The 2023 Running Baseball Thread

Maybe. But they and other MLB teams have been less likely to engage in service-time manipulations in the past two years.
They were really counting on Rodriguez to be good enough to be a middle-of-the-rotation piece. And he couldn't survive the fourth inning in his Triple-A game the other day. Could be a bust.

 

Ehh, I don't trust anyone on the Astros tree. Carlos Correa and Yordan Alvarez won the ROY despite being held back until the first week of June...which is when Rodriguez got hurt last year, when his ERA was 2.09, opponents were hitting .168 against him and his K/BB ratio was almost 6:1. There was nothing left for him to do at Triple-A. Would be something if the Orioles wasted some of his best efforts in the minors and now will lose a year or more of his development because of an injury suffered when he was needlessly wasting pitches in Triple-A.

 

Two unrelated points:

* Last year when I was in Sydney, I could count on waking up on Monday morning and catching the last few innings of a 1:10 ET game. This year, I’m back in Sydney, and the 1:10 games today are already over when I wake up.

* If Tyler Glasnow comes back healthy, the Rays rotation of Glasnow, McClanahan, Eflin, Rasmussen and Springs might be the best in the AL. Keeping them healthy will be the key.

 

I mean cmon, we're basing stuff off one start? To be fair, it was raining. Also he walked four guys for the first time since 2019

He's 23 and in the minors he's 25-9 with a 2.49 ERA in 69 starts (Nice!) and 421 strikeouts in 296 innings.

Last season in half a season at Triple-A he went 6-1 in 14 starts with a 2.20 ERA and 97 strikeouts and 21 walks in 69.3 IP

 

Chris Bassitt got lit up like a BP pitcher yesterday. The Jays haven't hit a homer this season and aside from the opener their offence hasn't done much. Manoah wasn't great on Thursday and Bassitt got killed yesterday

 

How’s Bassitt doing with the pitch clock? He had a very nice season with the Mets last year, but he was glacial on the mound.

 

If I remember correctly, he sucked during Spring Training, too. I'm wondering if the shift ban is affecting both him and Manoah, too.

 

MLB employee Tom Verducci loves the new rules:

https://www.si.com/mlb/2023/03/31/m...tm_medium=email&utm_campaign=campaign_6517665

 

Phillies are off to a glorious start, just glorious. Probably could be expected offensively with Hoskins and Harper out but, christ, the pitching has been a tire fire.

 

Yeah, as Deskgrunt noted, Bassitt was very good last year but seemed to have 10 PitchCom issues a game with his 100-pitch arsenal. Between the rule changes and moving to the power-happy AL East, he was a prime candidate for regression.

 

Improved yesterday, so the hitting went south. Just a terrible series. Yankee Stadium not a particularly good place for a pitching staff to get well, either.

 

The good news is they did this last year and everything was fine! But also, Taijuan Walker's velocity was down this spring and he's going at the bandbox that is Yankee Stadium tonight and Aaron Judge has four homers in 11 at-bats against him so sweet merciful Christ.