4/14 Gameday Thread: Just Thinking About The Roman Empire

Is Nero fiddling?
#romanempire
#dayoff

And Ehrlicher one-ups Cohen - with 7K's over 3 innings (2 unearned runs, 3H & no BB's)

But Salem getting no-hit through 6 innings.

Hickey 1-1, 2 BB

Mayer 2-2
Paulino 2-2, HR (3), 2B
Yorke 1-1, BB

Paulino is off to quite the start this year. OPS above 1.200 now

Keep aiming those flyballs that way Kyle

Yeah between that and his rotational swing he’s got sneaky power potential. I really like him as a utility man prospect.

I went to this game as well. Sunday is always a tough one with potential days off for key guys and missed out on Anthony and only got Teel behind the plate. Oh well.

Looks like they worked out some bugs with the scoreboard and had the pitching gun and pitch types. No idea how accurate the velos are but seemed pretty close. The pitch types is a complete black box.

Bastardo was 94-95 on his fastball all game. Some were called sinkers and some 4 seam FB. No idea how they decided. There were 1 or 2 random 97s, but definitely an average/sit in the 94/95 range. It didn't seem to have much life. I don't recall any swings and misses. He struggled through a brutal 35 ish pitch first. I thought it was interesting when he got into trouble with back to back walks he went to his low 80s curve to get called strikes. Again, I don't recall many if any swings and misses. What did get some swings and misses was his 85/86 mph change. He did a nice job eating some innings after that long first, but not much jumped out to me.

Celluci mixed in a small number off 92-94 mph fastballs, but mostly was flipping mid 80s sliders as much as he could. Kinda generic to me.

Zeferjan was interesting. In 9th he was mostly fastballs 98-100 that the Phils had a hard time catching up to while mixing in a few low 80s sliders. In the 9th he came out throwing all 87 mph cutters and those sliders. Not a single FB until the very last pitch of the game. I's sure that was more his game plan that pitching to scouting reports so that was interesting. He mostly threw strikes which has been a problem although I would say that he was noticeably slowing down his arm on the off speed stuff. Seemed like the kinda thing that will lead to experienced hitters sitting on his high heat and playing down.

Unfortunately the radar gun really undercut the offensive performance in the first couple of innings. The Phils starter was only throwing 89-91 and most of the damage was done on that non MLB quality fastball. Always a good reminder that it really is a huge jump from the high minors to MLB.

Mayer was a guy who very much feasted on those 89-91 fastballs early and he did struggle in subsequent ABs against guys who were able to mix in off speed stuff around 92-94 mph fastballs. One AB he struggled against a steady diet of 87 mph cutters. Another AB he was off balance against high 70/low 80s breakers. I think he's got a lot of development yet against spin. I'm out on Mayer in 2024 (not that I was every really on).

Teel hit long fly balls his first 3 ABs. One for a nice oppo HR although I do have to say the wind was blowing out pretty hard. I've always wondered why Reading plays like such an offensive park, the outfield dimensions are fine. There was some wind on Tuesday and a lot yesterday all straight out. Maybe it's a bit of a wind tunnel out. Teel's swing is not an exaggerated upper cut, but I was wondering a bit about the high fly balls. Of course as I was wondering he hit a hard line drive right at 3B in his last AB. Still I will be interested to see his GB rate this year. If he is flyball heavy it could impact his BA potential and he'll need to keep his EVs up to keep from being a lazy fly ball machine.

I didn't mention Paulino last time, but he hit the ball hard most ABs. His HR was a blast and was the only one that didn't need any wind help. He's much bigger and stronger than I imagined him especially in his thighs. If Mayer and Yorke move up it'll be interesting to see if he sticks at 3B and they still think he can handle the middle infield.

Next time Portland comes through is mid June. I hate to be the guy talking promotions in April, but it has given me self interesed reason to think about it. I kinda think I missed my last chance to see Anthony. Mayer will be interesting because of the Sox need and technically he's going to have a lot of AA ABs in a couple months. But do you give a guy credit for a chunk of bad ABs like he had last year? I think he's got a lot to work on against spin so I think there's a good chance he's more on the promotion at the All Star break schedule. No clue how to judge Teel who has so little experience, but I'd bet he's still there in June. There's just so much for catchers to work on, I'd hate to see him rushed. Most of his first full year in AA is plenty fast to me.

Not too worried about Bleis & Campbell at the moment. I’ll be more worried if in a month they’re not hitting. And in Bleis’s case, even if the average is not going up but his peripherals are strong, I’d still see him getting the promotion to Greenville (see: Roman Anthony last season).