NL Central Discussion

[Frisbee Slider]

Starting a thread for NL Central chatter:

Pirates on their way to 5-2 start.

Buy or sell: Pittsburgh finishing third in the NL Central with record above .500?

[adambr2]

Hard sell 

[wiguy94]

Sell. Sell. Sell. If Bryan Reynolds keeps up his hot start, someone is going to trade the farm for him.

[sveumrules]

Right now the various projections have the bottom three in the NLC with the following win totals…

FanGraphs
CHI (78) PIT (76) CIN (71)

538
CHI (77) PIT (73) CIN (70)

BPro
CHI (76) PIT (73) CIN (70)

I’d still be selling on both, but they aren’t that far behind the Cubs for 3rd and a number of teams beat (or underachieve) their projections by eight plus wins every season so it’s not too far out there.

The Reds on the other hand…

[KeithStone53151]

The pirates have a fair amount of young talent that could get rolling at any point. The pirates have plenty of time on Reynolds so I doubt they move him. I would buy a third place finish, the over 500 part is where the question comes in. I could see the cubs and pirates in the mid 70s battling for third 

[Brock Beauchamp]

18 hours ago, Frisbee Slider said:

Starting a thread for NL Central chatter:

Pirates on their way to 5-2 start.

Buy or sell: Pittsburgh finishing third in the NL Central with record above .500?

Super hard sell. 

[csbysam]

I’ll be a contrarian here and say I’m buying on the pirates. Hitting looks good but pitching needs some work. Have some exciting prospects that could be called up soon. If they get momentum and some fan support I could see them doing pretty decent this year, 

[TheAnalytics]

Seems like the Pirates have between a one in six and one in four chance of ending up over .500 according to Fangraphs. Feels like they could have some things go right and sneak into the low-mid 80s. 
 

Hot start for the Crew has the division at a coin flip going forward. 

[Frisbee Slider]

37-year old Carlos Santana drives in 36-year old Andrew McCutchen, 1-0 early lead for Pirates.

McCutchen with .946 OPS through 21 AB.

[sveumrules]

Sounds like Oneil Cruz fractured his left ankle in a play at the plate today.

[Fear The Chorizo]

1 hour ago, sveumrules said:

Sounds like Oneil Cruz fractured his left ankle in a play at the plate today.

Yep, and he's likely done for the season...I get the homeplate sliding rule was put into effect largely to protect catchers from injury, but this play is one rare reason why I wish a baserunner didn't have to slide on a play at the plate.  At minimum if you slide into home feet first it shouldn't be with the intent of trying to touch the plate with your feet first - just way too much that you could potentially catch a cleat on weird and severely injure yourself going straight for the plate.  Much safer play to actually slide head first or try a feet first slide off to the side while trying to sneak your hand over the plate. Its a shame for Cruz and the Pirates.

 

 

[wiguy94]

10 minutes ago, Fear The Chorizo said:

Yep, and he's likely done for the season...I get the homeplate sliding rule was put into effect largely to protect catchers from injury, but this play is one rare reason why I wish a baserunner didn't have to slide on a play at the plate.  At minimum if you slide into home feet first it shouldn't be with the intent of trying to touch the plate with your feet first - just way too much that you could potentially catch a cleat on weird and severely injure yourself going straight for the plate.  Much safer play to actually slide head first or try a feet first slide off to the side while trying to sneak your hand over the plate. Its a shame for Cruz and the Pirates.

 

 

I think part of the issue is he moved closer to fair territory in an attempt to make the throw home more difficult. The outside of the plate was open for a slide but he slid towards the inside of the plate and additionally slid late as well. 

[AdvantageSchneider]

1 hour ago, wiguy94 said:

I think part of the issue is he moved closer to fair territory in an attempt to make the throw home more difficult. The outside of the plate was open for a slide but he slid towards the inside of the plate and additionally slid late as well. 

That play seemed very similar to the play when JJ Hardy broke his ankle with a late slide into home against the phillies.  I'm wondering if at some point teams will start teaching players to just run through home plate similar to first base.  

[brewcrewdue80]

4 hours ago, sveumrules said:

Sounds like Oneil Cruz fractured his left ankle in a play at the plate today.

Seen that. Not sure what he was attempting to accomplish with his slide.  Ran down line then slid inside directly into the the Catcher for an easy out.   Tough loss. Cruz is an intriguing player.  Think he could have a massive season with the Pirates at some point.  Pittsburgh is my small market team I want to see some success at times.

 

[Fear The Chorizo]

9 hours ago, AdvantageSchneider said:

That play seemed very similar to the play when JJ Hardy broke his ankle with a late slide into home against the phillies.  I'm wondering if at some point teams will start teaching players to just run through home plate similar to first base.  

With the current rule in place for plays at the plate, I don't think they can just try to run through home plate without sliding.

[KeithStone53151]

12 hours ago, sveumrules said:

Sounds like Oneil Cruz fractured his left ankle in a play at the plate today.

The over 500 talk went from very unlikely to...nope...very quickly

[KeithStone53151]

7 minutes ago, Fear The Chorizo said:

With the current rule in place for plays at the plate, I don't think they can just try to run through home plate without sliding.

I think you can so long as you don't initiate contact. If Cruz kept running and tried to like sneak a foot in while going around the catcher i think that's fine...but I'm not certain. I didn't really see anything glaringly wrong with the play. It all happened so fast, how unusual for a catcher to need to jump to catch a high throw then come down for the tag. What led to the injury is poor sliding form from Cruz.

[Jake McKibbin]

6 minutes ago, KeithStone53151 said:

I think you can so long as you don't initiate contact. If Cruz kept running and tried to like sneak a foot in while going around the catcher i think that's fine...but I'm not certain. I didn't really see anything glaringly wrong with the play. It all happened so fast, how unusual for a catcher to need to jump to catch a high throw then come down for the tag. What led to the injury is poor sliding form from Cruz.

I think the Catcher was giving Cruz some verbal... compliments, and Santana took issue with it? But yeah it seemed a poor slide, and much better diving head first on the outside to slip a hand in as you go past

[wiguy94]

8 minutes ago, Jake McKibbin said:

I think the Catcher was giving Cruz some verbal... compliments, and Santana took issue with it? But yeah it seemed a poor slide, and much better diving head first on the outside to slip a hand in as you go past

Yeah the catcher was barking at Cruz about the slide being really late. It ended up being bad for Cruz, but it easily could have gone the other way and injured the catcher. You could hear the catcher say "What the f*ck was that".

If you rewatch the play, Cruz was running towards the inside part of the plate despite starting outside the line. He likely did this to make the throw home from third more difficult but the catcher wasn't blocking the outside edge of the plate. Cruz could have easily stayed outside and slipped a hand in and this all would have been avoided.

 

[Fear The Chorizo]

It's just an unfortunate play all around that started with a bad decision by Cruz to take off for home on a batted ball right towards him and the 3B - basically the one spot on the field where he shouldn't try to score from.

 

[owbc]

I feel terrible for Pirates fans...it's the first time in ages they are fielding at least a somewhat competitive team and this happens the second week of April. Brutal. 

 

[brewcrewdue80]

Well Travis D'Arnaud is currently in concussion protocol on a play at the plate. He happened to not catch the ball from a 1st baseman infield in play. The result was him falling fully across home plate. The runner Odor smacked him good with his knees or legs as he ran in standing vs sliding.  Not much Odor could have done avoiding this as TDA was positioned in front 1st base side to receive the throw. The throw was errant he probably seen that peaking and didn't think TDA was about to be fully outstretched across all of home plate.

Just a note on the run through home plate vs slide thought. Baseball still had an injury occur.

[BruisedCrew]

I just saw the replay of the Cruz play. 
 

You can barely call that a slide it was so late. He looked more like he was aiming for the catcher than the plate. 
 

IMHO, if he had slid to the back side of the plate (either head first or feet first) with the high throw he could have scored without colliding with the catcher. 
 

I can see why the catcher was upset

[nate82]

Still early in the season but the Cardinals rotation is looking really bad and I don't think Wainwright coming back is going to help all that much.  Also Wilson Contreras doesn't look all that good so far early in the season. 

[Brewcrew82]

1 hour ago, nate82 said:

Still early in the season but the Cardinals rotation is looking really bad and I don't think Wainwright coming back is going to help all that much.  Also Wilson Contreras doesn't look all that good so far early in the season. 

Anybody could’ve seen how bad the Cards rotation was heading into the season…Except for the national analysts who collectively went gaga over them.