Ronel Blanco has had his slider hit hard once. For every slider that results in a hit, he gets 3 strikeouts (almost 4) with the slider with over a 60% whiff rate. Any other pitch....well Barry Bonds on the good stuff didn't hit pitches as well. After tonight, it wouldn't surprise me if hitters had a BA over 0.800 on all non-sliders. At what point do the Astros tell him to just throw sliders. Do hitters have to hit a BA of 0.900 off fastballs?
So, 450 OPS for maldy. the one pitcher he and Diaz have both caught gets rocked with Maldy behind the plate and does just fine with Diaz We are 6-0 without him back there 6-11 with him back there. he catches roughly 9 out of 10 pitches thrown his way (slight exaggeration but whatever). how much longer can this keep up? We are a month in. Is the FO just going to allow this clown show to continue indefinitely where he’s by far the worst player in baseball or at some point in time will there be accountability and will he have to actually earn his spot? there is a new Sheriff in town. Dusty will never take him to the vet and put him out of his misery. Will Brown have the balls to make a move Dusty clearly won’t agree with?
I don't care how good his slider is, if you can't throw competitive MLB fastballs of some kind you aren't gonna have success.
Throwing hard and with bad mechanics are causes of arm problems. Maybe at lower levels and amateurs throwing sliders wtth bad mechanics may be bad. At the major league level, sliders don't have much correlation with injuries. Most of the "this pitch is bad for the arm" is anecdotel. The splitter is bad for the arm. The splitter is almost extinct among US-born pitchers, but pitchers stopping to throw splitters didn't reduce injuries.
I can think of two really great relievers that threw cutters ~90-95% of the time. Recently, Matt Wisler went from a 5-8 something FIP (or ERA) guy to a 2-3 something FIP (ERA) guy when he stopped throwing his fastball (i.e., threw it less than 10% of the time) in lieu of just throwing a slow slider. Small sample, but Blanco's slider looks a lot better than Wisler's. Edit: Granted, Blanco's fastball problem appears to be control as it has good velocity and rise. Just no wiggle.
To be fair to Maldy, Abeu has arguably performed worse so far. Going to be a stiff competition between those two for the worst player on the team this season.
You can look at this issue in different ways from different perspectives. Abreu will probably rebound to some degree, although I think at this point the idea that this is just a blip and he'll return to his former self is starting to go out the window. Maldy sucks at pretty much everything except pop time and having the ability to park his butt behind the plate and soak up the corresponding positional adjustment. However, Maldy can be gotten rid of with relatively little pain to the team's finances (although the players might be besides themselves with how much they allegedly adore Maldy) while Abreu might be a potential millstone around the team's neck considering Crane's refusal to incur LT penalties.
Maybe, I'm a little more hopeful on Abreu. Agree on the finances though, he's not as easy to get rid of.
I still hope ( and expect) Abreu to improve and become a better than league average hitter. But that hope is for 110 OPS+ not the 125 OPS+ I was expecting when he was signed. That's acceptable with the rest of the lineup healthy but certainly not what the team wanted with that contract. That said, right now Hensley is the backup 1B and he hasn't done much either ( though to be fair, hasn't gotten much of a chance) Just like last year, when it was obvious that Yuli was not going to pull out of it, this team will need to have a "plan B" very very soon. I would hope Julks and/or Brantley are working out there. Diaz is supposed to be able to play there but my hope is they continue working him in to the catching rotation and he is starting 25%+ there by end of season. If not then they will need to bring in a veteran at the deadline, which will send one of the promising youngsters back to Sugar Land. Come on Abreu. Don't let that happen !!
25% for Diaz? Dream big. So you want to trot out the worst player in baseball 75% of the time? I’d love to see Brantley play 1B some especially if meyers and Chas continue to be really good. Perhaps a platoon with Abreu and Brantley could be the way to go.
I don't WANT Maldonado to start 75% of the time. I'm simply resolved to the fact that there is no way, short of injury, to avoid it.
Yep. I'm thinking Abreu will rebound enough that it won't be too bad of a deal (i.e., the contract is a sunk cost and keeping him is probably a lot better than cutting him). On Maldy, his on field performance does not justify him being on the field as a starter right now. Problem is that I expect a lot of growing pains with Diaz, and Dusty really values off the field performance/avoiding growing pains (with exceptions of players who are in his good graces for off the field performance).
Everyone has been talking about Dubon never strikes out. Bregman is on some kind if roll the past 2 weeks and nobody is talking about it. .326 avg .436/.609/1.045 in 12 g. He and Dubon each have 55 PA in that time. Dubon has 5 Ks, which is very good (9.1%) Bregman has 2.
Yeah, Bregman has been super hot ever since his very early funk. Second highest xwOBA on the team right now for the season.
