Episode 12: Bregman Down, Mayer Up

“You’re not going to find a bigger Bello guy than me. If Bello is struggling, it’s because of the pitch mix called by Bailey or Narvaez. Whoever is calling the pitches needs to go.”

Awful take. Can’t Bello just be not very good? None of his pitches have a positive run value. He has no out pitch right now.

23 minutes ago, 5GoldGlovesOF,75 said:

The mystery in Bello's climb to the majors is that he dominated at each level. Not every starting pitcher to make The Show has minor league ERAs in the 2s and WHIPs around 1.

What has changed to make him so mediocre? Better overall hitters? Advanced scouting? Arm problems? Sleep deprivation? Or did coaches alter his mechanics in some organizational approach to battle launch angles?

I don't believe he was necessarily "dominating." Before being called up in '22, he hadn't even reached 60 innings in AAA. His bb/9 was 3.68. He had a successful half of a  season. The year before, he had a 3.87 ERA between A/AA. I think he was called up too early, under a bad pitching coach and wasn't quite ready to be the guy they wanted him to be. He went from a 12 k/9 in MiLB to 8 k/9 in MLB while keeping a high bb rate. He just never really learned how to pitch. Whenever he gets into a stressful situation, you can just stick a fork in him. At some point, it's no longer on the coaching, but on the pitchers themselves. 

Fitts, Dobbins and Buehler have all been more impressive than we thought they'd be, but I don't see many people jumping to give Bailey credit there. I'd say the same with Chapman, Weissert and Wilson. Maybe Bello stinks this year because he's just not as good as we thought he was going to be. Maybe he's just a #5? Maybe Houck is just the starting rotation/reliever question mark that we had him pegged for going into 2024 and not the All Star we saw last season? We're lucky Bailey was able to get that half of a season out of Houck. 

Coaches are fungible. Fire Cora, Bailey and Fatse if you really want. However, I don't think it'll change the direction of this team in any positive direction this season. It's almost always on the players and who picks the players. The coaches are just low hanging fruit IMO. 

3 minutes ago, TheSplinteredSplendor said:

Doesn't the pitcher still have the ability to shake off whatever pitch is called?

Depends on what the coaches tell them, I assume.

1 minute ago, TheSplinteredSplendor said:

Maybe, can you ever recall an instance where a pitcher was reprimanded for shaking off a pitch?

Not sure we'd find out about it.

2 hours ago, Alex Mayes said:

That also wasn’t the take. You skipped over a few sentences to combine some stuff and ignored the transition from Bello to Bailey. The take was Bello has to go longer than four and some change innings, then I pivoted to talking about Bailey and wondering about who is actually calling the pitches since we have multiple pitchers not getting their out pitch in situations where they should be striking guys out. If it’s Bailey calling pitches from the dugout then it’s a problem, if it’s Narváez calling them then it’s a problem. 

It’s entirely possible Bello just isn’t very good, likely right now even. But it’s also entirely possible that whichever person is calling the pitches needs to be held accountable too. 

Everyone should listen to the entire podcast and decide if they agree with me or Alex. I think that's only fair.

2 hours ago, Old Red said:

Coaches may be fungible, but Cora, Bailey, Fatse, and Tek don’t have the team going in any positive direction anyway. Sometimes firing the manager does shake things up, and the team gets a jump start like Morgan magic. Daddy would not fire Cora though even though Cora is as lifeless as the team he leads.

Firing Fatse would provide minimal return. I don't know of any winning streaks brought on by hitting coaches.