Orgfiller

f***ing hell, not a single f***ing line drive that can find a hole.

The 5 walks don't help also, lol.

They're getting laughable jumps off of him. Clearly he's too rattled by the s***** command to even notice each runner reading him like a book and getting a gigantic lead.

Raley was just getting absurd jumps off Manoah. Couple that with him struggling to put these two guys away after getting to two strikes early…already a very frustrating game.

Piss poor defense all around this inning.

Kiermaier trying to do too much there, tried to prevent the double which was never happening, instead resulted in a standup triple.

Nice job Varsho (+ baserunning), Vlad and Belt.

Shapiro and Atkins are not at all familiar with this version of Kluber.

His current K rate is kind of a mirage. His whiff and chase rates are both below average, not much higher than they’ve ever been for him in previous seasons.

But why? He’s a generic middle reliever. Mediocre fastball, loopy slider that didn’t really generate swings and misses. He still doesn’t get chases or whiffs. Perfectly average reliever who wouldn’t add anything to the current bullpen.

You really jinxed him with this post lol. Just had a nightmare second inning.

I mean mid 90s from a lefty would be comfortably above average, so it could definitely be that the fastball is by itself a very good pitch. Tim Mayza is a one pitch sinkerballer who averages what I imagine Jimmy Burnette averages on his fastball, and he has a career K/9 of 9.66, although he did use to throw a lot more sliders early in his career.

We saw him make a couple of TV appearances in Spring. He was mid 90s, sitting 94 t-96 from what I can remember, maybe hit 97 once.

Think you're mixing in Cooke's A+ and Danner's A ball rehab in their numbers. That's not to say they aren't promising pen arms down there, and I'm glad you pointed out Burnette, just that at least for Cooke most of his performance (and success, he just got rocked in his first taste of AA) has come at a lower level.

Completing a cycle with a position player on the mound doesn’t hit the same. Would be kind of pathetic if Springer hits a double and then celebrates his cycle.

DRS LOVES Varsho so not surprising to see him rate much more highly there. On the other hand, Teo has somehow graded as a positive defender. Colour me skeptical on that one, but defensive metrics are what they are. Moreno rates as a poor framer which is not accounted for in bWAR, thus the discrepancy there. bWAR for pitchers is pretty dumn

But there's no real reason Vlad can't be barreling balls 450+ on the regular. Tools wise he's what, a 75 raw power to Judge's 80? He also has a significantly better hit tool, and to some extent that might weirdly be a reason he's not as impactful lol. Whereas a guy like Judge is looking to crush every baseball thrown his direction no matter the cost (whiffs), Vlad has the ability to hit any ball pitched in any location, almost to a detriment. Vlad also has a pretty good eye, but it seems like he'll come out of a good approach to swing at pitches at times instead of just letting them go because he's pressing and knows he can hit anything. At times this season he's been like a glorified Ichiro, ability to spray the ball on any pitch into the outfield for singles, but with enough power that some of those just keep going and they turn into doubles or majestic line drive HRs. That's great when he's hitting .330 and walking at a good rate, but you just know he has 50+ homer potential in him while still maintaining a good walk rate and excellent K rate. That's the frustrating part, Vlad shouldn't be a scraping 30 homers kind of guy. He could be hitting 450+ nukes all the time.

He's also, annoyingly like a lot of our hitters, underperforming his xStats. Vlad performing closer to his .410 xWOBA or .574 xSLG would sure look like more of a force than his "pedestrian" relative to expectations 135 wRC+ paints him out to be.

It's easy to see why the org valued Varsho. His defense is exceptional - DRS loves him, UZR loves him, OAA is coming back around after a weird blip to start the year (now at 86th percentile), and interestingly just about every metric (in a much smaller sample size) thinks he's arguably better in CF than on the corners. The power is there, he's in 85th percentile for max EV (literally his first hit of the season with the team) and just hit a 446 ft nuke yesterday. His issue isn't even swing decisions necessarily IMO, while he could stand to chase less, his K/BB is fine for someone with his power. He's a smart baserunner despite not being a burner on the bases. Sure he's fast enough to beat out an infield hit more than most players, but he picks good times to steal and has good instincts on the bases for taking the extra base. His issue is simply that he doesn't barrel the ball enough. Is this straight up a hit tool/lack of hand-eye coordination? Or is there something in his swing or approach that prevents him from routinely hitting the ball hard? You would certainly hope it's the latter and he works with the coaches on it so that he's able to utilize his power more in-game. You would think it's not purely a hit tool thing since he's not striking out at crazy rates, and guys like Teoscar Hernandez who make terrible swing decisions and whiff a lot still barrel the ball pretty frequently. Certainly can't compare him to a Bo Bichette who has a 70 hit tool and can barrel balls in any direction or fight off any pitch because he has innate hand eye coordination and bat speed to make up for poor swing decisions.

Yeah it's not a terribly unheard of strategy. Off the top of my head I can think of Tony Gonsolin of the Dodgers who was drafted and initially developed as a reliever from 2016-17, then they liked the stuff and stretched him out into a starter in 2018 and the results just kept coming, and I believe the stuff eventually ticked up too - granted, this is the Dodgers pitching/player development we're talking about, so it's not like every team can execute it this flawlessly. I think you can do that if you didn't just draft some random power fastball/slider guy with no other offerings or feel to pitching. I'm sure most guys in college at the highest level, even relievers, have played around with 2 or 3 secondaries. The ones that don't probably throw 100 with a passable breaking ball as their secondary and have no idea where the ball is going but it's good enough to overmatch college hitters - guys like Ben Joyce would fall into this bucket.

Yeah of course, DFA'ing or releasing him would be silly asset management since it's not like we have anyone that needs to be added to the 40-man at the moment. But he's been costing us wins at the MLB level, he really needs some work in the minors, and if he can't get make some drastic changes then he might be done at the MLB level at least on this team.

At no point in his career has Biggio been a contact hitter. His best skill used to be how adept he was at drawing walks, but that has gone out the window this year. Perhaps because they're challenging him in the zone more than ever knowing he can't hit it (zone% higher than career, way more first pitch strikes), or he's making up for it by swinging earlier knowing he doesn't have the batspeed to catch up to anything so it's leading to him whiffing on everything. His plate discipline numbers are worse across the board, less contact than he's ever made by a mile - inside and outside the zone, whiffs, called strikes, everything is significantly worse. He might be cooked for good. He's a glorified defensive replacement/pinch runner but isn't elite at any of those things. At this rate just call Otto Lopez who can back up SS and CF as well as playing 2B, he literally can't be any worse than Biggio.

Belt is definitely a lot more likeable when he’s not whiffing.

Fair enough.

That was an excellent AB by Varsho.