Minor League Discussion & Boxes, 7-21-24

[CaliforniaRaisin]

Scheduled Games (Central Time):

Iowa at Memphis, 1:05 pm
Tennessee vs. Rocket City (resumption of game from 7/20), 1:00 pm
Tennessee vs. Rocket City (game two), TBD
South Bend vs. Quad Cities, 1:05 pm
Myrtle Beach at Columbia, 4:05 pm

ACL Cubs and both DSL teams have the day off

Probable Starters:

Iowa: TBD
Tennessee: (game two) RHP Sam Armstrong (at South Bend: 66 IP, 3.00 ERA, 3.87 FIP, 66 K, 22 BB) - AA debut
South Bend: RHP Grant Kipp (6 IP, 6.00 ERA, 3.81 FIP, 8 K, 6 BB)
Myrtle Beach: TBD

[Bertz]

GameDay has Noland going for Iowa.  Really interested to see his statcast data.

[CaliforniaRaisin]

 

[CaliforniaRaisin]

Here are the videos:

 

[Bertz]

https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/gamefeed?date=7/21/2024&gamePk=752817&chartType=pitch&legendType=pitchName&playerType=pitcher&inning=&count=&pitchHand=&batSide=&descFilter=&ptFilter=&resultFilter=&hf=playerBreakdown&sportId=11&liveAb=

He was all over the place and probably ought to hang out a tick lower than this but good lord that velo from Palencia today

Also interesting that Statcast defaults to thinking Noland's fastball is a cutter.  I want to see the pitch design guys dig in

[CaliforniaRaisin]

 

[craig]

5 hours ago, Bertz said:

....He was all over the place and probably ought to hang out a tick lower than this but good lord that velo from Palencia today...

Admit I've kinda given up on Palencia.  Fun to have great velocity, but what good does it do?  Seems useless for getting outs or throwing the occasional shutout innings?  His ERA has been high at every stop,   Only ERA's below 4 were back at Myrtle (3.74) and South Bend (3.94).  WHIP is always high.  Don't really see any hint of progress.  

[Cubs420psd]

46 minutes ago, craig said:

Admit I've kinda given up on Palencia.  Fun to have great velocity, but what good does it do?  Seems useless for getting outs or throwing the occasional shutout innings?  His ERA has been high at every stop,   Only ERA's below 4 were back at Myrtle (3.74) and South Bend (3.94).  WHIP is always high.  Don't really see any hint of progress.  

Yeah same, wake me up when Palencia can consistently throw it across the plate. 

He's Dillion Maples 2.0

[NorthsideAvenger]

43 minutes ago, Cubs420psd said:

Yeah same, wake me up when Palencia can consistently throw it across the plate. 

He's Dillion Maples 2.0

And what if he becomes the next Jeremiah Estrada? Unless Palencia is out of options, I am perfectly fine with the Cubs holding onto him. 

Edited July 22, 2024 by NorthsideAvenger

[Rcal10]

9 hours ago, NorthsideAvenger said:

And what if he becomes the next Jeremiah Estrada? Unless Palencia is out of options, I am perfectly fine with the Cubs holding onto him. 

Took the words right out of my mouth. Fans love to just discard guys and then when they are good elsewhere criticize the Cubs for letting the guy go. The words said about Palencia were surely said previously about Estrada. 

[Bertz]

11 hours ago, craig said:

Admit I've kinda given up on Palencia.  Fun to have great velocity, but what good does it do?  Seems useless for getting outs or throwing the occasional shutout innings?  His ERA has been high at every stop,   Only ERA's below 4 were back at Myrtle (3.74) and South Bend (3.94).  WHIP is always high.  Don't really see any hint of progress.  

I still like him.  The start/stop he's had to deal with between injuries and the fact that this team could only play nailbiters for the last two months last season (and thus Alzolay/Merrweather/Leiter pitched every game) has IMO prevented him from getting into a groove. 

One of the silver linings with the team sliding out of contention this year is that I think you can just throw guys like Palencia/Bigge/etc. into the fire, and I expect that we'll come into next year with a much deeper and more settled pen than we've had in a long time for it.

[Transmogrified Tiger]

Palencia has about 90 innings above High A and a 13.3% BB% in those innings.  You can be an MLB reliever with that many walks but it also requires doing things that Palencia hasn't done, namely being very hard to barrel/hit HR off of.  I don't see an urgency to get rid of him, and Estrada is an example that adjustments are possible, but I also think there needs to be *something* that results in a step change for Palencia.  He's not on a path that ends with productive MLB RP, so whether that's something mechanical to improve command, a pitch mix change, or something else, he needs to do something to get there.

[Cubs420psd]

11 hours ago, NorthsideAvenger said:

And what if he becomes the next Jeremiah Estrada? Unless Palencia is out of options, I am perfectly fine with the Cubs holding onto him. 

Im fine with the Cubs holding on to him, I'm just done getting excited about him until he shows otherwise.

[NorthsideAvenger]

11 minutes ago, Cubs420psd said:

Im fine with the Cubs holding on to him, I'm just done getting excited about him until he shows otherwise.

Fair enough.