Bertz

Shota's fastball averaged 90.8 last year, tonight he's averaging 92.3 and has thrown 1 fastball under 91 MPH. Jameson Taillon is a walking red flag but despite the inflated ERA I feel great about Shota.

FWIW even with a minimum IL stint the toughest lefties we'd be missing him for look to be Yusei Kikuchi and Gavin Williams

It's interesting because on the one hand Craig said something about how Kevin will be up if they have everyday at bats for him. On the other hand he said something about Shaw being the RFer if Seiya can't go. My guess is if Seiya's out a few weeks or less Shaw and the vets fill in, if it's a disastrous injury (which it doesn't sound like) Alcantara will get some runway.

Yup!

Kevin Alcantara has three balls in play tonight and all three were hit at least 105, that's fun

At least Rojas isn't dead

I don't think it's dead arm since it's been all spring, including the WBC where he'd presumably have a strong shot of adrenaline. That said they said some vague stuff about mechanics and his lower body. He's a guy who has gone on the IL with a leg injury every year here, so hopefully it is something he can work through with an IL stint.

The fact that they didn't shuttle him right to the tube makes me think nothing catastrophic is expected, but this does not sound like a guy who is gonna start the season on time.

IMO it's notable that neither Taillon nor the team is doing any sort of Allen Iverson style "we're talking about practice" with this right now.

There was an anecdote from the first week or so of ST, I think from Mooney? But basically a bunch of young pitchers threw the football around after practice one day and Hottovy had to adjust their throwing schedules for the next day or three to account for it. The team with the benefit of their wearables now is able to get hyper detailed on workload/fatigue/etc. So I think IP jumps are a cruder measure than they have to limit themselves to these days. That said we don't have anything better on the outside. I'd guess 140-150 innings like they got out of Horton is probably a good benchmark though? - I think we had more reason to be worried about Horton at this time last year than we do Wiggins right now. But like Jason said the team probably would have preferred to dial him back a bit - On that last point, I know Wiggins went MIA for a month in the middle of last season, but it sounds like he was throwing the whole time. He was kept out of formal games that would show up on a Baseball-Reference page but he was still building inninhs - It's anecdata at best but increasingly it feels like the league will let anyone go into that 130-150 IP range. Guys coming back from major injury, young guys, reliever to starter converts, etc. It kind of doesn't matter if you're able to stay healthy *in that season* teams seem increasingly unlikely to set a ceiling much lower than 150

I'll be interested to see how the FB grades out against big leaguers. It's 70 grade velocity, but also has premium shape/movement on top of that. So does that make it an 80 grade pitch and allow him to just spam it 55-60% of the time? I feel pretty confident in Jaxon on a per-inning basis. The question is going to be how many innings can we get out of him. The question is unfortunately relevant both from a health standpoint and a role standpoint.

Yeah I think not getting an update until Craig's pre-game media availability is a good sign. If it was a catastrophic injury it'd probably leak sooner.

He was bad yesterday, but Martin was dominant on Thursday. Struck out the side in 14 pitches including 4 whiffs. Fastbalk was 96.6 which was up nearly a full MPH from last year. Probably not for nothing but the velo was down a good bit yesterday. Probably why he sucked and hopefully just a little dead arm. I hope he's willing to go to Iowa. I would think it's the right call for him? Ethan Roberts, Jack Neely, and Luke Little have all been varying levels of encouraging this spring. But with Porter Hodge going down Martin's likely the first phone call once there's an injury. He'll probably be up before tax day if we're being honest.

Last year about 19% of Taillon’s fastballs were 93 MPH or above. This spring through the first two innings today he has 2 in 88 tries. He looks COOKED

The Venezuela/DR rematch on Tuesday is gonna hit hard as hell

i.e. he banged it into the ground sliding like a klutz

I love Seiya but yeesh he is not graceful Thankfully that didn't look like anything that should be long term.

"Unclear what the issue was" makes me hope it's minor. I assume he was walking around gingerly after the leap and they took him out for precaution.

I understand hoarding depth, it's the right thing to do, but I can't overstate how much I'd rather have Brown in the rotation than Taillon.

Annnnnd he just hit a 110 MPH line drive double in a big league ST game

Love Kelly at 1B. More please.

Worth noting that at any given time you can count all of the guys who have an expectation of 3+ WAR on your fingers. I'd probably have Rojas at #1 or #2 in the system. Rojas has, even at his worst, run healthy K/BB/GB numbers. Now that we see this spring he finally has the strength to A) consistently hit the piss out of the ball and B) catch up to velocity I expect those peripherals to more consistently turn into production. It's not the most raw physical talent in the system, that's probably Alcantara or maybe one of Conrad/Hartshorn/Tomas, but it kind of doesn't matter. Being a legitimate middle infielder pretty much inherently gives you a healthy ceiling. Horsefeathering Geraldo Perdomo was worth 7 WAR last year. Play pretty good defense and hit like Ian Happ and you're already at 5 WAR. Fingers crossed that both Rojas and Ramirez continue to hit once games start mattering. It's hard to lose a guy like Nico but if we have all three of Rojas/Shaw/Ramirez with legitimate claims to that spot that's a pretty enviable situation.

Found a reddit post pretty relevant to this question https://www.reddit.com/r/baseball/s/YIYOBredu1 Taillon’s at almost 19 career WAR based on Fangraphs and a little over 15 as measured by Baseball-Reference. So not by a huge margin but he's an above average #2 overall pick. Goes to show how brutal the MLB draft is.