Transmogrified Tiger

PCA in 2 games back with Iowa: 4 for 9 w/ a HR, 2/2 K/BB, and 2 SB

Across AAA and MLB this year, Little has a 4.65 ERA and 5.53 FIP, he's struck out 1 more batter than he's walked. He has objectively not pitched well, and my posts are explaining the whys that are driving that. These are small samples, just like the samples are small of him pitching a bit better in AAA/MLB last year, and that is part of the point being made. The answer of why Little can look good is obvious, he throws upper 90s from a brutal angle for LHH and gets like 30 feet of extension due to being part redwood. The answer of why Little has been less good is what I'm saying, that he's going to look great sometimes and horrible some others. It is not that Little's 2024 line is what you expect of him going forward, or that he's hopeless to ever sort out these problems. But these are the problems that have existed with his profile the whole time, it's why he got quickly moved to the pen, it's why his run prevention was merely 'good' in AA despite striking out 16 per 9, and it's why he's struggling with consistency at the high minors/MLB level now. You've created this fiction in your head that this skepticism is writing him off as useless and representative of demanding finished products of young players the moment they hit MLB. Not only is that obvious nonsense, it leads to a much less interesting conversation than actually talking about the player and performance involved.

I mean, who is talking about kicking Little to the curb? We can be clear eyed about his prognosis and hopeful that he bucks the trend while not trying to ship him out of town or make him into something he's not, no? Players with Little's build have been extremely rare, partially because they are at the tail end of the demographic curve, but also because especially players of that height have historically had the same problem of repeating mechanics and therefore not having sufficient control/command. Yes, Little has age on his side and I'm not saying he absolutely cannot find a way through. But he was also around a 15% walk rate in AA and AAA so the fact that his MLB time has been more of the same(now with more hard contact from better hitters) is a continuation of his progression and not a new bump in the road.

You can't have sufficient swing and miss to be a good bullpen arm without risking some walks, the only way to avoid that is if your stuff is so superhuman that you get a ton of in-zone whiff which only a handful of guys can pull off. That said, there are degrees to this. Little can be extremely hard to barrel, but major leaguers are good and if you give them repeated hitter's counts with uncompetitive pitches, you start to get burned even if you can steer the ball back in the zone. And that's the thing with Little, it's not necessarily the walk count, it's that the walks are representative of inconsistency in his mechanics that lead to him having basically zero command. The problem I see is that mechanical inconsistency is probably a function of him being an enormous person, and he doesn't have the athleticism to repeat in the way he'll have to. So in outings where he stays in and near the zone will look like last night, and then we'll flip the coin next time to see if he's that version or the one who can walk the bases loaded(or give up 2-0 line drives) in the blink of an eye.

Welcome!

NO LESS THAN YOU DESERVE, OZZIE

Saw this mentioned a couple places on Twitter, but Kyle is 5-6 weeks away from hitting 10 years of service time, which is a pretty important marker for a lot of players. If they are thinking about demoting or releasing him in his current state, I wouldn't be surprised if they make every effort to get him to that line, and this decision is probably along that path.

Interesting that Dansby comes back to hitting 8th, probably not overly meaningful and more of the unintended consequence of Tauchman leading off and balancing L/R and contact throughout.

Don't think so, if you were going to add Joey Wendle(owner of a 47 wRC+ in 355 PA since the start of last year) or some other external option but needed a stop gap for a day or so while the details were worked out, you would just...not demote Mastrobuoni.

I think that's just the regressed nature of projections, his Zips RoS is 6th in the NL in fWAR: https://www.fangraphs.com/projections?pos=&stats=pit&type=rzips&team=&lg=nl

In a 4 man bench where one of the 4 is a catcher with a 32 wRC+, I find it hard to believe the best option is having both Vazquez and Madrigal on the same roster. Avoiding a late inning K isn't such an important role that it's worth the duplication of other skill sets, and Madrigal is so out of whack offensively that he gives away a chunk of that with ineffective contact anyway.

Exactly, I suspect it's about 80/20 Mastro goes down in that comparison. But depending on how you weight a couple factors where there isn't a black and white decision, it could make sense to give PCA some more regular at bats while Mastro can be a PR and you have all 4 OF healthy and not needing shielded from the lineup.

In a world where two people are going down because Dansby is back, Nico isn't getting IL'd, and Vazquez is coming up, I assume that Madrigal is the lock to go down. He's in terrible form, he's duplicative with existing options, and the role he could potentially fill is so narrow that you send him to Iowa to try to get his swing back so you could potentially count on him with something more expansive later. The second spot is Mastrobuoni v. PCA. That boils down to a bunch of factors like your expectation for both of their upcoming production along with Tauchman/Wisdom, your faith in Morel's defense or desire to give him a break against certain pitchers, etc. And of course, the wild card is there is another IL stint that we don't know about, though given Vazquez is the call up I'm not sure who it would be if it's not one of the players being discussed for a demotion already. I guess Morel is the one that would fit best, and he's certainly had enough nagging problems that I wouldn't be shocked if something got worse

and some indirect internal confirmation from a scout No word on who is getting IL'd or sent down to make room.

Agreed. We do split things like this off when we notice them, but Sunday evening after a game isn't peak noticing hours.

Happ - No concern, he has been good for too long, and is showing signs that a heater is around the corner Mastrobuoni - Little concern, he's a bench player and I'd expect him to be stronger with the bat going forward, but ultimately he's probably not among the best 26 on the roster so I'm not going to hand-wring his minutiae. This series was bad but far from what I'd expect as a norm. Madrigal - Mild concern, similar to Mastrobuoni he's not of incredible importance, but continuing to not square the ball even with regular playing time makes him a rough profile. I've long stuck up for Madrigal because people exaggerate his shortcomings since no one apparently can accept bench-level production on the bench, but he and Mastrobuoni on the same roster isn't a long term solution. Busch - Little concern, you have to give him the runway to keep making adjustments, and even when he's struggling he's working counts and making some contributions. Anecdotally I haven't seen any defensive misplays in a spell too. Hendricks - High concern, he can't keep rotating between decent start, unlucky disaster start, and deserved disaster start. Part of me hopes that if his next start or 2 doesn't go well, that he truly gets rocked, because I think he can probably right the ship to some degree, and if he admits that he's not playable right now I think he could be agreeable to working things out in Iowa. Morel - Little concern, taking great at bats, tragically unlucky batted ball luck(.376 xwOBA). The defense is what it is, it's not good and not going to really get much better, that's okay given the at bats he's taking now Amaya - Medium concern, there's no real smoking gun that I can see but the unplayable offense stretches how much you can give him runway to succeed, especially since his MLB/high minors track record is not long. Gomes - High concern, I think I was early on the possibility that his bat is cooked, I don't need him to be last year offensively but if he's gonna be a slider speed bat he needs to punish those, because a 32 wRC+ stretches how much you can value defense from the position, doubly so with Amaya in a deep funk

Zac Leigh popped up in the Iowa boxscore as well.

Taylor said earlier in the game the expectation is both will be in the lineup after the off day, yeah.

I'm sorry Oneil Cruz is named after Paul O'Neill? That is insane

The catching situation is starting to get a bit dire. Entering today, they had a 23 wRC+ over the last 30 days, .149/.204/.223

that's quite enough of Triolo

Mitch Keller is a very good starter.

You could tell that throw was going anywhere by that wide left plant foot

They scored 3+ in three straight and 6 of 8 before yesterday.

Guessing Mowins has ESPN obligations that supersede, she does softball and that NCAA tourney started this weekend.