moonslav59

How is he inconsistent? All pitchers have some ups and downs, but I don't see Houck as being more up and down than anyone else. In 2021, after a bad game 3 of his season, his ERA was 4.35 (FIP 2.40), and then his ERA stayed between 2.45 and 3.80 the whole season. In August, he had a 4 game stretch where he did poorly in 3, but still never let 4, 3 and 3 runs in those games.) He had 2 straight poor starts in September (6 ER in 8 IP,) but that's it. Last year's jerking around from SP to RP probably didn't help, but again, after a bad first start (3 ER in 3.1 IP), his ERA stayed between and a brief spike to an ERA of 4.05 in mid May due to 2 bad games, including 7 ER in one relief appearance, hiis ERA stayed between 2.99 and 3.59. After May 8th, he never let up more than 1 ER in any of his 25 games. You said you like Hits per 9. His 6.9 H/9 is pretty damn good. (Pedro's career mark is 7.1. It was 6.4 from 1997-2003, perhaps the greatest 7 year stretch in modern baseball.)

It's been an area of high growth in importance since maybe Andrew Miller.

It wasn't meant to be some big happy projection, but plus middle relief guys are needed in a good pen. I think Houck should be the go to middle guy, but having a good 2nd one is always a nice thing to have. That takes up 2 of the 13 pitching slots and makes selecting the other 11 a lot more likely to produce higher quality SP'ers and short RP'ers.

I'd add Bello and call it a quartet. I may be a homer, here, but I still think one from Crawford or Wink will develop into a very useful mid-relief pitcher who can pitch in some higher leverage situations from time to time.

I've been on that wagon a long time, and do believe we have begun to turn the corner on that long awaited area of need. There is still some proving to do, so I'm not raising the victory flag, just yet, but our younger pitchers (26 and under) look better than they have in about a decade- maybe more. The other good thing is that this has not seemed to happen at the expense of weakening the everyday player aspect of our farm.

We will always be adding pieces via free agency and maybe via trade, again, so we aren't limited to just our homies working out where they fit best.

Always love your posts, Nick. I'm thinking, as long as Bello, Whitlock and Houck come through, maybe we just need 1-2 of these 3 to work out and maybe another 1-2 from all the rest combined. Call it 3. Mata Walter Murphy Crawford Winckowski Kelly Fernandez (Mills, Ort, Santos, Shugart, Broadway...) 13 Man staff, and we have 13 vets and post grads, not counting Crawford, Wink and Ort, and others on the above list, who all have options: 6 SP: Sale, Kluber, Whitlock, Bello, Pivetta, Paxton 7 RP: Jansen, Martins, Houck, Schreiber, Rodriguez, Brasier, Bleier I'm liking our staff more and more, as I think about it.

He's pretty good at that. What kind of living is a FT AAA'er?

Eventually, they will shorten the landing strip

In no way am I saying Duran should be compared to Ellsbury as a base stealer- just the poor instincts and only earlier in Jacoby’s career. BTW, Jacoby had bad instincts on D early on, too. Not nearly like Duran, though.

Are you honestly denying Jacoby’s bad base running instincts early in his career? The guy ran into more outs than I can remember. I’m not talking just CS.

He had bad instincts as a runner. He was picked off, often and ran into many stupid outs, hence the "kinda like" comment. First 5 seasons: 39 CS and countless thrown out trying for an extra base.

Kinda like Jacoby early on.

Houck might be able to fill Whitlock's long relief role- no second timers. Crawford and Winkc showed a few signs of sticking around. My hope is one will improve, this year, and fill the long releif/spot starter role, well. Agree on Kelly and Ort. Bello may rise to be a good #2, but solid mid rotation at min wage is a big help, going forward. I think Mata is going to do well, in whatever role he is handed or settles into. Walter is a question mark, for sure, but he shows more promise than Murphy, Wink, Crawford and many others. We have a nice 7 or 8 pitchers from my first two lines. Not all will work out, but if we come up with 5-6, that's more than we've seen in a long time. Best homegrown pitchers from previous seasons (must be top 15 in IP and have 25 IP min) All who qualify are listed: (I may have missed a name or two) 2004: Lowe, DiNardo 2005: Papelbon 2006: Papelbon, Delcarmen, DiNardo, Hansen 2007: (Dice-K & Okajima) Papelbon, Delcarmen, Gabbard 2008: (Dice-K), Masterson, Buchholz, Delcarmen, Papelbon, (Okajima), Hansen 2009: Buchholz, Masterson, Papelbon, (Okajima), Delcarmen, (Dice-K), Bard 2010: Buchholz, (Dice-K), Bard, Papelbon, (Okajim), Delcarmen, Doubront 2011: Lester, Buchholz, Bard, Papelbon, (Dice-K) 2012: Lester, Buch, Doubront (1-2-3 in IP!), Bard (traded for A Miller) 2013: Lester, Doubront, Buchholz, Workman (Alex Wilson #16 in IP and 28 IP) 2014: Buch, Lester, Workman, Doubront (Ranaudo #16 w 39 IP) 2015: (ERod traded for), Buch, Owens, Masterson (traded back to us), Barnes 2016: Buch, Barnes 2017: Barnes (#7 in IP), Workman (13) 2018: Johsnon (5), Velazquez (6), Barnes (10), Workman (14) 2019: Walden (5), Workman (6), Barnes (8), Taylor (13), Johnson (15) 2020: Valdez (4), Barnes (9), Houck (12) (IP requirement waived) 2021: (Whitlock 5- not homegrown), Houck (6), Barnes (9), Taylor (11), DHern (13), Valdez (14) 2022: Crawford (6), Wink (7), Houck (10), Bello (11), Barnes (15) 2023 Steamers projected IP 6 Bello 117 7 Houck 80 14 Crawford 52 18 Kelly 26 20 Walter 21 21 Wink 20 22 Mata 18 23 Murphy 14

Agreed, but it just feels better seeing good starts vs bad starts.

So far, our offense doesn't seem to be a concern.

Make that a "good" reliever. If we can get Houck and Bello to become two quality starters, that's a big plus over the last decade plus. If you count Whitlock, since he was chosen as a prospect, it's looking real good. To me, it looks like we're starting to see quality and quantity. Houck, Whitlock, Crawford, Winckowski Bello, Mata, Walter, Kelly, Murphy, Ort, R Fernandez Perales, Wikelman, E R-C, Drohan, Paez, Guerrero, Uberstine

How many times have you seen a single player get a SB, a CS and a picked off in one game? The "winner" is Jarren Duran.

Arroyo the beast!

And Brasier let one up, too. As far as I know, no projected SP'er has given up a run, yet.

Singing to the choir!

You’d think he’d have done that at minumum

I thought he threw scoreless

As shaky as he looked, I think all of our expected 26 man roster pitchers have yet to let up an ER, this spring, except Ort.

Slowly working towards building up strength, command and routines. It might be 2-3 months before evaluations on his levels of readiness are even significant. Sure, he might surprise everyone by improving quickly, but I think that's a long shot. Somebody mentioned coming back fro TJ surgery. Part of the rehab time comes after the arm feels fine. It takes time to gain what was lost through inactivity (atrophy.) We don't know how often Song worked out is throwing arm since 2019, either.