10 Observations: Ji Hwan Bae baserunning mishap, bad defense, David Bednar
First edition of 10 observations during the season examines a rough start to the season
WTM 3/27: Now that the dust has settled, the Pirates are in the unusual position of having four lefties in their bullpen. How well this will work remains to be seen. Of the four, three have significant career platoon splits. In opponents’ OPS:
Ryan Borucki: LH hitters — .557, RH hitters — .820
Joey Wentz: LH hitters — .674, RH hitters — .849
Tim Mayza: LH hitters — .573, RH hitters — .820
Even before the three-batter minimum cut sharply into the utility of LOOGYs, that’d be a difficult mix to manage. Hunter Stratton could help, although not while he’s at Indianapolis. His career split is .888 vs. LH hitters and .538 vs. RH hitters. Justin Lawrence has a modest career split, while Colin Holderman, Dennis Santana, and Caleb Ferguson don’t have meaningful splits.
Murphy 3/27: One game in, one ninth inning implosion from David Bednar. Didn’t take long for my bold prediction for the season (a Bednar All-Star appearance) to become that much bolder.
Oneil Cruz didn’t make the best of plays on the lead-off triple, but it was still two hits against the only two batters he threw to (he intentionally walked Xavier Edwards).
Not the best of starts.
Murphy 3/27: The defense, in general, was horrible on opening day. There will be plenty of highs and lows in a long baseball season, but man, that was a rough watch.
Joey Bart with two passed balls (while their best defensive catcher on the 40-man is playing first base), a guy with less than 50 games (including the minors) at first commits an error, the starting center fielder makes two gaffs, and your shortstop probably should have been charged with an error as well.
That’s just one game. (Editor’s Note: It was more than one game)
Murphy 3/27: Man, that turned from hopeful to utter dread pretty quickly. After extending the lead to 4-1 with a home run, Nick Gonzales notably hobbled his way around the bases.
He was added to the 10-day IL with a non-displaced fracture of his left ankle.
I’ve had my criticisms of Gonzales in previous years, but he certainly took a positive step forward in 2024, and got off to as good a start as you could ask here, but now will have to deal with this.
Murphy 3/27: There is no way you can carry Isiah Kiner-Falefa as your everyday shortstop for an entire 162. The arm isn’t going to work.
On the right roster, IKF could be a very valuable player.
This doesn’t feel like the roster.
Murphy 3/28: That wasn’t the most ideal start from Braxton Ashcraft. It felt out of character for him as well, walking four in 3.1 innings pitched. He walked 12 in 73 innings all of last year.
The slider was working for him, though. He picked up eight whiffs on 16 swings, a 50% miss rate.
Murphy 3/28: I’ll give credit where credit is due. I tossed Endy Rodriguez into the mix when I was talking about the defense in the opener, but he looked much better at first in the second game.
For all the talk people say about him at first, he’s played less than 50 games there, even going back through the minors. He handled himself well on Friday.
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Murphy 3/29: It really feels like Oneil Cruz is really going to teeter the line of providing a positive net outcome, doesn’t it?
The defense lapses have been fairly noticeable, and a few are more mental than anything. Can’t complain too much about what he’s done at the plate, but he’ll have to continue that level of production to outpace if the defense doesn’t shore up.
Murphy 3/29: The powers clearly won’t have a lot of power in the lineup, so to see Jack Suwinski, in his first game of the season, deliver with three batted balls over 100 mph was super encouraging.
Honestly, I wouldn’t mind him playing as many games as possible early on. Let's see if they can cook anything up with him differently, or at the very least close to his 2023 season.
Murphy 3/30: That was easily one of the worst displays of baserunning I have ever seen in my life by Ji Hwan Bae. The crazy thing, he had a great jump on the first ‘attempted’ steal and he probably cruises into second safely.
It’s just two games (that Bae has played int) but I’m not sure things could have gone much worst for Bae. He went 0-4 with three strikeouts on Saturday and then an absolute diasater of a baserunning mishap.
Going into the season, the talk was about now was the time to win. There has to be some sort of accountability going on here and when there is that big of a mess up, doing nothing is worst.
Maybe they don’t have to be extreme, but something has to be done here.
You can’t afford to have the whole team watch Bae stumble on the bases like that and then turn around and do nothing.
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At some point I struggle to blame the general lack of baseball IQ from some of these guys on coaching. It's that bad.
The Bednar vitriol is unwarranted. He threw 8 pitches, one was dribbled down the 3rd base side for IF single. Yes he threw a wild pitch to the second batter. But he wasn't knocked around the park like he was in game 1. Quite a bit of overreaction going on, understandable losing 3 out of 4.
Note to Anthony: Don't trust LameDay about the 4 feet, the ball went maybe 30-40 ft to where Key fielded it.