Watched the 1st two innings of Skenes pitching. During the 2nd a comment by the announcer gave a good clue as to why he is there. The announcer was talking about how many change ups he was throwing tonight when he threw very little in previous starts. He is doing what he should be doing, making sure he can throw all his pitches when he wants to and put them where he wants to. He should hit the mound in the Show in 2-3 weeks and should be primed to be an instant star.
In not all that distant retrospect, it’s funny once again how random spring training is.
Had quality relief depth including a non roster guy pounding the table to make the cut…. Bats looked like the lumber company pounding out home runs…. And starting pitching looked shaky at best, with dumpster fire potential.
Now, in the small piece of regular action we’ve seen, the starters have been the one pretty consistent plus….with the other two pieces looking strong together, for a bit, then awful (again, unfortunately, together) as of late.
Well-timed off day today as the team needs a reset after that abysmal performance in Queens. Boston and milwaukee coming next so will need to clean shit up in all aspects of the game to make it a strong homestand
Lots of good pitching yesterday at AAA with Cam Alldred, Carmen Mlodzinski, and Kyle Nicolas all looking good in a 1-0 W.
At A+ you had Ross as the hitter with 2 RBI - had to go searching to find out who this Catcher named Ross was - turns out he's the same kid who was signed as a shortstop, and played SS as well as 2B, 3B, and Catcher last year. This is a new twist on a Utility player. Great to see Jebb, Johnson, and McAdoo all get 2 hits in the game; Johnson also played SS and had a stolen base.
Thrilled to see Bradenton getting a win yesterday. The team still managed to strike out 14 times, but Javier Rivas came through with a 3 run double in the bottom of the 12th to win the game. If he can get this hitting thing down, he could race through the minors as a Shortstop!
Just saying…there is a middle infielder dahn in AAA with 12 xbhs, more than double the current parent roster leader, in case they are interested in scoring more runs. Perfect time to strike while that iron is hot.
Depends on what the situation is with Hayes, and how long he will be out. And, our management team felt that Alika Williams was the best Utility IF we had to start the season on the 26. If we brought somebody else up, would we send Williams back to AAA? Williams and Peguero are regarded as the two best SS/2B we have defensively.
We have MI's stacking up in the upper levels of the minors, and if BC is not thinking about trades while these guys all have value, he'd be the only one not thinking that way! It's at that point where many of those guys have solid numbers at AAA right now. We need to get the best we can for them and possibly secure a player in a position of current need, such as a young, RH hitting, strong defensive CF with some average and pop in the bat. I like Celestino, but he lacks power.
Saying trade Gonzales or Perguero sounds good but unless there's a decent return what's the point? You'll need to give up more than one of these middle infielders if you're going to get the kind of outfielder you're talking about even if you can find some organization that's willing to trade such a player. Other teams are not dumb and won't just give away good players the way the Pirates have in the past.
It will take at least one of the young arms the Pirates have to tempt another team into such a trade. Even then the return would probably be a prospect in the lower half of a teams top 30, which is far from a sure thing. Pitching is and always will be a need. Would you be willing to trade Chandler for that hypothetical outfielder or maybe Chandler and Gonzales? There would and should be an uproar unless the return was a top prospect and there aren't many teams out there who are going to be willing to part with that kind of player.
The bold, high-risk move would be to trade Cruz (same could be said for Hayes but I see him as a face-of-the-franchise) for a big return and roll with Peggy, Gonzales, Bae, and Triolo. Of course we could lose a generational-type talent and I'm not advocating for this. But I don't think the others bring much of a return, so if we really want to fill a weakness, we'd have to go big (literally).
I think you nailed it, I wouldn't push or even know who would be a trade partner but Cruz would be the big ticket.
It's still a question on return as well. Definitely would want quality over quantity and at least a couple quality pieces. Again not pushing for it, but other than pitching, Cruz is the big ticket.
Williams is not best utility IF, he is on the roster bc he’s out of options. This team needs xbhs, plain and simple. Their eleven wins are mostly a product of small ball and opportunistic luck…walks, weak infield hits, and errors. There are a couple exceptions, but they’re consistently below three xbhs per game, not nearly enough to generate runs. Last year, NG had 60 xbhs between AAA and MLB, which I think was the best in the organization. He has warts of course, but I would play the hot bat. He’s more than serviceable at 2B defensively, they need to see what they have here, shit or get off the pot time with some of these guys.
At Shortstop last year for the Pirates, AW played 45 games & was a .963, Peguero played 39 games and was .960, NG played 9 games and was .944, and Bae only played 3 games & was .857. Marcano played the most with 58 games & a .981 fielding percentage at SS.
That's why I said that Williams or Peguero need to be at the MLB level as the Utility player if we are going to play Triolo at 2B and now 3B due to the Hayes injury. It's defense first, and somebody to back up Cruz at SS is essential.
Williams has at least 2 options, he's on the big club because they want Peggy and Nick getting consistent at bats. Williams carrying card is his defense with the hope of the bat being something.
There's always someone raking for a week or two in AAA who is going to look better than some guy on the roster- who is facing Major-League pitching (again... for a week or two). You can't just start DFAing and waiving guys every time someone gets on a heater in AAA. Whose spot is Gonzalez going to take? Cruz? Triolo? Triolo just won the job over Gonzalez about 2 weeks ago.
Williams? Williams is actually playing pretty well.
This is just silly. Let's see where guys are at after a reasonable period of time... not after 10 games in Indianapolis.
And what did Williams do specifically to deserve this opportunity that NG didn’t or hasn’t? All of these guys are rostered and have options, that’s the benefit of having a young, flexible roster. NG is the younger and more productive player in the minors, not sure why everyone is willing to give Williams and Triolo the benefit of the doubt but not NG.
Looking at today's Probable Pitchers of Skenes, Chandler, Reilly, and Kelly at the different levels of the minors. Not hard to think all 4 will be in MLB at some point. An indication of the quality of pitching depth for the Pirates.
Going tonight and I'm curious about Kelly. Last year he was throwing in the low-90s. This year, as a starter, it's 98. OTOH, his ERA is 15.00, so . . . .
Started with BD, if I haven't smoked that part of my memory away. Charlie fostered a hell of a site to shoot the shit. Tim came along and changed things with P2. Around the fall of BD, many of us tried to get a reddit group going, but it never really took off. Vox took over BD and it went to a PC nightmare where we couldn't say anything without being reprimanded. P2 grew and Rum Bunter was also a thing. Pittsburgh Baseball Now is also out there. When P2 came burning down, BoD became our last refuge.
North Shore 9 has a cool Discord and Twitter on the newer side of things to me.
Yes. It is just a marketing term. When not playing poker or watching baseball, I get some editing gigs, and everyone is after people to edit the garbage that their garage-assembled word-jumblers produce, so I read this garbage and try to clean it up sometimes. The machines just do internet word scans of topics and then try to reproduce the text that it finds, changing enough words to try to avoid the appearance of plagiarism. As the machines change words, they create a word-soup of the various documents that they find on the subject. The result is worse than gibberish. When not obviously plagiarizing, the word-jumble of these ALs takes all sorts of things from context and mixes it together, creating... gasp... "misinformation," which is supposedly worse than the bogeyman. So, basically AI is capable of only 2 things: 1) Plagiarism; 2) Lying.
Watched the 1st two innings of Skenes pitching. During the 2nd a comment by the announcer gave a good clue as to why he is there. The announcer was talking about how many change ups he was throwing tonight when he threw very little in previous starts. He is doing what he should be doing, making sure he can throw all his pitches when he wants to and put them where he wants to. He should hit the mound in the Show in 2-3 weeks and should be primed to be an instant star.
In not all that distant retrospect, it’s funny once again how random spring training is.
Had quality relief depth including a non roster guy pounding the table to make the cut…. Bats looked like the lumber company pounding out home runs…. And starting pitching looked shaky at best, with dumpster fire potential.
Now, in the small piece of regular action we’ve seen, the starters have been the one pretty consistent plus….with the other two pieces looking strong together, for a bit, then awful (again, unfortunately, together) as of late.
Lets see 5 IP, 10 k for SKKKKKKKKKKenes today
3.2 and 8 is ok on a day he didn’t have his best location
Well-timed off day today as the team needs a reset after that abysmal performance in Queens. Boston and milwaukee coming next so will need to clean shit up in all aspects of the game to make it a strong homestand
Lots of good pitching yesterday at AAA with Cam Alldred, Carmen Mlodzinski, and Kyle Nicolas all looking good in a 1-0 W.
At A+ you had Ross as the hitter with 2 RBI - had to go searching to find out who this Catcher named Ross was - turns out he's the same kid who was signed as a shortstop, and played SS as well as 2B, 3B, and Catcher last year. This is a new twist on a Utility player. Great to see Jebb, Johnson, and McAdoo all get 2 hits in the game; Johnson also played SS and had a stolen base.
Thrilled to see Bradenton getting a win yesterday. The team still managed to strike out 14 times, but Javier Rivas came through with a 3 run double in the bottom of the 12th to win the game. If he can get this hitting thing down, he could race through the minors as a Shortstop!
Just saying…there is a middle infielder dahn in AAA with 12 xbhs, more than double the current parent roster leader, in case they are interested in scoring more runs. Perfect time to strike while that iron is hot.
Depends on what the situation is with Hayes, and how long he will be out. And, our management team felt that Alika Williams was the best Utility IF we had to start the season on the 26. If we brought somebody else up, would we send Williams back to AAA? Williams and Peguero are regarded as the two best SS/2B we have defensively.
We have MI's stacking up in the upper levels of the minors, and if BC is not thinking about trades while these guys all have value, he'd be the only one not thinking that way! It's at that point where many of those guys have solid numbers at AAA right now. We need to get the best we can for them and possibly secure a player in a position of current need, such as a young, RH hitting, strong defensive CF with some average and pop in the bat. I like Celestino, but he lacks power.
Saying trade Gonzales or Perguero sounds good but unless there's a decent return what's the point? You'll need to give up more than one of these middle infielders if you're going to get the kind of outfielder you're talking about even if you can find some organization that's willing to trade such a player. Other teams are not dumb and won't just give away good players the way the Pirates have in the past.
It will take at least one of the young arms the Pirates have to tempt another team into such a trade. Even then the return would probably be a prospect in the lower half of a teams top 30, which is far from a sure thing. Pitching is and always will be a need. Would you be willing to trade Chandler for that hypothetical outfielder or maybe Chandler and Gonzales? There would and should be an uproar unless the return was a top prospect and there aren't many teams out there who are going to be willing to part with that kind of player.
The bold, high-risk move would be to trade Cruz (same could be said for Hayes but I see him as a face-of-the-franchise) for a big return and roll with Peggy, Gonzales, Bae, and Triolo. Of course we could lose a generational-type talent and I'm not advocating for this. But I don't think the others bring much of a return, so if we really want to fill a weakness, we'd have to go big (literally).
I think you nailed it, I wouldn't push or even know who would be a trade partner but Cruz would be the big ticket.
It's still a question on return as well. Definitely would want quality over quantity and at least a couple quality pieces. Again not pushing for it, but other than pitching, Cruz is the big ticket.
Williams is not best utility IF, he is on the roster bc he’s out of options. This team needs xbhs, plain and simple. Their eleven wins are mostly a product of small ball and opportunistic luck…walks, weak infield hits, and errors. There are a couple exceptions, but they’re consistently below three xbhs per game, not nearly enough to generate runs. Last year, NG had 60 xbhs between AAA and MLB, which I think was the best in the organization. He has warts of course, but I would play the hot bat. He’s more than serviceable at 2B defensively, they need to see what they have here, shit or get off the pot time with some of these guys.
At Shortstop last year for the Pirates, AW played 45 games & was a .963, Peguero played 39 games and was .960, NG played 9 games and was .944, and Bae only played 3 games & was .857. Marcano played the most with 58 games & a .981 fielding percentage at SS.
That's why I said that Williams or Peguero need to be at the MLB level as the Utility player if we are going to play Triolo at 2B and now 3B due to the Hayes injury. It's defense first, and somebody to back up Cruz at SS is essential.
Williams has at least 2 options, he's on the big club because they want Peggy and Nick getting consistent at bats. Williams carrying card is his defense with the hope of the bat being something.
Thank you. I knew he had to have options.
There's always someone raking for a week or two in AAA who is going to look better than some guy on the roster- who is facing Major-League pitching (again... for a week or two). You can't just start DFAing and waiving guys every time someone gets on a heater in AAA. Whose spot is Gonzalez going to take? Cruz? Triolo? Triolo just won the job over Gonzalez about 2 weeks ago.
Williams? Williams is actually playing pretty well.
This is just silly. Let's see where guys are at after a reasonable period of time... not after 10 games in Indianapolis.
And what did Williams do specifically to deserve this opportunity that NG didn’t or hasn’t? All of these guys are rostered and have options, that’s the benefit of having a young, flexible roster. NG is the younger and more productive player in the minors, not sure why everyone is willing to give Williams and Triolo the benefit of the doubt but not NG.
Looking at today's Probable Pitchers of Skenes, Chandler, Reilly, and Kelly at the different levels of the minors. Not hard to think all 4 will be in MLB at some point. An indication of the quality of pitching depth for the Pirates.
Going tonight and I'm curious about Kelly. Last year he was throwing in the low-90s. This year, as a starter, it's 98. OTOH, his ERA is 15.00, so . . . .
Well, Kelly has a habit of getting fastballs over the middle of the plate. That’d work against a Haines-coached team, but otherwise, no.
Was thinking the same! Lots of good pitching to track today
People still read BD? That was like 3 sites ago for us degenerates :p
What has the progression of sites been? Ive only been in the commenting part of the community P2 -> BoD
Started with BD, if I haven't smoked that part of my memory away. Charlie fostered a hell of a site to shoot the shit. Tim came along and changed things with P2. Around the fall of BD, many of us tried to get a reddit group going, but it never really took off. Vox took over BD and it went to a PC nightmare where we couldn't say anything without being reprimanded. P2 grew and Rum Bunter was also a thing. Pittsburgh Baseball Now is also out there. When P2 came burning down, BoD became our last refuge.
North Shore 9 has a cool Discord and Twitter on the newer side of things to me.
Acorn, EMJ and myself go all the way back to CBS Sportsline……Jeez
I remember those days. I was thinking more fan driven content.
Degenerates? I resemble that remark 🤣🤣🤣
I think most of the content there is AI-produced dreck. As an aside, there is nothing intelligent about AI, though it is certainly artificial.
Yes. It is just a marketing term. When not playing poker or watching baseball, I get some editing gigs, and everyone is after people to edit the garbage that their garage-assembled word-jumblers produce, so I read this garbage and try to clean it up sometimes. The machines just do internet word scans of topics and then try to reproduce the text that it finds, changing enough words to try to avoid the appearance of plagiarism. As the machines change words, they create a word-soup of the various documents that they find on the subject. The result is worse than gibberish. When not obviously plagiarizing, the word-jumble of these ALs takes all sorts of things from context and mixes it together, creating... gasp... "misinformation," which is supposedly worse than the bogeyman. So, basically AI is capable of only 2 things: 1) Plagiarism; 2) Lying.
Sorry im bad at reading, are these Cruz's numbers or Peggys?
Why not Alika? At least he can play the position
OOTP baseball...play anyone anywhere on the diamond and hope for the best.
Got it, thanks!