Bertz

Nico's pulling the ball less than last year, and he's hitting more line drives. This doesn't stand up to even light scrutiny.

Not quite as strong as last time but another very good outing from Will Sanders. We're like three more of these away from it being fair to wonder if he should be in the big league rotation

Honestly Strosnider is fun too I'm just all in on pitching

FWIW Alcantara and Dean are the two guys on the 40 man not in the Iowa lineup tonight

I'm actually okay with this. It's very hard to get him into games while Seiya's locked into DH, so in the immediate term he's basically wasting a roster spot. And even when he's healthy it's tough to give all three of him/Shaw/Pedro decent playing time. Given that A) Mo can actually get some valuable development at Iowa (not so much at the plate but behind it) and B) the struggles of the infield mean you want both Shaw and Pedro around, it makes sense he drew the short straw. Really curious who comes up in his place. Triantos just for pinch running?

Literally the second time the Borg has been referenced in a political crashout in the past 6 months

Not the best outing from McGwire but still 13 Ks / 4 BBs in his early going at SB

The owners' only detailed policy proposal reduces short term costs but is objectively negative ROI and yet next March the dumbest most gullible people you know are going to be all like "The owners are totally willing to sacrifice a season for the salary cap!"

I'm pretty enthusiastic about how things on the farm are going, but this feels rich for me as I think there's a definite gap in the second tier. I tend to think in the Fangraphs future value parlance, focusing less on ordinal ranking and more on tier, but regardless I think the story is the same. - Hartshorn/Rojas/Ramirez are easy 50 FVs (i.e. a Top 100 prospect), and honestly if you wanted to say any is a 55 FV (top 40ish) I don't think anyone should argue with you too hard. Ramirez only has like 3 more days of eligibility though so I don't really consider him a prospect anymore - Wiggins and to a lesser extent Conrad are obvious Top 100 talents, but with ruby red injury red flags that should knock them down. Fangraphs normally calls these guys 45+ FVs. And for Conrad even this might be rich until we see him start to beat up on pro pitching - Ayers is in a weird spot because if he had just turned 23 instead of having just turned 25 he'd be a consensus top 5 prospect in the sport, but age relative to league is a huge deal. I'd probably call him a 45+ like the two guys above but you could very easily argue him up or down a grade The six guys above are the only guys I'd even really consider for this type of list. At least as of today. The next tier of prospects (guys I'd consider potentially a 45, i.e. a top 10 prospect in a typical farm system) all have too many questions: Kepley - How does he hold up when he gets to a level where pitchers can consistently throw strikes? Caple - Good pitcher, performing well, does he have the oomf in his repertoire to warrant more adulation than he's getting? Wing - Can this huge stuff hold up over longer outings and a long season? Sanders - Does he have the health + command to consistently put out outings like his most recent one? Mathis - Can he hit enough to justify a boffo rating even as a R/R 1B? Also how worried do we need to be about the durability here? I definitely don't think we have any complex league guys worth a ranking like this (and the older I get the more I wonder if any complex league guys warrant a grade like this).

Man Jose Escobar just keeps hitting I wonder if the thought is he's stuck in the Yonathan Perlaza zone? The bat would be fun if he was actually going to stick as an infielder but no chance as a LF?

Looking at game logs apparently it started late last week but I'm just noticing Lepley is finally back in CF Feels like Tenn as soon as he gets hot again should be more of an expectation now?

Just did a little math, pitchers in the 2010's had a .221 BABIP. There's pretty much no argument that any position player can be expected to run lower than a .230ish over any meaningful time horizon. And honestly anything under .250-.260 requires a leadfoot or someone who hits an insane number of fly balls. Everyone always tries to tie themselves in knots over why this particular outlier BABIP, HR/FB rate, strand rate, etc. is totally going to maintain itself and every time they end with an "ah, well, nevertheless".

I think with pitchers the simple solution is long relief. There's a delicate balancing act of making sure you have bodies available at AAA ready to go 5 innings, which is why I suspect despite my protests we have not had both Wicks and Assad on the MLB roster at the same time, but there's always garbage time innings to go around. I think especially with Craig, it seems like he likes having two long guys. One he can give some leverage to one more for pure garbage time. If I had my way in two weeks when Boyd's back I'd have Assad as SP 5, Rea as the more leveragey LRP, AND Wicks as the garbage time guy.

There are yellow flags on both Swanson and Bregman's profiles, but Nico's a pure victim of BABIP. Like I couldn't devil's advocate my way into being worried about Nico if I tried.

I mean I said the results have been atrocious? When someone full-on breaks, think Yan Gomes his second year with us, there are generally obvious tells. But for Dansby: - His contact numbers are fine, down just a smidge - His chase numbers are fine, up just a smidge - His groundball rate is normal - His bat speed is normal, and to Squally's point his sprint speed and arm strength are too. So there doesn't appear to be a physicality issue So it doesn't look like an injury or a case of getting old. He's just been bad. My amateur diagnosis is he's caught in between, fouling off good pitches to hit instead of driving them. Doesn't look fully broken IMO.

I know no one's interested in a nuanced conversation about Wicks but I'll throw these out there: - The International League is insanely hitter friendly, with a 4.84 ERA. And then Iowa is a hitters' park even within the context of that league. Legitimately an average ERA at Iowa should probably be considered a little north of 5 - Wicks was really good at Iowa last year, ERA and peripherals all in the mid 3's - Jordan Wicks missed spring training with a minor injury, and when healthy did his buildup/progression directly at Iowa - Jordan's stuff is largely flat year over year - Wicks' peripherals have been fine to good in MLB the last year and a half in a tiny sample. The .447 BABIP in 20 innings is doing most of the heavy lifting on that inflated ERA

Dansby's probably fine. He's always been hella streaky and there's nothing in his profile currently that screams broken. But yeah the results right now are atrocious and we're pretty flush with quality alternatives. I'd probably drop him down into a rotation with the kids and make him fight for his everyday spot back.

Matt Shaw since last year's All Star Break has a 121 wRC+ in 318 PAs

Great to see Jaxon back. I wonder how slow they work him up. Sanders got 1 start in the ACL and 2 at SB after missing a month. I wonder if they have Wiggins do the full minor league tour to get back to Iowa. Velocity was closer to last year than April as well, good sign.

Jed just knows that Dana Brown has a 3B fetish and Hunter Brown is likely to be the best non-rental SP available this deadline

There's also the bear case on Hartshorn's D. Longenhagen is pretty matter of fact that he's a 1B. And with how thicc he is already at 19 hard to push back too hard. I think you're getting at least 10 more runs of defense from Rojas, probably closer to 15, and 20's not out of the realm of reason. Hartshorn being better than Rojas at the plate seems likely, but 20+ points of wRC+ is a tall order. We also have Rojas having (or at least coming close to having) conquered AA, which is a big deal box to have checked. I think Hartshorn being nearly two full years younger wins out, but the argument is reasonable either way IMO.

I don't think it's that hard to make an argument for Rojas, but yeah it's Hartshorn.

It's rightfully getting overshadowed by Hartshorn but good lord Rojas is hot right now. Caple kept the ball on the ground like I've been asking for but light on the strikeouts today

Long way to go but this winter might be the first time in a long time the bullpen doesn't need to be rebuilt more or less wholesale? 2027 pen would look something like this if the season started tomorrow: CL - Palencia SU - Maton, Webb MR - Roberts, Rolison, Riley Martin LR - Rea, Assad Like obviously you don't want to roll into the season like that, but that's pretty close to something you'd be happy heading into OD with. One arm short, maybe two? Plus the usual assortment of Iowa depth.