Orgfiller

We have two top 5 CF/OF defenders in the game and another career CF playing a corner and people wonder how the pitching gets away with giving up strong contact lol.

He was still pretty good in his Dodger years though. At age 29 he had 4.9 WAR and a 191 wRC+ in only 86 games. He only really started his hard decline at age 31 once he signed for Boston

Not gonna bother with the rest of this, but at Grayson Rodriguez's age Manoah had a better rookie season in fewer innings, followed by a 4 WAR season and was a Cy Young runner up. Rodriguez could have a good 2024 then blow out his arm due to his higher avg velocity and then they would be on exactly equal grounds. "better development so far" my ass Manoah also didn't take 5-6 years to develop, for whatever that's worth. lol @ "better development so far"

Don’t think I’ve ever seen someone square up a Romano slider like that.

Nick Anderson is cooked. Long way from the monster he was on the Rays a few years ago.

Davis Schneider is snakebit today. Three balls hit hard, first robbed by Witt Jr., the second 389 foot bomb to straight CF, and then a 101 mph line out double play. s*** luck.

Davis Schneider with a rare barrel to CF. 103.8 mph, 389 feet, just missed it.

The sound of the bat on that dinger was amazing.

Kikuchi is SHOVING. Hope he can go the distance in this one, he deserves it.

Kikuchi at 28 pitches through 3 is incredible.

He’d certainly never start there I gotta think though. The left side of the IF defense would be a sieve.

What a beautiful adjustment by Bo on the outside breaking ball. Sitting all over it, strong drive to the opposite field. Amazing piece of hitting.

IKF scores easily if he goes on contact. Easier said than done, but damn it sucks to waste runs like that.

Bottom of the lineup cooking something yet again. Top needs to deliver.

Ironically the team already has so much flexibility with infielders that Vlad would be like 6th in line for an emergency 3B appearance.

Singer and Kikuchi both look good early on.

Assuming no injuries, most likely Pearson, Cabrera or Bowden Francis gets sent down and called up as necessary. Connor Cooke, Hagen Danner, Brendon Little, Mason Fluharty, Zach pop are other guys looking to make their presence known down there.

Also lol @ Carlos Rodon with 6 whiffs in 92 pitches against the Oakland A's.

Mason Miller is nasty. He threw 14 pitches, K'd all of Volpe, Soto and Judge swinging. A's blank the Yankees at home.

I'm pretty sure part of it is just to control Rodriguez's innings. He probably tops out at 80-100 IP this season. If Manoah is good this isn't even a problem, he'll become an unhittable 2-3 IP reliever, if he isn't, he'll be back to tossing 3-4 IP with a piggyback every 5 days.

Decreased avg EV and hard hit rates would very likely correlate to decreased performance, but not necessarily underperforming your xStats. You can underperform if you are slow, or have a suboptimal balls spray distribution chart. A good example is Matt Chapman hitting 400 foot bombs to dead CF, where even a 350 foot wall scraper gets the job done to LF. The opposite of Matt Chapman 2023 is Isaac Paredes and Davis Schneider, guys who sell out for pulling balls with good/mediocre EVs for good results, that don't necessarily have the physical tools to hit bombs all over the place ala Aaron Judge, Yordan Alvarez, Juan Soto types. You can also technically hit balls softly and have some success, by hitting a bunch of weak infield singles or little looping line drives over the defense, those balls are simply too hard to defend. Sometimes you'll see an 80 mph soft flyball have an xBA of like .990 because those balls are nearly impossible for defenders to catch. This is a very niche skillset and not a lot of players can succeed consistently with it. Springer has never been much of an avg EV darling, where he made his money is on barrel rate and sweet spot %, which have been declining the last few years. With that said, his xWOBA right now is in the 69th percentile, he still doesn't chase much and has been better at drawing walks in the early going, with an elevated sweet spot rate. These are probably the kinds of adjustments he'll have to make as his raw power declines, and he can still be an average to slightly above player earning more than he's worth.

He's 19 Jonn.

There's plenty of studies surrounding what's happened to Springer. Age and injury related decline lol. He's followed a completely normal aging curve given his injury history. Age 28 (HOU) - 3.1 WAR Age 29 (HOU) - 6.1 WAR (peak) Age 30 (HOU) - 1.9 WAR, shortened season, translates to 5.2 WAR/140 games Age 31 (TOR) - 2.6 WAR, missed half the season to injury, translates to 4.7 WAR/140 games Age 32 (TOR)- 4.1 WAR Age 33 (TOR) - 1.8 WAR, underperformed xWOBA by 12 points, most prolific steal season of his career Age 34 (TOR) (now) - underperforming his xWOBA by 45 points

I think we can aim a lot higher than Clement at SS. He's basically a poor man's Bichette, best suited for a utility role/LHP platoon bat. I think if all of these MIF/CIF options keep tracking well we're obviously going to have to trade a couple of them, unless Barger is the RF of the future. Having all of Orelvis, Schneider, Biggio, Ernie, Barger splitting time in the bigs provides a handful of riches, but likely results in diminishing returns. Then there's also Palmegiani, Horwitz, Leo Jimenez as lower end options which could be throw-ins in a deal.

Yeah the problem with Vlad's floor being a ~120 wRC+ bat is that's not a particularly high bar for a 1B who is inept at running the bases or playing good defense. Anywhere else but at first base/DH would that offensive floor at least contribute to being a slightly above average player.