It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out Brad Lincoln was going to have his hands full Tuesday night with the Astros. And right off the bat you wouldn’t know they were the weakest hitting team in baseball as they scored a run off a Bourn single off Lincoln’s glove, he then stole second, went to third on Keppinger line out to right, and scored on a Berkman ground ball to Walker at second with our infield playing back.
And it was all downhill from there.
Six of the next thirteen batters reached on him (.462 OBA) and four of those came around to score on two home runs, a walk, two singles, and a double allowed. The only outs he recorded during that stretch were from batters who chased his stuff mostly off the plate resulting in weaker ground balls to the left side.
I saw one good changeup thrown out of four, I saw several overthrown curves as well as a few tight ones, I saw a 90-92 MPH fastball that touched 93 when he threw the four-seamer, and I saw below average command on all his pitches. The only two games he even looked remotely competitive in were one against Huntington’s ex-club, the Indians (for that’s worth), and the other against an extremely flat Cubs lineup at the time. In those two games he had a combined 2.84 ERA.
Away from Huntington’s ex-boss and the Cubbies who we must have agreed to play dead against us in 2010 as part of the Ramirez trade, he has a 7.04 ERA, allowed 20 runs and 18 earned runs, 28 hits, and struckout just 6, in 23 innings. He’s not fooling anybody.. not even the pitchers he is facing. Nobody. And that’s better shown by these numbers..
.. first 25 pitches thrown: batters have an OPS over 1 .. even more incredible, they have a 1.070 OPS against him the second time through the order. He’s making Ohlendorf look like Nolan Ryan in that regard.
What is so frustrating about all this is that any evaluator with a brain should have recognized Lincoln’s short comings in triple-a.. he had to develop another pitch, he needs to work on commanding his offspeed pitches, and he needs to work on controlling the game.. he lets it get away from him too fast. He’s simply not ready to be in Pittsburgh.
We’re ruining an asset.
And how about Alvarez? He opens in Pittsburgh with a strikeout every other at bat through his first 39 plate appearances while hitting a buck-fourteen, and then in came the Cubs and Huntington’s ex-boss and he magically starts hitting at a .950 OPS rate striking out 50% less often. As soon as they leave, he’s back to striking out again every other at bat and hitting near the Mendoza line.
And it’s so obvious he flies open on offspeed stuff away that it’s amazing he doesn’t strike out even more often than he does now. Give film a little more time to travel around the league and he will.. go to the bank on it. I keep saying he needs to be developing in Indy and I can’t stress that enough – we’re risking failure with him just as we are with Lincoln. The only thing Alvarez has going over Lincoln is that he has some tools to make a difference if he gets better instruction whereas Lincoln simply lacks the tools to be effective at this level.
And you know what’s really odd about all this? Bob Nutting is allowing these assets to be used and abused the way they are. We’re a rebuilding club developing at the major league level and the last thing in the world we need to be doing is shortening our time of control over these assets when they aren’t ready to succeed at this level. It’s like throwing a few million dollars on the street just for the heck of it. Why not let them simmer in 3A and push their development?
I. Don’t. Get. It.
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Put packages together that gets Steven Drew from the D’backs using Maholm. Let’s get a real shortstop who is a clutchy kind of guy and who can also glove the ball at reasonable levels. He’ll be expensive over the next few years, but so what? The only thing I don’t know enough about is his medical history but all that would do is drive the price down if he has some issues. This has to get done – the D’backs have been all over us for pitching since January and now that Drew seems to be available is the time to get it done.
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Ten strikeouts against Wandy frikin’ Rodriguez. PUH-leeeeaaasseee.
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Cutch needs to go back to the top of the order and then we need to build around him there. Drew would be an excellent number two hitter if we picked him up. I’m not in the camp that believes Tabata is ready to handle leadoff quite yet.. maybe he’ll be ok over time but he’s just not ready yet. Bury him in the six hole with Milledge behind him for a couple hundred AB and then let’s revisit the idea.
Or here’s another idea if we picked up Drew.. how about Cutch, Walker, then Drew? Go look at Drews leverage in clutch situations - he’s off the charts.. sort of how Milledge has been doing. Throw Alvarez in the four hole with Jones behind him then Milledge and BAM.. we might actually score some runs.
We badly need to think out of the box, like Alvarez batting #3 against right-hand pitching.
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I wish we had stretched Carrasco out and had him start this year. We missed the boat there. He could have taken up some innings over the first half and then settled back into a relief role over the second half.
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I remember hearing something lately about how Tim Alderson’s velocity was improving.. well, he was mauled Tuesday night: 8 runs, 9 hits, and 3 walks and couldn’t make it out of the 4th. Bad outing or just a bad pitcher? You know my feeling.
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Jeff Clement was back at first ending his one day stint as a backup catcher resting Kratz. Clement went 3-5 against a very poor Louisville pitching staff. Good for him.
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How about Nathan Baker’s work for West Virginia Tuesday?
Now that’s sad to see..
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“The group headed by Chuck Greenberg and Nolan Ryan agreed to give up their exclusive negotiating rights so that bidding could be re-opened for the [Rangers].” — ESPN
Ouch. Ouch. Ouch.
I love ya Chuck but sometimes I wonder what the hell you are doing.
Original Story:
http://newbucs.com/2010/07/06/brad-li...
