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Bertz

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Everything posted by Bertz

  1. Bertz
    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.
  2. Bertz
    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.
  3. Bertz
    109 MPH line drive from our 20 year old shortstop prospect
  4. Bertz
    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.
  5. Bertz
    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.
  6. Bertz
    Taillon’s fastball that inning
  7. Bertz
    Mo Baller catching! Game is on Marquee and is also the MLB.tv free game of the day
  8. Bertz
    https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7077301/2026/03/02/bears-combine-caleb-williams-dj-moore/
  9. Bertz
    I still like Sanders, I think the insane run environment at Iowa (~4.80 league ERA, and Iowa's a hitters park on top of that) made some normalish promotion lumps look catastrophic. The fact that he can throw plenty of strikes as well as miss bats in the zone gives you hope there's just an optimization problem at play here. That said if he can be one of the small army of guys who came to Cubs camp with extra velo this spring that'd be really clutch. He seems like a guy where the difference between 92.5 and 93.5 would be pretty huge. Risk around a second TJ is pretty bad. It's getting slowly better, but I've mostly written Birdsell off as a SP. He might have a shot as a reliever but I'd probably have Brandon a lot closer to 20th (30th?) than tenth. Mathis is tough. On the one hand for a bat-first college hitter you want to see him DESTROY low-A. Him rocking a 120 wRC+ last April was frankly more disappointing than the HS/IFA kids who were in the 70's and 80's. On the other the elbow injury feels like a fairly valid excuse: Bryce Harper and Corey Seager are prominent examples of TJ sapping a hitter’s power the first year back. He was also drafted as a sophomore, so despite the mostly lost year he's going to open at South Bend still at a very appropriate age.
  10. Bertz
    Shota's velo is still up he could give up 30 dongs and today's a good day
  11. Bertz
    My guess is he will be in real honest to goodness games before the end of April, but given that he missed an entire year we're talking 5+ rehab starts in full season ball.
  12. Bertz
  13. Bertz
    Yeah Rojas alone probably can't show Nico the door. That said if Shaw has a good year in MLB and Rojas rakes in MiLB it's a bit hard to argue for keeping Hoerner around. Ditto Shaw plus Pedro Ramirez. The team is currently about $100M under the LT heading into 2027. And while the CBA almost certainly bumps that number up, inflation will keep it close to $100M in 2025-2026 dollars. So I assume the team will sign a FA SP of substance, a FA OF of substance (probably re-signing Happ or Suzuki), do a bullpen spending spree similar to this winter, and have room for one more big move. Whether that's Hoerner, the other of Happ/Suzuki, a second FA SP, etc. depends a lot on who does/does not have a big year in 2026.
  14. Bertz
    The way I'd reconcile this is: 1. Spring training results are noisy but measurables (e.g. Rojas' impressive exit velos) are usually very real 2. The biggest argument against results mattering is the wildly varying quality of competition. But for a 20 year old with just a quarter of a season at AA there's no worry that he's just beating up on pitchers beneath him on the minor league ladder
  15. Bertz
    Assad another guy whose velo is way up. Curious gow much of that sticks as he stretches out. And man Ben Brown
  16. Bertz
    Worth noting he did have surgery this offseason. So probably not a huge surprise they're slow playing him a bit this spring.
  17. Bertz
    Game is not on Marquee but is on MLB.tv
  18. Bertz
    Add Ethan Roberts to the list of guys showing way more velo this spring I guess
  19. Bertz
  20. Bertz
    Your assumption should be that anyone where you're at all surprised they settled for a minor league deal instead of a major league one that they have an opt out before the start of the season. So Conforto and Carlson are probably keep them or lose them types. Chas is interesting because if they add him to the 40 man they can option him up and down this year. So much like Alcantara in the name of hoarding depth I expect Chas won't make it regardless of how he performs this spring.
  21. Bertz
    Steamer has him at 97/129 lefties/righties ZiPS likes Busch a lot more, but unfortunately I just see slash lines and not an indexed number. They have .247/.338/.438 vs. .261/.351/.507, which eyeballing it I'd say something like 115/145?
  22. Bertz
    Chas McCormick's double today was hit harder than any ball he's ever hit in a regular season MLB game. More than 4 full MPH than any ball last year. Feels notable for a guy with a lot of health issues the past few years.
  23. Bertz
    Last year in 132 innings Connor Noland threw seventeen pitches 92 MPH or harder, and one pitch north of 93. This spring in 15 batters faced Connor has thrown eleven pitches 92 MPH or harder, four above 93
  24. Bertz
    Great stuff. This is definitely where you can feel that the system is a little soft. Ideally eachof these guys would be ~5 spots lower than they are.
  25. Bertz
    Carson Kelly's underlying numbers at the full season level backed up what he did last year (again at the full season level). He's a 30+ year old catcher coming off a career year, so do definitely guard for disappointment. But as long as your expectations aren't the Aaron Judge impression he showed off last April I wouldn't worry too much about him.
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