2025 Minor league game thread – Week 18– 8/4-10

It’s not outrage. It’s disapointment in the teams tone deafness toward their customers. It’s raisiing ticket prices and lowering payroll. It’s lowering the quality of the product. It would have been nice for fans to see their #1 prospect everyone is waiting for. They featured him on the ads for the game. I enjoyed seeing Matthews. But their cavalier attitude toward their fanbase is going to only make things worse. I think I liked it better when they acted like they cared.

: Fanduel. It was too bad for fans as it was a missed opportunity, but the two aren’t connected. IMO, it would be a bad precedent for the marketing people to push for a minor league manager to play a player for non baseball reasons

Well put. It was a missed opportunity. I understand your point about marketing people

What ever happened to the days of investigative reporting? Matthews pitched a gem last night, it was like he was pitching in 2024 again when he bolted through the system. But no explanation was ever given as to why his velocity dropped in 2025 followed by a drop in success. Is his velocity back up to 2024 standards? Were his coaches insisting that his velocity be lowered in 2025 so that he ocould concentrate on his breaking stuff? Was last nights performance a fluke, an outlier? I feel like I’m being left in the dark. And not a peep about Alec Willis. This kid looks like a stud. But there hasn’t been a word said about him that I can recall since ST. I’m going to guess that development staff is absolutely forbidden to talk to reporters. What else could it be? I know I’m sounding harsh. But Matthews pitched like a top of rotation guy last night. What’s going on?

Bling – I agree with you. He has to find that balance. There may be some things the trainers can do with him (especially in the offseason) to reduce the risk of re-injury, but if he reverts to doing exactly what he was doing last season, he’s likely to be hurt again. That’s why I don’t want to see 96 or 97 again. I do think that he has to get that average up a little more from around the 92 he’s at now to have good success. Maybe average 93 with the ability to throw 95 every once in a while when he needs it. That’s not too far away from where he is now.

We saw this on display perfectly with Wainwright in his last 5 seasons. He started to fall from 93 to 92 to 91 and then ended around 87. He was still the same pitcher but with less velocity and with each tick down, the results got noticeably worse. And Matthews is obviously not the wily veteran Wainwright was (although Matthews is about as good as you get in that category for a rookie). You wouldn’t think 93 to 91 is that big of a difference, but it sure seems to be based on the results we see on the field.