Most guys get wrecked early on in spring training. He’s only throwing fastballs and building up arm strength
True but it's interesting for certain players like Souza Jr who's fighting for a spot on the 40 man roster. Abreu, who also is fighting to make the team had a decent game yesterday. If they keep playing well, it'll be interesting to see who they keep.
This is almost entirely true. However, there are a few stats that have value, even in small samples against highly variable competition. One would be pitchers’ velocity, the other would be home runs. Can’t fake throwing a ball 100 mph, can’t fake hitting a ball 400 ft. Not that Souza’s HR shows us much since we already knew he had decent power, although it’s hardly a bad sign. But if a guy like Pena or McCormick hits 2-3 deep HR this spring, it’ll mean something to me, just as if we see Santos or Brown throwing high 90s, that’ll mean something too.
Observations of today’s game so far. Valdez looked solid. Induced a good amount of ground balls, his bread and butter. Apparently was sitting 92-94 with his fastball so that’s a positive. Good first start for him. Javier was a little shaky but worked two scoreless innings. Stuff looked solid. Peña has looked solid in the field and smoked the first pitch of his first AB right at the 3B for an out. He looks impressive physically. Nova showed some good speed beating out an infield hit.
So I've decided to read through a few baseball books this month and was skimming through the Book for interesting topics and found this one regarding having fast runners on base... "THE BOOK SAYS: The disruptive runner has an enormously negative influence on the batter, enough to almost completely offset the disruption caused to the defense."
Today’s game televised? Will be interesting to see where Lance’s velocity is at and if he throws some cutters.
Odorizzi is looking for a multi-year deal in excess of 10M per season. It’s more likely the Astros call someone like Rick Porcello if they bring in an arm at all.
