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Bertz

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Everything posted by Bertz

  1. Bertz
    So as far as I can tell that was the lowest velo of Merrweather's career by nearly a full MPH. Savant has it was lower than his season average by 2.4. He's probably hurt again.
  2. Bertz
    Over the last month Palencia has 11.1 IP, 3 BB, 20 K, 3.18 ERA, and a 1.something FIP The fact that he's the Iowa closer indicates he's likely next man up. Decent chance Merryweather needs an IL stint, so Palencia tomorrow and Kilian in a week when rosters expand?
  3. Bertz
    The Athletic made it sound like there's not a major rush to get him up, thr team's POV essentially being he needs innings more than anything. His velo is also down from where it was early in the season (but in line with last year).
  4. Bertz
    This is the last play he made before getting pulled, you don't see anything bad here but injury is probably the best assumption
  5. Bertz
  6. Bertz
    Now that he's settled in and calmed down Dempster's a pretty great PBP guy.
  7. Bertz
    The reason like 27-28 teams behave as a monolith is that the math is pretty clear cut. The math says to hug your prospects so unless you're a guy like Dombrowski whose resume is so good you could cut it in half and he'd still be a HOFer, it's hard to zag against all the zigging. We'll see what happens but if it's going to happen this will be the winter Jed dips into the farm. This winter the team needs catcher help and it needs bullpen help. Amaya and Hodge are making it so that you don't *have* to go hunting for impact at either spot. Being able to go into an offseason hunting for wins while being relatively agnostic about where you add them is how you make one of Jed's patented "good deals". And with the farm where it's at, you could reasonably deal away something like Caissie, Alcantara, and Wicks and still open next year with Top 100 prospects at Iowa able to cover every position on the diamond. I suspect that's a level of depth that will make even famously conservative Jed comfortable being aggressive.
  8. Bertz
    A first rounder from a major college program should dominate low A but still holy crap
  9. Bertz
    I hate to be a bucket of cold water but 2025 numbers have not been updated since March. Current season numbers update every day but the others are annual, with Szymborski recently saying they might do one mid season update per season.
  10. Bertz
    I know the track record isn't long but please just extend Lopez. It lets you be much less desperate shopping for bullpen help this winter.
  11. Bertz
    I do kind of want to see a team pull an anti-Angels and let some advanced college hitter like Cam Smith get like 500 PAs in Low A and just see if they can OPS over 1.500 But yeah Cam should probably be in South Bend on Tuesday
  12. Bertz
    With his speed and defense it's borderline impossible for him to be bad while he's running a sub 10% K rate. He obviously won't keep this up but wonder where he can settle in.
  13. Bertz
    Sure, maybe, that's why I phrased it as a question. But dumping Bote opens up the 26 man spot for Vazquez and the 40 man spot for Hollowell in one move, so additional moves are possible but not necessary.
  14. Bertz
    Thread flagged by Greg Zumach
  15. Bertz
    No injury, just dumping Bote?
  16. Bertz
    Paredes missed a day with a shoulder last week, so yeah that's probably what it is. A little surprised it's Vazquez instead of Mastro.
  17. Bertz
    I don't understand the conclusion that Shaw will have to radically transform himself into a dead pull hitter like Isaac Paredes to be productive immediately after pointing out his preternatural ability to frequently hit the ball hard? Isn't the former a response to a physical inability to do the latter? And are we really worried about a lack of doubles from a guy that hits the ball that hard? 7 of those 13 100 MPH balls were hit with launch angles between 10 and 30 degrees. Assuming his metrics were similar in AA his lack of doubles feels like SSS nonsense (or the weird Southern League dead ball) Overall I'm aligned with pumping the brakes on near term expectations for Shaw, but that's IMO more because of the broader widening in the gap between AAA and MLB. I miss a couple years ago when if you thoroughly dominated AA a quick little 100 at bat stopover was plenty, but we all need to shift our expectations.
  18. Bertz
    Wow what the heck happened to Max Meyer. I remember him being one of the few feel good stories for the Marlins early season. I know he got sent to AAA to manage his innings but didn't realize things went so thoroughly off the rails.
  19. Bertz
    This came up in the gamethread yesterday, but I just don't think the team can justify Amaya entering next season as the starter more or less regardless of how the rest of the season goes. His first half was just too bad, and that downside risk is going to follow him for another year or two (similar to Bellinger last winter still getting dinged for '21 & '22). I am sympathetic to his first half struggles, he quickly got thrust into far more responsibility than expected because Yan Gomes aged into becoming completely unplayable. There was also some batted ball luck that went against him as well (not as much as Morel or Swanson). I do think his improved play potentially undercuts the need for a major upgrade at the position this winter. If Jed doesn't want to give up e.g. Alcantara and Wicks for Logan O'Hoppe and decides to pivot to Carson Kelly in FA, that's becoming an increasingly defensible position. Though to be clear, the former is still probably the right move.
  20. Bertz
    We're now at 125 plate appearances for Johnny Long at Tenn and he's still rocking a .480 OBP. The power's not looking especially impressive, so you do kind of wonder if he ends up kind of Alfonso Rivas-y. I think I might be more interested in defensive scouting reports this winter than offensive ones, because it's a lot easier to get on board if 1B isn't the only place he can reasonably play.
  21. Bertz
    It is wild having both fun hitting AND fun pitching at Iowa. Seeing a Shaw homer and scrolling down to see Birdsell doing something more impressive is extremely fun.
  22. Bertz
    I think if we weren't getting the teeth of the Pirates rotation I'd be letting myself dream a little, but because of the way schedules fall the Pirates series are pretty tough. The Cubs have 11 series left - 4 look easy: @ Marlins, Home+Away vs. Nats, vs. Oakland - 3 look kind of tough: @ Rockies, @ Phillies (they will have their division locked up by then), vs. Reds - 2 look tough: Home+Away against the Pirates, but with their top 3 starters going both series - 2 look scary: vs. Yankees and @ Dodgers I'm feeling like they can end over .500 but 86-88 wins feels unreasonable.
  23. Bertz
    Javy's only hit of the series coming against slider specialist Ethan Roberts is kind of hilarious to me.
  24. Bertz
    Fly balls and Line Drives to the pull side this year have a .677 xwOBA and a .793 actual wOBA. Even if you exclude barrels, it's .481 and .547 Among qualified hitters this year, Isaac is 2nd in pull rate and 2nd lowest in groundball rate. I don't have pulled fly ball rate, that would require a little excel work, but he's probably #1 and certainly top 5. He was more or less designed in a lab to be an xwOBA outlier. Now there's some park specific benefits he enjoyed that will go out the window now in Wrigley, so his production will take a bit of a haircut, but we're still talking something in the 110-120 range as the expectation.
  25. Bertz
    So you think he was lucky for nearly 1600 plate appearances, and then suddenly the last 80 are the real him?
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