SP Roundup Spring Training Edition: 3-9-24 Games

Spring Training has arrived and as I’ve been writing daily notes for myself to recap all spring training starting pitchers, I realized I should publish them on the site for quick access.

I’ll be livestreaming every morning 10am-12pm ET at playback.tv/pitcherlist as I watch all of the starts with y’all and answer all your fantasy baseball questions.

Major SP News To Know

Jameson Taillon was scratched from his Saturday start after feeling tightness in his lower back while warming up. I don’t expect this to be any sort of setback for opening day.

Expected Rotations By Team

Statcast Games – TV

NYM vs. STL.

TOR vs. PHI

BOS vs. TBR

Sean Manaea (NYM) – 4.0 IP, 0 ER, 2 Hits, 3 BBs, 5 Ks. He’s back to sitting 93/94 mph and was able to elevate his fastball, but it also meant elevating his changeup, sweeper, and cutter too. That doesn’t sound good. Because it isn’t. I don’t buy into Manaea’s command and it’s not a road I want to go down.

Steven Matz (STL) – 2.0 IP, 4 ER, 5 Hits, 0 BBs, 2 Ks. I was stunned to see Matz throw a 97.3 mph sinker here, but that fell all the way to 93.7 mph (hey, he reversed the numbers!) while he still doesn’t have a whiff pitch in his changeup or curve (or one slider, you know, the pitch he stopped throwing six years ago because it hurt his elbow) and the line tells you the rest.

Ricky Tiedemann (TOR) – 1.1 IP, 1 ER, 2 Hits, 0 BBs, 2 Ks. His heater and slider combo obviously works when executed (96 mph heater is dope, but it did fall to 93.8 mph once), though I’m a little concerned that he doesn’t have the command to make him a reliable 12-teamer arm. Give him a look yourself, just looking at his body on release and you’ll see how much violent movement there is at the very end with his arm going from the side of his hip, above his shoulder, and to release. It’s so quick and twitchy. Yeah, that’s not what you want – it hinders repeatability and consistency. The Shag Rug is very much present here, while I also didn’t see a third pitch to help him along the way, and throw in the fact that the Blue Jays are highly likely to hold him back at the start of the year (unless they really don’t like Bowden Francis for some reason), we can forget about him for now. Still worth the spec add when he arrives, but he’s not a surefire reliable arm in my view.

Taijuan Walker (PHI) – 2.0 IP, 1 ER, 2 Hits, 1 BBs, 3 Ks. He’s down three ticks on his sinker to just 89.2 mph. What. Yuuuup. Phillies, sign JorMont and move on from Taijuan. Seriously, this is the way.

Kutter Crawford (BOS) – 3.0 IP, 0 ER, 2 Hits, 0 BBs, 2 Ks. Oh hey, it’s a small velocity bump (0.5 mph) that is likely just noise, but a kutter at 1.6 ticks harder for nearly 70% strikes. His command was pretty blegh, though, with his slider and four-seamer swapping places (sliders were stupid high, four-seamers landed low) and I’m going…