CDAV45
Small ball is for pussies!
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2021 Series #20 | Mariners @ Indians | June 11-13, 2021
- Thread starter Wham with the Right Hand
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Stark
The Winds of Winter
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I'm not seeing too many potential trade targets for starting pitching from the teams that are out of contention.
Maybe Jon Gray from the Rockies if he can get off the IL and prove that his forearm is doing alright. He's not great, but he's a FA after this season if he comes here and sucks and shouldn't be overly expensive in terms of what we'd have to give up.
Since McKenzie, JCM, Quantrill, etc. look to not be reliable starters this year, at least we'd kind of know what we are getting out of Gray. Plus he'd get to leave Coors, which might make his surface level numbers look a little bit better.
Bieber, Civale, Plesac, and Gray isn't the worst top-4 in the world when everybody is healthy.
Maybe Jon Gray from the Rockies if he can get off the IL and prove that his forearm is doing alright. He's not great, but he's a FA after this season if he comes here and sucks and shouldn't be overly expensive in terms of what we'd have to give up.
Since McKenzie, JCM, Quantrill, etc. look to not be reliable starters this year, at least we'd kind of know what we are getting out of Gray. Plus he'd get to leave Coors, which might make his surface level numbers look a little bit better.
Bieber, Civale, Plesac, and Gray isn't the worst top-4 in the world when everybody is healthy.
thestatman
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Plesac started throwing and is projected 3 weeks out. Contrary to the majority here, I think Mejia will be just fine.
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Team has done everything they've needed to do not to let the injuries to Plesac and Franmil derail the season. If we can keep hanging in there for a few more weeks, we've got a good shot to make the playoffs.
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Andrew Scheid
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Gray is interesting, but my preferred starting pitching target to acquire at the deadline would be Kyle Gibson.
DickyLeftridge
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No thanks on acquiring starting pitching. Continue to roll with TMac, Quantrill, Mejia, Logan Allen, and Hentges through the end of the year. Keep 2 (or I guess 3 until Plesac returns) in the rotation for a month while the others are in the rotation in Columbus. if 1 or more fail, replace with the ones at Columbus. We have Morgan, Moss, and Kirk the 5'8" to sprinkle in if it comes down to it.
All are young and inexperienced. You need to know what you have, as with Bradley, Miller, and the young position players. If it doesn't work this year, that's too bad. But stopgaps and bandaids completely miss the purpose of this transitional season in the first place. We are competing for nothing with or without the Ben Gamels, Jake BauerS, and Jon Grays of the world. It's just the facts. And I'm OK with them. You don't offload Kluber, Bauer, Clevinger, Carrasco, and Lindor in what 24 months and then start panic buying bandaids because you are 1-2 games out of the 2nd wild card.
All are young and inexperienced. You need to know what you have, as with Bradley, Miller, and the young position players. If it doesn't work this year, that's too bad. But stopgaps and bandaids completely miss the purpose of this transitional season in the first place. We are competing for nothing with or without the Ben Gamels, Jake BauerS, and Jon Grays of the world. It's just the facts. And I'm OK with them. You don't offload Kluber, Bauer, Clevinger, Carrasco, and Lindor in what 24 months and then start panic buying bandaids because you are 1-2 games out of the 2nd wild card.
Stark
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It's not good for TMac and the rest to keep coming up here and getting knocked out of the game before the third inning either. The bullpen is starting to get taxed because we literally have two starters right now (two of the best in the AL, might I add). We're pretty much running Bieber, Civale, and then a bunch of bullpen games. It's not good for McK, Hentges, Allen, etc. to keep getting rocked up here and it's not good for the bullpen to have to cover 6-7+ innings three out of every five starts.
Somebody like Gray or above mentioned Kyle Gibson helps give the pitching side of the roster some much needed stabilization. I'd prefer Gray over Gibson simply because Gray is off the books after this season anyways. They wouldn't be here long term.
KilgoreTrout
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Really hard to believe that every single one of our pitching prospects, excepts Civale, has come undone. So much hope for T-Mac, and he can’t throw strikes. None of the other guys are genuinely panning out. Hentges impressed today, at least.
Stark
The Winds of Winter
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I think T-Mac will be fine, but he's not looking like an MLB-ready guy right now. Necessity with Plesac out and lack of other internal options right now is keeping him up here - which is why I'd like to acquire a stop-gap guy like Gray.
Maybe Gray leaves Coors and comes here and is lights out. Maybe not. But at the very least, he'd be better than what we've got currently.
Out of the Rafters at the Q
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I still believe in TMac... this wildness isn't something he showed in the past, right? I have to believe that, whatever the cause (besides just general body control issues due to lankiness) he gets it sorted out. He's shown that he can get strikeouts at this level. Get his control sorted out and I think he's a stud. He's probably further ahead right now than Bauer was at this age.
@BimboColesHair any thoughts? You're the TMac expert around these parts as far as I'm concerned.
BimboColesHair
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Changed his mechanics to assist the long term health of his back. He’s been caught between his old mechanics (much more over the top release with more stress on his back) and his new mechanics (closer to 3/4 on his release and adding sweep to his stuff with less pressure on his back) and it’s playing into his wildness.
He’ll be fine. Big reason they wanted to send him down was to reign in his mechanics in a lower stress environment, because his problem is in-game, not throughout the week. His adrenaline and in-game mechanics are so much more inconsistent than his off-day bullpen and recovery day mechanics.
He’s never been a high walk rate guy. Always floated around 2.5 per 9 as a minor leaguer, which is pretty average.
Amazing.
We just beat the Mariners with their best starter on the mound and our kid doesn't get out of the first.
According to many on the board, we have no starting pitching, past the first two ( and no hope of having any, other than Plesac).... no offense, outside of Jose....no defense...and an over the hill manager. But we are seven games over .500 and on pace for 90 wins. The Chisox are unbeatable, but we've beaten them more than they've beaten us.
This is unsustainable, but you know what they say about letting an underdog hang around.
Dicky made a good point. We didn't collect a boatload of young talent by trading away our rotation, only to trade away some of that talent in order to pick up journeymen vet pitchers to patch holes.
There is one thing to consider, its this.
Our org doesn't make knee jerk reactions. Every decision is well thought out.
Every player on this roster is in the org, because the org thought long and hard about acquiring him. They are here, because the FO thinks they can play baseball at this level. Some of them are here ahead of schedule, due to circumstances beyond anybodys control. But that doesn't mean the FO doesn't think they can play.
IMO winning while playing, pitching, and hitting at such a poor level is unsustainable. But that doesn't mean that we need different players. It means that the players we have now have to play at the level that FO envisioned for them.
This seems to be a team of talented players that are very young. We don't need different players. We need the players we have to play better. We need some of the younger pitchers to pitch better. And we need them to do it soon enough so that the FO and ownership will consider trading for whatever major upgrade (TBD) is needed at the deadline.
And while we go thru these growing pains, which are painful to watch, we are gonna have to have a little luck and steal a few games, like we did last night. Its easier to steal them now against the teams on our near term schedule than later on against the Houstons, et al, which is why this stretch is so important.
Hang on, because its been and will be a bumpy up and down ride, but these can be more fun than the smooth ones. Just pretend that we are on the Cedar Point of baseball seasons.
We just beat the Mariners with their best starter on the mound and our kid doesn't get out of the first.
According to many on the board, we have no starting pitching, past the first two ( and no hope of having any, other than Plesac).... no offense, outside of Jose....no defense...and an over the hill manager. But we are seven games over .500 and on pace for 90 wins. The Chisox are unbeatable, but we've beaten them more than they've beaten us.
This is unsustainable, but you know what they say about letting an underdog hang around.
Dicky made a good point. We didn't collect a boatload of young talent by trading away our rotation, only to trade away some of that talent in order to pick up journeymen vet pitchers to patch holes.
There is one thing to consider, its this.
Our org doesn't make knee jerk reactions. Every decision is well thought out.
Every player on this roster is in the org, because the org thought long and hard about acquiring him. They are here, because the FO thinks they can play baseball at this level. Some of them are here ahead of schedule, due to circumstances beyond anybodys control. But that doesn't mean the FO doesn't think they can play.
IMO winning while playing, pitching, and hitting at such a poor level is unsustainable. But that doesn't mean that we need different players. It means that the players we have now have to play at the level that FO envisioned for them.
This seems to be a team of talented players that are very young. We don't need different players. We need the players we have to play better. We need some of the younger pitchers to pitch better. And we need them to do it soon enough so that the FO and ownership will consider trading for whatever major upgrade (TBD) is needed at the deadline.
And while we go thru these growing pains, which are painful to watch, we are gonna have to have a little luck and steal a few games, like we did last night. Its easier to steal them now against the teams on our near term schedule than later on against the Houstons, et al, which is why this stretch is so important.
Hang on, because its been and will be a bumpy up and down ride, but these can be more fun than the smooth ones. Just pretend that we are on the Cedar Point of baseball seasons.
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McKenzie said he was overwhelmed by the crowd, the first large gathering he’s pitched in front of as a big leaguer.
“I let the game speed up on me,” said McKenzie.
Overwelmed by the crowd? Are you kidding me? The "crowd" numbered 20,116. It was a regular season game against a non-division team ranked 12th in the A.L. in scoring and it's not even halfway through the season. This wasn't a game against the White Sox in the last week of September with a playoff spot on the line in front of a packed house of fired up hostile fans in Chicago. This was a laid back, happy group of Tribe fans on a sunny day in early June.
McKenzie is light years away from being able to succeed at the major league level from a psychological standpoint. But I question whether that was the real problem. He said he let the game "speed up" on him but in fact he was working extremely slowly. There were runners on base after the first four pitches.
Last year he averaged one walk every 3.5 innings. This year it's a walk an inning, almost. What happened? My guess is it's the new mechanics he's learning, according to Bimbo. When you've thrown a ball one way your entire life and now you're throwing from a different arm slot it's going to take some time. Sometimes he gets locked in, like last week when he struck out eight White Sox in a row. Other times he'll walk four batters in the first inning and look like Nuke Laloosh in his first start for the Durham Bulls.
If McKenzie could have just gotten that third out with the bases loaded he might have come out in the second inning and been dominant for the next three innings. His last two major league starts he went five innings each. He either got spooked by the "crowd" or his mechanics are just going to flutter in and out for a while until he builds up enough muscle memory.
It was nice to see Hentges pitch two scoreless innings, striking out four. He threw 33 pitches, 23 for strikes. Very nice. Those last spots in the rotation may end up being some combination of Mejia, McKenzie, Quantrill, and Hentges. If the starter gets knocked out early one of the others comes in and hopefully gives you several decent innings. The rotation might end up being Bieber, Civale, Plesac, Mejia/Hentges, and McKenzie/Quantrill and hope those last two combinations give you 5-6 solid innings between them.
“I let the game speed up on me,” said McKenzie.
Overwelmed by the crowd? Are you kidding me? The "crowd" numbered 20,116. It was a regular season game against a non-division team ranked 12th in the A.L. in scoring and it's not even halfway through the season. This wasn't a game against the White Sox in the last week of September with a playoff spot on the line in front of a packed house of fired up hostile fans in Chicago. This was a laid back, happy group of Tribe fans on a sunny day in early June.
McKenzie is light years away from being able to succeed at the major league level from a psychological standpoint. But I question whether that was the real problem. He said he let the game "speed up" on him but in fact he was working extremely slowly. There were runners on base after the first four pitches.
Last year he averaged one walk every 3.5 innings. This year it's a walk an inning, almost. What happened? My guess is it's the new mechanics he's learning, according to Bimbo. When you've thrown a ball one way your entire life and now you're throwing from a different arm slot it's going to take some time. Sometimes he gets locked in, like last week when he struck out eight White Sox in a row. Other times he'll walk four batters in the first inning and look like Nuke Laloosh in his first start for the Durham Bulls.
If McKenzie could have just gotten that third out with the bases loaded he might have come out in the second inning and been dominant for the next three innings. His last two major league starts he went five innings each. He either got spooked by the "crowd" or his mechanics are just going to flutter in and out for a while until he builds up enough muscle memory.
It was nice to see Hentges pitch two scoreless innings, striking out four. He threw 33 pitches, 23 for strikes. Very nice. Those last spots in the rotation may end up being some combination of Mejia, McKenzie, Quantrill, and Hentges. If the starter gets knocked out early one of the others comes in and hopefully gives you several decent innings. The rotation might end up being Bieber, Civale, Plesac, Mejia/Hentges, and McKenzie/Quantrill and hope those last two combinations give you 5-6 solid innings between them.
DickyLeftridge
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What was wrong with Hentges in the first place? He was solid for a bit in the rotation then blew up in one outing and has been relegated to the bullpen since. It seemed his leash was considerably shorter than the others.
TMac will get it figured it out and great insight from Bimbo. But quit with the yo-yo nonsense and send him down to Columbus for a solid month to 6 weeks. Let him get it figured out.
Just go with this and see how it goes until Plesac comes back.
BieGOAT
Civale
Hentges
Quantrill (I like this guy. Let him figure it out).
Mejia
TMac will get it figured it out and great insight from Bimbo. But quit with the yo-yo nonsense and send him down to Columbus for a solid month to 6 weeks. Let him get it figured out.
Just go with this and see how it goes until Plesac comes back.
BieGOAT
Civale
Hentges
Quantrill (I like this guy. Let him figure it out).
Mejia