Bertz

Some SSS stats from this weekend that may be vaguely meaningful: - Kyle Hendricks had a swinging strike rate of 20.5% in his first start. That's his first time being north of 20% since 2016. Last year he was at 8.9% for the year, and topped out at 13.5% in a single game. One game cannot tell us he's fixed, but this one did as much as possible - Seiya Suzuki swung at one pitch out of the zone all weekend, good for a 4.2% rate. For reference Juan Soto chases 10-15% of the time, and Mike Trout chases 15-20% of the time. Suzuki's average exit velo was 91.8 MPH this weekend, tied with Teoscar Hernandez and Willson Contreras last year, above Matt Olson and Joey Gallo. Only one of his balls in play was on the ground, a 20% rate. Austin Meadows had the lowest GB% in the league last year at 28.7%. Seiya is obviously going to give back ground in all of these areas, but man even after regression the comps are super fun - Collectively the team saw 4.32 pitches per plate appearance, and is in the early going leading the league in walk rate. They have the lowest swing rate in the league by a couple of percent, and the 3rd lowest swinging strike rate. They have taken the fourth highest rate of called strikes though, so I do imagine they'll at some point need to try to jump on some pitchers early to keep them honest - Patrick Wisdom's plate discipline and contact numbers were up across the board. Not great still mind you, but with his power and defense being bottom 10% in the league in contact rate rather than bottom 10 overall likely has him pushing 3 WAR - Velocity was higher than you'd expect nearly across the board. Usually, guys are ~1 MPH lower in April than you expect them to be for the year as a whole. It's some combination of still ramping up and cold April weather. Well given the weather this weekend, you'd not really be alarmed by guys being down as much as 2 MPH. But that wasn't the case, at all. The starters were each down a couple tenths of a MPH from last year's numbers. Martin, Effross, Robertson, and Roberts were all up. Norris and Wick were down about a mile. Keegan Thompson was the only guy down multiple MPH, and it's very easy to think that's because he was pacing himself to take that game to the house. Small sample and everything, but all else equal the team being collectively a MPH north of expectations would lead to 3-4 more projected WAR

I'm starting to think we're not gonna like Villar

It's the right thing to do from a team building perspective, particularly when you're not putting your foot fully on the gas to win games, but yeah the next six weeks or so while they sort out the bullpen are gonna require some Pepto

You'd have preferred he given up more home runs? His xERA and xFIP were fine last year too. It's completely unsustainable. His xFIP WAS 3.69, nearly double his era. His Siera was 3.58. Yeah its not awful, but coming off two awful years prior, I'm not aching to give a guy like that a roster spot. Those are very good numbers. Lucky does not automatically mean bad. You can be good AND have luck make you look great, and that's exactly what happened for Chavez last year.

LOL

We're presumably getting Cousins-Williams-Hader some would be nice to get to Suter this inning

I know it became clear very quickly that Palencia was the primary piece in the Chafin trade, but what the horsefeathers happened to Greg Deichman? Riley Thompson had a rough first but settled in really well for innings 2 and 3. Haven't seen a velo read yet but he was a guy we heard some buzz about being way up in the spring

Yikes

Yeah I'd like to use Madrigal to break up a couple of low contact guys. Something like Happ-Madrigal-Wisdom

Via Reddit

Stroman didn't really seem to have it at all that inning, good to get out with just one run Wonder about guys getting gassed faster early on this year, and Stroman came out of the gate with bigtime velocity today

I knew it was night and day but horsefeathering christ

111 MPH

Didn't actually pitch that well unfortunately

Peralta is an extreme flyball pitcher who gets lots of swing and miss. Might be one of the worst hit and run candidates you can draw up?

Including the big league club, the org struck out 69 opposing batters today. Every club had double digit K's. And this isn't some non-prospects bullying kids several years younger than them. Luke Little was the least prospect-Y starter, and he's a lefty up to 99 MPH

Obligatory

It's going to (fairly) get lost in the shuffle but, presumably done for the day, Ryan Jensen with: 4 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 2 BB, 4K and 50% groundballs

:flythew: This shutout brought to you entirely by homegrown pitching

It is *extremely* early obviously, but Patrick Wisdom's made contact with more than 75% of his swings so far. It takes a lot more than two games, but this is something where changes become meaningful pretty quickly. If he's still north of 70% a week from now it might be a story.

I'd like to see Keegan get 2, and then Rucker and Roberts each to get an inning. Get guys into the action sooner rather than later.

Herz definitely looks like a reliever, but then again so do Madison Bumgarner and Chris Sale

They're up 7 runs, Steele was under 70 pitches, and 7-8-9 is due up, I think we can be okay with him going out there Yeah I wanted to pull him after 4 because he seemed to be getting wonbly, but after those insurance runs leaving him in was a no brainer to leave him in