Bertz

I believe the first iteration of the ABS was full depth and a bunch of cheap unhittable breaking balls grazing the front bottom corners kept getting called. Making it a plane halfway back ended up giving results much more in line with expectations.

His velo's been high this spring too, hopefully he's back to his 2023 form. Assad's had an insane run of luck to start his career, but in 23 he actually pitched pretty well and just got lucky on top of it.

Turns out that his single earlier in the game was hit harder than any ball he's ever hit in a regular season game. They were cagey about what kind of stuff he was working on over the winter too...something's up with him.

The zone as umpires actually call it and the zone as it is in the rulebook are very different. Here's a really great graphic Jumping whole hog into robot umps instead of starting with challenges is begging for massive unintended consequences.

A) It's an entertainment product It's okay to make decisions that reflect that. In the multiple years of studying this in the minors they found 2 challenges a piece to overwhelmingly be the sweet spot for cleaning up the bad calls while keeping games watchable B) On a practical level ABS is literally changing the shape of the strike zone. It would be frankly moronic to not take an incrementalist approach to implementing it

It feels really notable that he's getting into so many ST games. I've been looking around and the last guy to get into multiple ST contest before playing a single game in full season ball looks like Ballesteros? I can find guys who got into a game (Cristian Hernandez, Pedro Ramirez, Ty Southisene), but three and counting seems like a high bar. And even just getting into a game has some signal to it, neither of Chris Paciolla or Ronny Cruz got gifted one for draft pedigree. Overall Hartshorn's exciting. It sounds like the bat is about as polished as can be for a high school kid, with a fun combo of contact/power/patience from both sides of the plate. I feel like every time I read about his defense and athleticism I end up dropping my expectations for him outside of the batters box, so that's probably not ideal? But I guess if he wants to be Mark Teixeira or Lance Berkman I'll learn to live with it.

Three more at bats today, three line drives (two of those over 100 MPH). Six swings, zero misses.

Every time James Triantos hits a hard fly ball an angel gets its wings

If Mo wants to keep winning ABS challenges at such a high clip he can more than make up for any physical deficiencies he has behind the plate.

So Boog is doing WBC stuff, he did the USA/Giants game yesterday for instance. I think he does a good bit of CBB this time of year as well. Can't/won't really excuse anyone else involved.

Pretty fun lineup considering none of the regulars are in place

One thing I wonder about is if the insane run environment in the International League makes a high contact / low power guy like Triantos look a little artificially worse. A hitters park/league is going to juice the value of well hit fly balls. If you have a guy who hits the ball on the ground a lot he's not getting as much benefit. But on the flipside when leaving Iowa and going to Chicago you'd expect the groundball guy to lose less of his production? That's not to say Triantos was secretly good last year, but more to say that like you said if in 2026 he's rocking a modest 110 wRC+ that's probably enough for me to feel like he can survive in the big leagues? Overall there's still plenty to like in Triantos' profile. He's going to play this full year at 23, so despite being around for what seems like forever he's still a positive age relative to league guy. The contact numbers also create a pretty reasonable floor, I'm seeing only three hitters last year with a K rate under 15% and a wRC+ under 80. He's also a modest plus with the glove and major plus on the bases. It's probably a bench profile, but I wouldn't write that in stone. The raw power is actually decent, so if he can add some lift and pull to his profile without sacrificing contact there's ceiling with the bat. And even if he can't an Adam Frazier or Amed Rosario type bat that can actually play defense is probably a viable everyday starter, at least at peak.

Ethan Roberts velo not quite as hot as his previous outing but seems pretty clear he's got his pre-surgery juice back. That's fun I'd mostly written him off.

Yeah I think there's three ways the lack of pitching in the system doesn't hit a full on crisis by this time next year 1. The widespread velocity spikes we're seeing in big league camp is also happening in minor league camp. So a bunch of Nick Deans and Ethan Flanagans see their stock rocket up next year 2. We find out that the team nailed the pitching in last year. The two guys you flagged, Coppola, etc. 3. The team goes all in on pitching on the next draft. Something like yhe 2022 draft where 9 of their top 10 picks were pitchers Honestly you need one of those to avoid a crisis and probably two to actually feel good about the situation.

Just brutal spring training for the Braves good lord

How is this the first I'm hearing about a 3rd Southisene brother named Tee? Good list, love MLB's thorough writeups. I'd probably order it so more of the fresh IFAs were in the 20s and the Myrtle Beach crew were in the teens, but what they have is not unreasonable.

So I'm not buying in on it yet, but I just noticed that Dylan Carlson is making a ton of contact this spring. His contact rate is 92.9%, which for comparison last year would have been the #2 mark in the league afger Luis Arraez. Nico Hoerner's an elite contact guy and has never crossed the 90% line. Carlson for his career has hovered around 80% Like it doesn't matter much yet, but contact rates are a spring stat that do have some signal to them. So if he keeps this up the whole spring it's something that's probably pretty meaningful.

109 MPH line drive from our 20 year old shortstop prospect

I'm glad that Taillon is going to pitch in the WBC because him pitching in a game that matters but doesn't matter for us should help me set my appropriate level of alarm. I'll say he is, by an order of magnitude, the guy I'm most worried about this spring. And the majority of that is that he was a guy I didn't feel great about a month ago. But in a spring where everyone's come in throwing gas, or at least relative gas, it looks like he's lost a MPH off of his already pretty bad fastball.

One of the nice things about him is that even if he ends up being a bit of a disappointment offensively it feels like he's a pretty different style of hitter compared to anyone else we have on the roster.

Taillon’s fastball that inning

Mo Baller catching! Game is on Marquee and is also the MLB.tv free game of the day

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7077301/2026/03/02/bears-combine-caleb-williams-dj-moore/