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He's basically showing that kind of velocity as a starter so far. Hopefully he can maintain that type of stuff over longer outings.

YRod has shown better velocity so far than I was expecting.

Holy s*** that was a good catch.

We'll see how long he can keep that up with the 84.7 MPH average exit velocity.

I was low key hoping that White would be able to carry forward the upper 90's heat from the end of the AAA season and spring training but unfortunately his stuff returned to previous levels pretty much as soon as the regular season started.

Or Biggio. Or Vogelbach. Or IKF, or basically anyone else on the roster.

That's an odd development as Kirk is literally the worst guy on the roster to park at first base given the fact that he's 5'8" with super short stubby arms that further limit his wingspan.

Yeah that's perfectly f***ed up as it appears the guy might finally be reaching his potential as a late inning weapon and his reward is a demotion to AAA.

Atkins has repeatedly struck gold with the shorter term signings but I fully agree he needs to start adding more long term core players to this roster if it's to be sustainable and if he is to have a chance to keep his job moving forward. They've generally gone after the right guys in free agency but have mostly been unsuccessful at landing the big fish and been forced to pivot to the shorter term fixes instead. I had the same observation as Laika earlier brought up that Vlad's quality of contact metrics are really solid this season, so hopefully this is something that eventually corrects itself over time and he starts receiving the type of results expected of the type of contact he's been producing. Perhaps the xWOBA model doesn't work for Vlad and he's the opposite of the guys who regularly outproduce their expected results. I recall seeing on a game broadcast that the opposition had already accumulated 5 OAA against the Jays so it stands to reason that Vlad has been victimized by some great defensive plays early on.

Varsho has hit home runs in his last two games he started and has a 4 game hitting streak so I think he's earned a start or two.

It's against the Rockies and he's only pitched 3.2 innings so far this season. Definitely off to a fantastic start, but don't get ahead of yourself.

I'd love to see this happen as I think Kikuchi has unlocked beast mode moving forward. I believe he's a Boras client so a pre free agency extension seems somewhat unlikely.

Varsho is off to a rough start to the season but Kiermaier has been even worse so it's a bit of a choose your poison scenario between the two of them.

In a typical offseason that's still bench player money though. IKF is likely about a 1.5 win player if he plays primarily in the infield and receives more than 500 PA, vs Gurriel who is a 2 win player if he receives 600 PA. Gurriel is paid a $14 million AAV for an extra half win vs IKF so it hardly seems like IKF is such a bad contact in comparison.

Baseball games aren't played on paper. Half of the team dramatically underperformed their projections last season and that's very unlikely to occur again. I think the only important loss to the lineup was Chapman, and he was a complete zero at the plate for approximately half of the season. I actually think the combination of IKF/Clement/Biggio may come close to approximating the same type of slightly above league average offensive production with appropriate matchups. Merrifield was a below average bat for the season as a whole and I think the club may actually stand to improve on what he offered with the available roster options, and I think Turner and Vogelback/Votto will essentially replace what Belt had to offer.

How the f*** do you even know if the offense is worse than last year? The team has only played 4 games for crying out loud. On top of that it's averaging 5 runs per game up to this point.

From what I can gather the team may only be on the hook for a prorated amount of the $2 million so the actual cost may be very little.

At a glance he's had a nice spring but then he also had a really similar spring the season before. He produced good numbers in the minors and Fangraphs has him pegged as a future 60 hit tool so it's not outside the realm of possibility he becomes a well rounded player that justifies the deal they handed out. The Rockies are the kings of handing out bad extensions so that's certainly possible as well.

I can only guess the club feels he's made tangible improvements with the bat. The dude looks like a legit premium defender so he won't have to hit a ton to provide a lot of value to the club.

There's no need to be so fixated about this. It simply appears as though Varsho prefers the foot first slide for whatever reason, whether it's due to past injury or some other factor. I looked to see if time to the base had been studied or not and it appears as though there may actually be a small advantage in the foot first slider reaching the bag first. It was surmised that the hand first slide opens up the player to a higher severity of injury due to potential shoulder, neck and head involvement so this should be factored in as well.

This isn't really displayed by his top end running numbers though. He came up to MLB averaging 27.0 ft/second on the bases. This only dropped to 26.9 feet/second last season. His running splits got worse by a similarly small margin as well. To my eyes the glovework is the biggest factor in his defense that declined as he started clanking a lot of plays that should have been completely routine. On top of that he started making a lot of mental errors in the field as well which compounded the issues further.

I don't necessarily think the club did anything to mess him up as it appears as though his swing was a bit of a mess due to the incompatible angles that he created throughout his motion. I find it impossible to not be really encouraged by what Varsho has done in the spring as he's almost completely stopped chasing pitches out of the strike zone and has been swinging at appropriate pitches that he can connect with. I'm a little dubious on his chosen goals at the plate as it very well may lead to an excessive amount of ground balls but at the very least he stands to strike out less this season and work his way onto base far more often if the plate discipline improvements hold to any degree. It's kind of hard to fathom but he's actually stated he wants to put the ball on the ground more this season. https://blogs.fangraphs.com/sunday-notes-daulton-varsho-goes-pull-side-thinks-low-and-hard/ It actually appears as though his swing has been overhauled with this goal in mind. He's been connecting for a lot of line drives which should help improve his overall numbers in conjunction with the plate discipline improvements but I do have a bit of fear that his overall power output will be sapped to a large degree. https://blogs.fangraphs.com/daulton-varsho-is-cleaning-up-his-process/

So in essence you are saying that players can't improve. Based on that reasoning players should stop bothering with swing and approach changes since it's such a black and white situation where their performance is preordained.

He suffered an offseason shoulder injury before the 2023 season. I just don't see any reason to doubt that his shoulder was actually bothering him again instead of immediately pivoting to inane theories about whether he's not "tough" enough or faking an injury for some ridiculous reason. I think it's a good thing that he recognized a shoulder issue and slowed down his buildup to give it a chance to resolve instead of doing something remarkably stupid and ignoring the issue in hopes it would go away.

It's too bad the Red Sox sent over such an awful lineup for today's game. I'd like to see what White can do against a major league lineup when he's commanding the baseball as he was today.