Bertz

Reds bullpen gave up 4 in the 9th to blow a strong Hunter Greene start It will not be the first time we write that I suspect

Would It Dong survived the transition to BlueSky!

I think for me, heading into the season I'm worried about 3 things 1. There are a lot of old guys on this pitching staff - I am generally agnostic about pitcher age, but even for me it's unnerving that we have more pitchers on the team over 35 than under 25. Shota is the median aged pitcher on the staff! Hodge, Pearson, Morgan and Brown are the only guys on the OD roster under 29! Some of this is a snapshot in time before Iowa arms start percolating up, but in the meantime there will be at least one of the older guys who goes all Kyle Hendricks on us. I just hope it's Rea or Brasier rather than Pressly or Taillon 2. The rotation and bullpen each feel a guy short - This feels a little less true than it did in February because Merryweather and Brown (and despite opening at Iowa, Wicks) all appear to be back at full strength. But still, for all of the great work done to build out this team's depth, unless Jed *really* nailed the Boyd signing this winter was light on adding impact to the top of the staff 3. The bottom half of the batting order has a chance to be a problem - Swanson and Hoerner are coming off injury and as you point out above the youths obviously come with question marks. Individually I expect each guy to end up within a stones throw of average offensively, but simple odds are one or two guys will faceplant. I ascribe to the belief that lineups with gaping holes tend to underperform the sum of their parts (call it the Heyward/Almora theorem). So if we have another situation like last year where PCA and Amaya were both catastrophically bad for multiple months, it could be a really big problem even if e.g. Tucker's hitting like an MVP

I can tell I'm getting older because the 9 pm start annoys me more than the 5 am games did I feel like we always struggle in Chase, and the Dbacks are a good team, so this weekend could be ugly. That said none of the individual pitching matchups are that scary and the team didn't have to travel far for this series so I am hoping for a split.

Yeah Armstrong looks pretty middle reliever-y IMO. In the pitch design era never write a guy off totally, but I'd guess he'll need the extra juice from working shorter stints to be a thing at the MLB level. That said an MLB career does look pretty likely.

Because of the weird roster machinations around the Japan series the team never actually had to IL Nico. So it's sort of a "no news is good news" thing because he'd only be involved in a transaction if he wasn't good to go.

Brasier and Miller both being hurt at the same time is annoying. That said until Merryweather and Keller have earned (re-earned in Julian's case) more trust i think all four guys would get similar pockets of hitters. So I'm actually pretty okay swapping Morgan in at the moment. Sounds like both injuries are short term. Hopefully two weeks from now Merryweather's been re-enshrined into the circle of trust and we can more stand slide in one of the ROOGYs.

Jared Jones apparently is going to miss a few months with an elbow issue That team is real bad on any day Paul Skenes isn't pitching. Annoying that they're likely going to line things up for us to see him every series.

Even if Smith ulyimately ends up being awesome, I feel pretty comfortable saying this is a terrible idea. Wyatt Langford had a 91 wRC+ and 1.3 WAR the first 5 months last year before going nuclear in September and salvaging his season. Zach Neto didn't hit as a rookie. Nolan Schanuel had a BABIP filled September callup before getting humbled last year. There's just not any reason to think you can skip the upper minors and be better off for it. Especially given that Smith's not likely to add a ton of value on defense.

Not watching, but GameDay has several substitutions happening at once so likely the latter

I'd assume Brujan still gets cut, but if he's IL-able you can potentially cut a pitcher like Ethan Roberts or Gavin Hollowell to open the 40 man spot.

Everyone on the Reds besides Elly and Hunter Greene was really good in one of 2023 or 2024 and really bad (or hurt) in the other. So it's not hard to see them getting a good dice roll and being quite good, the talent is clearly there, but the most likely scenario is them being a really top heavy 78 win team yet again.

I know he got traded in late ST just last year and went on to have a wonderful year, but I'd be somewhat worried about not getting the best out of Cease given the timing and circumstances around a move right now. On top of that, part of the reason for acquiring another starter is the slew of injuries Brown/Wicks/Horton had last year. But currently all three guys are healthy, and aside from one disastrous inning in Japan both Brown and Wicks have looked great all spring. Now I'm under no illusion either guy will outperform Cease, but at this moment I'd probably roll with them and evaluate rental starters in July. Especially since Brown and Horton are probably on an innings cap and even in wildly optimistic scenarios need to slide into the bullpen later in the summer.

Stuff models love both Pressly and Thielbar. Morgan and Brasier combined for a 2.57 ERA last year.

I mainly only care about the radar gun for Pressly. He was south of 93 in that game against the Dodgers, which would be no bueno. If his velo is fine we default to ST being meaningless for a vet like him.

This is really good. I'll say that I tend to be an xFIP truther when it comes to smaller samples, so I don't view Brown as an especially large regression candidate. Though that's possibly counterbalanced by fairly stark L/R splits, teams might push that advantage more this year. Nate Pearson is a similar case, though he does have a longer track record of being dong prone so I'm not as quick to handwave it away. Miller's a pretty prime regression candidate. I do trust him as a matchup guy, but I wouldn't want him facing any halfway decent lefty in a leverage opportunity. I also think Jameson Taillon might be the biggest regression candidate of them all. Especially since he doesn't appear to have clawed back any of the velo he lost between '23/'24.

I'd say it's most likely a sign that Rojas will head to SB rather than straight to Tenn.

Why do you think they are televising Monday and Tuesday's games and not today or yesterday's? Even with the tourney on, weekend games would surely have a better ROI no?

God forbid the crew at Marquee take a couple days off after traveling halfway across the world and before a 6 month season

Everyone's pro labor until they're mildly inconvenienced

Based on how teams are laying out their early season rotations, it looks like the Cubs are catching a couple breaks after Arizona. - Rangers are lining up deGrom as their #5 which would have him miss us - Dylan Cease and Michael King look slated to miss the Padres series at Wrigley. King wouldn't pitch in the series in San Diego either Weather or injury can obviously change things but every little bit helps with this tough early season schedule.

Via Fangraphs That's average contact and good (but hardly otherworldly) power. I don't want it to sound like I'm crapping but this whole thing is just getting very silly.

64.4% coming into today. If he were an MLBer last year that would have placed him between Zach Gelof and Will Benson. Ranked 282nd of 286 hitters with 300+ PAs. And I don't think Smith's anything is all that rare or special. He looks like a good hitter that will end up with a wRC+ in the 120 neighborhood and play a passable 3B. It's a comparable overall package to guys like Caissie, which is why he ranked comparably on offseason prospect lists.

Miller going on the IL was the last puzzle piece. Feels like it makes Brown being named the 5th starter just a formality. Whoever loses the battle between Brujan/Workman gets cut, that opens up the 40 man spot for Keller, and that is that between now and Thursday, barring additional injury.