Aggression with prospects is fine, but being stupid is not. There should be a way to find a happy medium between a Pirates like idea of being overly cautious with prospects and going stupidly fast with prospects.
A bit ugly at the end, but glad we held on for the W! Nice little homestand so far.
Lost in the shuffle of all the runs - Max Fried is a damn good major league pitcher.
Natural Immunity Croc
Freshmaker (05-18-2019)
Eh - I think if the game ended 3-0 and Fried pitches another scoreless inning the 'narrative' of the game is different. Not that this matters at all but after it was a blowout you kind of forget for a little bit there were some tight spots, especially to Yelich, where Fried showed his dominance.
We have something special brewing with Soroka/Fried and when Folty ultimately gets his act together the Braves could be positioned to be one of the best teams in baseball when you consider how potent the offense can be.
Natural Immunity Croc
bravesfanforlife88 (05-18-2019)
I think Kimbrel would help Minter out with the mental game.
Forever Fredi
After their last starts Soroka now has an xwOBA of .287 and Fried .288. That’s in the range of a 2/3 where folks start to argue they are TOR guys, and the argument turns into one of semantics.
This is what we expected from Soroka, so nobody should be overly surprised. That may be taking him for granted a bit, but we knew he was going to be good as long as the shoulder cooperated.
The new slider and greatly improved control from Fried transformed him from #5 or longman in the BP to a weapon in the rotation. It’s getting to the point where it’s becoming hard not to believe in the improved control, even if it may not be quite elite.
I’ve been advocating for Fried to add a pitch to mitigate the flat FA for over a year now, and I’m not sure why it never crossed my mind that pitch could be a slider. Imagine if he also added the above average or plus SI I still think he is capable of throwing. Those 5 pitches with his current control would be an undisputed TOR guy.
Last edited by Enscheff; 05-18-2019 at 11:36 AM.
Thanks Dr. Scheff.
Bringing sense into a conversation of players and abilities and this makes absolute sense, but I will go further, his FB is like 94-97 and if he can add a complete wipe-out slider (Kershaw or R Johnson) or a nice cutter, he is TOR stuff and possible ace material but he has to master the control of them.
His curve is already elite material. He doesn't throw change-ups much but they are sporadic, which will give hitters to think about.
What do you think about that?
Where was Webb? He only threw 10 pitches on Thursday night. Enscheff already showed us that Venters and Wes Parsons are trash using the xwOBA metric. I sort of understand giving Venters a low leverage situation but Parsons is no doubt hot garbage but to add “cherry on top of the ice cream” Snit takes out Venters (he was done, probably a little too late even) for a much worse pitcher! That situation became a not "low leverage" one really quick!
You guys wanna solve a bullpen piece ?
There is one down on the farm - that should stay there to hone his badassness because he has a crazy high cieling, but I feel like he could flat dominate in 8th inning situations...
VV