Bertz

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.

You can't totally close the book on him or Casey Mize, but it's wild how little the two of them have done. Both were in the tier below Prior/Price/Strasburg as draft prospects and even setting aside injury it has not played out how it's supposed to to this point.

I believe the last update on Steele was that he would be "facing live hitters before the end of the next homestand." That's vaguer than I'd like but I take that to be a sim game this weekend or early next week. From there you figure he needs 2-3 rehab starts? So I think the over under is basically that off day on May 9th following the stretch of 16 straight. I think outside of team context he'd probably rejoin the team for that road trip after, but given how banged up the team is already and how that stretch is probably only going to make it worse they might cut a corner and have him only do two rehab outings.

The Cubs went 4-3 on the road without their ace during this stretch?

Look at the opponent's starting pitchers from the last 7 games

Huge win. Cubs have locked in at least 6-6 during this gauntlet 12 game stretch. Also as one of the people who first raised the alarm about Keegan, if he's sitting almost 95 and throwing strikes that's the whole game. I won't trust him for a bit longer yet but last night is exactly what it would look like if he was officially back. And man the pen could use it.

In-division games start May 10th and in-division games that actually matter (i.e. not the Pirates) start two weeks later on May 24th. So the optimistic but still realistic timeline has you getting Steele back shortly before the former and Suzuki back shortly before the latter? ETA: Well horsefeathers I missed a Brewers series the first week of May on my first pass so I guess nevermind to the above