Bertz

For anyone like me who spends way too much time on Baseball Twitter, you might remember the "Would it Dong" bot. That bot got killed When dummy cleaned out all the useful bots last summer (while ignoring the porn). Apparently MLB built their own though and it survived the purge:

Caissie not being at Iowa from Day 1 is a travesty on par with 100 hindenbergs

Yeah I think repeating AAA, especially given that he was age appropriate already when he first got there, is a big red flag. What is encouraging though is that he was more or less a perfect offensive player during that second go around. Using MLB percentiles on his MiLB #s he was: - 85th percentile in chase rate - 79th percentile in in-zone contact rate - 85th percentile in average exit velo - 69th percentile in hard hit rate - 74th percentile in groundball rate - 94th percentile in HR/FB rate All of the above are set such that 100 is best (i.e. Busch's 85th percentile chase means he chases less than 85% of other hitters) So we've got a guy who doesn't chase, doesn't swing and miss, and hits the ball hard consistently and usually in the air. If he were younger we'd be wondering if we have a star on our hands, as is I feel like he's a pretty good bet for like a 120 wRC+ (though probably not a ton of ceiling beyond that).

Yeah I'm trying not to get too over my skis since it's spring and on top of that a lot of these guys first time seeing him, but he might *really* rack up the swing and miss. The homeruns will certainly be a problem but even so he could be something in the Freddy Peralta or Joe Ryan neighborhood.

A) Spring Training stats don't mean anything B) If you're striking out 40%+ of batters you face pretty much nothing else within reason matters. So if you were to take anything from his spring it should be positive.

I'm very much doing the kombucha girl reaction to that extension. Like $140M to a catcher two years out from FA is pretty dumb in a general sense, but a $14M AAV is very forgiving. I think I mostly come down on disliking it. To your point though there's definitely something going on with them. The Padres' LT nonsense, now in hindsight, was clearly about maximizing their window before Seidler died. For the Dodgers is all of their stuff this offseason just reverberations from Ohtani's deferrals or is something else going on?

https://theathletic.com/5351937/2024/03/27/sarris-ten-bold-predictions-2024-mlb-season?source=user-shared-article Bold predictions column from Eno Sarris includes a Cub

Surprise, he was just hurt again

Last year I think he subbed in for JD on every west coast trip. Unfortunately I assume that's an explicit arrangement they have.

Thanks for this, I had no idea about NF and Apple. I dumped both of those over the past year but I'll pick them back up. Even if it's the ad tier that's fine if it's free.

Looks like by Stuff+ it's #8 amongst pitchers with at least 20 IP last year. That said most of the guys above him are *significantly* above him. PitchingBot rates his fastball at #27. So yeah I think it's more of a 70 grade pitch. The funny thing is that Cuas is #7 by both graders. Shows how impactful extreme levels of funk can be.

There are three categories of quality bench player: 1. The guys who can just step in and be a quality starter if needed 2. The supersub types who can do a little bit of everything 3. The guys who can do 1 or 2 things extremely well I would consider Amaya and Tauchman category 1 guys. Mastro if he hits like he did in the second half (which his minor league track record suggests we should expect) is a category 2 guy, potentially a high end one. Madrigal, Wisdom, and Cooper are category 3 guys. Wisdom has insane power, Cooper is a lefty masher, and Madrigal is arguably the most extreme contact hitter in baseball. He's also, in limited playing time this far, an elite glove at a position where we have major defensive questions currently. I don't see a good argument for dumping him in order to carry a second one of Wisdom/Cooper/Canario. At least not in the immediate term.

This is an annual thread around here. What are your bold predictions for what we see in 2024? I'll lead off with a few: - Miguel Amaya has a 2008 Geovany Soto style breakout, and becomes clearly part of the core - Owen Caissie is hitting cleanup before the season is done - Kyle Hendricks pitches well enough to necessitate a qualifying offer, but thankfully gets extended before FA opens

Looks like it's confirmed, as is the end of the bullpen

This likely means Madrigal is going to make the team even though he just got back into games yesterday.

These get updated every morning for all regular and postseason games

If this were a regular season game I'd be turning on push notifications for tomorrow's umpire scorecard. Brown's been getting squeezed bad.

Montemuro provided a little more detail My guess is he does a good bit of early season DHing

Happ Seiya Bellinger Morel Swanson Busch Hoerner DH/Bench guy du jour Gomes/Amaya

I'm not a big lineup guy in general, and I think with this roster it's even less important than most teams. You've got, setting aside catcher, 7-8 spots each day that are going to be filled by hitters projecting from average to pretty good. Unless Suzuki's 2nd half carries over there are no star level hitters, but at the same time there's no spot you really worry about either. Even catcher looks to be above average by the lowly standards of the position. So when I look at the lineup, I look at it more in terms of wanting to balance strengths and weaknesses throughout to prevent pitchers from having pockets where they can breeze through. Some things I'm mindful of - On days where Wisdom and Morel both play they need to be separated. Both guys are very susceptible to pitchers who work north/south, particularly with big velocity. Swanson isn't vulnerable to the high fastball, but as a RHH with big swing and miss in the zone I also don't love him back to back with either of Wisdom/Morel - Similarly you want Hoerner and Madrigal to be separated when they're both in the lineup. I like interspersing them with the low contact guys. E.g. a pocket of Morel-Hoerner-Swanson - Happ has fits and spurts of being effective against lefties but mostly he's not. Same with Bellinger. So you probably don't want to do something like Bellinger-Happ-Busch because Happ doesn't really break up the lefties - Suzuki, Busch, and Tauchman are all guys who walk a fine line between patient and passive. So again guys you don't want to pocket together Ultimately I really like the lineup Counsell appears to be settling on. The nit I'd pick is that at I would either swap Bellinger and Morel at 3/4 or move Hoerner up to 5th to separate Morel and Swanson.

https://theathletic.com/5362707/2024/03/22/cubs-justin-steele-injury-spring-training?source=user-shared-article Mooney's article in the Athletic this morning makes it seem like Carl is making the team. So we're presumably looking at a bullpen of Alzolay Merryweathet Neris Leiter Almonte Edwards Smyly TBD That last spot I'd guess would be Little? I think him not getting sent down at the same time as Palencia is somewhat notable.

Mish is the Marlins' beat writer so very likely "source" is Garret himself.

Really good rundown of the entire timeline. The most likely explanation is that the initial story was true and no one (including the crisis handler) realized Ohtani covering Ippei's debts was super illegal until Wednesday. That said this exchange set off major alarms in my head That's such a sadly transparent lie it makes me more strongly consider the more sinister variations of this story.

Obviously hold your breath, but I would be very surprised if a ball that hit him on the bounce did any major damage.