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Willie, I generally agree that hits are better than walks. I’m not saying that they aren’t (although leading off an inning, it’s virtually identical). My point has always been that Bling saying JJ is playing so-so because his BA is in the .230 range is absurd. JJ’s job is to play good defense (check), see lots of pitches to wear down pitchers (check), and get on base (check). He’s also added some power and come up in some key situations. JJ has been fantastic. Getting another .015 of batting average points to get to the .250 line is seriously like 1 or 2 more hits. JJ has been robbed on a lot of liners. Over time, many of those will be hits.
And yet they are not in the HOF because they didn’t win enough because they mostly played on poor offensive teams. That’s the part I find dumb. Had they played for the Yankees, they are first ballot HOFers.
Noot isn’t a CFer. I know he can play CF, but he’s not good at it. We need Church as an every day guy and then a backup in a pinch which is Torres or Noot. Torres could do it every day and maybe be average. I guess we will have to see how he performs.
I agree 1TD. He needs some time to regroup. Got to get Church back though first before Victor could get sent down.
BA is better than pitcher wins. It’s a good stat. Just a bad one to use against a guy like Wetherholt who is finding lots of ways to get on base, which is his job to do.
Speaking of which, JJ draws a walk.
And later comes around to score. It equals a run whether he got on with a single or a walk.
How do you rate guys like Luis Tiant, Kevin Brown, or Rick Reuschel? All had career winning records, but not by a lot because they played on a lot of bad teams. BWAR says they are some of the best pitchers of all time (top 50 anyway). But their lower total win totals have kept them out of the HOF.
Bling, in Brian’s defense, he’s not saying wins don’t matter. He’s saying pitching wins don’t necessarily reflect a good or poor pitcher. Pitching wins are arbitrarily assigned sometimes and pitchers can pitch great games and lose and pitch poor games and get the win. Pitching wins is quite possibly the dumbest of all tracked baseball stats. Well, that and now we have added ABS challenge tracking %. That is equally dumb. Both things can be indicators of good or bad performance, but the correlation is relatively weak compared to so many other stats.
I posted that exact same set of moves yesterday. Torres has earned a call up and Saggese has earned the demotion. I do think Saggese has a higher ceiling if he can work to get there. Svanson needs a reset and Fernandez is pitching well. Neither move hurts the long-term season goal.
Bling – I think we can develop mid relievers just fine. We just keep trying to hang onto them as starters. Hansen, Mautz, Hjerpe, and the previous version of Hence come to mind. We also have Liberatore, Pallante, and Leahy who began as middle relief and grew up into starting roles.
Also, Svanson is as equally home grown as Roycroft. We picked both up from another team and developed them from the lower levels on up. Graceffo is truly the only fully homegrown talent.
What other lefty are you adding Booyah? Not many choices available.
Oh. I see you changed it to Shuster. I think Pushard is going to stick around for a bit. They committed to bringing him back up. They could send Svanson down for Shuster I guess. But it’s not like Shuster is likely to be brought in for a big moment unless they are desperate.
I think it’s time to swap Fernandez for Svanson and Torres for Saggese. If Torres were right handed, that would have already happened.
Svanson seemed to miss location last season too but he was effectively wild with lots of guys swinging over the top of pitches. This season he’s still missing location but guys are either squaring him up well or getting lots of bad ball hits. I’ve never really been a Svanson fan and was quite surprised at last season’s results. I think he’s fine but he’s more just a guy than elite reliever. I do hope they can fix him though. I just think it’s time to send him down to work at it.
Looks like the organization is going 0-6 tonight. Already down 4 minors games and Springfield is down 6-0 in game 2 of their double header.
Cards now down 5-0. Hard luck inning for Svanson here. Several weak grounders that found holes. A ball to Wetherholt that would have probably been a DP but for some reason the infield was playing in and it went by him. Then a liner to Walker that it looked like he’d catch, but then he pulled up and played it on the hop. We are getting singled to death tonight.
And now Reynolds gets a 2-run double to chase Svanson. At this point Svanson may need to be swapped with Ryan Fernandez at Memphis.
Brandt Thompson with a great start again tonight. 9 k’s through 4 2/3 on about 80 pitches. He’s the other guy (besides Uegueto) who I was surprised not to see make Kyle & Brian’s list who made mine. His stuff is far from exciting but he continues to get excellent results at each level. He’s kind of a little guy with not much of a FB.
I thought he had the GS too. Or at least a double off the wall. Nice play by Mangum to keep the shutout going.
Ugly start to the 6th as the Pirates get back to back to back base hits to load the bases. Bruihl coming in. This one could get ugly here.
Pop up to shallow CF, sac fly to medium right that Jordan throws at bit wild home (that’s been a trend with him lately), and then an easy ground out to 2B ends the inning. 3-0 bad guys now.
I was a bit surprised by that too. You could argue Prieto was more successful at AAA than Church and maybe that’s why, but Prieto has been dreadful in a limited number of MLB ABs.
2 tappers to 3B that a better third baseman than Prieto may have made lead to a 2nd run off McGreevey through 4 innings. He really struggled throwing first or second pitch strikes that inning. Not typical McGreevey. I’m worried he may be tiring early.
Church looks so much bigger and stronger than he once looked in his early minor league days. An 11th rounder that never got much attention. But the Cardinals kept promoting him ahead of Iadisernia who was drafted several spots ahead of him. Iadisernia would end up on prospect lists despite that. A few seasons later Iadisernia is gone and Church is a starting left fielder – well at least until Noot gets back. He’s really a pretty amazing story. He used to have zero power and wasn’t really much of a hitter in general.
