Bertz

The Shaw thing is dumb. The only argument I can see is helping keep his confidence intact by avoiding a tough slate of pitching. But if that was the goal sending him off with Glasnow and Cease is doing him pretty dirty.

He has exactly 1 at bat against lefties this year, so preposterously platooned. Also rocking a 40% strikeout rate. Still, good for him. Hopefully he can stick in MLB even if its likely to be a bench guy long term.

Palencia is a clear call. Like you mention he is a pretty similar profile to Pearson, and on top of that he's absolutely shoving to start the year (and frankly, going back to middle of last year). The other guy is where there's arguments in a couple directions: - Ideally to your point it'd be a lefty. That said Cosgrove hasn't pitched a game in the org yet, Little's looking rusty, and Martin hasn't been sharp yet. If you feel dead set on a lefty I think Brandon Hughes is throwing the best *right now* though he requires a 40 man roster move which isn't ideal - Keegan Thompson is, aside from Palencia, the guy getting the best results at the moment. But as called out in the game thread his velo is down, and of course he's not a lefty - Jordan Wicks already seemed relatively likely to come up and provide some innings in short order. That said after going 3 on Sunday, he's probably down until the homestand - Gavin Hollowell and Jack Neely are the only other optionable guys on the 40 man not covered above I think the plan probably depends on what the team was already planning with Wicks. If you are wanting to call him up on Friday, maybe you leave Pearson on the roster through the end of the road trip? If Wicks isn't imminent, I would probably eye Thompson or Hughes on the plane with Palencia.

Keegan's velo did weird things early last year at Iowa too and then immediately got fixed before his first MLB outing. He wouldn't be my choice for a callup but I wouldn't be shocked if he came up and looked totally fine.

Randy Vasquez is probably the worst full time SP on a good team in the entire league. Tonight is about as good as you can possibly feel playing a good team on the road.

We've got a freebie roster spot in Steele whenever Jed wants to cash that in.

Hard to be mad about Keller's outing, yeah there was a walk mixed in there but it was simple bad luck. Morgan and Pearson have to be swapped out today though. Palencia and Brandon Hughes maybe?

Understandably overshadowed by Hernandez, Brethowr's seeming breakout has been really fun to see as well. The contact numbers are worse than the strikeout rate, so there's probably some regression coming there (and for as much as I'm cheerleading for Cristian, ditto), but he's looking like he's validating the spring training hype.

One of the things that's nice too is that we do actually have reinforcements available to the pitching staff if things backslide further. Last May when the season was slipping away one of the things that sucked was that every pitcher of substance at Iowa was also hurt. So the only guys available to stop the bleeding were like Colten Brewer and Richard Lovelady. On the SP front we just had to keep running Hendricks out there even though it was clear he was cooked. Right now I'm excited for Palencia and Wicks to come up. Neely and Horton and Little don't seem that far off. If you just needed to stop some bleeding guys like Noland and Hughes could probably give you some boring innings. It's a far cry from a year ago even if there are some parallels with the bullpen.

I think it depends if his UCL is messed up or not. If his UCL needs to be replaced, because it's his second TJ I think realistically he misses most/all of next year too. If it's not the UCL I suspect given the timing he'd be good to go next spring.

It's definitely possible with all the off days, but with the Monday off day the Dodgers would have to skip someone. Right now it's slated for us to get Dustin May and Landon Knack.

Cease has a horrible ERA but the peripherals do not back it up. This is still going to be really a tough night. Conversely for this upcoming weekend Corbin Burnes and Zac Gallen's horrible ERA's are largely backed up by bad peripherals. So there's an argument that this is the last really tough pitching matchup until the Phillies come to town in a week and a half.

Cristian Hernandez has a 17% groundball rate right now which is ludicrous. Even in small samples I never really see it drop below 20 for a player. He's also rocking a fantastic 17.5% strikeout rate. Though his contact numbers make it seem pretty likely that bumps up with more sample size.

Busch absolutely Hulking out every time we face the Dodgers is one of my favorite sub-plots on this team.

Also Rea was kind of incredible tonight. If he can sit 94-96 for 3ish innings there might be some real long term utility there. With how dominant Jordan Wicks was at Iowa this afternoon in a 3 inning stint maybe there's a successful piggyback arrangement to be had.

1 run in 10.1 IP for the bullpen this series is maybe the biggest development in my mind

SP at the deadline just went from a 'probably' to a 'definitely'. I think there's extra incentive to get someone long term and not just a rental. i.e. like Squally said a few days ago, go get Sandy Alcantara. I will say with Horton and Wicks looking great at Iowa my concern is more about replacing Steele's TOR-ness and less about replacing him with broadly competent innings.

League average is about 40-35-25 pull-middle-oppo, and he was 40-26-34 last year. So a little oppo heavy. This year early on he's pulling everything, 68% coming into today.

Oh hey an opposite field double from Cristian Hernandez

Glasnow's actually been pretty bad to start the year. I presume that won't keep up (it's likely rust after last year's injury?), but hopefully he has one more clunker before righting the ship.

The offense is obviously the story but the pitching staff coming into this environment and giving up only 3 runs in 17 innings is pretty cool. Especially with no Shota/Steele contributing to that.

With Wicks presumably not needed in LA I hope he at minimum gets to piggyback Flexen today

I'm not in the "no way the Cubs sign Tucker" camp, but I'd be very surprised by this timing, and I trust Hector Gomez about as far as I could throw him.