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Bertz

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Everything posted by Bertz

  1. Alcantara's situation is so complicated because he looks like he will be major league ready at approximately the same time he must permanently be in MLB. So do you rush him up to MLB to get his "welcome to the big leagues kid" moment and try and speed up that learning? Or do you hold him down until September of next year to get as much minor league seasoning as he can get while that's possible? For his development I think ideal would be for him to be sent somewhere that's not planning to compete next year or frankly in '26 either. I think the Cubs should trade him, but I do get if they hold on because for AS much OF depth as they have CF isn't insanely well covered.
  2. I have thought about this. I think him being the best SS on the market by a mile hurts these chances. If it was like two years ago and there were 4 guys looking at 9 figure contracts he'd be a candidate to pull a Bogaerts, but this winter it's Adames, Kim, and a STEEP drop-off beyond that.
  3. I would guess that, short of a faceplant coming out of the ASB, the recent surge has sealed off any possibility at deep cuts to the roster. I don't think trading e.g. Hoerner ever made a ton of sense, but certainly now it's harder to justify. Even if the team does still sell, I think it'll be Bellinger, mainly to ensure he's not on 2025 payroll, and otherwise minor 40 man roster cleanup stuff (i.e. Canario). I do think, among the specific names here, I would quibble and say Assad is pretty movable. The timing of here at the deadline is probably no good given the setbacks to Brown and Wicks, but just broadly. I think when you combine current ability, upside, and durability there's not actually a ton of daylight between any of our young MLB SPs (plus Horton for that matter). Moving one of those guys to get an answer at 3B or C is a very reasonable path to take sometime between now and next March.
  4. Yeah I guess using 5 probably isn’t a concern this late. Maybe too they have another reliever up (Palencia?) that they're ready to activate if things go south and the bullpen gets shredded in either game today. Roberts is a lot easier to option right back in that scenario than Assad.
  5. Roberts not being the 27th man means he's staying up I believe. Otherwise this is just needlessly burning an option.
  6. That'd be my best guess, and probably Palencia of those two.
  7. I would say I feel pretty good about this game and tomorrow's game. Tonight's game less so, but it's far from out of hand.
  8. Ton of off days coming up, I think there's more opportunity to pull something like this than there was in April and May. Shota could certainly use it as could the kids as they come off the IL.
  9. The Giants and Cardinals are a hell of a lot better than the Angels. I think the glass half full on Kyle is that his time in the bullpen did actually fix him. The blowup against the Brewers was a run of the mill bad start and last Saturday shouldn't have been allowed to happen health-wise.
  10. Smyly is not at all stretched out. His longest outing this year is 2.1 innings. Also I don't expect much out of Hendricks, but I do think I'd still prefer him to Smyly on a per inning basis even if Drew were stretched out. That's more being anti-Smyly than pro Kyle though.
  11. They haven't been as good as the ERA implies, but they got a ton of bad bounces in May so they were due. Leiter's a legitimate dude, SSS but Little since the start of June and Hodge since his callup have been too. Miller's a fine matchup type. Neris has actually been pitching well for like 2 months, but those awful awful blowup against the Giants and Rays were sort of Karma for his terrible pitching/sparkling ERA in April. I think the unit is one arm short of having me feeling comfortable, two arms short of feeling good. Bigge looks like he might be one, and Merryweather was certainly one before his injury. Palencia is the other internal option I think has a chance. And of course if the team keeps piling up wins they can add someone externally.
  12. I think the best analogue right now is Wesneski honestly.
  13. Yeah Brecht would be pretty fun if he's willing to go underslot. If you gave him #20 money you'd pocket an extra million, which would be enough to bump our pick at #55 up to more like #35 money. If you add the team's 5% to that, you could offer up late first round money to someone willing to slide.
  14. Yeah I think it's really hard to overstate how big of a deal it is for the farm to be where it is even after all of the graduations. I don't think it has an argument for #1 status anymore, but it's still likely a comfortable top 10. Being there after pumping out Busch. PCA, Brown, and Wicks is awesome. On the flip side. I do find it disappointing that we're not tracking towards any true stars. PCA's looking very Kiermaier-y, Caissie's power data at Iowa has been more good than great, and Horton's stuff has backed up a bit as he's gotten stretched out. Alcantara's running out of minor league runway, so even if he does make a star turn it looks like that'll be a few years from now in his next org. Shaw, Triantos, and Ballesteros look pretty tweener-y, not so much that they can't be quality starters but enough that I question the starpower. Brown was giving Spencer Strider, but how many innings can he give you a year? Odds say that we'll probably still get a monster from that above group, but I was hoping this year for that monsterization process to be a good deal further along for one or two of these guys.
  15. Not as many as I'd like. I think my list is: Wrigley, Milwaukee, The Cell, Busch (current), Safeco, The King Dome (I think my only defunct one?), Fenway, Dodger Stadium, Oracle Park I think Oracle is my favorite non-Wrigley Park by a decent margin. Safeco is pretty great though. I didn't enjoy Fenway as much as I wanted, though there were some extenuating circumstances as it was one of those 4PM Saturday afternoon games FOX picks up and so I was essentially staring directly into the sun for about 6 innings. Work is supposed to start taking me to New York a few times a year, so I'm hoping to knock out both NYC parks next year.
  16. This is about as lopsided of a matchup as we've seen this year. If the Cubs pick this one hard not to get overly excited. I think a split is fine this series given the pitching matchups. 3/4 would be huge though.
  17. It probably doesnt mean much, I think he's DFA fodder when guys come back healthy, but Jorge Lopez had his best velo of the season tonight including his two fastest individual pitches.
  18. Daniel Palencia with a bit of a clunker, though he did hit triple digits 7 times. I wonder if he gets 27th man duties on Saturday.
  19. Christian Franklin on base 3 more times tonight Alcantara's pretty hot right now too. I don't think he's ready for Iowa but he might need to get the bump sometime before the end of the season out of pure necessity.
  20. This is a Dodgers fan BTW. Mostly posting this because every fan seems to only think their team does this.
  21. If Steele doesn't take this to the house please get Bigge in the game. I would like to give him the opportunity to pull a Hodge and become circle of trust worthy inside of a month.
  22. I wonder if that means this draft looks like '21 where they basically immediately threw all their extra cash at Triantos and that was that. I think Gray was a bit overslot and then everyone else was at or under?
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