AMS528

Vlad is having a weird season even by his standards. Hitting the ball less hard, but managing to create so much quality contact that his xBA is .332. And on top of that he's rated out as an above average defensive 1B so far this year. Having read the board for years, the way his defense has gone is the exact opposite of how 90% of people on here believed it would go. The standard expectation was Vladdy would be a borderline DH by 28 and he has instead just steadily improved year to year.

Usually Vladdy's power improves as the weather gets hotter through the summer, so it's nice that this year he's elected to hit .350 in the meantime.

Nimmala with another nice game so far. 12-1 in the 5th inning for Vancouver. He is 2/3 with a double and a walk. OPS is up to .851, four doubles and three homeruns so he is hitting for plenty of power. Landen Maroudis is alive. 3.2 innings, 4ks and most importantly 0 walks given up. Had no control after coming back from injury last year, 2.13 ERA so far this year. Also Tucker Toman out there showing signs of life.

I'm fairly certain that's what everyone thinks actually.

Thank you for making this thread, I missed having a place to just casually note a performance or ask a question. On that note, Charles McAdoo seems to have had a great start to his season great power, reasonable strikeout numbers, solid patience etc. Be nice to have a reasonable option for callup if we have ongoing injury issues.

Random aside, but I remember on the old version of these boards, the minor league thread would often have tons of activity through the year (whether the big league team was good or not). I feel like it gets buried underneath the great updates threads in the minor league part of the forum. No one posts in that thread for weeks. I get the sense like 90% of people only click on Toronto Blue Jays Talk. It'd be nice to have that aspect of the team be active as well with discussion, maybe one general minor league thread on this part of the forum would work? I was going to ask if Charles McAdoo had made any changes or looked better with his numbers looking great in Buffalo but the last post in there was April 7th.

Vlad with the 27% walk rate 4% k rate and .000 ISO. I'm not gonna complain, he has been doing what he needs to do, excellent patience. Just funny the kind of hitter he'll occasionally turn into.

Extremely composed after going down 0-2.

What. There's no way that's true. He would have signed it immediately. That's so far and beyond what any 2B has made before and every other team clearly has viewed him as being a risk potentially.

That's the second time now (BA was first) where it's been mentioned that Nimmala has great hands at shortstop. Very hopeful sign, if there's any kind of offensive breakout he's going to rocket up the lists with a defensive floor in place.

So it appears that Nimmala has gone from it being unclear if he would stick at short, to now being rated the top defensive infielder in the org, described as being an above average defender at SS. That really changes his floor (and ceiling), and explains why even after a mediocre hitting year he's stayed high on everyone's lists. He doesn't need to be an elite hitter to succeed, but becoming an above average hitter with above average power would make into a star. Obviously there's still risk if his hitting never develops at all.

Sure but that has mostly not been the teams hitting philosophy. This is the team that (and every person in American media has been saying for the last three weeks) does not strike out, puts the ball in play regularly and creates big innings from that. They also do walk, but in the way Vladdy and Kirk do, walking while also not striking out. Schneider has had a good year being used in the way Terminator said, but the team overall has gotten to the playoffs and the WS now by not striking out. The team was by whatever measure you want to use at worst a top 3 team at hitting this year.

So I thought the same but if I was providing the reasons for why, it would be that Schneider has struck out in exactly 30% of PAs in his career and France has struck out in 18% of PAs in his career. Schneider wanted to play for the run, not for the possibility of DS maybe getting a bigger hit. He did not want a K in that situation and so went with France. Maybe you think it's better to go for a big inning than to just try and guarantee a single run here, but I do think I understand trying to just get that 4th run for sure. It provides a reasonable amount of breathing room. In that frame of thinking, I don't see why it's any kind of egregious decision. One that you can disagree with if your philosophy about what is more important is different. But going with the guy who is likelier to make contact in a situation where you want to guarantee another run in a two run game is entirely defensible I think.

I just read through this thread and my God some of you are whiney. Vlad continues the historically great post season. Second most hits in a single post season now. With Bo it's amazing that he has avoided the rust of being off for weeks, jumped into playoff baseball and been consistently clutch already. I feel good about facing Snell again next.

Highest K/BB ratio of all time (500 IP minimum) and it's not even close. There's a bigger gap between him and DeGrom (1.3) then there is between DeGrom and the next 30 guys on the list. List is mostly recent guys though when you drop the IP requirement to that. Bieber is 5th, Gilbert is 6th.