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2021 Series #32 | Indians @ White Sox | July 29-31, 2021

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Not sure why we tried stretching two innings out of Wittgren with Stephan available.
Today was evidence of why Wittgren is still on the roster on August 1st but won’t be on April 1st, 2022.
 
any reason we're playing an afternoon game tomorrow? canadian holiday? geddy lee's birthday? boxing day?
 
any reason we're playing an afternoon game tomorrow? canadian holiday? geddy lee's birthday? boxing day?
It's Civic Holiday in Canada...which doesn't rate as big as National Ice Cream Sandwich day in the USA !!
 
Deja vu. Friday night McKenzie got behind Goodwin and threw him a fastball dead center of the zone resulting in a home run. Today Wittgren did the exact same thing. One out, nobody on, bottom of the batting order coming up, if you walk him you're still fine. The only thing you can't do in that situation is a fastball down the middle, especially after seeing what happened with McKenzie. But that's what he got. Don't these guys learn?

Another week, another dropped popup between the infield and outfield. At least nobody got hurt on this one. I said this before - I've never seen a team so bad at catching pop-ups and bloops.

That being said, the outfield that started for the Indians today was the best defensive outfield I've ever seen on an Indians team and maybe on any team except the Kansas City Royals. It looked like Abreu had a double in the gap against Parker but Zimmer ran it down and made a sliding catch. Mercado also cut off a ground ball inside the bag at third and held the hitter to a single.

Quantrill with six innings and no earned runs. He is really making a case to be in the rotation next year. That's his fourth consecutive start allowing one run or less in 5-6 innings. He drives me crazy, however, with the way he consistently gets ahead 0-2 and then throws three straight balls. It's like he's convinced that if he just throws enough pitches out of the zone with two strikes he'll get the hitter to chase. They rarely do, and Quantrill drives up his pitch count with all the teasing. We may never see him pitching in the seventh inning for that reason.

The Indians took one game out of three but the last two were close. Now the season series is tied. The Indians actually compete very well with the Sox considering their overall records are not similar.

When these teams play their last series in September the Sox should have Eloy Jimenez and Luis Robert. We should have won two games this weekend when we had a chance.
 
Deja vu. Friday night McKenzie got behind Goodwin and threw him a fastball dead center of the zone resulting in a home run. Today Wittgren did the exact same thing. One out, nobody on, bottom of the batting order coming up, if you walk him you're still fine. The only thing you can't do in that situation is a fastball down the middle, especially after seeing what happened with McKenzie. But that's what he got. Don't these guys learn?

That being said, the outfield that started for the Indians today was the best defensive outfield I've ever seen on an Indians team and maybe on any team except the Kansas City Royals. It looked like Abreu had a double in the gap against Parker but Zimmer ran it down and made a sliding catch. Mercado also cut off a ground ball inside the bag at third and held the hitter to a single.

Quantrill with six innings and no earned runs. He is really making a case to be in the rotation next year. That's his fourth consecutive start allowing one run or less in 5-6 innings. He drives me crazy, however, with the way he consistently gets ahead 0-2 and then throws three straight balls. It's like he's convinced that if he just throws enough pitches out of the zone with two strikes he'll get the hitter to chase. They rarely do, and Quantrill drives up his pitch count with all the teasing. We may never see him pitching in the seventh inning for that reason.
Some great points;
Deja vu. Friday night McKenzie got behind Goodwin and threw him a fastball dead center of the zone resulting in a home run. Today Wittgren did the exact same thing.
This is what differentiates a mediocre or developing pitcher from the best pitchers, having thing the focus and command to greatly reduce the number of "mistake" pitches. Even guys like Bieber make occasional mistakes and even good pitchers get away with a mistake here and there. But with all our young pitchers and with some of our middling relief pitchers like Wittgren the thing that makes them or breaks them is the number of mistakes that they groove down the middle to hitters who can take advantage. Mejia is one of the worst offenders, but McKenzie has also had more than his share of these leave the yard.

He drives me crazy, however, with the way he consistently gets ahead 0-2 and then throws three straight balls.

Sticking with the pitching... This is another thing that differentiates the cream of the crop from the mediocre or developing pitchers. The ability to maybe take one chance by nibbling off the plate to hopefully induce a batter to chase... but then go right back to attacking, throwing strikes on the edges of the plate. Too many of our pitchers are guilty of nibbling after getting ahead in the count, and even Bieber did this on his bad days. I think Civale is the best guy when it comes to repeatedly attacking the zone and putting hitters away.

That being said, the outfield that started for the Indians today was the best defensive outfield I've ever seen on an Indians team
I absolutely LOVE the defensive ability that our new outfield gives us. Now if they can all just learn to call LOUDLY for fly balls in gaps and overlapping areas. Talk before-hand about who gets first shot at plays in these overlap areas, it really shouldn't be as hard as our team makes it look.
 
re Quantrill - if he could miss a few more bats and be a bit more efficient with his pitches he could move from BOR prospect to MOR
 
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Quantrill is already there. He compares very well to Plesac.

In fact, thru his first 200 MLB IPs, he compares quite well to almost every young SP we have had since CC...Biebs and Civale being exceptions.

And he throws harder than any of them.

In retrospect...and its not a knock on the org, because I would have done the same thing...Quantrill should have begun the season in the rotation, but everybody, including me, was transfixed by Allen's mirage in ST, and Quantrill's struggles...and ignored track records and trends.
 
Two really good things have happened in the last few weeks. One, Quantrill is proving he can be a capable and maybe even above average starter. The Padres tried him as a starter and gave up pretty quickly, IIRC. I don't want to overreact to five starts, but we may come out ahead in the Clevinger for Quantrill portion of the trade and the other five guys we got are a bonus.

Depending on whether Naylor can come back 100% and how the three minor leaguers pan out this trade could turn out to be one of the all-time best for Cleveland. Hedges has already been a big help after Berto got hurt.

Secondly, the Indians said they have been pursuing Myles Straw "over several trade deadlines". If that is true they have been coveting him for years. Well, they finally got their man. I hope he turns out to be the player they think they're getting.

It's clear they don't think Zimmer, Mercado, or Rosario is the long term answer in center field. I don't think Zimmer or Mercado have enough bat to play a corner OF spot so I think they are going the way of Bauer and Luplow, possibly at the end of this season if they need to create spots for Rule 5 guys.

As for Amed I suppose he'll play shortstop or second base until somebody displaces him.

By the way, I think he needs to work on getting his throws off more quickly. He takes a long time getting the ball out of his glove and then he draws his arm way back and uses a long throwing motion, almost like an outfielder. It cost us a key double play a few games back and almost cost another one last night. In fact, the runner was called safe before it was overturned.
 

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