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Yeah, catching has been the same black hole in the lineup as last year. But at least last year we had Yadi’s defense. I wasn’t a fan of the Contreras signing. I have no doubt that he will hit a lot better than he has. But 5 years is a really long time for a poor defensive catcher in his mid 30’s. At least we have Herrera, Bernal, and Crooks coming up to potentially move him to backup long-term.
BikeMike, I think we as fans need to have some more patience with certain pitchers. Especially ones that look like they’re still learning. Oviedo fits that. Liberatore is certainly another that we’ve seen so many of us harp on before even though he was (and is) still so young.
He threw Carlson 5 sliders in 6 pitches. And Carlson swung and missed 3 of them. Clear game plan against Dylan.
Wow Euro! In today’s age we see so few sac bunts. But a guy like Eddy is probably the right pick for it. He occasionally gets into one and his sac bunts are still competitive tries for a hit due to his legs.
I hear you BikeMike on the walks. Woody was solid there and typically has been in his career. But when I look at every pitch that got hit and 80% (or about there) were hit at 100mph or more (by the Pirates mind you), that’s scary. Our defense saved us a few times.
I like the defensive alignment tonight much better. It just feels more comfortable getting O’Neill back in left and Dylan in center. Plus as much as I love Walker’s bat, I prefer Burleson in right by quite a bit.
I agree on O’Neill ZTR. He always seems like he’s guessing at every pitch before it’s thrown and decides beforehand if he wants to swing. He does go on little streaks where his guessing is good. It seems to me in those times he does one of two things- hammer the first pitch or become extremely patient and hunt a sloppy pitch that doesn’t break. But that hasn’t been the case this year.
I disagree with all of you. Woodford was really bad tonight and extremely lucky. He left lots of balls in the middle of the plate and nearly every Pirates hitter was teeing off against him. Nearly every ball hit was a sharp line drive. They just happened to be at many of our defenders. Woodford was extremely lucky and needed to come out. He did earn a few strikeouts, but it’s the Pirates.
On the other hand, Oviedo looks really good. Lots of pitches right on the black or in the corners. He was slightly wild, but not nearly as much as we remember. He’s wearing down a little now and the Pirates should have had a short leash on him this inning like Ollie did with Woodford.
Overall, I thought Mikolas had pretty good location of his pitches tonight. But he seemed to lose a couple miles per hour on his fastball as the game went on. Going from 94 to 91 is not good. At 91, he has to be far more perfect.
It’s so frustrating. Matz was cruising along ok last night too and then the wheels came off. Deja vu. All I know is this sucks.
W/L is a symptom of pitching, but it’s not a good measuring stick. It’s like trying to measure how sick someone is by how many times they coughed. Sure, it’s kind of related. But there are lots of better measurements. We’ve all seen a reliever get a win after coming into a game for the last out of an inning, allow 4 runs in that 1/3 of an inning, but then have his team score 6 runs in the next half inning and he gets credit for a win. Conversely, we’ve seen a pitcher throw 9 innings and give up 2 hits and take a loss. Wins and losses can be extremely arbitrary.
Ultimately, there’s no one way to measure a pitcher. Just like there’s no one way to measure an illness. You need lots of data. And that’s what all those geeks are out there trying to collect. But no matter how much data you gather, you just need to be humble and realize that you’ll never truly ever have the complete picture. No decision will ever be 100%. That’s what makes it still fun. Play the odds. Or choose to go against the odds and sometimes look brilliant (or more often dumb like Ollie pinch hitting for Donovan). Because baseball is slow-paced, we all get to make these decisions along with the manager in real time. It’s fun. It’s infuriating. And that’s why I love it.
Bling, how can you say Woodford got it together and Mikolas didn’t? Woodford gave up 6 runs in the first 2 innings. Then, he walked a guy in the third. And then he walked another guy and threw a wild pitch in the 4th, plus has 2 hard hit liners that inning – one that was really deep. Is that getting it together?
Mikolas’ 3rd inning was strikeout, single, strikeout, strikeout. That’s pretty darn good. Then in the fourth he gave up a ground ball infield single to Springer, struck out another guy, and then gave up a hard hit ground ball single and was relieved by Thompson who gave up a sac fly to score 1 run. Is that substantially worse? I don’t get this comment at all. I’d much rather have ground balls and strikeouts than walks, wild pitches, and hard hit line drives to the wall. Sure, Mikolas did allow 1 run vs 0 from Woodford after the 2nd, but his pitching was far, far better.
3 I think is the safe answer. Unless he is horrendous in his next start, I think he gets up to 3 poor starts before a change is made. But it also depends on how Liberatore looks too (or some other more unlikely option).
