Aaron_Kennelly

Zobrist in the outfield. http://i.imgur.com/lBYwEDm.gif

This is really bringing me back, circa July 2014, when we sucked but we had all those awesome prospects and everyone was like, "Where are all of these shortstops going to play!?" And the answer was, as its always been, wherever the hell we want to play them. That was one thing I dreamed on, even more than the dongs... "Oh my god, we are going to have Gold Glovers everywhere." This was before we realized that Schwarber was the King Dongsmith and our minds quickly shifted to all of the dongs. We've really come full circle since the Russell trade, though. After that trade, we had all these awesome shortstops that were gonna gobble up everything. We argued for days about which one had to move to third and which one to second. At the time, Bryant was irrefutably The Dongsmith. His future position was less clear. Some didn't think he could stick at third. Others thought it would be a waste to have him patrolling the outfield. It turns out, he can play third, and he if he has to play the outfield, he will be a badass out there too. And he's going to have a ton of value wherever he plays. But, we still agreed, it was great to dream on that defense we were going to trot out. But, things shifted from the thought of all these amazing defenders playing all over the field. For one, Starlin and Javy proceeded to suck. Eventually, it was like, oh, so trading for Russell was a great idea, because none of our other shortstops even deserve a spot on the roster. So it looked like Bryant was staying at third, by default, even though he showed himself well there anyway. And then Schwarber unleashed his mammoth dongs all over the National League. And we began to recognize the power of the dong was enough to overcome all. So now we are without our beloved dongsmith Schwarber temporarily. And, yet, we are back to where it all began: too many Gold Glovers and not enough positions to play them. Oh, boohoo, we are going to have to move our solidly above average third baseman out to the outfield so we can play one of the better shortstops in the league at third, where he is a whirling death machine with his glove and arm. The Castro/Zobrist swap complicates things a little. And Jorge sucks. But, oh yeah, we also have Jason Heyward now. Still, this thought should hold up: We are living what we dreamed about for years. We are there. It all happened. And it is even more glorious than we ever imagined.

The best part about this is that the team inflicting this pain is a team that they horsefeathering hate.

Time to sweep. I hate to look too far ahead, but let's just say we win tomorrow and have a 6-game lead. The Pirates head to St. Louis. We have a tough series with the Nats coming in, but... big deal. Then the Padres come to town. After that, the Pirates come into town, and are set up to face the same three guys we ran out this week. The Cardinals will spend their time on a tough West coast trip. What I am trying to say is, if we play up to our potential, we could have an astonishing lead by the 15th of May.

Here's one thing that has been making me irrationally angry: the Pirates and Cardinals having some better offensive numbers than us. I know they have worse lineups and that the numbers will reflect as such eventually. But, seeing the Pirates BABIP all over shitty teams to a higher OBP than us has seriously been pissing me off a little. So it's nice that we can correct some of these issues on our own.

Yeah, I've tried breaking this all down. I waver. I understand why they've done what they've done so far. I wish to have the most sexy possible combination, too, though. So I am just not even gonna worry anymore. We are awesome. Our defense will be awesome regardless of where guys are at. Just stick them out there and let them make plays. It's not even worth stressing over.

I haven't seen the last two games, but does it appear that Addi is struggling at the plate? He's had a lot of swing and misses.

So Javier Baez has turned into something I never thought he would: a good baseball player. He's so damn good at so damn much that he doesn't even have to hit that much. And he's gotten better at that, too! If he unlocks his power stroke, he's going to be a nice player. I hate his approach, still. There's nothing more frustrating than watching a guy flail at balls out of the zone. But, I don't even care anymore. He's too good at everything else. I love you, Javy!

Kris Bryant must be Kelly Kapowski, because I totally would.

I'm looking forward to Kalish OPS'ing .900 for a couple of weeks before being sent back down, since we are now the Cardinals.

I think Dustin Diamond is a little more adept than Soler at swinging lumber.

We are a normal start from Jake and a normal start from Jon away from being 6 up on the division.

I think it would be prudent for me to change what I said last night: I'm convinced that there is no player in major league history who was better at applying a tag than Javier Baez.

I was at the South Bend game tonight. I got my first look at Carlos Sepulveda, who didn't play when I saw them last week in the Quad Cities. He's an easy guy to like. He probably won't ever be much, because he is small and has no power. He's listed at 5'10", but I doubt he is over 5'8". He made a couple of very slick plays with the leather and turned a couple nice DPs. He also looked alright at the plate. He has good contact skills and a good eye. He probably is never going to hit because of his size and lack of power. But he battles. He had a nice 10- or 11-pitch at bat in the first. The Wisconsin starter, Miguel Diaz, looked good. He was sitting 94-95 and pumped several in at 96. His slider also looked nice. He was perfect through 4. Eloy broke that up with a line drive single, and Diaz kinda fell apart in the fifth. He didn't get hit really hard, but he wasn't able to maintain his velo and was sitting more 92-93 that inning and South Bend was able to do more damage against him. Eloy also hit a gapper later in the game. He continues to impress me. He has decent speed and looks like a pretty smart base runner. He made a nice play in the field, going back and getting a ball. He misread another off the bat that was a liner in front of him, but he was able to correct himself and make the play. It's hard to not be reminded of Jorge Soler when watching him. They both have freakishly sexy bodies, for one. But, Eloy seems to struggle with breaking balls some, while also showing good plate discipline at other times. They both can hit the ball really hard but don't dong enough. At his best, he'll be Good Jorge, with, maybe, solid defense and a little added speed. At his worst, he's the Jorge we are seeing right now. I still haven't seen Dewees do much at the plate or in the field. I'm still anxiously awaiting him displaying his speed. His swing is nice, for sure -- quick and compact. The Eddy Martinez hype from some scouts still confounds me. He's got a really nice arm. It's strong. It's not like Heyward strong or anything, though. I'm sure he's quite fast, but he's hardly even put the ball in play for me to see it. He's got good bat speed, but it's not special. Sands looked alright. His fastball was sitting 87-89 and occasionally hitting 90. He had solid command of it, too. His off-speed stuff looked good, but he wasn't consistent with it. Sometimes he would break a good one off and completely fool the hitter. Other times he was bouncing it in. They didn't make too much hard contact off of him. There were a couple innings where his curve and change-up were sharp and he mowed guys down. When they weren't, he had to work a little. I'm not positive if the gun was right on these. But, twice the gun lit up at 95 for Sands. Once was when he had guys on first and third and was clearly rearing back to get a little something extra to get K's and get out of the inning. It worked because he blew it right past him, and he K'd the last two hitters to get out of the inning. I didn't see him top 90 the rest of the game, though. Is it usual for a guy to reach in and put 5-8 mph extra on a pitch? The second time he did it for sure looked and sounded like it was a lot more heat than the rest of his pitches, though. And the batter was way late, so I definitely believe it could be 95. I just found it odd that he could dial it up that much.

Great to see Contreras hitting for a little pop the last few day. Suddenly, his line is looking pretty damn similar to where he was at last year, which is quite impressive.

I think the desire to give Zobrist a consistent spot makes giving him LF harder. They still want to give Soler a decent number of at bats. That becomes very difficult if Zobrist is in the OF. With Zobrist at 2B, it's easier to shuttle guys in and out. True. In which case, Jorge either goes away, or he rights the ship and we just have awesomeness everywhere and Zobrist gets told to suck it up and switch back and forth like he has his whole career. I'm just not too worried about it this early in the year. Maybe someone -- gasp -- gets injured, or Jorge doesn't improve, or whatever. It will fix itself eventually. And if it doesn't, then around mid-season you tell Zobrist tough horsefeathers. That Russell-Baez DP combo up the middle is so damn enjoyable, though. I hope we saw more of it at some point, with Bryant at third. But I can wait.

I believe it was Kyle that said we would have to have, like, 5 guys injured before it even became an issue. I am pretty sure he was wrong. I think it needs to be at least 10 guys injured.

I think if we settle on Javy as an everyday player, we'll eventually move to Zobrist to left. I agree: Javy is a stud and needs to play in the infield, preferably up the middle. Bryant is a plus defender at third. Let him stay there. Zobrist is the weak link defensively on the infield. And he's played left a lot. But, the pact makes sense, for now. Zobrist's coming off of an injury. He's getting older. He doesn't need to be a super utility player, and he probably shouldn't be anyway. Let's keep him nice and comfortable at the one spot, get him settled in, and maybe we'll move him later on. Bryant playing half his time in left isn't going to kill his value or anything. And the difference between him or Zobrist playing in the infield really isn't too much. Ideally we would rather have Zobrist out in left. But, we'll cross that bridge when we need to do so. But, I just don't think they are going to move him to left until it is clear that he is only going to play left. Make Javy force our hand.

Yeah, Joe's done a great job getting everyone ABs. And the ancillary players have all done well, except Soler. Jorge's got a lot of potential, so they aren't going to completely forget about him. He'll get some chances still. But, it's hard to just let Javy run with a spot when Le Stella and Szczur are playing this well, too. So, basically, keep doing your thing, Joe. It's working -- whether it is playing hunches or match-ups or whatever. I really do enjoy watching Javy play. And part of me wishes I could see him everyday. But part of me remembers he is still Javy and carries with him the same Bad Javy traits we saw in 2014. He's improved them, for sure, but he still needs to develop. If he keeps playing well, he'll play more. But, let's ease into that. Let everyone get their ABs now and they'll sort things out for themselves. #anybodyanytime

I'm convinced that there is no player in the major leagues that is better at applying a tag than Javier Baez.

http://rack.3.mshcdn.com/media/ZgkyMDEyLzEyLzIwL2Q1L1JvbjIwU3dhbnNvLmUxNzRlLmdpZgpwCXRodW1iCTg1MHg4NTA-CmUJanBn/4bb2382c/5ac/Ron%2520Swanson%2520America.jpg

Please don't compare him to Starlin Castro. Starlin has a history of looking horrible at the plate for long periods of time. Starlin twice went a whole season with a wOBA under .290. Jason Heyward has had a wRC+ of at least 110 in 5 of his 6 seasons, being over 120 four times. He might look like Starlin right now. But the man has a history of starting off slowly and then picking it up. It's troubling in the sense of "Why are you starting off slowly again, J-Hey?" When Starlin was bad, it was, "Oh great, Starlin sucks again." Heyward has a proven track record of being a good hitter. Starlin's track record is checkered, to be kind. I am not going to worry about a guy with thousands of good ABs until much later in the year.

Ah well. We were bad offensively today. Battled back in late. Tough loss, but my pain is eased by us being awesome. Please pummel the Pirates, though.

crap

Good eye, KB. Send 'em home happy, Anthony!