Since he was in the minor leagues with the Cubs andTigers, he has been criticized for his slow foot speed. It led to low batting averages and intense criticism from scouts over his long-term ability to play the field. At one point he was supposedly going to be limited to 1st base or 2nd. However - he has a really high aptitude for the mental part of the game and excellent instincts. He will never be a vacuum at third, but he has quietly become an above average third basemen because of positioning, extremely soft hands and an accurate arm. Hitting wise - he is very slow footed, but he works counts very well, and he frustrates pitchers because of his ability to hit pitches most other players either don't swing at or make soft contact. He only turned 26 years old a few months ago - and outside of struggling to adjust to the city of Chicago in season, he has been solid for years now. He is supposedly working on his hand placement as well, in an effort to get power down the right field line as well and to increase his doubles. Not relevant - but Theo Epstein and his little buddy now running the Cubs really screwed up what the Cubs had brewing and had built in Chicago. Paredes was one of a number of players that Epstein traded that were going to lead the Cubs in the future. Off the top of my head in about two years he traded Paredes, Dylan Cease, Glaber Torres and others.
Yep, that's why I was good with this trade. We got a good replacement at 3rd for Bregman and we got our future RF.....all for someone who was going to jump ship or we were going to be out of his price range. Now hoping Wesneski recovers from TJ and we got another future great arm that will help.
I didn't know all the advanced stats, but you can see he has a solid approach when he's batting. He knows his own strengths/weaknesses and just tries to find the right pitch. I'm never confused or annoyed with his plate appearances.
I feel the same way watching Paredes hit as I did watching Michael Brantley: “I don’t know what is going to happen but it’s probably going to be good, and if it’s not good it won’t be because he did something stupid, it’ll just be bad luck.”
I always thought the Oswalt inning had a lot to do with him pitching to contact a lot (started to happen once he started prioritizing getting deeper in games and pitching to contact, as opposed to him being inside his own head- but yeah- those two are pretty similar down to being criminally underrated by most of baseball.
What would you give him? I'm thinking 3/100 or 4/120- he could pick whatever one suits him best and I'd be fine with either. I'd pass at anything over 4 years or over 33M, personally, for him.
At this point I pretty much plan on having an entire starting rotation out for the year when figuring out pitching depth.
Go ahead and give him $130M/5yrs with an opt out after years 3 and 4, and assume that 5th year will be a bust. But some stupid team will give him a lot more than that.
Oswalt/Ausmus made major adjustments that season as his pitch sequencing was getting a tad predicatble as to when he would throw the off-speed stuff (that wasn't really deceptive by itself... but hitters were just never expecting it, till they caught on some pattern recognition). Was very important against St. Louis as they'd seen Oswalt a ton with some improved success... till they basically ditched most of the off-speed stuff and went for sink/cut movement on a variety of fastballs. But with more possible contact came the possibility of more hits... and if Roy's location was just slightly off either due to fatigue or whatever, he would become hittable (till he wasn't again). Framber has similar tendencies, just in reverse. Starts to try and strike too many people out or go for the extreme corners to get calls... vs just pitching to contact and letting the defense do their thing.
Having both knees operated on (for a 'degenerative condition') before the age of 24 wasn't enough of a tell? I've said this previously, but there's a better than 30% chance that Yordan's body doesn't get him to the next big contract phase after this extension (which also is a fair reason as to why he would consider a team-friendly extension like that to begin with... he knows what his body has to go through year-in/out).
He hasn't and I was wanting him to from 2023 on. I think that's when he first went out. It's dumb that he hasn't been swinging an ax handle bat since that problem first popped up. I swear this team makes me want to pull all my hair out with the dumb **** they leave on the table from a tech and injury avoidance perspective.
