max silver

The pen was very solid early on and was a huge part of why the club was able to win so many one run games. Lately the pen has unfortunately joined the offence in being a huge tire fire. I keep telling myself the club will start hitting on all cylinders at some point but they are going to run out of time eventually.

I think it's just a matter of time before we see the front office give him a shot against MLB hitters. Who are other relievers who have below average velocity and utilize primarily changeups. Trevor Richards is one example that comes to mind, but he's largely getting torched this season so hopefully that's not a sign of things to come for Hernandez.

Very interesting suggestion, I think that makes a lot more sense than blowing up the entire farm system. The Nats still get a cornerstone player back in return as well as a few very good prospects as well.

My point still stands that I don't think this type of trade actually makes the overall team better given how much value will need to be moved out and salary requirements necessary to keep this guy long term. Soto already turned down a $350 million contract, how do you expect to be able to sign both him and Vlad long term given how each player very well may require $400+ million deals? The team president is on record stating that the club will not be venturing into luxury tax territory for payroll so tying up $70 million annually on two players would greatly affect the ability to build a complete roster to surround these two players with. Shapiro has stated all along that one overall theme for the organization is sustainable winning. Blowing up the farm system and concentrating so many assets into one player would be completely against this philosophy. I would hate to see a stars and scrubs approach to filling out the roster becoming a necessity. Let's hypothetically say Espinal is a 4 win player moving forward (this might actually be underselling his true potential), Moreno is a 3-4 win player as soon as next year, and Martinez is also a 3-4 win player as well. This would give you above average regulars at 3 positions on the diamond, and they would all likely be cheap as hell to boot. Perhaps there will be other prospects in the system who emerge as potential impact regulars but these are the two prospects who give you a shot for inexpensive star potential in the not too distant future.

Soto is amazing no doubt but I wouldn't consider moving this level of major league and prospect capital out for one player. Does this actually make the team better beyond this season? Espinal has been playing at nearly a 5 win pace going back to last season and has nearly 5 years of remaining control, and Moreno looks to be on track to debut in MLB this season. Vlad and Bo are going to need long term deals sooner or later, and the available payroll as is may already have difficulty in supporting two long term mega deals, especially if low cost high impact options such as Moreno and Martinez are moved out. Soto would be another guy you would want to keep long term, especially if this is the type of return the Nationals would require.

I don't think his stuff is much different from previous seasons, velocity is very close to previous years and vertical/horizontal movement looks to be pretty much the same as previous seasons as well. To me his issues look to be stemming from poor command within the strike zone.

Berrios was quite good. As you mentioned he didn't strike out many batters but he was able to limit the hard contact for most of the start. It was certainly a step in the right direction but Seattle didn't exactly have a murderers row lineup last night.

It was reported that he was having issues with gripping the baseballs in the blown save in New York.

He's up to a 187 WRC+ in AAA at the moment, if he can recapture his prior offensive form this club could desperately use him. Unless you want to continue seeing Tapia swinging out of his shoes at pitches out of the strike zone.

Bats really need to figure s*** out sooner rather than later as the chances of the current pen holding small leads seems pretty slim.

Robberse was garnering a fair bit of attention heading into this season, some sites had predicted he would be the club's top starting prospect as soon as this season as he had a ton of remaining projection. Of course Tiedemann has blown by Robberse with the fast start but Robberse still could turn into a nice starter. The club raves about his intangibles, and the organization looks to be able to help coax extra velocity out of their young pitchers given the full on embrace of velocity programs and other advances in training techniques. Robberse was reportedly sitting 93-95 to end 2021 so it's not like his stuff is terrible by any means.

They mentioned in the post game breakdown that the Flames outshot the Stars by over 140 shots for the series, just insane goaltending performance, took a perfect snipe to finally beat him in overtime.

Nice to see Springer in the lineup, hopefully he can actually finish the game though as we've seen him attempt to grind his way through injury plenty of times.

There were a ton of encouraging signs tonight. Ryu looked like the good version of himself as he was effectively spotting his fastball to both sides of the plate, and save for the mistake he made leaving a changeup up to Diaz the pitch was very effective for him as he was keeping it down very nicely. I thought the hitters looked much better as well as the approaches were better with far fewer wild swings chasing out of the zone while also using the whole field nicely. Chapman hit a few balls hard which was nice to see and Jansen just continues mashing, while Teo also had a great game with an opposite field single and homerun to straightaway center field. Getting all three of Ryu, Jansen and Teo back just about at the same time is a huge boost to the lineup, and once Springer returns from the ankle injury the offence will hopefully start to live up to expectations.

I'd have an extremely difficult time moving any of Moreno, Martinez and Tiedemann after what they've shown this season. Moreno in particular has more to show as the power hasn't showed up yet, I can't help but wonder if he's back at full strength yet after the broken hand last season.

Awesome, had no idea this existed.

Zulueata looks poised to explode onto these lists in short order. He had a very good outing tonight for Dunedin, 4-2/3 innings, 10 strikeouts, no runs allowed, only 1 walk, 2 hit batters.

Batspeed for days with Orelvis. He appears to be adjusting to AA nicely and his recent numbers are very encouraging. For the month of May his strikeout and walk rates were 24.2%/9.1% vs 35.8%/1.5% for the month of April. In April he struggled a bit to the tune of a 102 WRC+ vs 180 WRC+ for May, hopefully he can keep it up.

Must be dipping into the Grand Marnier or something.

Do you happen to have a subscription?

Oettinger is the only reason this series has been close.

Flames with a great 3rd period to win the game after having nothing going the first two periods.

I think every male who grew up in the era before free internet porn existed has likely done the same.

This really isn't much of a denial you know....

I suspect xWOBA should still be useful as a tool for comparing relative performance (ie percentile rankings) as everybody in MLB is playing in the same offensive environment. It just won't be as useful for comparing expected performance vs actual results at this point.