' FO, that their 80 grade prospect who was on the verge of breaking out into a perennial 5+ WAR stud threw his whole career away, then I think you're giving them a lot more credit than they deserve, and that's saying a lot. Imagine having to replace a guy like that, one whom you've finally gotten signed for the foreseeable future, face of the franchise, with Jose f***ing Caballero. The Rays are in last place right now, they got zero value for the most valuable piece in franchise history (toe to toe with Evan Longoria). They're not gonna dwell on it forever, but they're in a significantly different spot than they were prior to the news breaking. Arozarena has sucked this year, Yandy Diaz has sucked, Jose Siri sucks, all of their pitchers are hurt.

But why? Teoscar has been worse than Davis Schneider and Varsho in LF, making 4x as much.