Link Report for Sunday 5/22

[Mass Haas]

AUDIO: Shuckers Week In Review with guests Garrett Cooper, Brandon Woodruff and the week's top highlights

[Mass Haas]

Reminder - Monday noontime Timber Rattlers matinee with Devin Williams on the hill on TWC SportsChannel.

 

New Link Report out by late morning...

[molitor fan]

It is almost like Hader was talking directly to Young geezy in his quotes after the game: (I think he is being handled just fine by Brewers)

"I really haven't had a stretch like this before," Hader said. "I really believe participating in the [Arizona] Fall League helped me to redefine my mechanics and my pitches. The biggest thing for me was to remember that feeling from the fall and to carry it over to the season.

 

"That being said, it's been a process. Early in the year, I was having a hard time getting past the fourth inning. Since then, I've made an effort to get contact earlier in the count as opposed to trying to strike everybody out and doing too much. The strikeouts will come and I don't need to make every pitch perfect."

 

Right now we're at a pitch count of about 90," the Maryland native said. "When you're feeling good, you always want to get that extra inning in. There have been a few times when I finished the sixth at around 80 pitches and I wanted to get out there for a little more. But down here, you're building yourself up to play in the big leagues. The goal is to stay healthy and trust in the process so when you do get to the Majors, you're ready to go."

 

Oh, and please read that Diplan piece....very good

[Jose Cardenal1]

I said this in the thread the last time Hader pitched. I don't think he will be promoted until his pitch limit is bumped to 100+. Hader will likely struggle (not necessarily a bad thing) at Colorado Springs and if he isn't allowed to throw more than 90 pitches (89 is his top so far this year) he may have many starts that don't get through the 5th. That wouldn't be good for his development or the AAA club.

[And That]

It is almost like Hader was talking directly to Young geezy in his quotes after the game: (I think he is being handled just fine by Brewers)

"I really haven't had a stretch like this before," Hader said. "I really believe participating in the [Arizona] Fall League helped me to redefine my mechanics and my pitches. The biggest thing for me was to remember that feeling from the fall and to carry it over to the season.

 

"That being said, it's been a process. Early in the year, I was having a hard time getting past the fourth inning. Since then, I've made an effort to get contact earlier in the count as opposed to trying to strike everybody out and doing too much. The strikeouts will come and I don't need to make every pitch perfect."

 

Right now we're at a pitch count of about 90," the Maryland native said. "When you're feeling good, you always want to get that extra inning in. There have been a few times when I finished the sixth at around 80 pitches and I wanted to get out there for a little more. But down here, you're building yourself up to play in the big leagues. The goal is to stay healthy and trust in the process so when you do get to the Majors, you're ready to go."

Thank you.

 

The Brewers are doing what they think is best for Hader at the moment and Josh doesn't seem to be too disagreeable about it. I'm sure he'd love to be promoted, but at the same time he seems to understand why he is where he is. All the rhetoric about this being Hader's third year in AA, not being challenged, etc., is way off base.

 

As is the weird anti-Tom Flanagan thing - player placement decisions are a group effort, right? Tom doesn't sit on a throne and move pawns around on chess board, laughing manically. At least as far as I know. He's actually a really good guy, and quite bright. If he weren't, he would not have been retained (and promoted even) by the Stearns regime.

 

My problem with Reid Nichols never really had to do with player placement. That's not a huge part of a minor league system director's job. What Nichols failed at was long term development vision and communication with his players. I'd like to think that with Nichols gone, what happened with guys like Nicky Delmonico and Tom Wilhelmsen will not happen in the future. And that's how I'll judge Flanagan.

[JohnBriggs12]

Madison Bumgarner made his major league debut at 19, and was in the big leagues to stay midway through his 20 year old season, one in which he logged 193 innings. the previous season he logged 141 innings at age 19. He hasn't missed a single start since. Chris Sale made his major league debut at 21, was used out of the pen for a year, then save for a couple starts here and there, has been in the Sox rotation since. Sale had all of 10 minor league innings before making it to big leagues to stay. Kershaw debuted in the majors two months after his 20th birthday, and has been there ever since, and never missed a start.

 

The difference between those guys and Hader as minor leaguers? Performance-wise, zip, zilch, nothing. Hader's been every bit as dominating as those guys were. No, the difference is that those guys were all first round picks, and Hader was picked in round 19. But if they could go back and re-draft the 2012 draft, is there any doubt Hader is a top 10 or 15?

 

Brewers are babying him, plain and simple. That's not the way to handle talents like his.

[FVBrewerFan]

Maybe because no two players are alike? You mentioned three pitchers who were promoted early, but failed to mention dozens of top pitchers in the league today who were dominant at this stage of development but were NOT brought up.

 

I'll trust the Brewers player development people to make the call on how to handle Hader, rather than promote him to MLB because that's what the White Sox did with Chris Sale.

[TheCrew07]

Madison Bumgarner made his major league debut at 19, and was in the big leagues to stay midway through his 20 year old season, one in which he logged 193 innings. the previous season he logged 141 innings at age 19. He hasn't missed a single start since. Chris Sale made his major league debut at 21, was used out of the pen for a year, then save for a couple starts here and there, has been in the Sox rotation since. Sale had all of 10 minor league innings before making it to big leagues to stay. Kershaw debuted in the majors two months after his 20th birthday, and has been there ever since, and never missed a start.

 

The difference between those guys and Hader as minor leaguers? Performance-wise, zip, zilch, nothing. Hader's been every bit as dominating as those guys were. No, the difference is that those guys were all first round picks, and Hader was picked in round 19. But if they could go back and re-draft the 2012 draft, is there any doubt Hader is a top 10 or 15?

 

Brewers are babying him, plain and simple. That's not the way to handle talents like his.

 

How can you not see that you are using the extreme best case scenario? For every Bumgarner there's 2 or 3 Mark Priors... pitchers with exceptional talent who flamed out because of injury.

 

I wholeheartedly agree that pitch counts and innings limits should be done on a case by case basis, where the actual drop off in velocity and effectiveness is charted for each pitcher, instead of the arbitrary pitch count methods that are used through out baseball.

 

However, to continually use Hall of Fame or near Hall of Fame players as proof of a concept is disingenuous at best. Furthermore any business which would operate on the absolute best case scenario isn't going to be in business very long because sooner or later that kind of exposure comes back to hurt you.

 

The simple truth here is that people are going to see what they want to see because of their own personal agenda. It's laughable to compare Hader to any top MLB pitcher today, he's barely getting through 6 innings on his pitch count. Yes he's filthy, but there's more to pitching than having nasty stuff, though as I've stated many times that's my starting point. I care more about stuff than about velocity.

 

Developing pitching is mostly about patience because so few athletes have gotten any kind of decent coaching along the way. I've told every QB and pitcher I've ever coached that becoming better is a process because in most cases they have to be completely torn down and built back up to break their bad habits. I must text "trust the process" once a week to college pitcher I've been working with the last 2 years, it takes years and thousands of repetitions to fix one self and learn how to throw with accuracy. There's no magic button, no instant fix, it's just hard work and time... a ball, a glove, and a target twice a week in season (on a 7 day schedule) and 3 times a week out of season.

 

I have never understood the fascination with trying to push pitchers around our MiLB forum and still don't, we simply haven't had that kind of talent, and we still don't. HS pitchers like Urias and Fernandez are a handful per generation, as close as we've gotten was Gallardo, and I believe he was handled perfectly as he progressed. You can push them, but then you end up with injuries, which in the past were career killers, and now cost a season or 2. Our college pitchers whom have succeeded haven't been that kind of talent either, they've been projects of varying degrees or pitchers without great stuff who were statistically dominant. Mastering a level of minor league baseball has less to do with the statistical results than it does mastering the skills necessary to compete and have success at the next level. I spent all of last year trying to point that out with Medeiros, I questioned numerous times whether his game would play at higher levels, and it hasn't to this point.

 

Let Hader ride out AA to the break, then promote him to AAA and see how he does against much better hitting competition. Having watched Josh pitch I've already offered my opinion that he's about a 5 inning guy in MLB right now. I could absolutely be wrong, but that's my gut feeling, and there are very few effectively wild starting pitchers in MLB. Edwin Jackson is the most successful recent example, but his career has been a bit of a roller coaster, nor would I use him as any kind of benchmark for starting pitching. I say that as someone who likes Jackson and always have, I wanted to trade to for him or Niemann when he was with the Rays and they had surplus pitching, but that was more about his talent, my soft spot for him, and pitchers like Dave Bush being in the rotation rather than admiring how he pitched.

[BillScottCanRake]

Brewers are babying him, plain and simple. That's not the way to handle talents like his.

 

The Brewers should handle him just like they handled Nick Neugebauer.

[tbbrewers]

Shuckers vs Smokies game 1 Sunday 5-22-16

 

Hader is a gunslinger for sure. A lot of moving parts and he slings it in there. He did not throw one ball the dirt. His ball goes side to side with not very many of them going straight. He topped out at 94(about 4-5 times) and hit 93 about the same. His fastball was normally 88-91. Off speed was 77-85 and changed speeds a lot. The ball straightened out on him some when he maxed out as two of the three hits he gave up were on 93 and 92 mph fastballs. When he lost the zone some in the fourth....he really lost it. Not even close pitches. A double play got him out of that inning. With a tighter strike zone he may not have had the same results today. A lot of chatter from the Smokies dugout on balls that were close. Especially low strikes. Side note he smoked to balls to the outfield, but he stands really close to home plate. I mean right on the inside batters box line. Not sure that is recommended for a pitcher that could be a bit wild.

 

The Shuckers batters missed a lot of curve balls that day. Nottingham hit two more fastballs on his hits and missed on curve balls.

 

Cooper has a good approach at the plate.

 

I am very interested to see how Woodruff does next time out. He has a big time arm too. He was hitting 98 some the night I saw him pitch.

 

Nothing professional about this. Just what I saw.

 

 

Entertaining note:

 

My son had on a Braun shirt and while we were eating one of the club workers was joking around with us and stuff. He then ask us if we thought Braun might wind up with the Cubs and we said maybe. He said some of the people there said there is a possibility it could happen that some people had been around. Then he said he was told the Cubs may get Trout and I was like OK. Oh well...Some much for that information.