OT: Raise the Jolly Roger: Duct Tape and Bubble Gum

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bigdaddyk88

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Apr 21, 2019
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Yay, here comes the Reynolds starting every 3 games bull****. Nothing says you've been doing an unbelievable job like riding the pine back to back games.

Like I said.

Mickey Mouse Operation.
You knew that once Dickerson came back they were going to play him everyday til they traded him. Didn’t matter he hit like 200 on his rehab stint. They couldn’t send Reynolds down even though he had less 60 ab in AAA because he is breaking out. Dickerson isn’t healthy but they had to call him up or lose him for nothing
 

bigdaddyk88

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Apr 21, 2019
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I think with the young pitchers let them pitch there way for 3, games live with the outcome then as a coach make suggestions they told everyone who would listen Keller isn’t ready I say give 3 more starts up here
 

DJ Spinoza

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Aug 7, 2003
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That Markakis at-bat was straight up unfair.

I think there's no better time to use Vazquez in this game – top of the order, tie game. Hurdle's only using him because he hasn't pitched in a week because of our new strategy to lose every single game. But I don't see the sense in saving him for a second inning. The only problem is that it seems like efficiency is touch and go anymore, so now it's questionable whether you'd use him in the 9th if you got a lead here.
 

DanielPlainview

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Apr 28, 2009
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It's only a matter of time before pitchers just throw nothing but sinkers and sliders into the dirt against Marte.
 

DanielPlainview

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Apr 28, 2009
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tenor.gif
 

DJ Spinoza

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Aug 7, 2003
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The more losses that happen, the greater likelihood we'll see some drastic changes. On the whole, I've enjoyed seeing a team that's competitive and can fight back, keep things interesting, and so forth. This current team is the wreckage of everything that can go wrong with that sort of half-measured approach, up to and including the kind of disastrous mistakes that completely wreck a team. That's what has happened and there isn't really much of an easy fix.

It's a little too simple to say that we would be in significantly better shape if we had some luck with the injuries, and if Archer hadn't continued to tank. I guess that's still basically the animating hope, with Archer basically being a sunk cost, but hoping that Taillon won't need a surgery that puts his 2020 in question, and Musgrove and Williams stay healthy, etc.

I don't really trust Huntington to make the kind of adjustments that need to be made. He's been clearly without much of a direction for some time. Ironically, the team really doesn't need a full-blown tear down, but he needs to be aggressively pursuing multiple angles to improve the talent in a certain number of places. Above all, we need a new pitching philosophy at the top level of the system, and that's probably not happening unless Hurdle and Searage are both fired. I can't see them doing that until the winter.
 
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Pens x

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Oct 8, 2016
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And yet Hurdle and GMNH still have jobs.

That is by accident folks.
Yes, it’s utterly pathetic but on par for this joke of a team. Both Hurdle and Huntington are under contract through the 2021 season, so no changes will be made since the team is too cheap to pay for them and two replacements. They sadly likely have more job security than anyone else over the next 3 years.

Baseball is broken to allow this.
 
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Empoleon8771

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Aug 25, 2015
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Can they just send Keller down and keep him down there? What's the point of potentially rushing him to the majors when this season is basically lost and he's getting shelled out there?
 

cheesedanish87

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Jun 27, 2012
10,797
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Pittsburgh
The Pirates just find ways to keep on losing.

The offense comes up big against Woodruff and Soroka and the pitching can't get anybody out.

Then you have Brault pitch the game of his life and the offense gets shut down by Chase Anderson.

I'm all for trading Vazquez for the right return, bad teams don't need good closers.
 

DJ Spinoza

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Aug 7, 2003
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They could send him back and I suspect if he gets shelled like this another time or two they will. It doesn't really have an effect on anything other than their impression of his development, since his option has already been used and he's almost definitely cleared the Super Two date.

John Dreker has a few interesting remarks about Keller on his twitter. It seems as though Keller often doesn't break out the curve until later in his starts. I can see the case for him maybe being a bit unlucky in the first inning especially. His struggles were certainly not the same kinds of struggles he faced in the first start, especially if the left side of the infield could have made an above average play to bail him out. The worrying thing to me is that Dreker was saying that he wasn't strictly using the fastball in the first inning, even though it sure looked like it to me. I guess he is working in a cutter, and there was maybe a slider or two.

The 97, 98 mph heat will absolutely play if he can locate it. The question to me is whether that cutter is actually cutting, and whether the Pirates are going to hamstring him by trying to throw that heat low in the zone. Especially if he has a cutter, he can try to locate that lower in the zone for swings and misses or ground balls, but the fastball is good enough that he should be challenging hitters up in the zone. This isn't rocket science, it's literally copying what successful hard throwers are doing all across MLB and directly what multiple failed pitchers under Searage's instructions have done as the cornerstone to being front-end, dominant starters after they've left.

They should literally just keep him away from Searage and give him tapes of Gerrit Cole to watch.
 

DJ Spinoza

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Aug 7, 2003
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I agree about Vazquez unfortunately. I want to see us do a responsible retool, more or less in line with what Huntington has repeatedly been trying to do, except to tap into the core a little bit more in order to get better pieces back. The Dodgers have the talent depth to be attractive, especially if you can pry guys like Stripling away as part of a package. Stripling, Smith/Ruiz, and a couple pitchers from lower down on their list would be a nice haul.

The trouble is, Cleveland is in just as bad a situation as us, and should be making Brad Hand available, who is arguably more appealing than Vazquez in a trade.

While there's still going to be 1% of me that holds out for the miraculous, i.e., a long winning streak that starts today (let's say 9 games, win today, sweep the Fish, then run the table on the homestand), the rational part of me is fully acknowledging the fact that signifiant changes need to be afoot. Vazquez is probably the best trading chip that we have in terms of risk/reward and how volatile closers can really be.

Marte is a good trading chip too, although I think his detractors are going to be in for a rude awakening with what life looks like without him. The Phillies are the obvious fit, but I do not like any of their prospects well enough to want to move Marte. Marte is a dominant CF with an almost unparalleled skillset across the league, outside of perhaps Cain, and he's going to look that much better on a team where he doesn't need to be the 1st or 2nd best guy in the offense all the time.

At the end of the day though, Huntington maneuvering for a bigger deal like this is just utterly depressing to me. I have the confidence that he can probably fix some current holes by nibbling around the edges, moving a guy like Cabrera, and give the team another shot to have everything work out perfectly, multiple guys play well at the same time, no injuries, etc. in 2020. But beyond that? He could tap slightly into the young core here and get 6-8 players back. If he gets the right mix, we're a division contender by this time next year. If he doesn't, we're a cellar team with Josh Bell on the block.

So I dunno, maybe rooting for the winning streak is the only sane option. I guess the "middle ground" position here to what I'm thinking out loud about is move Vazquez + Cabrera, Dickerson if anyone will have him, and perhaps Frazier, and then anoint Crick the new closer and let the rest of the bullpen guys see if they can figure it out, which has the side benefit of padding the L column to get a better pick. Then you hope to head into 2020 with a better bullpen and the pieces from the Vazquez deal, and if that's not going to work, you have Marte and Bell to think about moving next summer. But I think as tempting as it is to just say move Vazquez and Marte, I don't see the team emerging that gives you good value for Marte this summer.
 

DJ Spinoza

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Aug 7, 2003
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I'll add a triple post to point out explicitly what I left only implied with my "unfortunately" response above: salivating over who we'd be able to get for Vazquez is almost exactly the same situation we were in when Cole was on the block. The Dodgers make perfect sense because getting one of their catchers + Stripling would make for immediate improvements at positions of need (my idea here not being that Diaz is bad, but that Diaz + Smith/Ruiz is a perfect combo in a world where you need two good catchers).

We lined up the Astros and Yankees in a similar fashion, and NH managed to get two ok supplementary pieces. In theory, Vazquez's value should be higher than Cole's was when we dealt him, by a significant amount, but I do not really trust NH to get the right 4 pieces in a deal.

And I guess there is potentially some logic to exploring a Marte trade, in the sense that Bryan Reynolds is probably best profiled as a CF, and so there'd be no better time to get him tons of playing time there than in a season totally lost to retooling. This needs something of a caveat because PNC's LF is like another CF, but the thing with Reynolds is, I'm not sure he has the power to be a corner OF longer term. Obviously we'll take the hitting, but we absolutely need to figure out how to get more power from LF, RF, and 3B. Hayes is all projection and now might have some kind of hand/wrist injury that can totally sap power.

So I'd say if we can find a blue chip option for Marte, it's maybe worth it. Let Reynolds play CF every day and make mistakes, let Polanco play every day to see if he can find the form he had last year and stay healthy. And then give whoever a look in LF. Hell, it would be a disaster, but even throw Will Craig out there and see if his bat will play in MLB.
 

ImporterExporter

"You're a boring old man"
Jun 18, 2013
18,780
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Oblivion Express
I want Will Smith from LA. I think he's a legit MLB prospect at C. He's 24, ready for the show by all accounts and should make for a nice 1-2 punch with Diaz behind the dish.

I had a long write up proposing some deals last month and getting Smith and Gonsolin (for Vasquez) was what I proposed. Both are essentially MLB ready guys. Gonsolin has legit starting potential but I think he ends up as an 8th/9th inning guy.
 
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