re: Baseball players providing the best surprises and biggest disappointments after 3 games

Overall, I was happy about the effort the first two games.

My biggest takeaways from the weekend:

1. Cade Doughty is really good and I hope he continues to improve. He is going to be a good one.

2. Jaden Hill - Wow, if he stays healthy, the sky is the limit.

3. Nick Storz - great to see him out there throwing. I hope he can continue to improve. He will be a valuable weapon down the stretch.

Negatives:

1. Gio - looks lost at the plate. Misjudged a ball in the outfield, and just looked out of sync. I hope Hampton gets a start this week.

2. Dugas - looked hesitant in both the outfield and at 2B. Hopefully he can continue to improve.

3. CJ Willis - Where are you?

I can't wait to watch New Mathis this season. Everything I've read about the guy leads me to think we have a masher at the hot corner and nobody realizes it yet.

Like you, my favorite thing about opening weekend is being selective about what I decide to grossly overreact over, and what I decide to say “hey, it’s february” about. I reserve the right to do both.

I don't want to overreact to the positive, or negatives, too much. Hopefully Mainieri doesn't either, but I don't think he will. There will probably be a lot of tinkering with this lineup in midweeks, as usual. Then from there, the weekend lineups will begin to slowly take shape.

Here's what I'm going to guess happens in the two midweek games.

1. Beloso stays at first.
2. Doughty stays in the lineup. Once at second, and I'm calling once at third.
3. Mathis spends a game at SS.
4. Hampton starts at least once in CF.
5. Toups starts at least one in LF.
6. Milazzo catches one of the midweeks.

quote:

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There is no one on this team who has a prayer of supplanting Beloso at first

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Idk why I even typed that.

I was about to go through them all, position by position, then changed my mind and didn't erase Beloso.

If I were setting the lineup I would have Bianco in LF and Cabrera in RF with

Toups, Gio, and Hampton battling for that CF spot.

The DH duty can be anyone with Garza catching and Garza when Milazzo is catching.

Yea he’s closer to getting playing time than I thought with the lack of assertiveness out of Gio and Dugas

Mathis didn't qualify as a surprise for me. He really only hit the ball hard once, as he had a couple of lucky hits. I was expecting a better weekend from him, after all the raving I've heard about him, but one weekend isn't enough for me to call him a disappointment. He just was a little bit off on his timing.

Other guys looked lost up there, but those particular guys kind of did what I expected, unfortunately. A lot of inexperienced guys needing more time, and others like Hal who have a history of hitting struggles.

Milazzo's hitting, though a small sample size, was a surprise. He seems to have a better idea at the plate, right now, than some of the guys who came in with much more fanfare. His ceiling isn't as high, but he showed a better eye.

I was disappointed in Marceaux's lack of command. He looked like first half Marceaux, from last year, again. I had heard that he ditched the curve in favor of a slider that was supposed to be sharper. I saw no evidence of a sharp slider. Not saying it doesn't exist, but since we're making one week observations, this was the biggest disappointment for me.

Edit- I should add that balls popped into the outfield do not qualify as quality contact, no matter what the exit velocity is, in my book. That's a very misleading stat. But Mathis was close. He'll be fine.

If there is a sport you can’t draw conclusions after 3 games I’ll say baseball is it,

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He had three of the top 7 hardest hits of the weekend for LSU per Statcast data lol

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I guess you forgot to read what I specifically said about exit velocity. Statcast measures the velocity off the bat, even if you hit the ball straight up. He only squared up one ball. Everything else was either a bloop, a roller, or hit high and shallow into the outfield. As I said, I do not consider that quality contact.

So if you want to split hairs with me for the sake of being a contrarian, I'll just say he only squared it up once. He got way under the ball a lot, as he was taking some big upper cuts. I think he may have been a little over anxious. I'm certainly not worried about him, long term. But this thread was about weekend observations.