OT: Raise the Jolly Roger: Good Vibes Only

[DJ Spinoza]

Crowe's pitching pretty well so far, let's see if he can navigate two or three more scoreless innings and give us a chance to win a close one.

I really do like Tom's approach at the plate. Not sure he's a great fit for an everyday OF (and obviously neither Difo or Evans are), but might as well give him an extended look. I think we should keep churning and giving looks to guys, and then pivot the season around the handful of trades that are possible, promoting some younger guys where it makes sense and playing out the latter months of the season with even more of a youth vibe.

Come July or August I don't think guys like T. Frazier or Difo should be anywhere near the team (Frazier's been so awful that his spot has to be in jeopardy). In this regard I don't even mind continuing to run Evans out there. The league has figured him out and he has to make adjustments, but there aren't really a ton of other options yet anyways. When Hayes is back, I think Frazier should probably go over Evans.

 

[Gallatin]

Crowe's pitching pretty well so far, let's see if he can navigate two or three more scoreless innings and give us a chance to win a close one.

I really do like Tom's approach at the plate. Not sure he's a great fit for an everyday OF (and obviously neither Difo or Evans are), but might as well give him an extended look. I think we should keep churning and giving looks to guys, and then pivot the season around the handful of trades that are possible, promoting some younger guys where it makes sense and playing out the latter months of the season with even more of a youth vibe.

Come July or August I don't think guys like T. Frazier or Difo should be anywhere near the team (Frazier's been so awful that his spot has to be in jeopardy). In this regard I don't even mind continuing to run Evans out there. The league has figured him out and he has to make adjustments, but there aren't really a ton of other options yet anyways. When Hayes is back, I think Frazier should probably go over Evans.

Frazier's so bad they've invented a new stat for him. Many Mandoza made hitting under .200 famous. Now finally someone's has outdone him. The Todfather line - for those unable to hit .100....

Actually have some empathy for Frazier. Clearly he's desperately trying to hold on to his career. I think he might even love the game.

 

[DJ Spinoza]

Nice start for Gonzo. In ST it seemed like he was really out of sorts, maybe due to the layoff, but then was more and more comfortable as the spring went on.

It's not an ideal comparison, but Gonzales is sort of a case in point for why I am liking Frelick a lot as a surprise under the radar option for pick 1.1. College hitters are often a great play, and so "double tapping" them in back-to-back years is a great way to inject some very solid offense into the lineup in short order, and maybe one of them really pops into more of an impact player than just a good everyday player.

With Frelick, he has shown the ability to rake while also having great carrying tools of speed and defense and the ability to play a premium position. There's maybe a little bit of a question how high the power ceiling is, but more and more, I am liking him as the option to spread slot money around a little bit, if that's the eventual play.

I'm still not quite off the Vandy pitcher train, and I think a few bad or mediocre starts aren't enough to really hurt anyone's stock. Leiter was almost definitely scratched so that he'd be available for more important games, and you can make a good bet that some tiredness got to Kumar yesterday. I think a lot of eyes will be on them as we go ahead, and I really want to watch both closely. For me they remain 1a and 1b, though the gap is less and less. I like Frelick and Watson more than Lawlar and Mayer, but neither of these two sound like they'd be really bad picks. I just prefer the ceiling of Watson if we go prep, and the speed/athleticism of Frelick as what seems to me a longer shot at the moment.

 

[DJ Spinoza]

His swing is outstanding.

 

[DJ Spinoza]

Looks like we are going to keep racking up the Ls.

While I'm not going to be on Team Tank until I look and see what the deal is come August, I do think that a clear jolt away from anything like being vaguely relevant in the division is for the best, in terms of trading players. Frazier might be more the kind of guy that teams get invested in at the deadline itself, but at least with Tyler Anderson, a lot of his value is going to be giving teams with playoff hopes a pretty dependable 1 out of every 5 game start to get needed regular season wins. Cherington should be aggressively shopping him over the next few weeks.

 

[Gallatin]

Man I just love how positive and upbeat you guys are. It's such a wilderness out there in online pirate fan land these days, if you care. But not here.

And yeah I still don't see it, I still don't see a team that's going to avoid 100 losses. And I still want that 1st overall.

 

[DJ Spinoza]

Pujols has a full NTC so I can't see it, but him retiring a Pirate would be an enormous F you to Cards fans.


Edit, I swear I was going to speculatively add that it's probably Gamel before I saw this!

 

[wheelz87]

So we won’t be seeing Hayes til mid June?

 

[DJ Spinoza]

I think a little bit earlier than that – it's retroactive to when he first went down, so I think he'll be eligible to be back in the first couple days of June.

 

[bigdaddyk88]

Smart business saving Hayes till summer drive those ticket sales.

 

[bigdaddyk88]

Man I just love how positive and upbeat you guys are. It's such a wilderness out there in online pirate fan land these days, if you care. But not here.

And yeah I still don't see it, I still don't see a team that's going to avoid 100 losses. And I still want that 1st overall.

Cause there’s a ton of bad teams so we will not lose 100 or get the 1st pick

 

[DJ Spinoza]

I'm repeating myself from earlier, but I think Cherington should be aggressively putting Anderson's name out there and seeing what kind of bites he gets. It's not that I think he won't have value at the deadline, but his value is bolstred by the extra 2 months of starts that an acquiring team would get. Right now, Anderson is on pace for a career season as a really nice mid-rotation arm who gives you a good chance to win just about every game he starts. He's dirt cheap and not really doing anything that seems unsustainable relative to his career numbers.

One thing I'm not sure about is how anxious other teams are going to get, since there isn't too much separation between most teams right now. Looking at the standings, the teams that might be getting anxious are the Twins, Angels, and maybe the Blue Jays, all of whom could use pitching.

The Angels match up really well except in terms of value. They have a perpetual need for pitching and don't want to waste another Trout year + maybe a career season out of Ohtani. They have an already crowded OF situation and their top three prospects are all OF. Trouble is, Adell and Marsh are more the kind of guys you'd trade for a starter with control like a Sale or Quintana (even if the Quintana trade backfired horribly for the Cubs) or maybe a guy like Scherzer. I don't really think the Pirates have any additional pieces for them which could increase the value that much - Frazier or RichRod, Howard, others might be very nice, but there's no way that kind of solid combo gets you a top-50 prospect.

Maybe if they got desperate, Adams, who is further away, could be made available. The dream would be to somehow get Adell, but I think it'd take his stock nosediving in AAA and I just don't see that either. In any case, probably the best upside play is a player similar to Escotto and/or helium guys. Teams just don't trade their top prospects, let alone for a random one year rental.

 

[DJ Spinoza]

Some other quick hitters:

- There are all kinds of idiotic Pirates things on twitter, but by far the stupidest I've seen are the people who seem to think Hayes is soft for not playing with a f***ed up wrist...

- Speaking of twitter, Peguero came out of the Greensboro game early today after he hit a double and stole a base. He played a defensive half inning and then came out, and though reports aren't official yet, the scuttle on twitter is that he's fine.

I think it's way too early to do much more than glance at some box scores for the prospect performance – in 2-3 weeks, we'll have at least slightly more information after a month or so of games. So far it doesn't seem like anyone is off to too slow of a start, and you like what you are seeing out of the younger developmental pitchers - Mlodzinski, Burrows, Thomas all putting up clean innings and a good number of Ks to start. Yean got roughed up in his first appearance but then looked sharper the second time out. Priester was probably the only bump in the road, but he didn't get touched up or anything, and reports were that he looked good.

Five biggest standouts so far are Contreres, Gonzales, Pegeuro, Swaggerty, and Castro.

I've caught innings here and there from Altoona and Indy. It's really a shame that there's no Greensboro broadcast, though strangely there does seem to be a centerfield camera in the stadium. Swaggerty looks good to me from the eye test so far. Good discipline at the plate, a nice swing, and really good speed (he has 2 SB already and today made a great diving catch in CF on a sinking line drive).

I'd say I'm most excited about Swaggerty just because he's closest to MLB besides maybe Yajure / Tucker / any of the veteran depth. I think he's made a swing change this year and has hit the ground running. Certainly has the prospect pedigree and development isn't really linear. If the hit and power are just average, he's still going to be a really nice regular.

 

[NewAgeOutlaw]

I just saw that Frazier went 2 for 4 yesterday to improve his average to .086.

!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

 

[cookthebooks]

I just saw that Frazier went 2 for 4 yesterday to improve his average to .086.

!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

there is a great high school algebra 2 problem in here somewhere

 

[MrBrightside]

 

[DJ Spinoza]

No surprise, he was pretty awful. Gamel is definitely more of a fill-in guy, though one implication of this is that we don't really have a clear 1B with Moran out for a while. I assume that Evans is going to be given a look there, which, well, let's hope he can figure out how to make adjustments.

From a roster construction perspective, unless a trade is possible, I don't know what better move is possible. It's too early to promote Martin and Craig is no kind of answer (plus no longer on the 40-man). I think you just duct tape it for a while. Maybe in the long run, if Martin looks good at AA, he's the kind of prospect you aggressively give a shot to in the latter half of the year, since he's not necessarily a top flight prospect and the sooner you see what you have, the better. He's probably someone who was hampered the most by the layoff, because he could have been knocking on the door for AAA or in any case somewhat ready for a look in a situation like this, but I think you can't be too cavalier with a guy who is not even 22 and hasn't really played above A ball.

 

[cookthebooks]

excited for the post dfa back and forth tweets

 

[MrBrightside]

 

[cookthebooks]

ruining the good vibes must be said

 

[MrBrightside]

ruining the good vibes must be said

Nah. That's pure gold.

 

[DJ Spinoza]

Six pitch inning for Keller with a bunch of weak contact. Not sure this is a long-term solution, but we'll take it.

 

[DJ Spinoza]

Same old story, back to the whiplash and this time it's within a start. Mostly had good stuff going early, but ran into some issues and couldn't give himself a leg up because none of the pitches can miss bats, then created more issues for himself and it got really ugly.

I don't feel like trying to dig through and check, but it did seem like some of his fastballs had more ride on them during this game.

One step forward, two steps (at least) back.

 

[Scandale du Jour]

Quite the ass kicking, ouch.

 

[MrBrightside]

Quite the ass kicking, ouch.

Yeah this lineup is horrifying. At least Brubaker is pitching tonight so they have a chance to be competitive.