April 16-18: Return of the prodigal son Ryan Goins vs Dome Sweet Home

[Randle McMurphy]

Morales is expected back Friday , JD not expected against the Yankees.

Can we send Gift down then when that happens? The guy might be the worst hitter (non-pitcher) in major league history. He's worse than most pitchers too.

[Randle McMurphy]

It’s starting to seem like Teoscar Hernandez might just be good. Got called up last year, hit the cover off the ball. Destroyed spring training. And has once again, done nothing but hit since getting recalled.

We'll see. It's going to be pretty hard for him to be valuable in the majors with a 30% K rate. There are only a few guys over the past decade that were good hitters with that kind of K rate and they all had absolutely massive power (Sano, C. Davis, Dunn, C. Carter, etc.). He'll likely need to reduce his K rate if he wants to be productive at this level.

[vaff87]

It’s starting to seem like Teoscar Hernandez might just be good. Got called up last year, hit the cover off the ball. Destroyed spring training. And has once again, done nothing but hit since getting recalled.

We'll see. It's going to be pretty hard for him to be valuable in the majors with a 30% K rate. There are only a few guys over the past decade that were good hitters with that kind of K rate and they all had absolutely massive power (Sano, C. Davis, Dunn, C. Carter, etc.). He'll likely need to reduce his K rate if he wants to be productive at this level.

Hopefully he can. He will bring more value than those guys in other areas, though.

[BigLeagueChew]

Morales is expected back Friday , JD not expected against the Yankees.

Can we send Gift down then when that happens? The guy might be the worst hitter (non-pitcher) in major league history. He's worse than most pitchers too.

We could. That would make Solarte backup shortstop and make Martin or say.. Pearce play 3rd base if they had to switch during games. Ngoepe is really overmatched at the plate, 3rd string shortstop, he's mostly here because he has options left and Tulo is hurt.

Otherwise they could send Mayza back down to go with 7 bullpen pitchers or Hernandez back to Buffalo if they feel like Ngoepe is still needed.

[Raps in 4]

Third best run differential in baseball (just 1 run behind LAA), lol.

2nd now that LAA got blown out again.

Time to sweep the Skankees.

[Wo1verine]

Morales is expected back Friday , JD not expected against the Yankees.

Can we send Gift down then when that happens? The guy might be the worst hitter (non-pitcher) in major league history. He's worse than most pitchers too.

I think you could be more productive at the plate, Randle!

[Skin Blues]

From Lott's article at The Athletic today, it looks like Gibby is close to making a decision on RF, and possibly giving those AB's to Teoscar. I know it'd be popular with fans, but would be a big mistake. Grichuk is performing exactly as we should expect, if not better. All performance indicators (K%, BB%, Chase Rate, Exit Velocity, and so on) are all pointing toward a 2 WAR right fielder when you take into account his defense. He's chasing less pitches out of the zone without lowering his swing rate on pitches in the zone. He's making better contact than ever before on the pitches he's hitting (2018 FB/LD Exit Velocity Leaderboard), and they simply aren't dropping in. To quickly summarize all of this in a table:



One of these things is not like the others. This is a 26 year old right fielder having probably the best season of his career (during which he's averaged 2.2 WAR per season) and we are possibly on the brink of replacing him due to three weeks of BABIP luck.

[Mehar]

Morales is expected back Friday , JD not expected against the Yankees.

Can we send Gift down then when that happens? The guy might be the worst hitter (non-pitcher) in major league history. He's worse than most pitchers too.

Ryan Goins signed a minor league contract with Kansas City in the off-season. Would have preferred Goins over Gift right now. Gift does not belong in the major leagues.