Bertz
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Everything posted by Bertz
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As far as traditional numbers there's been research that say it's pretty strictly strikeouts and walks. So like with Michael Busch don't look at him hitting .500, but do notice the fact that he has gone 10 at bats without a strikeout and all his contact numbers are up as well. The pitch arsenals are harder to say. I would tend to pay a lot of attention to velo increases, especially if a guy's not getting hit around (i.e. he's not artificially throwing hard to try and make the team). New pitches I try to pump the brakes on. I bit hard on the "Jameson Taillon’s got a great new sweeper and he's going to level up now" narrative. I think even if a new pitch has great spin/movement you need to know that a guy's comfortable locating it and using it in games that matter.
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I had stopped paying attention by the time Scalzo was in the game, but his average velo was up 3 full MPH today it looks like. Some of that might be classification, in that he maybe had some AAA cutters get classified FBs and drag down his average. But the top end velo doesn't lie. The fastest pitch he threw in AAA last year was 95.6, today 10 of his 11 fastballs today were harder than that. Including topping 97 twice! Looks like he might be adding a sweeper too, but I'm gonna leave parsing that to the experts.
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95.9. Down a little bit from Thursday, where everyone's velo was up and you wonder if the gun was hot, but still very high for him. Interesting thing to me is that Sharma indicated Keller was being viewed as a SP, but pitched today on 3 days rest. I wonder if he's making enough of an impression to have a real chance at the MLB bullpen as a 2-3 inning guy instead of having to bide his time at Iowa?
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Brett Taylor brought up a really good point this AM that the amount of Ivan Brethowr we're seeing is probably meaningful. You expect to see the Iowa guys all over these games, you don't expect to see a Myrtle Beach guy, especially in like the 5th/6th inning. Given that he's not a Top 30 guy it's a soft sign that the org likes him a lot better than the public.
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104 the other way on a line. Gorgeous
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Brad Keller's velo still way up 👀
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This game is in front of Statcast, so yes! He averaged 95.4 today, down from 96.4 on average last year. I'd guess for it being February that's about where you'd want him to be.
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Ben Brown's alive!
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Amaya looks good. Him being close to his second half self for a full year would be huge.
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I don't know that he looks jacked enough for Soler? On the other hand the white pinstripes can be misleading on that front. And the long sleeves in temperate weather thing is very compelling.
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Spring Training Moves/Transactions Thread
Bertz replied to Outshined_One's topic in Chicago Cubs Talk
It's interesting to me that things have gone radio silent on adding another reliever after it sounded pretty inevitable ~10 days ago. Curious what happened. Some potential explanations? - There's not room in Jed's budget. It was always Turner or a reliever not Turner and a reliever - Julian Merryweather, the most plausible guy to get the boot in the event of another signing, looks great in camp - One or more of the young starters is looking great, which would push Rea to the bullpen - Jed's still got cash earmarked for a David Robertson, but wants to hold off until deeper into ST to make sure he doesn't need to reallocate that money to an emergency SP -
Spring Training Moves/Transactions Thread
Bertz replied to Outshined_One's topic in Chicago Cubs Talk
They probably simply re-sign Quintana but you do wonder about Dylan Cease -
No Marquee today but the team is on MLB.tv and the game has statcast coverage
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Yeah it's one of the bit players from 2014. Matt Szczur?
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From Sharma
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This is good, I know the Cubs have a lot of this same tech. I do wonder how many teams have fallen behind in this arms race. Like I know the White Sox have, but is this something that is just widening the gap between the bottom feeders and the rest of the league, or is this an edge the Cubs have over e.g. the Brewers as well?
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Spring Training Moves/Transactions Thread
Bertz replied to Outshined_One's topic in Chicago Cubs Talk
In Seattle it should be noted I like Canha, so I'm curious if there's a red flag with him I'm overlooking or if he simply lost the game of musical chairs among the backup 1B types. -
I would suspect with how loaded Iowa is this team's going to continue racking up a bunch of Cactus league W's.
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Yeah. It's not impossible he gets the last bench spot as he'd be a better defensive CF than anyone currently in the running. But my guess is that this is in case, god forbid, PCA gets hurt and we have to push Alcantara into the starting CF role early.
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Brad Keller feels pretty firmly like the most interesting of the NRIs
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Probably bad. Caissie looks like a good player but trading Darvish at that point and getting nothing of substance for four+ years is a tough pill to swallow. Caissie's pretty much got to be star to salvage it IMO.
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- The Javy trade looks amazing - The Rizzo trade looks good and decent chance it turns out amazing as well - KB trade was a bust. Weird trajectory too where it looked sort of bad initially, looked good for a while, and has now totally flamed out - Kimbrel trade was disastrous, somehow for everyone involved
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Yeah his only shot is if he can live at like 98 as a reliever IMO.
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It's not just being in/out of uniform like I kind of wondered at the convention, Jordan Wicks has lost some weight.
