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Bertz

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Everything posted by Bertz

  1. Bertz
    Yeah, the Dodgers are the platonic ideal, the Yankees dipped around 2015/2016 but not particularly hard, and then I'm not sure there's anyone else we should be looking at longingly in this regard.
  2. Bertz
    Is this something that could really happen? I was hoping (more like wishing) they could move him at the deadline. Even if they had to eat 90% of the contract I would have been happy with it. I think this offseason we're finally at the point where it might happen (though it's unlikely). Right now, we have 5 (!!!) LH OFer/1B types between the MLB club and Iowa: Heyward Happ Ortega Deichman Rivas With the latter two having minor league options, and with the DH being an inevitability, it's not an untenable situation to keep all five. But there is some light 40 man crunch this winter IIRC. And having 5 of practically the same guy on your 40 is pretty dumb. So I think you should expect one of these guys to be shipped out. Happ's clearly the most likely impact guy, so he probably stays. Ortega's currently playing the best by far, so he stays too. The team JUST traded for Deichman, so they clearly like him. That leaves you Rivas and Heyward. They probably keep Heyward for veteran mentorship and such, but we've gotten through enough of his contract that it's no longer a slam dunk.
  3. Bertz
  4. Bertz
    Really good. I'm curious if he's done. He only went 60 something pitches his first start off the development list. At the moment though, in his two starts off the DL he's at 9.1 IP, 11 Ks, 3 BBs, 0 R, and with a grounball rate a bit over 50%. That'll play.
  5. Bertz
    I don't get why people say things like this. On paper this team is trash. They have no pitching. The strength of the staff was the bullpen that is all gone. The rotation has one guy and a bunch of garbage. They have one major league hitter, who is a catcher, and have been getting complete lightning in a bottle performances out of a collection of nobodies and it's still not enough to make up for the full roster. This is an incredibly bad baseball team that will need to add several very expensive players in the offseason to be competitive next year. If they went into the season with this current roster they'd lose 120, easily. You know there's pretty easy ways to verify how silly this is, right?
  6. Bertz
    Feels like between Canario hitting the ground running at SB, Nelly Velazquez doing the same at Tenn, and what Nwogu has been doing at Myrtle Beach, we've got a good shot at netting a big time power bat. Really nice to see, as until recently I wasn't expecting much dong-wise in between Davis and all the ACL kids.
  7. Bertz
    This is fun, especially since my understanding is that Brennen has been getting victimized by the high fastball
  8. Bertz
    Yeah, I feel like from his relief work it wasn't too hard to imagine he could do the high K high BB low IP type of outing. Seeing him with an outing where he leaned hard on the sinker and did the pitch efficiency thing was really good to see. If he was stretched out more or it wasn't 1000 degrees outside he'd likely have gone 7 IP, that's awesome.
  9. Bertz
    OK, my comment may have been a tad bit overzealous but it just doesn’t sound good over the radio. I think the Adames dong got him out of his groove and it took a few batters (and a visit from Hottovy) to get back into a good headspace. Fairly normal young pitcher stuff, just gotta see it get better with experience.
  10. Bertz
    Adames' dong was a bit of a cheapy, but that Garcia one was not at all
  11. Bertz
    7 for 7 now
  12. Bertz
    4 Batters Faced, 4 Groundballs Justin, I think you and I are going to get along quite well
  13. Bertz
    I kind of like the idea of Mancini if you trade for him and extend him at like 3/45. I don't think he'd take much to acquire and while he's bad in the outfield, he's ok defensively at 1B and you can expect him to give you a 115-120 wRC+. I totally agree about Mancini, but maybe a "bad contract" trade involving Heyward and Hosmer might work with the necessary tweaking (prospects/cash). Hosmer could give a few years of "adequate" production at 1B, while Heyward could replace Pham or be 4th OF/defensive replacement.
  14. Bertz
    I'm generally of the mind that if you're a teenager in full season ball, you have to be REALLY bad for me to hold it against you. And like TT said when you add in the pandemic and the loss of short season ball, there's even more extenuating circumstances this year than normal. But Howard has been REALLY bad. And unlike say Hearn or Nwogu, his season doesn't look much better when you ignore May, which IMO would lend credence to either COVID rust or losing the NWL as an intermediate stop. I'm not writing Howard off for the reasons above, but we SHOULD be down on him from where we were a year ago. Especially since he's not the highest upside guy to begin with. I don't have a top prospects list written out, but if I did I imagine Howard would be closer to Strumpf than to Davis.
  15. Bertz
    I feel like the Cubs were just extremely lucky last year that they didn't have an outbreak, and this year they've been mostly unscathed because they are one of the few teams that have to live with the under 85% protocols. For an organization that can hardly do anything right the last few years, I doubt they somehow devised the optimal strategy for preventing COVID outbreaks. There was some stuff last year (I think in the Athletic?) about how they actually were really great about things. Doing things like choosing hotels with outdoor areas they could take over, etc. Part of it was also that the team leaders like Rizzo, Heyward, etc. were part of enforcement in the early part of the year when less of the protocols we're mandatory. So while they have been doofuses a out the shot they were a big part of last year's efforts. And the team did have a small outbreak early this year. It's just that it nabbed guys in the bullpen we don't care about like Brandon Workman and Dan Winkler.
  16. Bertz
    If Happ were on the open market, would you pay him $5M? If not, why even offer him arbitration? He has had plenty of time to figure things out, and he is terrible. Rafael Ortega is playing over his head for sure, but I would much rather let him fill the spot for the next year, whether that be as a 4th outfielder or as a placeholder starter. Sure I definitely would. Coming into this season he had a career .825 OPS in 1262 PA. Last year he had the 24th highest fWAR for a position player in baseball (yes SSS but still). $5m is worth trying to figure out what has gone wrong this season and whether he can go back to some semblance of the production he had in his previous 4 seasons. I'll trust the 1200 PA over the 300 PA this year, even if that 300 PA is the most recent data point. Yeah, if this were a KB or someone making $15M+ through arb you'd probably cut him, but Happ at $5M is nothing. Especially for a team that's going to be competing but also just trying to sort through guys, you absolutely should buy that $5M lottery ticket. Hell, at this time last year he was an MVP candidate (yes shortened season blah blah blah) so it's not like you have to turn the clock back that far.
  17. Bertz
  18. Bertz
    Obviously needs to work on the contact, but he really had been hitting the horsefeathers out of the ball night in and night out
  19. Bertz
  20. Bertz
    Yeah, I think no matter what we need two starters, including a legit #2/#3 guy. But if Steele or Thompson looks good here that second SP can be a backend type. If Steele AND Thompson look good it can be simply a guy we stash at Iowa. Like you said those latter scenarios make this winter a hell of a lot easier.
  21. Bertz
  22. Bertz
    I'm generally patient with moving guys up, but Nwogu is a little old for his level and has been hot for nearly two months. Feels like he ought to spend the last month of the season in South Bend.
  23. Bertz
    Dear Lord
  24. Bertz
    For the tank Yeah I think it's this. He's got a lot of funk to his delivery, but it appears going from 90 MPH on the fastball in 2019 to 89 the past two years was enough to take him from effective to garbage. Just goes to show how thin the margins are. I am starting to think we'll need to add a LH reliever to the shopping list for this winter. Because while we seemed flush early this year, that depth has been decimated - Steele was too good and will now hopefully be in the rotation - Wieck is good, but his heart problems are a bit scary, and he's fairly split neutral regardless - Ryan and Brothers are pumpkins again - Marquez and Carraway were not nearly as close as we thought back in March - Bryan Hudson and Brendon Little will probably be factors, but neither is so dominant or so close to MLB that you can pencil them into the April bullpen It's not a tough situation, just bring back Chafin or someone comparable, but just something to keep in the back of our minds as we (rightfully) focus on the big names at SS and in the OF this winter.
  25. Bertz
    Strumpf going on a year would be really nice right now. It didn't get a lot of notice because he was hitting like horsefeathers, but in July he dropped his K rate under 20%, and had as many BBs as Ks. Now in August he's on fire, and the K's are still down. Kevin Made is up to .258/.281/.323. Obviously one of the emptiest batting averages you'll ever see, but from an 18 year old in full season ball that's still exciting IMO. Rowan Wick seems close. He's had seven appearances. There was a disastrous outing outing on 7/28, but in his other 6 he's gone 6 innings, 4 hits, 0 walks, 13 strikeouts. You can't just throw out a guy's bad outings, but given that the MLB team is going nowhere, I'd rather him get some play up here than make 150% sure he's knocked all the rust off at Iowa.
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