Bertz

I think generally the decision making has been good today (maybe not on that two point attempt....). I know the accuracy has left a lot to be desired, but I'm not nearly as worried about that long term as I am about the between the ears stuff.

Oh that's beautiful. You know the Cards fans started to believe after the Molina single.

It feels almost inevitable that the Mets are going to blow this tonight

Even if they don't come back to win this game, this might be huge for the Mariners to burn Romano today. The Jays pen outside of him is not very intimidating

Fields looking pretty bust-y now doesn't mean we have to apply revisionist history back to his draft. That was viewed as an exceptionally strong QB draft, and as recently as April general consensus was that Fields would have been QB1 this year and gone in the top 2-3 picks.

I'd love to see Mervis' L/R splits from like August 1st onwards

Guardians-Yankees might be really fun. Youngest team in MLB vs. a Yankees team who I don't know where they rank age-wise but are definitely very veteran-heavy

Relevant again

A little more on Leigh That's a really unique profile. Two distinct breaking balls at ~2800 rpms, plus a fastball at ~2500. Looking at a leaderboard for this year I only see a couple of guys in that neighborhood, https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/pitch-arsenals?year=2022&min=100&type=avg_spin&hand=&sort=6&sortDir=desc Ironically though they're all bad? Trevor Megill, Lucas Sims, Luke Bard, Drew Smith. It's a quick and dirty comparison (literally just RPMs and MPH), but interesting considering how impressive each of the individual underlying skills are.

Citi Field seems really horsefeathering loud. This is fun

Fun fact: Aaron Nola led all pitchers this year in fWAR

Oh boy the fans streaming out of the park there is going to lead to some wonderful content from the Best Fans Stl Twitter account

Of course the Cards are going to win this game on the backs of Jose Quintana and Juan Yepez. Of course.

Really good rundown from Bryan Smith. I'd quibble with his choices at the end (I'd keep Mckinstry and Wick instead of Marquez and Uelmen) but the decisions definitely aren't clear cut on several of these guys.

I think people are really sleeping on the Mets chances of winning this whole thing because of last weekend's embarrassment. If they take care of the Padres in 2, they'll be able to get two deGrom starts and a Scherzer start in a five game series against the Dodgers, and as scary as the Dodgers are give me the Mets in that series. Oh, and they'd still have Scherzer ready to start game 1 of the NLCS. I also think the Phillies and Mariners are a bit underrated. Everyone's like "aww good for you buddy you snapped the drought" but these are good teams with fearsome front of the rotation starters who could horsefeathers you up in a short series.

Zach Mckinstry racked up 0.9 WAR in 185 PAs this year despite a 79 wRC+. That'd be basically a 3 win player over full playing time. The offensive bar is super low for guys who can play good defense everywhere on the infield. That said I posted about this a few weeks ago but I think there's a bit more in the bat. Despite the low BABIP Statcast doesn't think he was especially unlucky on balls in play. Where he probably has been unlucky though is in his K numbers. Here are his percentile ranks in several categories among guys who got 150 PAs (these are all set so 100th percentile is most, not necessarily best) BB rate - 60th K rate - 81st Out of zone swing rate - 47th In zone swing rate - 32nd Out of zone contact rate - 69th In zone contact rate - 78th % of Pitches in Zone - 41st None of that indicates a guy who should be running a 28% strikeout rate. He's got good contact rates, is average at chasing out of the zone, and maybe a little passive but not egregiously so. This is a guy who should have a ~20% K rate, which would likely bring that wRC+ up to vaguely average. Stepping back, there's probably only room on next year's roster for one of Mckinstry or Madrigal, and even as a guy who's not a Madrigal hater I feel pretty strongly that Mckinstry should clearly be the guy. They're probably comparable value players in the abstract, but even if Madrigal is little better he is a horrendous fit on this current roster. A RHH who is intractably tied to 2B is just the squarest peg you could possibly think of right now. I think one of the moves that Jed needs to make this winter is a sort of reverse Vizcaino for La Stella trade.