Reds lefty Alex Wood, who’s dealt with back spasms since he arrived for Spring Training in late February, “didn’t respond well” after his latest bullpen session, reports manager David Bell (via MLB.com’s Mark Sheldon). Wood, who was acquired in an offseason trade that also sent Yasiel Puig and Matt Kemp from Los Angeles to Cincinnati, will likely seek a second opinion on the creaky back, placing his eventual Reds debut in even further doubt. Thanks to stellar early-season performances from Luis Castillo, Sonny Gray, and Tyler Mahle, among others, Cincy’s starting five leads the NL in nearly every rotation category, doubly impressive when given the puny dimensions of Great American Ballpark. Still, it’s a unit that should both anticipate heavy regression and yearn for the return of Wood, whose recent-year track record stands apart from each of his potential rotation mates.
The latest on a few other NL franchises…
- The Brewers and Mets were the teams most connected to Gio Gonzalez in the rumor mill before the lefty agreed to sign with Milwaukee on Thursday. Gonzalez confirmed Saturday that the Mets were indeed the other club pursuing him, per Tom Haudricourt of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “The Mets were in there but they have such a great rotation. The Brewers met my expectations and needs,” Gonzalez said. “Either way, it was a win-win for me. Two great teams were coming at you. It came down to wants and needs with Milwaukee. I played with them last year so I had the feel for what they’re trying to do.” While Gonzalez lauded the Mets’ rotation, he nonetheless may have been an upgrade for New York. The Mets have been running out the much-maligned Jason Vargas as their fifth starter, after all, yet they only viewed Gonzalez as a marginal-at-best upgrade over him, Mike Puma of the New York Post tweeted this week. Their bearishness on Gonzalez helped pave the way for the 33-year-old to rejoin the Brewers, with whom he performed well after they acquired him from Washington last August. Now, Gonzalez will slot back into a Brewers rotation that entered Saturday with the NL’s worst ERA (5.77). His first outing of the year will come Sunday against – you guessed it – the Mets.
- Banged-up Pirates outfielders Corey Dickerson and Lonnie Chisenhall aren’t recovering as hoped. Dickerson felt tightness in his strained right shoulder while throwing from 110 feet Saturday, and Chisenhall’s now dealing with left calf tightness that has forced the team to stop his rehab assignment, according to Bill Brink of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. It’s a new issue this year for Chisenhall, who started the season on the IL because of a broken hand. However, it’s all the more troubling because Chisenhall – then with the Indians – missed large chunks of the previous two seasons because of calf problems in both legs.
- The Braves have placed reliever Jesse Biddle on the IL with a right thigh bruise and right calf strain, Mark Bowman of MLB.com writes. Atlanta recalled righty Shane Carle in a corresponding move. The IL placement continues a difficult stretch for Biddle, who, as Bowman notes, has retired just 10 of the last 23 batters he gone against. The southpaw faced four batters in a loss to the Rockies on Friday and failed to retire any of them, though one reached on an error, and yielded four runs (one earned) on three hits. Biddle has still notched a solid 3.18 ERA in 11 1/3 innings this year, but he has also walked upward of seven hitters per nine and seen his swinging-strike rate plummet from 10.4 percent in 2018 to 6.8 this season.
Hell, Gio might be an improvement over Snydergaard. What is up with him this season?
His xWOBA is so much lower than his actual. He’ll see better results.
copy and paste….Braves bullpen is atrocious. Enough of the front office apologists or ‘developmental’ jargon comments. You guys who make excuses for both are the same who keep making excuses why you girlfriend keeps cheating on you
Hey the Blue Jays are open for business. Come get Ken Giles or Joe Biagini
Keep seeing injured guys “not responding”. What the hell is happening? Players are becoming like glass.
Best guess is that it’s the year round specialization. Playing multiple sports builds muscles that baseball doesn’t, as well as general endurance/stamina.
Just shows you how stupid and cheap the Mets are. Yes, keep running Vargas out there! He’s worth $16 million. He must be good! They don’t make mistakes! Luckily, I’m not a fan of that clown car.
Who wants to join me and go protest at the braves front office?
But the Braves “don’t want to spend just to spend,” and that second round pick loss would be way too much draft capital to surrender.
It’s not just the pick, it’s more the bonus pool slot money they would. In my opinion that is more valuable than the pick itself because if always to over pay or under pay and losing that money would present a problem.
*would lose
Remember people going nuts about how “dumb” the Dodgers were to make that Reds trade?
But how would they ever reproduce all those counting stats? I mean they lost 40+ hrs and rbis and stuff.
Count this… Shut-up.
Yawnnnnnn. Guess you furthered “the inability to replace counting stats myth.”
The season needs to end already. Every game is the same story and yet they are constantly reassured it is only April. The Braves are a bad team. They have no pitching whatsoever. Also, please just drop “Mr. Underpaid” Albies down in the lineup. He is not a good enough hitter to lead off.
U want some whine with your cheese
How do you know he’s eating cheese
Calling Gonzalez a marginal upgrade over Vargas is laughable. Gonzalez wouldn’t have been a season-changing addition, but he certainly (at least on paper) would have been a massive upgrade over the current version of Vargas.
As laughable as bragging about super GM Wagon Wheel who has ZERO experience and is only a good talker for so long. That is until senile Fred tells him, “sorry I’m not putting any more cash in your atm card”. Another season that rips the Mets fans hearts out is unfolding. Enjoy the big slide. The paint will be over by early June. Then you can put on your gang green helmets for the summer.
Kimbrel
Umm
I’m watching the game and Braves bullpen Lost another game ?
Hey alexxxxxx wake up
He doesn’t care he ruined Toronto while he was there so guess he’s trying to ruin atl
It’s officially official, after the worst offseason EVER I can now say I honestly despise the Braves FO and upper management for ruining a good thing and wasting a whole season of baseball.. You’ve been nothing but an embarrassment to this organization and shown you’re not in it for the win. There’s a lot of fans that should be plenty full of eating crow by now and to the ones that just say things about people complaining, you have 0 passion or just don’t understand what it takes to win.
The Braves bullpen IS terrible, but going all the way to “wasting a season” in late April when the team just finished its worst stretch of the season and is 2.5 games out could be an indication that you’re a tad heavy in the passion department. It’s a long season. Some of us with a little more patience understand exactly what it takes to win, and we’ll be looking to see some of it between now and July.
So if the Braves are 10 games out of first come July, and 5 games out of the WC, due primarily to the pen, won’t management say they don’t have a realistic chance of making the playoffs so no drastic moves ate justified at this point and just finish out 2019 as is?
I get that not much stock is put into wins and losses for pitchers anymore, but I still find it hard to believe that 0-3 Tyler Mahle can be described as “stellar.” Forget the record, I have watched him pitch every game. Trust me, he is not “stellar” no matter what the advanced stats say.
I doubt the author has seen Mahle pitch this year. He probably just grabbed the numbers off his BBREF page or fangraphs which doesn’t even have today’s starts included. His FIP and ERA are both going north. I actually saw his last 3 starts and you’re right they were not stellar by any stretch of the imagination. He was a decent fill in.
stellar as far as a guy who wasn’t expected to even contend for a rotation spot in spring.
I said it when the Reds made that trade, why? Not only did they take on the Dodgers headaches they sent decent prospects. Would they really have been worse off just riding out the Bailey contract? It just seems with the majority of the trades the Reds make they end up on the losing end.
Roark, Sonny Gray, Castillo, and Suarez trades seen to have worked out really well.
I know you’re not bringing Sonny Gray into the conversation. Let’s talk Chapman, Cueto, just to name a few.
Revisionist history much? I think Joe is commenting about this past offseason. Which is much more relevant than bringing up Chapman &/or cueto.
I almost agreed with you prospect but you failed to see he included Suarez. If he would’ve stopped at Roark and Gray you would have had a point.
“Revisionist history much?” Dude what are you going on about? I wrote “It just seems with the majority of the trades the Reds make they end up on the losing end” so Joe cherry picks a couple. I can go into all the trades they’ve made over the last 5 years and they’re on the losing end more than not. My original statement was about all their trades and not just a couple.
Ya, but it does suck for them though that the biggest piece of that deal hasn’t even debuted for them yet. I can see at the time that they maybe thought Wood and Puig could be impact pieces on top of what they already had, but I guess that kind of blew up, so far at least.
Taking on Kemp’s money and trying to contend didnt make sense at the time though and looks even worse now.
“Staying healthy” was always at the top of the list of things the Pirates would need to do to contend this year.
Their only plan for losing Marte was “let’s hope we don’t lose Marte”. Melky Cabrerra has started almost every game. Polanco is not healthy and probably wouldn’t be back if not for all of the other injuries.
On the small plus side, overused as he may be, Melky has been pretty good, so no one cares what happens to Chisenhall anymore. Take your time.
Its getting to be re-run after re-run with the ATL bullpen. It was an easy call that ATL would lose if Folty didn’t go 7 . What ATL sees in AJ is a mystery to me, and an even bigger a mystery is why most of the ATL pen is so terrible. All have great stuff but few have any command
It was the same thing last season. Watching AJ Minter pitch was just about the most stressful part of the season. I’ve never seen anybody do so little to become so anointed. At least this season I’m not hearing as many “left-handed Craig Kimbrel” comparisons. Once every few appearances he’s lock down. Most of the time he takes the mound, though, he’s got runners at the corners before he blinks. Every count goes deep. There is usually some great play at a corner infield position to bail him out. The number don’t tell the whole story with him. It’s painful.
This Braves season is becoming unbearable to watch. Same thing, night after night. It’s at the point, where if they actually close one out it’s a surprise. Apologists can play the “nobody’s trading anybody in April” or “It’s still early” cards all they want, but these issues carried over from last year. NOTHING was done about it, other than minimal bargain basement shopping. Casual fans saw something like this coming.
I’m done hoping something is going to change. Viz goes down, I’m thinking, “OK, now we HAVE to do something.” Biddle craps the bed again, I’m thinking, “This HAS to be the last time.” This ‘last year we over performed. We were ahead of schedule.’ mentality from the front office is garbage.
I hate being a MIA fan and seeing Castillo and Paddack just given away and now look at how well they doing. Got Castillo back after the Padres scandal just to trade him for Straily who we released and Paddack for F. Rodney is on a whole nother level
So if the Braves are 10 games out of first come July, and 5 games out of the WC, due primarily to the pen, won’t management say they don’t have a realistic chance of making the playoffs so no drastic moves are justified at this point and just finish out 2019 as is?
Stellar performance by Tyler Mahle ?
.02 WAR, 0-3 W-L, 4.50 ERA
Braves fan here, and I hope the best for Alex Wood. When he’s was traded to the Dodgers for the player that shall not be named made me nauseous. Especially after said so-called committed DV. Good Luck and Get Well Alex Wood!
Why should the Reds expect heavy regression from their pitching? The starters and relievers both have ERAs that are nearly identical to their FIPs. Add that to the fact that they have solid ground ball rates, solid strikeout rates and are not giving up many homeruns due to their increased ground ball rate. They’re middle of the pack in walks but have been limiting them better the past few weeks after a rough first two weeks. They’re bottom third of the league in BABIP so they’ve actually been unlucky so far. I wouldn’t be surprised if they keep it up and the bats finally get going.