max silver

Or maybe everything comes together for him and he leverages his talent to become a fearsome middle of the order bat year in and year out. He was tantalizing close last season and hopefully the better conditioning and mechanical changes bridge the remaining gap.

My take on a lot of his struggles was that the opposition could largely ignore the offspeed pitches and zero in on the heater vs Nate tipping his pitches.

Is Nate a jobber in your view? He still has a tremendous ceiling, unlike Ryu who likely maxes out as a decent back of the rotation pitcher. They wouldn't even serve the same roles in the first place so I'm failing to see why you are directly comparing the two of them to start with.

In an interesting bit of news Nate suspects that he was tipping his pitches last season. I'm not necessarily buying that as a primary reason why he was so ineffective at times due to the suspect command but it certainly wouldn't help things any. https://www.mlb.com/bluejays/news/nate-pearson-working-on-new-pitch-for-blue-jays

Remains to be seen. I'd guess it comes down to whomever has the best spring. I suspect a bit of a platoon between Biggio and Schneider but that is up in the air at this point.

The only starter that Ryu would have any chance outperforming would be Manoah if Alek doesn't recapture his previous stuff and/or command. Trading any of the other starting options and replacing them with Ryu would be a step backwards both in expected results and likelihood to avoid the injured list.

Steamer projects them as a tossup offensively as each has a 95 wRC+ projection. Rosario had a butcher level defensive season at short stop (-16 DRS/-14 OAA). That's on par with how poorly Bo performed at short stop in 2022 for comparisons sake. It's far from a given his skills would successfully transfer to third base given how steep a defensive decline he's shown the last few seasons.

Nate underperformed his statcast expected stats by a decent degree. Add a touch more effective results on top of actual and expected stats lining up to a closer degree and you're likely left with a pretty effective reliever. (Stats are pulled directly from baseballsavant) Slider .320 wOBA .270 xwOBA Curveball .287 wOBA .254 xwOBA ERA 4.85 xERA 3.90

It would be imperative to have him throw primarily to Kirk as he's one of MLB's most effective pitch blockers.

The Orioles very well may be due for their own regression. Their rotation stands to start the season without two expected members of their rotation with top of the rotation stud suffering a partial UCL tear. The offense was more like the Blue Jays except with better clutch numbers, and they punched far above their expected win total.

There's no harm in giving this chance given the incredibly high ceiling he possesses. If he ever puts everything together he could be a high octane closer. Even if he's a step below and becomes a fireballing multiple inning reliever that's a fantastic outcome as well. The chances are obviously less than great but the potential upside makes it well worth giving him another opportunity.

Sounds like an epic movie title. If it were made I'd love to see a trailer with narration provided by the epic movie trailer voice guy.

I'm fine with whatever direction they go. If Nate can learn an effective splitter it could really help him moving forward. He doesn't quite have the same type of stuff as someone like Felix Bautista (139 stuff+ 94 location+) vs the 127 stuff+ 93 command+ for Nate. Bautista is the template for a high octane fastball/splitter/slider pitcher being an absolute terror for opposition hitters despite featuring similarly poor command to Nate.

The team might as well keep giving the guy chances until he runs out of options. This is a bit of a make it or break it season for him as at the very least he needs to show the team that he can provide some effective innings. Otherwise he would need to make the team out of spring training or would face the waiver wire. Given the premium stuff he'd be certain to be picked up by someone hoping to turn him around. It would be a nightmare scenario to lose the dude for nothing and see him develop into a closer for someone else.

There are plenty of success stories with this organization helping to turn around struggling pitchers. Stripling had a great year with the club, as did Matz. Ray won a Cy Young award, Kikuchi went from being one of baseball's worst starters to a mid rotation level of performer etc.

There seems to be a lot of smoke around Snell signing with the Yankees. That possibility along with reports that Rodon is hitting 96 MPH in the spring would combine with a dynamite Yankees rotation if these guys can manage to stay healthy.

Nate can be a weapon out of the pen if he can iron out his command to the point where he can at least place his offspeed pitches near the strike zone. The opposition can just sit and wait for mistake heaters because they can effectively spit on everything else. Maybe adding a splitter can at least give the opposition to think about in the likely scenario that Nate has no feel for the offspeed stuff on a given day. It could also serve to disrupt the timing of the opposition when they are gearing up for the heater. Nate still has tremendous stuff as evidenced by a 127 stuff+ overall rating, including 118 for the heater and 140's for both the curveball and slider. I do have a bit of trepidation that adding another pitch to the arsenal of a guy with serious command issues though. I'm very curious to get an eye on Rodriguez against major league hitters. I recall that the stuff+ system absolutely hates his4 seamer and gives it a ranking similar to Ryu's mid to high 80's fastball. It features very high spin and sit's mid 90's while featuring a bit of a cutter shape, so hopefully this is just a case of an outlier fastball that sort of breaks the stuff+ system. Rodriguez is maybe the offseason's most interesting pickup in that we simply don't know what kind of role he's going to fulfill moving forward. He's being stretched out as a starter in spring, and if he can even manage to become a good back of the rotation arm this deal offers a lot of upside. If his success out of the pen in Japan transfers to MLB he could also develop into a high octane leverage reliever so there are multiple avenues for this deal to pay big time dividends.

The MLBPA simply doesn't seem to fully understand how much of a drag the luxury tax has been on their prospective earnings. Most teams are treating it like a defacto salary cap, except the players don't get the benefits of more evenly split revenue sharing with the owners, along with a salary floor that forces the el cheapo owners to spend a minimum of money and forcing the owners to finally open the books. It's like they cut off their nose just to spite their faces.

Seems more like to me that your sorry ass would benefit more from this.

According to Tiedemann he arrived at spring training at 225 last season vs 240 this season.

Assuming no moves were made to clear payroll space (I know this is really unlikely) where would the team's payroll stand if Escobar and Vogelbach make the opening day roster.

That's exactly my point that his character flaws are largely behind his lack of an MLB job. It's a fake equivalency to point to his higher ERA numbers before he emerged as a top of the rotation pitcher later in his career and pretend like that has anything to do with why he's been effectively blacklisted by MLB.

Let's not pretend it's performance related issues preventing Bauer from being signed by major league teams.

Ultimately the 40 man issue could be a good type of problem if it allows the team to consolidate redundant assets to shore up the 26 man roster.

He's been absolutely awful at the plate since about June of the 2022 season so it seems really unlikely he'll reach those heights again. He showed signs of coming around with the bat towards the end of the season but I think his best is behind him.