Dagagad

Seattle being able to produce a guy like Murfree that they drafted in 2018… someone who can actually strike someone out in that spot. Why don’t we ever f***ing do that? For f*** sake. We f***ing suck at it. We’d put in cimber and he’d get babipped into a sac fly or a bloop.

Yea he must have got a bad read on how hard it was hit but still, he really should have been able to tell that wasn’t going to be caught. He took a step back after it hit the deck.

I know there’s no real point benching people for baserunning errors but it must be so tempting.

I feel like you have to move Bo down right? That was a nasty pitch but still, he’s scuffling pretty bad for a while.

When things are going bad, things are going bad. That’s terrible baserunning. Charlie must be ready to strangle people.

He thought he was going to catch it? Did he lose it?

The Yankees and astros are two of the poster children for being good at literally everything. The Houston farm system doesn’t look amazing right now but I’d bet quite a bit of money that they somehow uncover a couple more viable starters from there in the next couple of years. Houston are excellent at everything. Only one of their current homegrown starters was considered anywhere near an elite prospect. It’s totally possible they are cheating as well. We should be too.

We are 20th in K/9 in the bullpen. We aren’t exactly lighting it up there either. I always think swinging strike rate is a better indicator of stuff than called strikes. That’s a small quibble I guess. Failed starters into shutdown arms is kind of exactly what I’m talking about. I think we have a pretty good track record at old, used to be good, put him in a new environment and tweak his pitch mix. That’s not revolutionary though. That can’t be all that you do. I play a lot of fantasy, dynasty, and I consume alot of content from guys who are as close to experts as possible on the public facing side on pitch design and pitching dev. They never mention us. They don’t say bad things about almost anyone (except Kansas City) but they will say good things and the teams that are mentioned as being cutting edge or doing something interesting are not us. I think that matters personally, especially as it usually backed up by real life results. You can call that anecdotal but relief pitching is already such a small sample, volataile mess that is hard to separate signal from noise unless you actually talk to people in front offices. The problem could be lots of different things too which is impossible to figure out from outside. - we could be misevaluating, bad scouting or analysis - we could be good at scouting or analysis but picking the wrong players for our dev group style - we could have a mediocre dev group at the majors or in the minors or both - we could be super unlucky … maybe possible - we could have none of those problems right now and actually our pitch dev is much improved at all levels but there just hasn’t been enough time to make the trades to bring in the talent in the last few years - we could be too reluctant to spend assets to acquire pure stuff in the bullpen and dev has nothing to work with - we could be behind the curve on identifying underrated attributes in pitchers or projecting changes on to pitchers based on their arm slot, movement or whatever You could probably add 10 more things to that list but all actually know is that there is something off there right now. As an example of something you hear, I heard that that SF pumps out pitchers that throw 85mph+ sliders. You hear that Cleveland has fantastic synergy between scouting and dev so they pick players that dev have shown they can improve. You hear that seattle has some of the most cutting edge pitching dev in the majors. You hear that the dodgers teach everyone a sweeping slider. There are more of these. My ears will perk up when someone I respect says that about us. Anecdotes yes but also identifiable signs of a philosophy. I struggle to see that with us. I didn’t throw the unlucky one in there for balance. I absolutely believe you can have an off year and just be unlucky. Two in a row though is less likely.

I hadn’t thought of that. I don’t remember seeing many indicators of us having this ability before that either but we have put a lot more resources into it behind the scenes since then. Maybe this is a bigger factor than I’m giving credit for.

I’m looking at swinging strike percentage. That’s the literal definition of swing and miss. Do you make people swing and miss, thus causing a strike. What other definition is there? Even if that’s not important, I don’t see how the plan of ‘have an average bullpen’ in the AL east was a credible plan. I also think there is a s*** ton of evidence that we can’t produce our own bullpen pitchers. I don’t mean draft and produce them. I mean getting a guy and then making him a lot better. Or not even making him better but identifying ability that’s untapped. Or shaping a pitch differently. Or teaching everyone the same pitch. Or anything like that.. All you need is eyes to see over the last 6 years and you can tell we don’t do what the best teams do in this area. What do we do about this? Nothing probably… we have a window of contention and we are good. I’m sure as s*** not blaming the players though because we can’t produce relievers or back end starters. Yes, my conclusion is do nothing .. lol. Maybe change up the pitch dev team, I don’t know. These things are so tangled.

You can blame the players but it’s the front office that put together an average bullpen and didn’t foresee the possibility that sometimes average can go to bad really easily in the bullpen AND you also have very little swing and miss. That’s betting a lot on projections. Also, we’ve had decent injury luck. It’s on the front office that we can’t produce even back end spot starters that are competent. Other teams can do that. In other words, if we had even the semblance of the ability to produce our own pitching, the hitters could be below projections (but still good) and it wouldn’t matter. At the end of the day, it’s all about pitching. So, yea the players should perform better but the front office isn’t doing a super job of preparing for predictable eventualities. I know I’ve bitched about the FO and pitching and not given them credit for hitting. We’ve done a great job on that side but I concentrate on pitching because it’s frankly more important. The ability to pull pitching out of your ass is the difference between the ‘good for a while and then bad’ good front offices and the ‘good for extended periods’ great front offices. We have money so that gets extended out a bit for us, which is good.

I would move Jansen for the best possible return (even all prospects) and then use prospects to buy relievers. You are more likely to get full value that way.

Ahh, yea our pitching overall has been good because of manoah, gausman and stripling. They’ve basically saved our season. They aimed for an average pen I think. That’s our projection, and we just haven’t hit it. We are close enough to it though that it might be random, I don’t know.

Aren’t they 13th in the AL in fWAR? Am I looking at the wrong leaderboard? I’m seeing 23rd in FIP and 25th in fWAR league wide. I’m sorting by team, pitching, relievers on fangraphs .

How about FIP and swinging strike rate? I tend to agree with you that they aren’t a complete disaster but you picked all the stats that help them. It was intended to be an average pen that came out as below average.

Sounds like the guys where 1/10 would suddenly find way more velo in the Cleveland system and become a 2/3/4 starter,

I don’t see how you can be realistic about things and not be happy with the hitting side. Bo or vlad could easily have been straight up busts. Kirk, Espinal have been success stories. It’s the pitching.

Realistically this window ends after 2025 just looking at the springer deal (you have to assume that isn’t a great contract by then), Gausman is 35 after that year and possible not a good contract either, and vlad and Bo are out of control then. That even might be a little optimistic. You realistically would have to find new cheap talent by then because Bo and Vlad would be expensive in their final arb year as well. So. this is bang in the middle of the window and at the better end of springer and gausman’s age curves. If we aren’t going to go for it this year (assuming you need to because where you are at the deadline) then we never will.

51-40 must have been pretty good odds so small buys made sense. It’s all down to the odds. If the odds determine that we we need to win a lot but feasible amount to get in, then you need to do what you have to do. It’s not a choice. You can’t sign springer, have the countdown of vlad’s control, berrios contract and gausman contract, and not use the appropriate means depending on the odds. The window is open, the clock is ticking. From memory the rays were competing when they sold archer. That’s one of the reason they get those kinds of deals. It’s sheer willingness to do that mid contention. Also, the dodgers get to sell a ton of prospects every year, they know they can make more.

Ignore the second dagagad. He was mad with angry passion. We buy big, buy small, or sell completely based on playoff odds and injuries. It’s the only way.

They have time. But if they have to buy this year they have to. The window has to take precedence over the farm. I don’t understand how Cleveland were so good at this (and still are, they have an amazing group of pitchers in the minors) and we aren’t.

2019 is only 3 years ago. Interesting….

If the playoff odds say we need a Castillo size addition, then we do that. It doesn’t matter what we have to give up. The window is time constrained. You can’t just decide not to try.

Fair enough. The one thing I will say is don’t dream too hard on low minors pitching. It will jump up and punch you in the balls with no warning.

Holy f*** you will write bible long posts defending them on pitching dev but you want to fire him over starting a pitcher in one f***ing game? Lol, I love it! I’m here for this irrational energy.