Bello's doing all right in front of the Sox defense and he's got a higher groundball rate than Hendricks. And a higher average exit velocity as well. Not here to heavily advocate for it, but I can see Hendricks being a good fit if the price is right. Especially if Story and Chang are the primary MI for the bulk of the second half.
They do need a 5th starter until at least one of Houck/Whitlock/Sale are healthy. Right now the rotation is:
That's totally fair. I do feel like Bello has a little bit more ability to dial it up and make his own outs (via K) than Hendricks, but it may not be as bad a fit as I originally thought.
Sale is ahead of Houck by two weeks right now... Not very encouraging. But! A week ago some supposedly reputable folks were speculating that Whitlock could miss as little as one start. tbd...
Well not literally, no.
I don't agree with this but I'd want a closer to big league guy anyhow.
Yeah it sounds like Whitlock will be the first arm back. He's also been the worst of the 3 in the rotation, though similar to Houck, he's been a bit unlucky with an xERA and FIP significantly lower than his actual ERA. He would certainly be an improvement over a AAA/opener bullpen game that is currently occupying the 5th spot behind the Pivetta-opener slot.
Again, you'd have to get a prospect who is extremely good and close to producing at the majors league to justify it. Basically you'd be trading" Paxton + 40 man spot + top 50 '24 pick" for a "Prospect(s)." They'd need to be very high floor.
I'm sure that's the plan. Keep the three starters on as close to regular rest and use whatever off-days they have to limit the need for the opener/bullpen strategy. In fact, I think doing the back to back opener/bullpen games in Oakland is how they will be able to maximize their starters' usage through the Giants series. Sequencing the first five games any other way might force them into another bullpen game.
He was a Paxton-level pitcher in 2019 sooooo they just do whatever they did there & POOF.
Depends on how cheap but I think the Sox could eke some value out of a guy like that. His numbers first time through the order are decent (3.82 FIP this year; 3.93 FIP last) and he’s still solid against LHB (.270 wOBA in ‘23). Keibert Ruiz is also the game’s worst framer among catchers, so changing scenes wouldn’t hurt him there either.
I don't know that Walter is really ready to be a guy right now (or maybe ever), & he may be someone you could move for value & to clear up a 40-man spot.
His pitches seem to be quite similar in terms of speed & movement to when he was a really good pitcher so I'm thinking there is a certain amount of lack of focus in there & that there will be a few tweaks to his repertoire & pitch patterns a smart/motivated team could make.
Is the emotional injury of playing with the Nationals any different or less than the physical injury of physical injury? lol
Costing $35m in cash next year is a feature, not a bug.
We paid Hosmer the minimum, and the Padres paid the rest. Something like that.
Okay, gotcha. I just interpreted what you wrote incorrectly, but it's all good. We get 98% from them, not we get 98% that we have to pay.
Because his pitches are the same pitches as when he was striking out 11.1/9 in '18 & 10.6/9 in '19.
The Nationals have no CBT problems & 0 incentive to pay Corbin's full freight to pitch average baseball somewhere else.
Except something is different because he's getting entirely shitty and progressively worse results with those same pitches and it's not attributable to the team around him.
So one thing that stood out to me is that while the movement is basically the same, his spin rates are all down - fastball and sinker are both -8% compared to 2018, for example. Something is clearly different about the pitches if they are spinning less but breaking the same amount.
I mean, if you're motivated by winning, it's probably hard to go out there & be at your best when your team is averaging 60 wins per season.
I mean, they're 9-10 when he starts & 27-44 when he doesn't, but go off.
Nothing, but as discussed above it's more about the case for him returning to past performance. It's a shot in the dark and probably only worth it if he comes very cheaply. Here are his full Baseball Savant numbers going back in time.
Digging around, I’m not really seeing anything encouraging about Corbin’s stuff. In the pitch modeling metrics, his Stuff+ is at 80, which is 105th of 109 starters. He’s always been more or less a 2-pitch starter. His sinker/slider thing still seems useful against lefties but it doesn’t seem especially worth it to me. Possible he can ramp it up playing meaningful games, but I don’t think I’d trust him with bulk innings which is what we’d need.
The Cardinals have him and Matz only under contract next year; they are in really deep shit. They can’t move him.
Yikes, I did not realize how their situation looks for next year and beyond. They kind of need to nail this deadline, probably have to get something good for Goldy.
Having seen both play for Greenville, I think Lugo's ceiling is Espinal (which is about what you're describing.)
