Fifth Avenue Forum

Was it cruz that hit one 115mph in his ab previous to that?

Jesus

Hayes hit his 4th yesterday. Looking good

34ab 6k .353/371/794/1.165

Some expectations i have for the season.

I think they will start very poorly. Over the course of a whole season, I think that Santana, Choi, mccutchen and joe will be alright. But they will be ass in April and May.

Suwinki and Castro both get demoted to AAA and become after thoughts. They either need to take a step forward with their experience, or teams will have the book on them and make them look foolish all year.

Cruz shows incremental improvement, but not a huge step forward.

Endy and at least one other current minor leaguer earn a starting role for 2024. Thinking that is either Mitchell, swaggerty, or Gonzales.

Unless the bullpen is good, the pitching staff is in a bad spot. The rotation is almost all 5ip start guy (getting into the 6th is a victory). That means 3+ innings every night. The hurdle playoff teams always had an 8th and 9th guy and solid options for before that. Not sure who they can trust in high leverage situations. It’s bad to pair those two weaknesses together.

Is this the year???

No

But things that will get this gentleman aroused in 2024:

-Cruz drops 30 dingers. If he hits 35+ Home runs and doesn’t strike out 250 times …things are looking promising

-Between Castro, salt bae, suwinski, Mitchell, one of those guys proves to be a worthy major leaguer. Not all star level but Josh Harrison level

-Cocaine Mitch pitches well enough for the pirates to somehow maybe consider giving him a contract to buy up free agent years. Or at least pitches well enough that he will be a tradable asset in 2024 or 2025 (he’s a free agent in 26)

-Two of the three of Oveido, Ortiz, and Contreras pitch well enough to be legit starters or at least legit bullpen arms. I’m not asking for much here…just a real bullpen arm (like better than wil Crowe) is all i ask.

Unless the bullpen is good, the pitching staff is in a bad spot. The rotation is almost all 5ip start guy (getting into the 6th is a victory). That means 3+ innings every night. The hurdle playoff teams always had an 8th and 9th guy and solid options for before that. Not sure who they can trust in high leverage situations. It’s bad to pair those two weaknesses together.

GMBC has shown almost a pride is not caring about the production in the bullpen or the catching position. His has basically been like a football coach with a no faith in his offense that chooses to punt from 4th and 3 from the 40 yard line. Or that one friend we all have that takes pride in strictly drinking crappy domestic beers. He’s been in charge since 2019 and the best you can say about his efforts at these two positions is that he signed Roberto Perez, who was barely a replacement level guy at this point in his career and got hurt anyway. He doesn’t seem to care if bad catching and bad relief pitching costs the team 5 to 10 games a year. Going into this year, he definitely doesn’t seem to care if the bullpen and the catching (at least to start the year) are the difference between say 70 wins and 65 wins.

That kind of thinking sucks for the fans who actually watch games (me), but I’m sure it suits ownership just fine. If things trend in the right direction in 2024, though, GMBC is going to have to start taking the bullpen seriously. Let’s hope that this team forces his hand and he *has* to actually try to find bullpen help. And then lets hope GMBC actually has the ability to detect bullpen help.

Poor Pat Lackey may not survive the Williams/Cherington Pirates.

So Travis Williams has been giving interviews to Buccos beat writers. Evidently, he told Biertempfel something along the lines of "fans don't care about winning if the gameday experience is good," which was predictably received well. Of course, the loud mouths on Twitter and message boards aren't who Williams is talking about...he's talking about the casual fan who goes to a couple of games a year. If that.

So a couple of hours later, Jon Heyman tweets that the Pirates and Reynolds are again talking extension. Probably leaked by the Pirates.

So Lackey's theory is that Williams callous comment might cost Nutting $100 million to fix the PR mess.

Hopefully like you mentioned a few guys like Ortiz, Oviedo, Contreras, Bolton, Mlodzinski, Nicolas or Selby become strong bullpen guys if they don't make it as starters. A bunch of them looked good in Spring Training. Including Burrows and Priester. And who knows about this rule 5 pick in a year or two if he sticks around. Holderman looks good too and Bido was throwing gas. I'm not interested in watching Crowe or Underwood or De Jong struggle at all

Hopefully like you mentioned a few guys like Ortiz, Oviedo, Contreras, Bolton, Mlodzinski, Nicolas or Selby become strong bullpen guys if they don't make it as starters. A bunch of them looked good in Spring Training. Including Burrows and Priester. And who knows about this rule 5 pick in a year or two if he sticks around. Holderman looks good too and Bido was throwing gas. I'm not interested in watching Crowe or Underwood or De Jong struggle at all

I mean, that’s how GMNH built the last good bullpen, no? Hughes, Watson, Vazquez, even Grilli and clay Holmes (sigh) were all failed starters that found a home in the bullpen.

Poor Pat Lackey may not survive the Williams/Cherington Pirates.

So Travis Williams has been giving interviews to Buccos beat writers. Evidently, he told Biertempfel something along the lines of "fans don't care about winning if the gameday experience is good," which was predictably received well. Of course, the loud mouths on Twitter and message boards aren't who Williams is talking about...he's talking about the casual fan who goes to a couple of games a year. If that.

So a couple of hours later, Jon Heyman tweets that the Pirates and Reynolds are again talking extension. Probably leaked by the Pirates.

So Lackey's theory is that Williams callous comment might cost Nutting $100 million to fix the PR mess.

God, must be exhausting to see a pirate front office guy say something stupid and think that

I read that there is only one Lefty in the bullpen right now. That doesn't seem to be good.

And he's the rule 5 pick. Never pitched above AA i believe

Hayes has a 96.1 exit velocity this spring good for number 2 in the mlb

JT Brubaker has arm/elbow discomfort and will start the season on the IL. Probably TJ time. Not good.

Looks like Bae and Canaan Smith-Njiba made the team. Although things could change in the next day or two, waiver wire wise.

Opens the spot Oviedo, that’s not a terrible trade off.

So behind the starting 5, what is our rotation depth? Let's assume brubaker is seriously hurt. We have Ortiz, then??????? Burrows? Priester?

Burrows could move up into the picture quickly.

Bolton and Bido are some other MiLB depth options for this year.

Oviedo is better than Brubaker

best case is Oviedo performs well and Brubaker can make something out of a bullpen role because there isn't a spot when he gets back healthy

Interesting. This means:

Delay beat out heineman
Bae beat out utility guys like Mathias, vilade
Canaan beat out the glut of uninspiring outfielders (marcano, Mitchell, swaggerty)
Suwinski is being counted on for an important role

Interesting. This means:

Delay beat out heineman
Bae beat out utility guys like Mathias, vilade
Canaan beat out the glut of uninspiring outfielders (marcano, Mitchell, swaggerty)
Suwinski is being counted on for an important role

Swaggerty had a good spring training.

Canaan has a 1.000 OPS during spring. Just hit a 3 run jimmy john bomb

Swaggy T also was over 1.000

Yeah he seems guaranteed to get a good look in the majors. (Swags)

I'm very surprised they didn't give jobs to Mathias or Owings. They shouldn't have but i expected them to. I like them in the system even though the pirates could field two AAA teams this year

I also expected those guys to be here. Veteran roster fodder is a big pirates play. Maybe they really are changing.