Luke Weaver hasn’t pitched since Monday due to a sore forearm, and “I think we’d have to push pretty hard to get him ready for Opening Day,” Reds manager David Bell told the Cincinnati Enquirer’s Bobby Nightengale and other reporters. Despite the ominous nature of forearm-related injuries, Weaver’s issue seems to be just soreness, and he might throw a bullpen session in a few days’ time. However, that still doesn’t leave the right-hander with much time to fully build his arm strength in advance of the Reds’ first game on March 30.
Weaver was projected to be Cincinnati’s fourth starter, creating another wrinkle in what was already a battle for the fifth starter’s job. Connor Overton, Luis Cessa, Brandon Williamson, and non-roster invitee Chase Anderson were all in the running for the final rotation job, and two of those pitchers might now earn jobs if Weaver indeed needs to miss any regular-season time. Cessa is also a bit of a question mark for workload-related reasons, as he might need to build up his arm since he hasn’t pitched much as a member of Mexico’s World Baseball Classic team. Even if Cessa doesn’t make the rotation, Bell said the right-hander will still be a member of the Reds’ bullpen.
More from around the NL Central…
- Cubs manager David Ross provided media (including MLB.com) with an update on Seiya Suzuki, as the outfielder continues to recover from an oblique strain. Suzuki will likely need to begin the season on the injured list to make up for his lost Spring Training time, but he has been steadily increasing his workouts, and been taking part in some light baseball activities within the last week.
- Hayden Wesneski has become the favorite for the Cubs’ fifth starter role, The Athletic’s Sahadev Sharma writes, which could mean that Adrian Sampson will begin the season as a depth starter at Triple-A. Wesneski made his MLB debut last season, with an impressive 2.18 ERA, 25% strikeout rate, and 5.3% walk rate over the small sample size of 33 innings. Besides Sampson, Javier Assad is also still in the competition for a rotation job, though Assad hasn’t been amassing innings in spring camp, but rather with Mexico’s WBC team. Sharma feels Assad might also have a path to Chicago’s roster as a reliever rather than as a starter, if Keegan Thompson’s velocity continues to be inconsistent.
- The Brewers have been working Owen Miller out in center field, as the team attempts to give itself another outfield option with Tyrone Taylor injured and top prospect Garrett Mitchell nursing a sore hamstring. “It’s good to get game reps like that. I’ll keep working every day to see as many balls out there as I can,” Miller told MLB.com’s Adam McCalvy. Acquired in a trade from the Guardians over the offseason, Miller has seen action at all four infield positions (but primarily first and second base) over his two MLB seasons with Cleveland, but one Triple-A game in 2021 represents the entirety of his professional experience as an outfielder. Still, becoming even more versatile can only help Miller’s chances of carving out a spot on Milwaukee’s roster.
Hilarious that the Brewers are putting OWEN MILLER in center field when they have Joey Wiemer and Sal Frelick. This is borderline sabotage
With their excellent starting pitching, you’d think they wouldn’t have to do too much to win more than half their games…Just not screw it up, score some runs, which they should be able to do, and hope the bullpen can get the last handful or so outs each game…
If Winker, Yelich, Contreras, Tellez, Urias, and Adames can get things clicking, or at least play up to their standards, combined with their starting pitchers staying healthy, then the Brewers should come out of the Central division.
Amazing pitching but thats a lot of ifs.
Imagine what a juggernaut the Brewers pitching and Cards lineup woukd make…
richardc
With their excellent starting pitching, you’d think they wouldn’t have to do too much to win more than half their games
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I’m not a Brewers fan, but I respect their organization. It’s a little frustrating that they have three potential AS SPs, and two other pretty decent SPs, and not have them invest a little more in the offensive side.
I’m not even a “spend big” type of guy, but teams like the Brewers, Reds, and Angels are screaming out for a little more investment. With that pitching staff, 90 wins should be easy.
The sad part is they wont be able to keep that pitching after their six years are up, if they don’t have to deal them in year five to get some return.
The curse of small markets in today’s MLB.
there’s no reason to hold Frelick down, he could be Rookie of the Year which gets a draft pick now.
no reason to hold Frelick down, he could be Rookie of the Year.
Yeah, the Cubs are going with Bellinger in CF just for his glove. Being strong up the middle defensively with power on the IF & OF corners seems the way to go.
Guess someone at Wrigley has been watching the Cardinals…
Sampson would have to clear waivers to be sent to AAA and THEN accept the assignment as he can be a FA. I highly doubt that will happen as somebody will take a shot with him at least in the beginning of the season. Thompson has pitched 2 of the last 3 days and his velocity seems fine so this is the first I’ve even heard about it. It’s Steele who’s inconsistent right now and his control is certainly lacking. They skipped Steele early because of arm fatigue and he’s definitely behind. But with Asad and Wesneski doing fine and Elias pitching fairly well for Cuba I’m not worried. Sampson still seems good as gone to me.
Sampson has less than 2 years ST and options remaining. as far as my understanding goes, the Cubs can option him without consequence.
Thompson has been at 90-92 mph all spring and was 92-94 last year. It is a concern, and the team said yesterday he may start the season in Iowa.
Sampson has already been released, Picked up, Released and came back. There’s no way he can have any options left. He elected FA last time and surely will again. There’s no way he has any options left.
fangraphs.com/players/adrian-sampson/13339/stats?p…
FG seems to indicate he has options
The kid GM sitting on his hands all winter looks really good now, doesn’t it?
Face it, ownership has given a big middle finger to the fans for 2023, assisted by MLB for the fiasco of a CBA and their mismanagement of getting in bed with the Bally gambling entity which is ironic with their continued treatment of Pete Rose in regards to the HOF as a player.
He IS a hof’er whether the commissioner’s office wants to acknowledge it or not. All baseball fans know that and there’s even some of his landmark items in the hall.
Pete Rose is an awful human being and has no business being associated with baseball now in any way shape or form. People on their “Pete Rose belongs in the Hall” platform really need to do some research as to why baseball hates Pete Rose so much.
Pete Rose being in the Hall and Pete Rose working in baseball again are separate issues, desite people trying to equate them. I don’t think he should ever work in the game again but he is a Hall if Famer as a player.
Ty Cobb was probably a worse human being and he is in there.
Pete Rose the Baseball Player and Pete Rose the Human Being are different things. I agree with Reds on this one. He was a POS and a tool off the field, But as a player he should be in. Now personally I have no feelings one way or the other, And I have no idea whether his gambling issues as a Manager should carry over to his stats as a player. Has it ever ACTUALLY been proven he gambled a s a player or not? I don’t know of many gamblers who just STARTED in their 40’s. It’s usually a much earlier proposition I would think. Now if you could actually prove he gambled as a player then…………..
Pete Rose is a despicable human, he isn’t in the Hall of Fame, unlike Cobb, and doesn’t deserve to be.
If Rose was in the Hall, like Cobb, I wouldn’t say they should kick him out but he isn’t and baseball shouldn’t allow a waste of air like him in, ever, I don’t care what his stats are.
I’d like a fact check also on Cobb being a worse human being.
Yeah a lot of the stories about Cobb are just a bunch of lies, many first told by his illustrious ‘biographer’ Al Stump.
You can’t get much worse than killing a guy. It’s not exactly a secret.
Specifically said “fact check”
Back in 1996, the peer-reviewed journal The National Pastime examined autopsy records and newspaper reports from that time and found no record of any deaths due to blunt-force trauma in Detroit in August 1912. So, sorry, there’s no reason to believe Cobb killed a guy.
If you knew your history, you would know the entitled were often able to suppress items from being printed in the newspaper (instead of newspapers having an agenda like today, the cynical would probably say, but Hearst would probably disagree). The exploits of people such as Babe Ruth and Mickey Mantle among others would not be quiet today because someone would print it.
Proves nothing.
You obviously just want to be contrary behind the anonymity of the internet.
What is going on with Keegan Thompsons velocity? I checked the Cubs page, no mention of concerns this spring and he’s given up zero runs and only 1 hit in four innings so far this spring.
That Wesneski trade is looking quite bad for the Yankees. They really didn’t have a very good trade deadline experience last year.
Wesneski to me is very interesting/puzzling. This site tabs Wesneski as a back of the rotation starter without much swing and miss, watching him pitch however suggest otherwise. His slider is flat out ridiculous at times which was on full display during his immaculate inning.
However, watching Wesneski, I see a guy who regularly misses his spots and misses up in the zone a lot. He hangs a lot of his sliders but hitters still look baffled by them.
It will be interesting to see his career progression, will hitters figure him out or will he settle in and control his pitches better. It does look like at the very least Wesneski will be a highly effective reliever.
If you knew your history, and didn’t pretend to based on one man’s book that was full of lies, you would know:
Ty Cobb wasn’t a racist, his family had a long history of supporting black rights. Stumpf lied about Cobb getting in a fight with a black waiter, it was in fact a white waiter.
Ty Cobb never sharped his cleats, instead wrote the baseball commissioner that player should file their cleats down when they were new to dull the edges.
Ty Cobb never killed anyone.
Ty Cobb never steamed stamps off and reused them and typically replied to young fans mail and signed autographs for them
Teams/players did not hate Ty Cobb
Pete Rose however is in fact a pedophile by his own admission.
Who says it was full of lies? You?
As far as Pete being a pedophile, Dowd even admitted years later the fact checking there was dubious. But given his history with women, it wouldn’t surprise me. Who knows, the girl might have said she was 18 or something like many do.
None of us know what happened in either guy’s case because we weren’t there. Don’t pretend you were.
In any case, none of that has anything to do with HOF qualifications as a player. If you want perfect citizens there, you would have to throw half of them out. A lot of them had a girl in every city in the road even though they were married, among other things you could probably dig up if you knew them well enough.
I don’t recall OJ getting kicked out of the football Hall of Fame either.
Enjoy living your life with your head in the sand, being too lazy and bullheaded to do any research whatsoever.
Btw, since you’re so focused on Roses Hall of Fame credentials:
“shall be chosen on the basis of playing ability, sportsmanship, CHARACTER, their contribution to the teams on which they played and to baseball in general.”
Everything you said is moot.