Dagagad

Phelps stuff isn’t good enough to be this wild. Also, god damn does our bullpen love to give free bases to the other team when they are chasing a lead. We didn’t get the swing and miss but we do get the walks!! Worst of both worlds.

It’s weird because he’s supposed to have a good eye. That’s an auto take for Kirk or biggio. I mean biggio is also taking it if it’s a strike but whatever.

Vlad is kind of becoming an easy out if you can place a slider close enough away. Which is pretty surprising. I always thought he had a great eye for spin. That shouldn’t be effected by how well you are swinging it.

Man I’m jealous of the Rays front office. Archer for meadows, baz and glasnow AND then meadows for paredes. They are f***ing geniuses. I think a part of it is just sheer willingness to do these kinds of trades. Like the jays could probably have swindled some delusional team and traded teo for three future pieces but big money teams don’t do that kind of thing.

The most realistic scenario is that you bring Jansen back, play him enough to make it seem like you want to keep him and ‘reluctantly’ trade him right at the deadline.

If we broke it down over 10 games. - Kirk catches 2, DHs 6. - Jansen catches 3, DH 0-1, pinch hits - Moreno catches 5, DH 0, pinch hits Does that work? That’s the lower limit to me to how much Moreno could play and it still be worth having him up. Maybe you could 4/4 him and Jansen.

I appreciate all the work that went into this. I just skimmed it and I’ll reply more thoroughly later. Just from a quick look over, the Rays front office is like 50% to 100% better at this than us. The list of the trades they made is like a list of at worse good value all the way to steal after steal after steal. Like, you can call that luck but that’s a lot of luck over a very long amount of time. Like that springs deal alone. He’s started games for them (on short outings) and he’s pitched very well this year. That’s insanely valuable for what essentially was a riley Adams return.

Lol, I have no idea why it does that. I’m not typing them in. I’ll edit the original.

It’s a frustrating experience being a fan of a really good team with a massive weakness that they seemingly refuse to address and that no journalist seems prepared to ask questions about. It’s always just assumed that it ‘takes time’ and that we have to ‘wait on prospects’ when that’s ********. I would like my favorite team to not suck at something really important. Message received though.

I agree with this to a point but there are teams that basically never have bad swing and miss numbers. There is a luck element and there’s also a systemic element. People keep talking about spending resources. The good teams at this build pens on the relative cheap year after year after year.

I’d like to see him answer questions on it. It’s a major point of failure. I’d like to know what the plan is other than wait for prospects because no other team does that in the pen, and I think he knows that.

Number 1 on that list is pretty much unacceptable. Especially two years In a row. I don’t want them to be exactly like the Yankees and I don’t think you have to put as many resources as you think they should into this to be good. You just have to be smarter than we are. Miami and Seattle are way up the swinging strike list as well and they didn’t spend tons on their bullpens either. The rays aren’t as good this year (because of injuries which is part of the way they do things .. they target higher injury risks than other teams) but they do it every year. I’m sure Atkins is trying but he isnt good at building a pen and the people who are good at it are able to do it in less than 7 years. It shouldn’t require carefully nurturing pitchers up from A ball like some people on this board think. I don’t know. This is all just super high grade denial of a basic fact. Good bullpens strike people out and ours is one of the worst in the league at it. I agree on AA. He traded too many prospects but all of them became not much. Wasn’t that the rationale for the berrios deal last year that those guys weren’t good anyway? So, why doesn’t AA get the same logic? And now everyone wants Atkins to AGAIN trade two top 100 guys for a number 3 starter because AGAIN we are incapable of developing/finding our own back end starters. Yea, yea, yea we have good pitching prospects. Fine, I hope they work out. I’m sure our pen will be the only great pen in the league that’s 50% homegrown. Missing the playoffs last year when we had a good team will be worth it. Edit: I don’t mean by that that we should trade all those pitching prospects. I mean you should be able to build a pen without waiting for them.

I don’t care about WAR. I care if a reliever can strike people out or not in high leverage. If most of your relievers habitually give up decent contact, then you are going to give up runs in high leverage. If there is a guy on third and one out, can you get a strikeout? If there is a guy on second, with no outs, is your best option a guy like Phelps who anyone can at least put the ball in play against? If I’m the Yankees, I absolutely want cimber (such a different look after a starter) and romano (even though romano hasn’t been good this season) and that’s probably it. I’d swap our entire bullpen for the Yankees right now and they can keep Holmes. I’ll just take the rest. The problem by the way isn’t that our manager wants to be the rays, it’s that the rays front office is capable of giving their manager a good pen.

I mean exactly. The Yankees are able to do that every year. They acquire guys for next to nothing and after a few years of tinkering, he’s a stud at least for a while. They had the same with Losaiga last year. Got in a trade for not much, turns into an elite reliever for at least a while. Almost no reliever is good for ever. Most that get to be good are only good for one or two seasons here and there. You need to be constantly churning out new guys. It’s been 7 years. Every team misses a ton and the best teams at this miss less. We aren’t one of the best teams at this. There should have been some random nothing trades made a couple of years ago that turned into real bullpen production by now and that doesn’t happen for us because we aren’t good at this. I don’t know how many other ways to say this. After 7 years it’s not bad luck.

I don’t know if I agree with this. Like, yea the Yankees gave quite a bit to get Holmes. The king trade though wasn’t a blockbuster at all. Most of these signings and trades were done for not much. You could go through all those players and find that most were acquired for not much. I think you are right to an extent but it’s more like they aren’t prepared to give anything of real value at all for a reliever generally AND they don’t target swing and miss. All these bullpens have some element of talent ID and then development of that talent. We do one or both of them badly. I’m not talking about one off results. I’m talking about one stat that is a decent proxy for how nasty your bullpen is and we are 29th. The hand and romo trades/signings are indicative of our philosophy. Cheap and used fo be good. Doesn’t strike people out, doesn’t have great underlying stuff but they might get it back and theres value in that. Other teams hunt raw funk and think they can harness it.

I would really love to just know why. Like is this intentional? Do they think that swinging strikes are overrated? There’s something missing. I don’t know if it’s pitching dev or talent identification or both. But there is something missing.

I doubt it as there is now 7 years of evidence that they suck at trading for it and suck at signing it as free agents.

There are 5 players out of 45 who were signed originally by that team. The vast majority sign as free agents or via trades.

The top 5 teams in swinging strike rate have 9 pitchers or so each in their bullpen right now for a total of 45. There are 5 players total who were drafted by that team or signed as an amateur free agent. 5. The narrative that it takes time for pitching to develop and that it needs to percolate up the system for us to get swing and miss in the pen is ********. 7 years is enough time to put together a bullpen if you have a smart front office and good development and pitch design. We just aren’t super good at this as an organization.

I’d sell on teo because you can only have so many guys who regularly have uncompetitive at bats in one lineup. They can be valuable but you can’t have too many. Bo and Teo is one too many, and Bo plays short kind of.

Montoyo messed up by not putting in at least one of the goons we have that throw pure filth. What a dumb ass.

You can’t pitch to contact in these kinds of situations. You just can’t. We can’t develop motherf***ing relievers who can strike anyone out and it will always be a f***ing problem. Can someone get that moneyball meme and put in ‘his weakness is that hitters never swing and miss’. Thanks.

If you could just will yourself to score one run every inning you need one, every team would score 9 runs a game. It’s on the f***ing bullpen. The guy who walked two guys and then hit a guy. It’s on him. Not the hitters who struck out like guys do all like 25% of the time. This front office can not to save their f***ing lives find relievers who can strike people out. It’s a problem. Hopefully we can rally to win.

Twins lost their highly regarded pitching coach to LSU mid season which is a shocker. I remember hearing that the biggest opportunity in baseball right now is just finding good dev guys and paying them well. It’s crazy that a college can offer more than a first place mlb team.

I feel like todays outing from berrios is the nail in the coffin for Kikuchi starting his next one. You can’t have two of those guys starting. I think I’d like to see a phantom IL stint, and Lawrence up. Maybe piggback Lawrence and Castillo for Kikuchi or maybe start both with the doubleheader this week. Even if they are bad. They are unlikely to be as bad.