Bertz

The Astros early issues have been entirely pitching. Injuries to the rotation and then a bullpen struggling to cover the extra innings (hey that sounds familiar). So you'd really love to win these first two games and lock in a series win before drawing Verlander. He's not nearly as intimidating as he was, but the Astros when getting even solid starting pitching are a tough draw.

I think at this point Alt is #1 for me. I think if we can nab one of Alt/Odunze/Naybors I'm ecstatic. If not I'll be a bit disappointed and I'm not so sure trading back a couple spots doesn't become the right play.

I think on the SP piece I'd probably be fine with holding. As far as guys we know will be available that have some legitimate juice there's a real chance it's just Jesus Luzardo. And yeah if that's the case like AJ Preller will trade his entire AA team for him and I won't blame Jed for not matching. On the RP side though, no excuse not to add someone of substance this year though. Only the elitist of elite RPs would cost one of those big primo prospects, so Jed needs to pull someone down unless things really get locked down by internal options over the next two months. Only so long you can hold out of that market because it's inefficient.

This is a great framework. Like TT I think there's value in delineating between the short relievers who are in the "circle of trust" vs. those you feel good about but maybe don't trust implicitly, but that's the biggest nit I'd pick. I think framing it like this also shows you what the team needs and what we'd want Jed to buy at the deadline if it were coming up. The team's SP have not been great, but the team do not need just a SP. They've got plenty of guys you trust for 15-18 batters. Jed should add someone who you're not horrified to let face a batter for a 3rd time, or not even bother. On the RP side it's similar, you'd want someone at minimum in the Almonte zone, ideally an immediate circle of trust type. There's not a lot of value in a lottery ticket or a warm body who can eat some low leverage innings. We have those already.

So the homeruns won't keep up. I'm increasingly confident we don't have to caveat that "Maybe he's a unicorn but in a bad way" like I have been. He's given up 7 barrels and 8 homeruns. The league has given up 1253 barrels and 653 homeruns. He's just getting unlucky. This isn't exhaustive, but I pulled what I think is most of the position player pitching data from the last 15 years and they have a collective HR/FB rate of 16.5%. Again, he's just been comically unlucky. What I can't handwave away is the complete inability to miss bats. Kyle's giving up a 91% contact rate in the zone. That's in the territory of guys like Mookie Betts and Xander Bogaerts and Trea Turner. And he's clearly not suppressing hard contact to a meaningful degree and the groundball rate is good not great. So even chalking the dongs up as mostly bad luck I'm struggling to see a path to an ERA much under 5 until he can miss a couple more bats. It's not the disaster it has been but it's behind Brown and Wesneski and Assad in any sort of reasonable pecking order. I might give Kyle one more start before throwing him on the IL to clear his head though, less because I think he'll do anything with it and more because we're starting up this stretch of 16 straight and we probably don't get Justin Steele back until right after that next off day.

I think Zach Neto is the obvious parallel to Shaw if we decided to race him up to MLB in the next few weeks. He was more solid than impactful last year, and looks this year like he might be paying the price for more or less skipping the minor leagues. With Morel settling in at 3B I don't see a need to race Shaw up here. Vazquez despite his hot streak probably doesn't add much beyond Madrigal. I think he's a sweetener in a trade not someone who will get much time with the Cubs short of injury.

I think Kyle pretty much has to have a good day today or you have to IL him to clear his head. I am strongly of the mind that HR/FB rates are noise, but things that are 100% true in the fat part of the curve are not necessarily true at the tails. And Kyle being the softest tossing SP in the league definitely lives in the tail.

Oh I'm a very strong agree with this

He's going at least 7 innings today

Apparently despite all of this the highest the Sox can pick next year is 10th because of the CBA's anti tanking measures. lol

My guess is it's one of Brown/Wesneski heading out. So Taillon probably starts tomorrow but that guy that's heading out hangs out to be the 27th man on Saturday? I don't think callups for DH's count against the 5 time callup limit. But the good news is there's a bunch of other ways to play it, such as what you laid out. This rainout combined with Wesneski's hero outing yesterday combined with Taillon’s return very quickly alleviates the precarious situation the bullpen was in. Yeah the doubleheader on Saturday won't help but overall this was really fortuitous timing for this.

Officially Banged. Curious if we still get word on roster move(s) today or if that waits for tomorrow now

2 of those guys are in the middle of heaters where they're running OPS marks around 1.000 and yet Caissie's the one who scares pitchers so much he has more red outside the zone than inside. He might have a special bat.

Yeah that's a good question. These are all higher percentile = good even if numerically it might work in the inverse. E.g. Caissie's 30th percentil chase rate is bad because he is chasing more often than 70% of MLBers. The last number, the % pitches in the strike zone, since that's not (directly) a skill I went with lower = lower, though now writing this out I probably should have gone the other direction. But no I'm not worried at all about the contact. Guys within a half a percent of him in in-zone contact rate include Mike Trout, Max Muncy, Bryce Harper, William Contreras and Austin Riley. Like it is below average contact but totally normal for a power hitter. Those contact numbers do require the chase to come down and the exit velo numbers to be more elite like we've seen reported previously. But if these are the blemishes from his first few weeks at the new level I'm happy. They indicate that he's not that far off IMO.

Wicks' fastball changes are absolutely transformational IMO. The fastball he threw last year was probably a 40 grade pitch? Honestly you could maybe argue it lower? The one this year is probably above average. Just a massive upgrade at a pretty foundational aspect of his repertoire. I think what he's given back with command in the early going is a couple of things: - The fastball's actually a worthwhile pitch now, so it can now reasonably be expected to draw chase and is being used as such - Related to #1 Wicks is throwing it way more. Last year was 27%, this year it's 46%. I think with such low usage last year a disproportionate number were probably a "steal a strike" situation - Jordan has faced better lineups this year and gotten boned in the BABIP department. So I think the lower strike rate, increased walk rate (and admittedly some of the increased strikeout rate) has been due to nibbling and will work out in the longer run. Right now in terms of Ks/BBs/GBs he's at 28%/11%/36% and that with time he'll shift closer to 24%/8%/45%. I was a cold-water guy on Wicks over the offseason but if you'd told me these FB changes were on the way I'd have absolutely not been.

Huh, I had in my head it was a 1:20. Yeah this looks pretty dicey then

I checked in on Owen Caissie this morning, and honestly the Statcast data is really encouraging. I'm going to do that annoying thing I do where I percentile his numbers against MLB averages from last year: Avg. Exit Velo - 90.1 MPH (69th) Avg. Launch Angle - 13.1 (54th) Max Velo - 112.5 (59th) Hard Hit Rate - 48.5% (87th) Chase Rate - 31.7% (30th) Contact Rate (all pitches) - 69.9% (14th) Contact Rate (in zone) - 81.9% (24th) % Pitches in Strikezone - 43.1% (1st) It's not what I expected to see, but it makes sense. The exit velo numbers are good but hardly elite, and the chase rate is kind of bad? The contact numbers are bad but not atrocious, something I'd hypothesized last season based on his swinging strike rate (basically that his elevated K rate was less a Joey Gallo lack of contact deal and more of a Kyle Schwarber deep counts deal). So what's the deal? It's that last number. Pitchers at AAA are completely refusing to throw him strikes. Bryce Harper is the only hitter in MLB who got fewer strikes last year. Every pitcher is turning into Blake Snell when he comes to the plate and nibbling like crazy, scared of his power. Caissie's probably getting frustrated and chasing more than he should when he finally gets a vaguely decent pitch, and that's leading to softer contact than he by rights ought to be generating. We'll see how quickly Caissie locks it down and just accepts his Barry Bonds treatment until pitchers come back into the zone, but this does not look like a guy who is very far off.

Weather Channel has it being mostly dry until 5-6 so we should be fine. Might drizzle throughout the game but much more playable than the games last homestand.

I'd expect Wesneski or Brown down. Probably Wesneski because even after yesterday the bullpen is still pretty shredded. But Brown is going to go down at some point to manage his innings and now with Taillon back wouldn't be the worst time. I think they will (and should) give Hendricks that Sunday start against the Marlins as a springboard to get back into a good place, and if Sunday goes poorly Kyle seems very unlikely to still be on the active roster Tuesday. I'll say generally this series worries me a bit. The Marlins are playing at a 34 win pace and regression is going to kick in sooner or later. I just hope it waits for Monday.

Only two balls in the air and one of them was a pop-up. That will play

A .904 OPS as I'm typing this. Like it's just 41 PAs but he's 18 and it's high A. Ludicrous.

This is great news, but also this is the type of stuff that has made me really harsh on BA the last few years.

This got me going down a rabbit hole to see the extent of Albies exploits as a Cub killer. This is his career line against the Cubs: .406/461/734 Good lord, hopefully this keeps him out until at least May 16th when the Cubs are done with the Braves for the year.

Yeah if Wisdom’s not back in the next few days I'm going to start thinking something is up. I know he missed most of spring but he's pushing 30 at bats on his rehab assignment, and several of the arms coming up this week (including Henry tonight) are great matchups for him. If not now then when?

I think it's a couple things: - Reinsdorf was a cheapass and didn't push in additional $ when they were briefly pretty good. Kind of like that Pirates run in like 2012-2015 - Rick Hahn and their prior FO wasn't very good. I know Kyle and some other people disagree, but tanking isn't easy. The Sox FO clearly horsefeathered it up and the Phillies were on their way to horsefeathering it up before Dave Dombrowski came in and saved the day - Several teams were tanking at once, which is part of what made it difficult. When Theo did it it was just the Cubs and Astros doing it, when the Sox were doing it the Phillies and the Orioles and the Reds and several teams were if not actively tanking at least passively tanking by refusing to add anything until they had a core built up.