OT: Raise the Jolly Roger: Tanking underway

[DJ Spinoza]

No concerns at all with Kela stuff-wise after that outing. Maybe a slight bit of rust and bad luck, but Barnhart's HR was a perfectly executed pitch that he just guessed right on. If anything, his stuff looks like it's a tic or two better than I remember.

 

[ImporterExporter]

 

[DJ Spinoza]

Tucker back in the mix today. I don't really care for the OF experiment, but see it more as a necessary evil in terms of him not really having IF playing time available, especially with Gonzalez playing lights out right now. He's effectively in a kind of platoon with Dyson and Polanco, which I suppose is ok if he can at least be getting 3 or 4 starts a week. I don't want to denigrate Dyson, who is a fine veteran fielder, but in our context, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to have him around except in a mentoring role.

More basically, I hope we will move Frazier ASAP and collect whatever price we can for him. If it's PTBNL (because of the roster limitation) lotto tickets, then so be it. The #1 priority right now should be opening up an everyday spot for Hayes. If Frazier is moved, then that becomes a lot easier. Wasting this meaningless season with Hayes only getting glorified spring training would be maybe the one offense that I'm willing to hold against the new management and coaching. Everything else is kind of easy come, easy go, with some emphasis on trying various guys out for a future that might be worth a damn. But Hayes' playtime time should really be at the top of the priority list on that front, and now we've definitely cleared the part of the season where we'd lose a year of control on him.

 

[DJ Spinoza]

I'm officially on the Kuhl hype train. Tonight he made a bad hanging breaking ball to Winker, who smashed a second HR. It was a 2-run blast because Votto got on base after this umpire screwed Kuhl out of strike 3. Winker also hit a HR earlier in the game, as he's just on fire right now, but otherwise, it's all extremely positive signs out of Kuhl. The velocity is good, the offspeed stuff is good, and the control is pretty solid even as he misses on occasion. Most important is that he's getting tons of swinging strikes and executing them into a solid number of Ks.

An interesting subplot, maybe not quite this offseason but soon enough, is that a small group of players who could be longer term contributors are controllable via arbitration through the 2022 season. My expectation is that in the best case scenario, 2022 would be the season where you are actually expecting to win to some degree (emphasis on best case scenario). Kuhl would definitely be someone who would make sense as a calculated risk to be in the mix longer than that season, and surprisingly, Erik Gonzalez is probably in that conversation now too.

 

[ImporterExporter]

Back in the L column.

One step closer to being f***ed out of Rocker by MLB.

 

[DJ Spinoza]

Kirby Yates called for the trainer after making a pitch tonight. Perfect timing with Kela returning.

Before this series, I was firmly on the Rocker bandwagon, worries about MLB set aside. I truly cannot bring myself to root for anything good to happen for the Reds, even though more losses in short order would be the most ideal outcome I think. We need to aggressively sell whatever we can and then get Hayes up, hell, even figure out some playing time for Oliva.

I'm not sure how you could get him playing time exactly, but I remain convinced that Barreto would be a very good target. Power bat who they don't have any ABs for at the moment? Stick him at 2B here, or even part-time in CF and see what happens.

 

[DJ Spinoza]

lmao

 

[Mario_is_BACK!!]

 

[DJ Spinoza]

I don't want the win tallies, but it would be pretty funny if 1) Bauer is the one with covid and 2) MLB arbitrarily decides to basically punish the positive-testing team, since at a certain point, you can't really just add more doubleheaders. The Cardinals have 7 or something crazy. I doubt you can start forcing teams to forfeit, either. It's just an obviously untenable situation .... like everything else.

 

[Mario_is_BACK!!]

Ah well

 

[Winger for Hire]

The flip side of the Cards having a bunch of double headers and the Reds on the brink of maybe going down that path... The Pirates could come out of this weekend with a bunch of double headers of their own without a positive test.

 

[DJ Spinoza]

They are saying that it could be possible to play a doubleheader Monday since we're both off. I bet they'll postpone tomorrow too and hope there's no outbreak in order to do that, which is the cleanest option.

Upside might be that dragging further into the season, games-wise, will get us to Hayes quicker. Though at this point it seems more likely that he won't be promoted unless there's an injury or trade. I think that's somewhat defensible actually, even though I also think his playing time really should have been priority number 1. Now that the year of control has ceased to be an issue, it seems possible that the next hurdle is the new Super Two cutoff, which is less defensible, especially since now he's fully healthy and as close to game shape as possible but unable to play games and develop.

 

[DJ Spinoza]

The Alvarez signing seemed like a good flier to take – I suspect there's more to the story as there are contradicting reports floating. Alvarez tweeted that the signing fell through because we signed someone else, but Mackey says that's not the case. Hard to tell.

 

[Jaded-Fan]

 

[OnMyOwn]

Ooops, I burnt dem again

 

[cookthebooks]

how pirates would it be if the damn red sox out tank them

 

[JimmyTwoTimes]

Brady House 3B/RHP or Jack Leiter RHP(Rocker's teammate at Vandy) would be great picks as well. With the Pirates luck, maybe missing out on first pick would end up benefitting them(Rocker ends up with two TJ surgeries for example like Taillon) .

Brady House is further away(HS) but the fact that hes a plus hitter and pitcher makes him the most intriguing.

Theres even Catcher Del Castillo from Miami.

Either way a top 5 pick and it should be a very good selection. This is a better class than last year.

 

[ImporterExporter]

This team needs to focus on pitching. We have some offensive pieces to work with but very, very little in the way of mound presences. You hope with Preister but who knows given he was a HS arm and is now losing an entire developmental year essentially. Keller simply isn't a front line starter. And quite simply put we still may have clueless analytic people so it could all be moot.

But if you're focusing somewhere it has to be on the mound.

C is a close 2nd.

 

[cookthebooks]

the lack of minor league baseball and interesting conversations around changes in player development, philosophy evolutions, etc along with the abbreviated draft has really put the focus on the major league club at the worst possible time. also makes it a lot harder to see cherington as doing anything to move the needle versus the last regime.

 

[Winger for Hire]

You need a very special player to draft a player who you project to stick at catcher in the first 2ish rounds, IMO. I don't think this class has that and the organization needs help and depth almost everywhere but MI. They can probably get away with some later round developmental guys to try and hit there for the next year or so. It's such a volatile position to project and even harder to evenly develop. I think that should either be one of the positions you leave up to FA or one of the last ones you hit just before you are ready to open the window.

ETA- In the Top 100 draft prospects, there's 5 catchers... 3 already project to move out to a corner, one is a glove first slap hitter, and the other has a cannon and "projectable" bat

 

[DJ Spinoza]

It's not like it matters much, but I think tonight I've crossed over into officially being anti-the new leadership. Not only does the most important positional prospect in the high minors continue to waste away in Altoona, but Tucker continues to not be given at-bats in favor of journeymen who will not amount even to moderate trade pieces. Fittingly, as I type, the starting CF JT Riddle softly grounds out to the pitcher.

Play the god damn kids at least!

 

[cookthebooks]

if cherington isn’t trying to build some value to move a couple of these guys for lottery ticket prospects he is worth moving on from already for someone who really grasps the unfairness of the pirates situation and still wants to try and win

 

[DJ Spinoza]

I think I owe overdo apologies for the various people with whom I've engaged in polemics about Bell over the past few years. I remain skeptical that we would have received an enormous haul for him just by magically dealing him in his white hot month or soon after, but it seems pretty undeniable at this point that he's not the answer at all at first base. The only question is whether he'll be traded in a minor deal or sign a free agent deal and mash somewhere else, but I sort of doubt it. He has the look of someone who might give you cheap power in a DH spot, which in the current MLB, isn't exactly something teams are banging on the table for.

At the end of the day, I think the only relevant fact about this team is that it's doomed and they should do the best they can to try and see what they have with various pieces as a rebuild extends into next season. So I don't have a specific issue with playing JT Riddle in the abstract – maybe he can cobble together something like a Phillip Evans-like emergence and become a supplementary player in the future – but Hayes wasting away in AAA and Tucker on the bench in Pittsburgh is totally inexcusable. It should probably be the case that both are playing fairly often and we are debating whether or not other players getting starts should be doing so over Oliva and others.

Just hard to find much to feel good about with this organization right now, again, insofar as it even matters in this joke of a season during which much more important things are going on outside of baseball. For me I think the only thing might be Kuhl, though my feeling is still that Brault is serviceable in the backend of a rotation and I'm at least fine seeing Brubaker start for a while, even though I think we should just focus on developing him as a lights-out multi-inning reliever.

 

[ImporterExporter]

Polanco is just as bad (he's f***ing batting .071), and he's another one I never understood the hype on. Always looked awkward as hell moving. He was so long and his swing suffered because of it. And his baseball IQ was pathetic. There were blowhards in the Pitt media that put him in the same sentence as Bonds. Yawn.

Bell wouldn't have given you a huge haul but had you moved him last year mid season I think you'd have at least brought back 1 top 5 prospect from a team + more. Years of control, switch hitter, big power, still young. Especially the AL his value would have been fairly high IMO.

Not dealing Vasquez is an epic failure for obvious reasons.

I want to see what the leadership does with an actual entire off season and spring training (hopefully) in 2021 to iron out the road map. I knew this team would be bad, but they are downright atrocious. We should end up with the worst record comfortably. The only real question is do we get f***ed by Manfred and MLB. If they go to a lottery system for a one off, we could end up drafting 25th....

 

[JimmyTwoTimes]

I think its fine to let them sit for now. After the deadline is when they should start playing.

We dont want to start winning and 1. Not sell at the deadline...2. Not get top pick.

A few more weeks of losing, call up Hayes. Play Tucker. Frazier should be gone by then. Its too bad Evans got hurt for the year, he could have been a trade chip. And this FO didnt pound the table for Erik Gonzalez so maybe they capitalize on his good season so far.

3B Hayes
SS Tucker
2B Newman

For the rest of season. Getting about 20 games in.