I feel like I’m in the minority right now, but I’m cool with PK staying down in the minors if the point is to limit his innings so he won’t be shut down at any point this year. Hopefully there will be a reason for him to be available in September/ October.
I also don’t want to see him come out of the gate firing and earn ROY while the Pirates reap no benefits from it.
With Skenes, I selfishly want that extra year, which is only necessitated by having a cheap owner--it's one thing to extend Keller for ~$80MM and would be another to go well into the 9 digits.
What's interesting in terms of limiting innings is that they should have similar concerns with Jones. Will they give him a breather mid-season so that he can pitch through September and into October if necessary? They'd leave themselves open to criticism from the players' union if they sent Jones down while he's pitching well but that actually makes some sense in terms of keeping him healthy for the end of the season. When they bring Skenes up, they could send Jones down for a month or so. Or, simply go to a 6-man rotation as someone suggested earlier this morning.
I’m really curious with this situation to see what the pirates will do. They did give some extensions to Keller, B Rey, and Ke but I agree with your comment. I would love a Skenes extension to keep him a pirate for many years.
Looking at some HR stats in AAA where the Norfolk Tides (Orioles) have 5 players - Kjerstad, Stowers, Mayo, Burdick, and Norby all in the Top 8 HR hitters in the International League. Yep, sounds like the PCL. Last night they played the SWB (Yankees) and lost, but I checked the HR's of some of the players. The Harbor Park Field in Norfolk has a dimension of 333' down the line in Left, but Kjerstad hit a HR to LF with a 41degree angle that traveled only 320'! That's 13' short of the posted shortest distance in LF. And, Mayo did hit a HR to Left that traveled 338' and it was on a 40 degree angle. Then Everson Pereira of SWB hit a HR to CF that traveled 375', but CF is posted as being 400'. Is it the posted distances or Gameday?
With the Pirates, Greensboro is about the only decent HR hitting park, but our upper 2 levels of Altoona (especially in early Spring) and Indy are not very conducive to hitting HR's. Last year at Indy, 5 players got into double figures for HR's with the highest being 16 HR. At Altoona only 4 players hit more than 10 HR's, the highest being 17 HR. VG Pitcher's parks, but the excitement and recognition I am seeing for the Orioles would lead me to believe we should attempt to put the HR into baseball at our AA and AAA ballparks. Even better, let's swap our AAA location at Indy to the Brewers for their AAA location in Nashville. Lot's of Pirate and Steeler fans down here!
Question now is: if Falter hasn’t actually been working with Tread and he continues in the manner he has, does Oscar Marin deserve a Nobel Prize and if so, which one?
Physics, and it may not be Marin but someone in the front office who found that extension (Falter is 97th percentile) plus low spin rates (Falter is in the single digits) are highly correlated with exit velocity (Falter is in the 87th percentile). :)
Or maybe medicine, for allowing a pitcher to be who he is without going to one of the pitching labs to increase spin and/or velocity that his arm wouldn't have been able to handle?
In any case, bears watching--Falter has risen on my scale of must watch starts. And while I know they didn't acquire Perez and Gonzales to mentor Falter, Falter could hardly be in a better situation than to have two soft-tossing lefties to watch and learn from.
Excellent points, and the Pirates under Marin seem to be able to find and develop pitching. I've read good and bad on here about him, but the Pirates overall pitching went from 25th of 30 in 2022 to 18th in 2023, mostly due to the BP going from 24th in 2022 to 9th in 2023. The BP is strong again in 2024 even though there are a lot of new faces in the BP so far in 2024. And, we know that the Pirates Starting Pitching with Jones and Skenes coming onboard in 2024 will definitely take a positive step forward.
I try not to be reactive and hypercritical, even of coaches whose approach (cough cough Andy Haines) doesn’t seem like it’s working very well.
That said, the Clay Holmes trade is irksome and the fact that the Rays were able to get what they got out of Stephenson by having him adjust his slider grip doesn’t inspire a ton of confidence in the pitching coaches.
There are only 171 days left in the MLB Season, so Paul Skenes could be on the "any day now" Roster where he would be unable to reach 172 days which is the number of days to qualify for a full year of MLB Service. Super Two? From 2023 and back 5 years, the S2 numbers have been 2.118, 2.128, 2.116, 2.125, and 2.115 in 2019. To safely avoid S2, waiting until 114 days were left in the season would seem to be safe. That would occur on June 9.
I truly doubt the Pirates will try to keep him down that long. The Rotation at the MLB level is moving along very smoothly right now, but that could change any day. Right now, I would think he is about 3 AAA starts away - figure 20 days. On May 3, 2024 the Pirates start a 9 game homestand with 3 against the Rockies, 3 against the Angels, and 3 against the Cubs. He will pitch 2 of those games at PNC Park!
If Falter continues not to Falter do they need Skenes so imminently? Obviously he becomes our best pitcher or close to it, and is an upgrade over whomever he replaces, but at the current moment, I can’t imagine they feel a ton of urgency in that regard?
It's disappointing to think they pull this, but with as slow as he's being stretched out, June makes sense. I think after he gets to 5 innings he's more than ready. I mean he's already there, the Pirates are just dragging their feet.
But, he should get the 1st call following an injury and springtime is a great time for injuries. But, a spot start? Is that really the best use of him?
There is the added complexity that if he wins rookie of the year he'll still earn the full year of service. Given we're the Pirates, a plausible scenario is we call him up too late to earn the extra draft pick (I think that deadline just passed which is why the O's called up Holiday when they did) but with enough time to win rookie of the year.
Of course if they're being honest about him having things to work on and it not being about manipulating service time, that won't be a factor. And several rookies are off to such good starts that it may not be much of an issue anyway. We've been rightly impressed with Jones, but he only ranks 6th in WAR for rookie pitchers and several position players are on a 3-4+ WAR pace.
I thought that too, but when reading about the O's calling up Holiday this week the writer said that it was just in time to earn the pick if Holiday wins ROY.
I'd be buying up tickets for that early May Rockies Series right now and then put them on line after the announcement was made. Probably be able to buy season tickets for a few years with the Profit! Zambelli Fireworks on Friday May 3 so no need for that night, so Saturday May 4th or Sunday May 5th. Pitching on the 5th would work well by getting his 2nd start against the Cubs on Friday night, May 10.
That would be brilliant for Skenes since it's closer to the college schedule and it would help protect Jones too. The other four pitchers may not be too happy, though. OTOH, with the exception of Keller they may just be happy to have a rotation spot after last season. And we could have perfect RLRLRL, hard throwing/soft-tossing/... rotation.
So in a super short sample size Keller is our worse starter in every category except Ks where he is second to Jones.
Feels like they lost yesterday more than we won, lets change that up today!
I feel like I’m in the minority right now, but I’m cool with PK staying down in the minors if the point is to limit his innings so he won’t be shut down at any point this year. Hopefully there will be a reason for him to be available in September/ October.
I also don’t want to see him come out of the gate firing and earn ROY while the Pirates reap no benefits from it.
With Skenes, I selfishly want that extra year, which is only necessitated by having a cheap owner--it's one thing to extend Keller for ~$80MM and would be another to go well into the 9 digits.
What's interesting in terms of limiting innings is that they should have similar concerns with Jones. Will they give him a breather mid-season so that he can pitch through September and into October if necessary? They'd leave themselves open to criticism from the players' union if they sent Jones down while he's pitching well but that actually makes some sense in terms of keeping him healthy for the end of the season. When they bring Skenes up, they could send Jones down for a month or so. Or, simply go to a 6-man rotation as someone suggested earlier this morning.
I’m really curious with this situation to see what the pirates will do. They did give some extensions to Keller, B Rey, and Ke but I agree with your comment. I would love a Skenes extension to keep him a pirate for many years.
Looking at some HR stats in AAA where the Norfolk Tides (Orioles) have 5 players - Kjerstad, Stowers, Mayo, Burdick, and Norby all in the Top 8 HR hitters in the International League. Yep, sounds like the PCL. Last night they played the SWB (Yankees) and lost, but I checked the HR's of some of the players. The Harbor Park Field in Norfolk has a dimension of 333' down the line in Left, but Kjerstad hit a HR to LF with a 41degree angle that traveled only 320'! That's 13' short of the posted shortest distance in LF. And, Mayo did hit a HR to Left that traveled 338' and it was on a 40 degree angle. Then Everson Pereira of SWB hit a HR to CF that traveled 375', but CF is posted as being 400'. Is it the posted distances or Gameday?
With the Pirates, Greensboro is about the only decent HR hitting park, but our upper 2 levels of Altoona (especially in early Spring) and Indy are not very conducive to hitting HR's. Last year at Indy, 5 players got into double figures for HR's with the highest being 16 HR. At Altoona only 4 players hit more than 10 HR's, the highest being 17 HR. VG Pitcher's parks, but the excitement and recognition I am seeing for the Orioles would lead me to believe we should attempt to put the HR into baseball at our AA and AAA ballparks. Even better, let's swap our AAA location at Indy to the Brewers for their AAA location in Nashville. Lot's of Pirate and Steeler fans down here!
Question now is: if Falter hasn’t actually been working with Tread and he continues in the manner he has, does Oscar Marin deserve a Nobel Prize and if so, which one?
Peace.
Physics, and it may not be Marin but someone in the front office who found that extension (Falter is 97th percentile) plus low spin rates (Falter is in the single digits) are highly correlated with exit velocity (Falter is in the 87th percentile). :)
Or maybe medicine, for allowing a pitcher to be who he is without going to one of the pitching labs to increase spin and/or velocity that his arm wouldn't have been able to handle?
In any case, bears watching--Falter has risen on my scale of must watch starts. And while I know they didn't acquire Perez and Gonzales to mentor Falter, Falter could hardly be in a better situation than to have two soft-tossing lefties to watch and learn from.
Great reply. It’d be swell if he could improve his GB% to go along with his excellent EV. Likely too much to ask
Excellent points, and the Pirates under Marin seem to be able to find and develop pitching. I've read good and bad on here about him, but the Pirates overall pitching went from 25th of 30 in 2022 to 18th in 2023, mostly due to the BP going from 24th in 2022 to 9th in 2023. The BP is strong again in 2024 even though there are a lot of new faces in the BP so far in 2024. And, we know that the Pirates Starting Pitching with Jones and Skenes coming onboard in 2024 will definitely take a positive step forward.
I try not to be reactive and hypercritical, even of coaches whose approach (cough cough Andy Haines) doesn’t seem like it’s working very well.
That said, the Clay Holmes trade is irksome and the fact that the Rays were able to get what they got out of Stephenson by having him adjust his slider grip doesn’t inspire a ton of confidence in the pitching coaches.
Totally saw Falter leading this rotation. The fastball planar momentum x the cut of his jib + orbital rotation = monkey man
And I thought it was just limiting walks and keeping his fastball up and breaking stuff on the edges. While avoiding middle middle of the zone.
You are silly.
I just checked your math and I hate to point out that you are wrong, is chimpanzee man.
Yep, we're on the same wave length Mitch
There are only 171 days left in the MLB Season, so Paul Skenes could be on the "any day now" Roster where he would be unable to reach 172 days which is the number of days to qualify for a full year of MLB Service. Super Two? From 2023 and back 5 years, the S2 numbers have been 2.118, 2.128, 2.116, 2.125, and 2.115 in 2019. To safely avoid S2, waiting until 114 days were left in the season would seem to be safe. That would occur on June 9.
I truly doubt the Pirates will try to keep him down that long. The Rotation at the MLB level is moving along very smoothly right now, but that could change any day. Right now, I would think he is about 3 AAA starts away - figure 20 days. On May 3, 2024 the Pirates start a 9 game homestand with 3 against the Rockies, 3 against the Angels, and 3 against the Cubs. He will pitch 2 of those games at PNC Park!
If Falter continues not to Falter do they need Skenes so imminently? Obviously he becomes our best pitcher or close to it, and is an upgrade over whomever he replaces, but at the current moment, I can’t imagine they feel a ton of urgency in that regard?
It's disappointing to think they pull this, but with as slow as he's being stretched out, June makes sense. I think after he gets to 5 innings he's more than ready. I mean he's already there, the Pirates are just dragging their feet.
But, he should get the 1st call following an injury and springtime is a great time for injuries. But, a spot start? Is that really the best use of him?
with how slowly they’re stretching him out, i don’t see how he is up before June
There is the added complexity that if he wins rookie of the year he'll still earn the full year of service. Given we're the Pirates, a plausible scenario is we call him up too late to earn the extra draft pick (I think that deadline just passed which is why the O's called up Holiday when they did) but with enough time to win rookie of the year.
Of course if they're being honest about him having things to work on and it not being about manipulating service time, that won't be a factor. And several rookies are off to such good starts that it may not be much of an issue anyway. We've been rightly impressed with Jones, but he only ranks 6th in WAR for rookie pitchers and several position players are on a 3-4+ WAR pace.
I thought they had to be on the opening day roster and remain with the team throughout the year? Probably wrong, but I thought I read that somewhere
I thought that too, but when reading about the O's calling up Holiday this week the writer said that it was just in time to earn the pick if Holiday wins ROY.
To get the draft pick if they finished top 3 in ROY
Pirates aren’t letting him waste innings in Indy. Leads me to believe your timeline for his arrival is right on the money.
I'd be buying up tickets for that early May Rockies Series right now and then put them on line after the announcement was made. Probably be able to buy season tickets for a few years with the Profit! Zambelli Fireworks on Friday May 3 so no need for that night, so Saturday May 4th or Sunday May 5th. Pitching on the 5th would work well by getting his 2nd start against the Cubs on Friday night, May 10.
Promote skenes now!,6 man rotation for a while everyone get an extra day of rest.
That would be brilliant for Skenes since it's closer to the college schedule and it would help protect Jones too. The other four pitchers may not be too happy, though. OTOH, with the exception of Keller they may just be happy to have a rotation spot after last season. And we could have perfect RLRLRL, hard throwing/soft-tossing/... rotation.
Does it not make you wonder why many of us on this site are not on BC's emergency call list if he needs help making these tough decisions?
Well, onto the next topic