Orgfiller

Generally speaking when a prospect is listed as a 1B/DH but they aren't an obese stiff they just have bricks for hands and have horrendous defensive instincts. Think Michael Busch, Addison Barger most recently, etc. Black "looks like an athlete" but likely looks lost out there at a position.

Jesus Christ they almost turned that. FFS Vogelbach

Barger's inexperience has also been evident at the plate. Pitchers are flipping the gameplan against him, lots of offspeed and breaking stuff early with the fastball to blow him away later, or start with one overpowering fastball and then freeze him with the secondaries. These things will mature with experience, they know he hits the ball hard so he's being game planned to keep him off-balance.

Some action for Barger, not saying much but he looked a bit more comfortable there. Still runs pretty stiff, you can tell he’s still learning the outfield. Not much fluidity out there.

Another excellent swing put on a ball by Schneider, 98.7 mph, 34 LA, just missed extra bases hitting it 362 feet.

Would’ve preferred he just toss it to Vlad over risking any shenanigans with the umpire’s discretion of the runner being in the baseline. Moot point, easy inning for him there.

Always funny seeing pitchers throw bullets to first base. Vladdy definitely felt that one.

And there it is, the Manoah arc is complete except without the dominant second year.

Feel like we're already pushing it with the defense as is to not have Turner's 39 year old ass letting balls go by him into the outfield. Jansen will come in to hit for Biggio, IKF or Ernie if the opportunity arises late in game.

Jesus Christ that outfield defense, we're back in 2022 lol. I'm sure they're just giving Varsho a breather, he's been putting in work in the outfield.

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.