Lynnings, Victor, and Sags Oh My

I’m not proud of this headline. Okay yes I am.

I have several thoughts that don’t necessarily deserve its own post, but I want to share them, so today you get a grab bag of ideas. Plenty to talk about.

Thomas Saggese

I’ve written about Thomas Saggese before, and if you’re interested in more of his history, I go into more detail in this piece a little bit after last year’s trading deadline. Something I will echo here though is that he’s incredibly easy to root for. Rob Rains wrote a profile of him in spring training, and I recommend reading the entire piece.

When Saggese was 8-years-old, his mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. She went to participate in clinical trials in New York a couple years later and after a week, she wanted her son with him so he flew out to New York to be with her for a few months. He was happy if he was playing baseball and with his mom.

His Bible growing up was “The Science of Hitting” by Ted Williams, gifted to him by a family friend in 8th grade. His mother convinced his dad to get an apartment so he could go to a better baseball school, but he moved back when his mother’s health declined after two years. She died the summer before his senior year.

He wraps his wrist with tape and writes more “More” on it, because whenever he told his mom he loved her, she would respond with “Love You More.” Okay, you can stop cutting the onions while reading this, here’s some nuggets of his first two games.

While he has gone for 0-7 with 3 strikeouts, there has been a lot of good. For one thing, he hit his hardest hit ball of the season in his first ever game, majors or minors, when he lined out to left field at 108.4 mph. He also lined out in his second game, this one was hit 99.6 mph. And for good measure, one of his other batted balls was hit 93.5 mph. So he’s making good contact, when he makes contact.

On his only weakly hit ball, Saggese also displayed surprising speed. Obviously a sample of one is not reliable, but he ran down the line on a grounder to 3rd base at a speed of 29.5 feet per second, which would be tied for the 22nd fastest runner in baseball. So he’s not slow.

Then there are the defensive highlights already. You can kind of see why the Cardinals have tried him out at shortstop, aside from needing someone to play short whenever Masyn Winn needs a day off, from seeing this plays at 2B.

Those are not easy plays! Diving play to stop a 112 mph ball is ridiculous.

Victor Scott

There’s been some debate about whether Victor Scott should play in what are effectively meaningless games for the sake of his development. Basically, give him the Masyn Winn treatment or currently the Jordan Walker treatment. There’s a very important distinction – for me, not sure about the Cardinals – between those two and Scott: Scott still needs to hit a little bit in AAA.

Say what you will about the disappointment with Walker in AAA, but he has a 90 wRC+ and 94 wRC+ along with a 115 wRC+ in the majors last year. Winn had a 108 wRC+. Scott is not the same. He has a 64 wRC+ in AAA. His hitting line in the majors was an improvement, but came with some red flags that I can’t see working long-term, namely not walking at all (4.7 BB%) and striking out a ton (31.8% – this is actually quite a bit worse than his first stint, believe it or not). He had a couple flyballs that left the park at a higher rate than he has ever shown in the minors (10.8 HR/FB%).

I am happy he made massive strides, but there’s still work to do, and it should start at the AAA level. Michael Siani needs MLB reps more than Scott does. My plan for next season would be to stick with Siani as a platooned CFer (likely have to get a right-handed CF in free agency). If Siani falters, then go with Scott. If Scott forces his way onto the roster by hitting in AAA, go with Scott. If Siani gets injured, call up Scott.

Siani is currently more MLB ready than Scott and I can’t see how that won’t still be true on Opening Day next year. Maybe Siani is as good as he’s shown this year (1.2 fWAR in about half a season, not being platooned at all), maybe he’s not. He’s at least an effective placeholder for Scott. Hell maybe they’ll both be part of the future, who knows. A defensive outfield of Siani and Scott and who cares would be pretty fun to watch. (Nootbaar’s pretty good defensively as the likely third member of that bunch.)

Lance Lynn

Okay so here’s the thing. I proposed this theory when Lynn went on the injured list, a theory I will wholeheartedly believe if Lynn has two more decent to good starts. That theory is that Lynn’s back was acting up and causing him to pitch terrible in his four prior starts to his IL stint.

Convenient narrative? Absolutely. I will not dispute that. But three of his four starts were bad from an advanced stats standpoint, and the other was more okay than bad. He somehow got good earned runs results in three of them. Prior to those four starts, Lynn had a 3.59 ERA, 3.91 FIP, and 4.12 xFIP. If you throw in yesterday’s game, that’s straight up an above average pitcher. Like clearly too.

If you couldn’t tell, his 11 ER performance kicked off the bad starts. Here’s why I suspect it: he stopped striking hitters out. A guy with a career 23.6 K%, who struck out 23.6% of batters last year, who has struck out 22.7% of batters in all his other starts, stops striking out hitters right before he hits the injured list and these facts aren’t related at all? We already know for a fact that his final start before hitting the IL affected him.

Like here’s a stat: Lynn has made 22 starts this season. He has struck out at least 5 batters in 15 of those starts, and at least 3 batters in 19 starts. In three of the four games prior to hitting the IL, he struck out 2, 2, and 3 batters. As soon as he returns from the back injury, he strikes out 7 batters. Like I said, this theory will hold more weight for me if he strikes out hitters in his final 2-3 starts.

I 100 percent think Lynn’s “badness” is way overexaggerated, like he’s not the most fun pitcher to watch (except when yelling obscenities), but I do think picking up his option is more debatable than most people think. With yesterday’s start, with a full 32 starts, he’d be a 1.8 fWAR pitcher in about 150 innings. In theory, he’d probably be worth his $12 million option.

I’m not even advocating they should pick it up by the way. But in a different situation with a more barren farm, with more need for innings at the MLB level, it’d be kind of a no brainer to pick it up, and I don’t quite think people realize that. The reason they should reject it is because they already have four guys locked in, and a better version of Lynn who also has an option. Plus the starters knocking on the door.

But the Lynn signing was actually a success.