Baseball Chatter 04/11

Michael Pineda went 6-12 with a 4.82 ERA last year, ranking 64 of 74 qualifying pitchers. He still lead the Yankees in strikeouts with 207 and the American League with a 10.6 K/9

Julio Urias allowed two runs on two hits in 3 ⅔ innings at Triple-A Oklahoma City. The Dodgers want to limit his innings after he went 5-2 with a 3.39 ERA in 18 games last season.

Yoan Moncada homered for the second time over his last three games down at Triple-A. He’s batting .391 (9-for-23) in five games this season.

Mitch Kopech struck out 10 batters in four innings for Double-A Birmingham. Kopech has a 100 mph fastball that has been compared to Noah Syndergaard, and is rated as the top pitching prospect in baseball.

Houston Astros prospect Francis Martes pitched five scoreless innings at Triple-A Fresno last night

Yulieski Gurriel has been fine defensively, but his bat is not fine. He was moved down to ninth in the order. The Astros have both Tyler White and AJ Reed waiting in the wings to take the job at first base.

Jared Eickhoff struck out 13 batters in 13.2 innings. His 7.6 K/9 last season is not the ceiling here.

James Paxton had a 9.44 K/9 (26.1 K%), 3.19 ERA (2.45 FIP) and 1.05 WHIP through 67.2 innings to finish last season. So far this season, he has pitched 13 scoreless innings with 13 strikeouts and a 0.69 WHIP. He relies heavily on his fastball – on Monday it sat 95 and topped out at 97 mph – but has effectively mixed his curveball and a cutter in his first two outings.

Taijuan Walker has walked five in 11 innings with a 1.55 WHIP over his first two outings. The switch to the National League may have been a plus, but the fact that he went from a pitcher friendly ballpark in Seattle to a hitter friendly park in Arizona is going to hurt.

Sean Doolittle earned his first save of the season last night. Oakland will continue to use a closer-by-committee approach which includes Doolittle, Santiago Casilla, Ryan Madson and Ryan Dull as possible save candidates.

The Diamondbacks were scoring seven runs a game on average and hitting a combined .313 entering yesterday. Then they allowed three runs to score on an infield ground ball.

The Braves starting pitchers have three quality starts in the first six games, ranking third in ERA in the majors and the best among National League teams. Last year was a different story.

Braves in 2016:

  • 64 quality starts in 162 games. Only five rotations generated fewer.
  • Starters had the third-worst ERA in baseball.
  • last in baseball in runs.

The one weak spot in Atlanta so far this season is their bullpen. They can’t seem to strike anyone out.

We told you a few days ago that the Tigers were going to call up Joe Jimenez. This happened yesterday after they demoted Bruce Rondon to Triple-A Toledo.

We decided to go that way based on — we felt that Bruce needed more time to get ready for the season, We were hoping that, before we broke spring training, we were hoping that, by giving him the benefit of the doubt, that he could come in and help right away. We just felt that he needed more time to get himself ready.Al Avila
We might catch lightning in a bottle,But I’d caution you on thinking that this is some type of answer. This is a young kid with a big arm who is still developing. Certainly not going to throw him out there in a one-run game in the eighth inning. Probably ease him into some situations, let him get his feet wet and see if he performs all right. If he performs well, then we’ll increase the leverage.

The Marlins their rotation is, well, mediocre without Jose Fernandez. They’re not buying the conventional thought that the Marlins rotation as it exists now is nothing more than a collection of back-of-the-rotation starters who don’t measure up with the rest of the league. That much-maligned rotation hardly disgraced itself the first week of the season. Through Sunday, the starters ranked seventh in the National League with a staff ERA of 3.56.In four of the six games, the starters gave up one or zero runs.

J.T. Realmuto was named the National League Player of the Week after getting hits in all five games, and batting .500 with a .542 on-base percentage and two home runs.

Byron Buxton is on pace for 378 strikeouts. Lucky for him, his defense rules.

Sonny Gray will throw two sets of 15 pitches each against hitters before Thursday’s final game against Kansas City. The A’s are hoping he’ll be pitching by the end of the month.

Joaquin Benoit will be 40 in July. Don’t be a closer sucker, a lover of sucky closers, a temporary closer lover…Edubray Ramos is the future closer in Philly – my opinion.

His fastball is plenty good enough and he has impressed the Phillies with his progress. But Ramos is a young 24 and the team would rightly worry about pushing him into that spotlight too soon. Then there is Hector Neris, and he’s the one who should have gotten the tap on the shoulder Monday. Mackanin outlined a couple of reasons he didn’t make that move. One is that Neris can give him more than just one inning, which adds flexibility to bullpen decisions late in games. The other, according to Mackanin, is that Neris is coming off a good season and he doesn’t want to put “unnecessary pressure” on him this quickly. Bob Ford Philly.com

Gerrit Cole got his slider back. He only threw the slider seven percent in his season debut last week, but last night he threw it 30 percent of the time.

In seven games and 22 1/3 The Cardinals’ bullpen has allowed 21 runs in 22 innings, with a combined 8.86 ERA. Only Washington’s bullpen had a higher ERA (7.52) in the National League entering Monday.

Steven Souza Jr. is batting .409 and hitting anything that moves He has struck out only twice.

 

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