Bertz

I think whether it's someone new or a re-signing you can be pretty confident saying you will definitely need to pay market rates for a corner outfielder and a starting pitcher. There will be more for sure but the rest will hinge on TBD 2026 health and performance.

Yeah this point can be taken too far but broadly I think depth gets you to the playoffs and impact wins once you're there. I'm (foolishly?) optimistic that the simple numbers game will work out though. At least one of the Boyd/Shota/Steele trio and at least one of the Cabrera/Horton/Brown/Wiggins quartet will have me feeling good, even if I couldn't tell you for sure today which ones.

Yeah the rotation is weird because with one notable exception I feel good about every SP we have, but on the other it's relatively easy to take the under on every single one of them individually. It won't be as extreme but there's an extent to where it's reminiscent of the bullpen builds from the last few years.

I'd guess there's a slim chance that they IL Taillon. There was some allusion to something with his lower body. I took it as mechanics but it might be a mild injury. But yeah I think you have to keep the leash short. The main reason for hoarding all this SP depth is to protect from injury. But a close second is to avoid another Kyle Hendricks situation.

Yeah I'm not going to dismiss it out of hand, it certainly raised an eyebrow, but I suspect it was just logistics in one direction or the other. A) The team has insisted up and down dating back to the winter that Brown is still a SP B) Brown has looked great this spring, well above expectation, and continued to do so as he's been stretched out C) We have at least one non roster invitee (Snider) that looks like he's worth giving that last bullpen spot to The timing feels weird to pull the rip cord on Brown as a SP.

Shaw has had a pretty stellar spring. I don't take too much from ST results unless it's something that indicates a skill change (e.g. velocity), but given what's been put on Shaw's plate defensively I'm encourage it hasn't hurt him in the batters box even just in exhibition games.

Brett Taylor this AM brought up a good point I didn't know. You can backdate a season opening IL trip by 3 days. So you can IL Seiya and have him only miss a week. A week where they're playing the Nats and Angels. Feels really hard to justify not IL-ing him.

The Pinstripe Alley article you posted sort of gets at this, but look at Team Italy. The team was mostly American but still managed to have loads of fun and become the darlings of the tournament. Oh, and not for nothing but on talent they probably shouldn't have made it as far as they did yet they were in the semifinals, so clearly the positive vibes didn't hurt them on the field.

Shota's fastball averaged 90.8 last year, tonight he's averaging 92.3 and has thrown 1 fastball under 91 MPH. Jameson Taillon is a walking red flag but despite the inflated ERA I feel great about Shota.

FWIW even with a minimum IL stint the toughest lefties we'd be missing him for look to be Yusei Kikuchi and Gavin Williams

It's interesting because on the one hand Craig said something about how Kevin will be up if they have everyday at bats for him. On the other hand he said something about Shaw being the RFer if Seiya can't go. My guess is if Seiya's out a few weeks or less Shaw and the vets fill in, if it's a disastrous injury (which it doesn't sound like) Alcantara will get some runway.

Yup!

Kevin Alcantara has three balls in play tonight and all three were hit at least 105, that's fun

At least Rojas isn't dead

I don't think it's dead arm since it's been all spring, including the WBC where he'd presumably have a strong shot of adrenaline. That said they said some vague stuff about mechanics and his lower body. He's a guy who has gone on the IL with a leg injury every year here, so hopefully it is something he can work through with an IL stint.

The fact that they didn't shuttle him right to the tube makes me think nothing catastrophic is expected, but this does not sound like a guy who is gonna start the season on time.

IMO it's notable that neither Taillon nor the team is doing any sort of Allen Iverson style "we're talking about practice" with this right now.

There was an anecdote from the first week or so of ST, I think from Mooney? But basically a bunch of young pitchers threw the football around after practice one day and Hottovy had to adjust their throwing schedules for the next day or three to account for it. The team with the benefit of their wearables now is able to get hyper detailed on workload/fatigue/etc. So I think IP jumps are a cruder measure than they have to limit themselves to these days. That said we don't have anything better on the outside. I'd guess 140-150 innings like they got out of Horton is probably a good benchmark though? - I think we had more reason to be worried about Horton at this time last year than we do Wiggins right now. But like Jason said the team probably would have preferred to dial him back a bit - On that last point, I know Wiggins went MIA for a month in the middle of last season, but it sounds like he was throwing the whole time. He was kept out of formal games that would show up on a Baseball-Reference page but he was still building inninhs - It's anecdata at best but increasingly it feels like the league will let anyone go into that 130-150 IP range. Guys coming back from major injury, young guys, reliever to starter converts, etc. It kind of doesn't matter if you're able to stay healthy *in that season* teams seem increasingly unlikely to set a ceiling much lower than 150

I'll be interested to see how the FB grades out against big leaguers. It's 70 grade velocity, but also has premium shape/movement on top of that. So does that make it an 80 grade pitch and allow him to just spam it 55-60% of the time? I feel pretty confident in Jaxon on a per-inning basis. The question is going to be how many innings can we get out of him. The question is unfortunately relevant both from a health standpoint and a role standpoint.

Yeah I think not getting an update until Craig's pre-game media availability is a good sign. If it was a catastrophic injury it'd probably leak sooner.

He was bad yesterday, but Martin was dominant on Thursday. Struck out the side in 14 pitches including 4 whiffs. Fastbalk was 96.6 which was up nearly a full MPH from last year. Probably not for nothing but the velo was down a good bit yesterday. Probably why he sucked and hopefully just a little dead arm. I hope he's willing to go to Iowa. I would think it's the right call for him? Ethan Roberts, Jack Neely, and Luke Little have all been varying levels of encouraging this spring. But with Porter Hodge going down Martin's likely the first phone call once there's an injury. He'll probably be up before tax day if we're being honest.

Last year about 19% of Taillon’s fastballs were 93 MPH or above. This spring through the first two innings today he has 2 in 88 tries. He looks COOKED