Farm Aid

 

The Orioles could have called the Jackson Holliday experiment a failure. Calling up a guy absolutely smoking the minors only for the major league pitching to do him in, all while the spotlight's firmly upon him, it's been seen before, but it's been a while since a call-up has underwhelmed like this. And with Holliday's callup feeling like a logical next step, it'd be understandable if the Orioles took a hit following the demotion.

But right as Holliday was struggling, a completely different Orioles rookie was commanding the attention, and keeping the Orioles competitive. And so that took the sting out of it.

That's what separates this Orioles team from one you may have seen in 2021, upon Adley Rutschman's debut. Back then, the whole team was hinging on a top prospect to do well so the winning iteration of the team could be built around them. Now, because this is already a competitive team with so many working homegrown parts, successful prospects are just ways of strengthening the already-strong core. So Colton Cowser coming up and going on a tear was just another great element of this team's development system.

Cowser's numbers have gone down a bit, but his 6 homers and 20 RBIs have still contributed mightily to the power numbers this team is capable of. Also a wise contribution? Kyle Stowers, who's now a major league piece after hitting a ton of homers in Norfolk. The trouble with this is that at the moment, it's been hard for Stowers to land substantial playing time now that Austin Hays is back, and now he's kinda warring with Stowers for time. And yes, while this isn't the situation for the next 10 years like Atlanta, considering that Anthony Santander's a free agent after the season, it's making this a rocky development period for both of them.

Then you think about Heston Kjerstad, who's lower on the totem pole than either of those two and really has no place to break into the major league outfield picture. So far for Norfolk, Kjerstad's played beautifully, hitting .337 with 33 RBIs and 11 homers. Not only has Kjerstad not succeeded in the majors in general, but he's been sent back to Norfolk, like Holliday, because of the lack of immediate success. There's so many young players on this team that it's impossible to get all of them in the lineup at once, and I'm guessing it's gonna lead some of them to be traded fairly soon. Kjerstad for sure, but possibly even someone like Cowser or Stowers if they don't heat up long-term. 

The rotation doesn't really have that much of a youth overflow issue, as Grayson Rodriguez and Tyler Wells happened to go down around the time that both Kyle Bradish and John Means came off the IL. Bradish has been strong so far, though he's yet to register a decision in 3 games. Means is looking very sturdy in 2 games back, and has 1 win under his belt. Burnes, Irvin and Kremer are still working pretty consistently as well. Last year there was somebody like D.L. Hall scratching to get in, but he's over in Milwaukee...hurt again, I think [I mean, his name IS 'D.L.'...]

The Orioles have enough working now that they'll be great for a while, it seems. I just hope that this competitive environment for the young players doesn't stunt the growth of any of their finest prospects.

Coming Tomorrow- I dunno what I'm happier about; the team doing well, or this guy finally becoming a multi-tool guy.

McMahon of the House

 

When Ryan McMahon began the 2018 season as the Rockies' starting 1st baseman, we were all figuring it would be the next step in the team's dominance. Famously, the Rockies started Trevor Story at short out of camp in 2016, he got off to an incredible start and became a mainstay for the team. By 2018, the Rockies had Arenado, Blackmon, Story, LeMahieu and that young, trusty rotation, and were gearing up for a strong year that would eventually bring former World Series hero Matt Holliday to join them for a playoff run. McMahon was considered one of the last pieces the team needed to prove their worth.

It didn't happen. McMahon had a dismal start, only hitting .232 in 91 games that season, and mostly being relegated to a bit player. The Rockies' 2018 playoff run flamed out somewhat quickly. And after a while, nearly everybody left.

And as the Rockies attempt to jumpstart a new young team, Ryan McMahon is still there, as one of the last bastions of what once was. And thankfully he's still awesome. So far he's the standout of the lineup, hitting .308 with 48 hits, 22 RBIs and 6 homers. He's a varied enough player to be known for his defensive play as well as being a consistent plate producer for this team, and since 2021 he's been one of their most crucial players. The Rockies thankfully have McMahon signed until 2027, and though many symbols of the early 2020s teams, such as Charlie Blackmon, Elias Diaz and Daniel Bard, might be done in Denver after this season, McMahon's gonna stick around and continue to be the foundation of the team.

To this team's credit, there has been some progress other than McMahon's start. Brendan Rodgers has taken longer to come back than the team has liked, but he's finally getting his average back up. Brenton Doyle and Ezequiel Tovar are looking like they have staying power, and Tovar especially is doing a lot of things right at the moment. Austin Gomber, Cal Quantrill and surprisingly Ty Blach have been consistent starting options. Gomber especially is having a great year, although I think about Daniel Bard in 2022 and sometimes the other shoe needs to drop. The Diaz/Stallings battery is still working really well and making the Marlins catching battery look even worse [considering that Stallings left there at the right time]. And as I write this, the Rockies have won 6 straight, including a sweep of the defending champion Texas Rangers, and a shutout rout of the San Diego Padres just yesterday.

So even for a last place team, there's a lot about the Rockies that can work, and that can provide wins. I don't expect them to suddenly become competitive, but there have been worse Rockies teams, and they're at least improving from last year, which is all you need to do.

Coming Tomorrow- The latest rookie from a team whose farm system is really having a moment.

That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore

 

"It was the stickiest stuff I've ever felt on a glove," remarked umpire Erich Bacchus, upon ejecting Houston Astros starter Ronel Blanco from the game against the A's. To this point there hadn't been many substance ejections, and by and large people have been following the rule to stop using tack to get a firmer hold on the ball. But, Blanco was not only using tack, he was OVERusing tack, and the umps had to quickly put a stop to it.

What makes this infuriating for Astros fans is that, to this point, Ronel Blanco was their best pitcher. Through 8 starts, Blanco, a-30-year-old sophomore, was 4-0 with a 2.09 ERA and 45 strikeouts under his belt, all team highs. Not only that, but in his first start of the season he no-hit the Toronto Blue Jays, and used that to get off to a truly vicious start to the season, with teams only beginning to prepare for him in the last week or so [the Yankees seemed prepared]. And now Blanco, clearly one of the silver linings of a dire Astros start, has been caught cheating and will probably have to face some consequences.

Imagine that, an Astros player facing consequences for cheating? Isn't that a fun concept? Alright, so after he gets back in like a week, the Astros will really have to think about what they're gonna do going forward. Will they minimize Blanco's role in the team, or...do they want to win?

That's really the key to this stage of the Astros' history. We've reached the point where cheating doesn't make much of a difference anymore. It used to be that the whole lineup waiting for trashcan cues or one guy using an illegal bat or leaning into a HBP used to be the difference between ALCSs and World Series'. Now it can't get them more than 2 points in a game against the A's. And you can see the necessity- the Astros have the best lineup in the game, with no cheating to be found there really, and the pitching is 100% letting them down. So of course a pitcher's gonna try to cheat. They've gotta do SOMETHING, right? 

Like with the 2019 cheating, this has to piss off Justin Verlander, because he's still incredible without the use of any alternative methods for success. Dude's 41, he's 2-1 with a 3.38 ERA, 23 Ks. Clearly not 2011 caliber but he's still reliable, can go late and carries his share of the load. And now this Blanco thing's happened and there's a lot more pressure on him, cause Valdez and Javier are fine but not at peak levels and the kids are tanking. This is not an ideal rotation scenario, and maybe Blanco would have helped the team more had he just...not gotten too cocky.

And yet the Astros ended up winning that game against the A's anyway, despite Blanco being taken out. They had a walk-off by Victor Caratini, which is happening a lot lately, and ended up with their third straight win. And now the Astros are in 4th place, and tonight they have to face A's pitcher...Aaron Brooks. So even if the Astros don't cheat, they might still be alright for a bit. Maybe not 'competing this year' alright, but...they've survived worse. 

Coming Tomorrow- I never would expected this guy to be the sole factor holding the Rockies together.

Partly Sonny

 

I was thinking about this the other day, because Frankie Montas has been proving himself in Cincinnati this year, after just...failing to show up in New York. And it's just clear how unfit some people are for New York in general. My dad calls it 'Ed Whitson disease', you have a great career, you try to make it work in New York and it really doesn't happen, and then you go back and the magic reappears. Montas is looking like his old self this year, and the Reds are reaping the benefits. 

And it's funny, because Montas has the exact same career trajectory that Sonny Gray had, though Montas was in a few farm systems before landing in Oakland. Come to prominence for the A's, midyear trade to New York for some prospects that are thought foolish but mostly aren't, cannot get a single thing done for the Yankees. Signs a low-hazard deal with the Reds, now he's back. Sonny Gray is the better pitcher, and has the better career, but that is the path. 

It's very funny looking at Sonny Gray's numbers and seeing just how consistent he's been. Been around for 12 years, just notched 100 wins, could pass 2000 strikeouts if he keeps it up for the next few years. Since he joined the Reds he's only had 1 season with an ERA higher than 4, and he's coming off his single strongest season in years. He's not a Hall of Famer, but it's very cool seeing him continue to produce consistently into his 30s. He was once the hip young thing of the leagues, now he's 34 and still extremely strong on the mound.

And even if the Cardinals going with a veteran rotation this year is a wee bit misguided, getting Gray back off the IL has helped them a bit, as he's been stellar since his activation. In 6 games he's 4-2 with a 2.29 ERA and 44 strikeouts. This is, though, undeniably the best performance in the rotation. Kyle Gibson's also decent, but he's very much an innings eater with added perks here and there. Lynn's okay, Mikolas is struggling, they're letting Matthew Liberatore start and unsurprisingly he's not doing well so far. Maybe give Andre Pallante another shot? Who knows. They just need a steady answer, and I hate that this rotation already seems like it's falling off. 

The Cards themselves still aren't great. Goldschmidt and Arenado are still looking past their prime. Gorman, Donovan and Nootbaar still aren't getting anything done. Contreras was doing awesome but now he's out for a bit. It's just a very meh affair with the occasional defensive move and the occasional strong bullpen day. They've caught up to the Reds in the standings, and the Reds are a better team with worse luck at the moment. I think the Reds will come out of it, but the Cardinals, unless a lot happens at once, might be a last place team yet again. 

Coming Tonight: It took a while for teams to figure out how to hit him, but even now he's got some tricky stuff left. 

The Pham-tom Menace

 

God what a mad team this White Sox club is. The four best players on the team are pitchers,  three of which had little to no MLB experience during the 2023 season. There's only three people in the day-to-day lineup who actually came up in this organization, the same organization that's trying to jumpstart itself. There's multiple people who were once extremely good at baseball just struggling to hit even .215. And one of the sparks of the lineup has been a guy nobody wanted during the offseason that signed late just so he could play.

Tommy Pham might be one of the strangest MLB figures of the last several years. By all accounts, his Rays numbers seemed to indicate a sensible, normal career, and he instead picked the supervillain route. He came to San Diego to perform to his standard, and instead struggled defensively AND offensively in two seasons there. Then split the next two seasons between two teams, performing well at the plate in the first half and feeling like a consolation prize in the second. He decided to get on the bad side of Joc Pederson, one of the most likable players in the game right now, and someone who ironically took over for Pham after he left Arizona. Even when he does well, nobody knows what to think of Tommy Pham. Like he has this sort of polarizing aura about him, not even in a laughable way like Jazz Chisholm. 

And so now, Pham is one of the only people the White Sox fans can properly trust right now. So far, in 15 games, Pham is hitting .293 with 8 RBIs and 2 homers. It's weird that a 36-year-old is hitting better than most of the young kids, and has the best average on the team, but...that's the White Sox for ya. You'll hear things about how Eloy Jimenez is having a good day or Andrew Vaughn is doing something, and then you look at their averages and it's still not great. Like, Benintendi was having a great day recently and you look at what's changed, and it's just 'well, now he's batting .190 as opposed to batting .160'. Pham actually hitting competently over a long period time is a change of pace for this team.

And yet. Like usual, there's the chance that Pham will be dealt midyear, because that's what tends to happen with him. He burns places out quickly, and they deal him. And so you're not sure if he's actually gonna ride out the 2024 White Sox experience to the end or if he's actually gonna get to play for a competitor again. And even still, will he contribute that much? He only did so much for the D-Backs last year, even if he was an excellent postseason performer. Maybe that'll boost his appeal?

The White Sox are a slight bit better than they were, but that's really as much as they're gonna get. And so they need to figure out victories that will be more important than just 'well Tommy Pham's not hitting .200 like the rest of the team'.

Coming Tomorrow- Well, we can cross off another market on the list of cities that aren't New York that this guy can pitch well in. 

Stormy Weathers

 

Ryan Weathers must feel like he booked a last minute ticket for the Titanic and was in the bathroom at the exact time they started filling up the lifeboats.

Luis Arraez got traded to the Padres, and is now hitting .300 with them and helping them compete, and Weathers is still stuck in Miami getting the snot kicked out of him every 5 days on a team with no run support. And it's only gonna get worse as the season goes on.

Writing about the Marlins used to be fun. It was fun just last year. And now it's just depressing. This team could have been great, they could have built something with all the pieces that made 2023 work, and now they're just struggling. The team's most valuable player right now is Max Meyer, who made three starts then went back to Jacksonville. Nobody has a 1 WAR right now but 9 people have -0.5 and below WARs, including a guy they paid actual money for during the offseason. In fact, the Marlins are paying 44,330,000 to people who have a 0 WAR or lower. Josh Bell, Tim Anderson, Jake Burger, Christian Bethancourt, Avisail Garcia, all weighing this team down.

How does that reflect on the young players who are actually trying? Ryan Weathers has finally been given the opportunity to start every day, and he's done relatively well, with a 4.54 ERA and 34 Ks. But with no run support and a lot of superior teams, he's racked up a lot of earned runs and he's not winning many games. Jesus Luzardo's similar, the raw materials are there but without the team he's not very impressive. Trevor Rogers is 0-6. Braxton Garrett got rocked in his first start. A rotation that felt so realized even after Alcantara got hurt last year now looks lost and completely unsteady. And this is how it is with a lot of injured players reinstated. 

There are some positive production aspects. Bryan de la Cruz and Jazz Chisholm ARE doing well as power pieces. Otto Lopez and Dane Myers have been very nice off the bench. Tristan Gray is hopefully gonna come into his own, despite being a 28-year-old rookie. There's still no good hitting catchers on this team, no starter hitting over .270, and no real perennial on-base guy now that Luis Arraez is gone. And, again, this is how bad the team looks in May.

I...can only hope for some improvement, something to click, but I'm not sure if it's happening this year. And it's sad, cause they actually looked good last year. Apparently they only do this when nobody's expecting them to.

Coming Tonight: A late signer that's looking like an incredible asset playing for a bad team.

Skip Trace

 

Sometimes, when you have all the talent you need to win and just aren't getting it done, there's no palpable one thing that's wrong, and improvement requires retooling multiple facets over a long period of time. Other times, the thing that is wrong is the person managing the team, and once that is removed the problems go away. I'm not an expert on the inside aspects of baseball, but my guess is that the 2024 Blue Jays fall into the latter category.

The best you can say about John Schneider is that he elevated the Blue Jays from a divisional also-ran to a playoff team. Unfortunately, these Schneider Jays teams have never gotten further than the Wild Card round, even with Bichette, Guerrero, Gausman, Romano and Springer having prime seasons. The problems have only multiplied in 2024, with Bo Bichette having his worst season to date, Daulton Varsho leading the usually power-heavy team in homers with 6, and numerous tough losses that weren't especially close. You're seeing a more irate version of Schneider, one that's been thrown out a lot recently, and hasn't been as fun to be around. 

There are a bunch of managers that people are already going 'how much better would the bench coach be?' at this point. The suspects you'd expect, y'know, Grifol, Marmol, Espada. Which is ironic considering that Espada used to be a coach anyhow. And with Schneider I think it'd be the most cathartic if the firing did happen, because the Jays fans aren't especially loving his work. A colleague of mine, a Jays fan, has never especially been a fan of his, and has noted how 'exposed' he's felt recently. And yeah, while a lot of this team working isn't exactly his fault, it is his fault that it hasn't gotten better. 

Daulton Varsho is still one of the best players on this team, and it's concerning because he's a rare non-homegrown young hitter. Varsho's not only excellent in the outfield, he leads the team in RBIs with 17, and homers with 6. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. only has 4 home runs right now, and that should be extremely concerning, even if he's began to heat up in the last week or so. Bichette, Springer, Biggio and Kirk are all toiling around .200. There's some production from newcomers like IKF, Davis Schneider and Justin Turner, but not a ton. The pitching is solid enough but the ERAs are higher than they should be. Is it the strength of the division? Maybe a little. But it'd be interesting to see how well this team could do without some of these circumstances. 

Like, y'know how Oli Marmol got ejected like seconds into the Cardinals game yesterday, then the second he was ejected the Cards were able to come back and win? The Blue Jays need an 'aha' moment like that, or else this season's gonna be even more disappointing than the last few.

Coming Tomorrow- He was traded to Miami for a player that didn't even make October with his old team. Now he's just seen a teammate be traded back to his old team as they're competing. I just feel bad for this guy.