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1.) It won't.
Good question. My take right now is that they would like to see him get more starting opportunities. His command was pretty decent but his downfall was allowing hits when he had 2 strikes on several batters. That's the time you want to get batters to chase a pitch outside the zone and his 2 strike pitches caught too much of the plate .
He has 26 career starts. That's basically a full season of starts already. He has a 5.86 ERA as a starter and a 3.89 ERA as a reliever (and much better than that in 2024 as a reliever). I'm not sure this is playing to his strengths.Strummer Jones wrote: ↑08 Apr 2025 10:32 am1.) It won't.
2.) Yes, it IS more acceptable. Because there's a puncher's chance that he'll learn from it and improve it. He's still fairly young. Mikolas is what he is. Nobody's going to even think that Mikolas' best is still to come.
Usually the goal is to win games vs worrying about what even the minimum wage
I don't know why people devalue this so much when talking about him as a starting pitcher prospect. He's not even in his arb years, either. Plenty of time to evaluate!Ronnie Dobbs wrote: ↑08 Apr 2025 10:58 am Cite what you want, but the facts are that he has never been given an actual chance to start regularly, and has been yanked back and forth between the bullpen and rotation with seemingly no plan behind it.
If you give him the year and he is junk, then maybe you can make a final decision. But he's still 25, Bloom apparently loves him, and he's never been given the chance like he has. Besides, while the ERA is ugly, the peripherals are looking good. Keep starting him.
Oh yea, and this is a reset year, or whatever you want to call it. The young guys should play. Probably should have started last year, or even at the end of the year when it was clear we weren't going anywhere, but we blew that opportunity. No need to blow this one.
He was often getting rocked by RHB.An Old Friend wrote: ↑08 Apr 2025 11:42 amI don't know why people devalue this so much when talking about him as a starting pitcher prospect. He's not even in his arb years, either. Plenty of time to evaluate!Ronnie Dobbs wrote: ↑08 Apr 2025 10:58 am Cite what you want, but the facts are that he has never been given an actual chance to start regularly, and has been yanked back and forth between the bullpen and rotation with seemingly no plan behind it.
If you give him the year and he is junk, then maybe you can make a final decision. But he's still 25, Bloom apparently loves him, and he's never been given the chance like he has. Besides, while the ERA is ugly, the peripherals are looking good. Keep starting him.
Oh yea, and this is a reset year, or whatever you want to call it. The young guys should play. Probably should have started last year, or even at the end of the year when it was clear we weren't going anywhere, but we blew that opportunity. No need to blow this one.
And I see and understand the logic in your argument, but I don't think it's that simple. How many of those starts were "Hey, I know you're in the bullpen, but NOT TODAY!!" And how many of them were emergency starts up from Memphis? I'll argue that I don't think these starts are equal.Carp4Cy wrote: ↑08 Apr 2025 10:37 amHe has 26 career starts. That's basically a full season of starts already. He has a 5.86 ERA as a starter and a 3.89 ERA as a reliever (and much better than that in 2024 as a reliever). I'm not sure this is playing to his strengths.Strummer Jones wrote: ↑08 Apr 2025 10:32 am1.) It won't.
2.) Yes, it IS more acceptable. Because there's a puncher's chance that he'll learn from it and improve it. He's still fairly young. Mikolas is what he is. Nobody's going to even think that Mikolas' best is still to come.
Well stated.Strummer Jones wrote: ↑08 Apr 2025 12:35 pmAnd I see and understand the logic in your argument, but I don't think it's that simple. How many of those starts were "Hey, I know you're in the bullpen, but NOT TODAY!!" And how many of them were emergency starts up from Memphis? I'll argue that I don't think these starts are equal.Carp4Cy wrote: ↑08 Apr 2025 10:37 amHe has 26 career starts. That's basically a full season of starts already. He has a 5.86 ERA as a starter and a 3.89 ERA as a reliever (and much better than that in 2024 as a reliever). I'm not sure this is playing to his strengths.Strummer Jones wrote: ↑08 Apr 2025 10:32 am1.) It won't.
2.) Yes, it IS more acceptable. Because there's a puncher's chance that he'll learn from it and improve it. He's still fairly young. Mikolas is what he is. Nobody's going to even think that Mikolas' best is still to come.
Further, I still don't think you can fully argue that you know who a pitcher is after one whole season of starts early on in their career.
-Randy Johnson's first full season of starts--a similar number to Liberatore's, 26 to 28--were pretty uninspiring. Randy had a WHIP around 1.5, and an ERA near 5.
-Tom Glavine's first three years was ho-hum at best.
-Greg Maddux's first full year SUCKED. It was Mikolas bad. And his WHIP was ATROCIOUS.
-Chris Carpenter was pretty mediocre for a long time. He didn't get good until he became a free agent and came here.
-Bartolo Colon's first season was pretty meh.
-Jon Lester through a similar number of starts was pretty mediocre
And I'm sure there are many more. I'm not saying that Libby's the next Glavine or Unit or anything, but baseball history is littered with guys who don't figure it out right away. And I'm 100% certain there are many more that never figured it out. And there's even some who came up, pitched well, and cratered after.
Here's what I see. Liberatore's often had problems maintaining his velo deep into starts. That's a more than fair criticism to make. And this time last year, I would've been right with you in saying that Liberatore's not cut out to be a starter, based on that information alone. We've also seen and criticized Liberatore for falling apart when things got bad. That's fair criticism, too, and criticism I've leveled at Liberatore.
That said, we also have new information. Lib got rocked in the first couple innings yesterday. But then he recovered and pitched pretty well until Oli yanked him and Roycroft allowed a conga-line of runners to score, including one of Libby's. His velo looked pretty good throughout the game, and he carved up his share of batters. Bottom line, he kept us in the game. If Roycroft does his job, and the bats add on one more run, are we having this discussion?
Here's what's different for me. Being able to hold the velo over several innings is good. Being able to take a rough inning and turn around and pitch clean is a thing we see out of Liberatore now. Being able to pitch into/past the sixth in both of his starts and keep the team in the game (and what more do you want out of a fifth starter?) is something he can do now. His underlying stats also suggest that he's due for positive regression. His k/9 is right in line with last year's, and overall better than his career marks. His FiP is in the 2's, suggesting that he's been unlucky. And he's walked nobody through 2 starts--and that's been a particular bug-a-boo with our guys this year.
There's a lot of flaws on this team, but Matt Liberatore ain't one of them.
Mikolas is the worst pitcher in baseball. Libby will only get better for a while. If Libby goes the path of Mikolas then ship him out also.
+1 his development was already stunted from the covid year he missed then he was skipped from A ball to AAA after missing the covid season then they jerked him around between bullpen and rotation his development was screwedAn Old Friend wrote: ↑08 Apr 2025 11:42 amI don't know why people devalue this so much when talking about him as a starting pitcher prospect. He's not even in his arb years, either. Plenty of time to evaluate!Ronnie Dobbs wrote: ↑08 Apr 2025 10:58 am Cite what you want, but the facts are that he has never been given an actual chance to start regularly, and has been yanked back and forth between the bullpen and rotation with seemingly no plan behind it.
If you give him the year and he is junk, then maybe you can make a final decision. But he's still 25, Bloom apparently loves him, and he's never been given the chance like he has. Besides, while the ERA is ugly, the peripherals are looking good. Keep starting him.
Oh yea, and this is a reset year, or whatever you want to call it. The young guys should play. Probably should have started last year, or even at the end of the year when it was clear we weren't going anywhere, but we blew that opportunity. No need to blow this one.
Covid was 5 years agoOzziesfan41 wrote: ↑08 Apr 2025 12:51 pm+1 his development was already stunted from the covid year he missed then he was skipped from A ball to AAA after missing then covid season then they jerked him around between bullpen and rotation his development was screwedAn Old Friend wrote: ↑08 Apr 2025 11:42 amI don't know why people devalue this so much when talking about him as a starting pitcher prospect. He's not even in his arb years, either. Plenty of time to evaluate!Ronnie Dobbs wrote: ↑08 Apr 2025 10:58 am Cite what you want, but the facts are that he has never been given an actual chance to start regularly, and has been yanked back and forth between the bullpen and rotation with seemingly no plan behind it.
If you give him the year and he is junk, then maybe you can make a final decision. But he's still 25, Bloom apparently loves him, and he's never been given the chance like he has. Besides, while the ERA is ugly, the peripherals are looking good. Keep starting him.
Oh yea, and this is a reset year, or whatever you want to call it. The young guys should play. Probably should have started last year, or even at the end of the year when it was clear we weren't going anywhere, but we blew that opportunity. No need to blow this one.
Gee really I had no idea! It doesn’t change the fact in 2019 he pitched in A ball then missed all of 2020 due to covid then in 2021 after missing an entire year he was skipped to starting in AAA missing a year then skipping from A to AAA is a set back in debelopment then they started jerking him between rotation and bullpenecleme22 wrote: ↑08 Apr 2025 12:53 pmCovid was 5 years agoOzziesfan41 wrote: ↑08 Apr 2025 12:51 pm+1 his development was already stunted from the covid year he missed then he was skipped from A ball to AAA after missing then covid season then they jerked him around between bullpen and rotation his development was screwedAn Old Friend wrote: ↑08 Apr 2025 11:42 amI don't know why people devalue this so much when talking about him as a starting pitcher prospect. He's not even in his arb years, either. Plenty of time to evaluate!Ronnie Dobbs wrote: ↑08 Apr 2025 10:58 am Cite what you want, but the facts are that he has never been given an actual chance to start regularly, and has been yanked back and forth between the bullpen and rotation with seemingly no plan behind it.
If you give him the year and he is junk, then maybe you can make a final decision. But he's still 25, Bloom apparently loves him, and he's never been given the chance like he has. Besides, while the ERA is ugly, the peripherals are looking good. Keep starting him.
Oh yea, and this is a reset year, or whatever you want to call it. The young guys should play. Probably should have started last year, or even at the end of the year when it was clear we weren't going anywhere, but we blew that opportunity. No need to blow this one.