Bertz

Ethan Flanagan's back today too. Good stuff

A silver lining of more or less starting his season in June is the team really doesn't need to worry about managing his innings from here. If we're being aspirational I'd have visions of Trey Yesavage and Cam Schlittler dancing in my head.

Grant Kipp threw 4 innings where the only baserunner allowed was an error. That's great, but the fact that he only went 4 feels less great.

Another good outing for Naz Mule. Keep stacking those up my dude.

He's healthy enough to be back in CF and he appears to have gotten hit again, Kepley should be in Tennessee Tuesday night

The stuff models started kind of liking Thornton before his pat leave. But the preponderance of evidence is that he's the worst pitcher on the 40 man roster

Matt Shaw has 15 homeruns in 332 PAs since last year's ASB. 27 dong pace. 120 wRC+ over that time before today, so call it 122 right now? I'm not super confident with him against some tougher righties, but dude is good and lining up for an everydayish OFer job next year IMO.

I think it's more good than great on the surface (sits 95 it looks like), but coming from a 6'9" frame I presume it's top of the charts extension and such.

Yeah take advantage of him throwing strikes while it's happening. It could leave as quickly as it came.

Good lord what has gotten into Jace Beck??

Toronto's bullpen was already pretty shredded because of Max Scherzer getting scratched on Wednesday, so chasing Gausman like this is an especially big deal

Nico's pulling the ball less than last year, and he's hitting more line drives. This doesn't stand up to even light scrutiny.

Not quite as strong as last time but another very good outing from Will Sanders. We're like three more of these away from it being fair to wonder if he should be in the big league rotation

Honestly Strosnider is fun too I'm just all in on pitching

FWIW Alcantara and Dean are the two guys on the 40 man not in the Iowa lineup tonight

I'm actually okay with this. It's very hard to get him into games while Seiya's locked into DH, so in the immediate term he's basically wasting a roster spot. And even when he's healthy it's tough to give all three of him/Shaw/Pedro decent playing time. Given that A) Mo can actually get some valuable development at Iowa (not so much at the plate but behind it) and B) the struggles of the infield mean you want both Shaw and Pedro around, it makes sense he drew the short straw. Really curious who comes up in his place. Triantos just for pinch running?

Literally the second time the Borg has been referenced in a political crashout in the past 6 months

Not the best outing from McGwire but still 13 Ks / 4 BBs in his early going at SB

The owners' only detailed policy proposal reduces short term costs but is objectively negative ROI and yet next March the dumbest most gullible people you know are going to be all like "The owners are totally willing to sacrifice a season for the salary cap!"

I'm pretty enthusiastic about how things on the farm are going, but this feels rich for me as I think there's a definite gap in the second tier. I tend to think in the Fangraphs future value parlance, focusing less on ordinal ranking and more on tier, but regardless I think the story is the same. - Hartshorn/Rojas/Ramirez are easy 50 FVs (i.e. a Top 100 prospect), and honestly if you wanted to say any is a 55 FV (top 40ish) I don't think anyone should argue with you too hard. Ramirez only has like 3 more days of eligibility though so I don't really consider him a prospect anymore - Wiggins and to a lesser extent Conrad are obvious Top 100 talents, but with ruby red injury red flags that should knock them down. Fangraphs normally calls these guys 45+ FVs. And for Conrad even this might be rich until we see him start to beat up on pro pitching - Ayers is in a weird spot because if he had just turned 23 instead of having just turned 25 he'd be a consensus top 5 prospect in the sport, but age relative to league is a huge deal. I'd probably call him a 45+ like the two guys above but you could very easily argue him up or down a grade The six guys above are the only guys I'd even really consider for this type of list. At least as of today. The next tier of prospects (guys I'd consider potentially a 45, i.e. a top 10 prospect in a typical farm system) all have too many questions: Kepley - How does he hold up when he gets to a level where pitchers can consistently throw strikes? Caple - Good pitcher, performing well, does he have the oomf in his repertoire to warrant more adulation than he's getting? Wing - Can this huge stuff hold up over longer outings and a long season? Sanders - Does he have the health + command to consistently put out outings like his most recent one? Mathis - Can he hit enough to justify a boffo rating even as a R/R 1B? Also how worried do we need to be about the durability here? I definitely don't think we have any complex league guys worth a ranking like this (and the older I get the more I wonder if any complex league guys warrant a grade like this).

Man Jose Escobar just keeps hitting I wonder if the thought is he's stuck in the Yonathan Perlaza zone? The bat would be fun if he was actually going to stick as an infielder but no chance as a LF?

Looking at game logs apparently it started late last week but I'm just noticing Lepley is finally back in CF Feels like Tenn as soon as he gets hot again should be more of an expectation now?

Just did a little math, pitchers in the 2010's had a .221 BABIP. There's pretty much no argument that any position player can be expected to run lower than a .230ish over any meaningful time horizon. And honestly anything under .250-.260 requires a leadfoot or someone who hits an insane number of fly balls. Everyone always tries to tie themselves in knots over why this particular outlier BABIP, HR/FB rate, strand rate, etc. is totally going to maintain itself and every time they end with an "ah, well, nevertheless".

I think with pitchers the simple solution is long relief. There's a delicate balancing act of making sure you have bodies available at AAA ready to go 5 innings, which is why I suspect despite my protests we have not had both Wicks and Assad on the MLB roster at the same time, but there's always garbage time innings to go around. I think especially with Craig, it seems like he likes having two long guys. One he can give some leverage to one more for pure garbage time. If I had my way in two weeks when Boyd's back I'd have Assad as SP 5, Rea as the more leveragey LRP, AND Wicks as the garbage time guy.