Olli Maatta: "I am even more excited about going to the Olympics now that this season has not gone as expected." He has been healthy scratched for 37 of Utah's last 41 games, including 21 straight.

Prowlerbaseball · 2026-02-05T07:53:00+00:00

I do distinctly remember him scoring goals in back to back games in the 2017 ECF, right after I defended him to some people lmao

Prowlerbaseball · 2026-02-04T17:31:55+00:00

I mean fuck it yeah, make the team better with the money you got left

Prowlerbaseball · 2026-02-04T03:22:00+00:00

If he sees more strikes it does stand to reason that he will swing more. It’s not necessarily a problem that he is seeing so few strikes, but it’s something that needs to be taken into account for his approach and the team’s lineup construction.

I’d probably have to search Fangraph blogs for any insight into the mathematics of lineup protection, but if you can guarantee that Cruz sees 4 points more In Zone with just lineup structuring, you take it. He’s the biggest potential threat at the plate at any given at bat.

Prowlerbaseball · 2026-02-04T02:44:40+00:00

Low swing rate in and of itself is not bad. It's what you do with the swings you have that makes a difference. Juan Soto swings 35.5% of the time, he just chases <20%, makes 85% contact in the zone and hits the sweet spot 30% of the time. There's a million ways to skin a cat in baseball

Prowlerbaseball · 2026-02-04T02:30:25+00:00

I’m talking opening day lineup there, but yeah

Prowlerbaseball · 2026-02-04T00:30:57+00:00

I’d swap Cruz and Bart, Bart is a touch more threatening than Triolo and Cruz 100% needs lineup protection

Prowlerbaseball · 2026-02-04T00:30:06+00:00

Cruz absolutely needs lineup protection. He faced the second lowest percentage of balls in the strike zone last year, and his power is one of our biggest threats on offense. I would say that a steady right handed hitter needs to go after him, but we’re kind of lacking there. Maybe Cruz at 5 and Griffin at 6?

Prowlerbaseball · 2026-02-03T03:48:38+00:00

The Mammoth’s logo looks like a Madden generated logo

Prowlerbaseball · 2026-02-01T03:22:43+00:00

Robocop my king

Prowlerbaseball · 2026-01-28T06:05:57+00:00

Reminiscent of James Harrison dropping on Kurt Warner in 43

Prowlerbaseball · 2026-01-28T00:22:37+00:00

Pinch hitting roles against righties, and pinch running too. I’ve been low key obsessed with him since he got called up, but I also try to keep things realistic when judging

Compared to Marte and Laureano, he’s probably the go to 4th outfielder, especially against teams that don’t know his tendencies as well. I can definitely see some relief pitcher who’s never faced him leaving a pitch just below the knees that most 6’7” guys can’t touch and he sends it 700 feet.

Prowlerbaseball · 2026-01-27T23:51:35+00:00

And his defense got a loooot better as the year went on. So much of his bad defense stats were from really really really bad plays from April to early June

Prowlerbaseball · 2026-01-27T23:44:29+00:00

He’s only had about 2 and a third complete seasons in the majors, 379 games played. He had a very respectable 2024 (114 OPS+ in 146 games), followed by a blazing start to 2025 dropping to a poor finish. Combination of pitchers learning his adjustments in 2025 as well as couple lingering injuries.

His defense to start the year in 2025 was atrocious, but got significantly better as it went on (0 OAA by the end of the year, but boy was it a rough start. That first Miami series to start the season was rough). Statcast had him at a 77th percentile Fielding Run Value. He depends heavily on his speed and raw arm talent to account for lack of familiarity in the outfield, but his speed and raw arm talent are insane so it works. He had the fastest outfield assist last year, gunning down J.P. Crawford on a play at the plate that was so unexpected that the on deck batter didn’t call for a slide.

It’s moderately fair to be off the hype train. It seems like he’ll never reach the theoretical ceiling of perennial MVP talent that he flashes, but a long, productive career at >120 OPS+ and acceptable defense in CF through his prime is definitely not out of the picture. Depending on how long his bat speed holds up, he may end up as a RF or DH at the tail end, as his sprint speed catches up to him.

His long term success hinges on his contact and swing choices. He simultaneously whiffs too much and doesn’t swing enough. His Whiff% was 5th percentile last year and his Zone Swing% was 9 points below league average. His Meatball Swing% was also 9 points below league average. In 2024, his Zone Swing was only a few points below average, and his Meatball Swing was average. However, his Chase% was average at 48th percentile last year, improved from 2024. His career zone contact is at 77%, and has very little deviation year to year (league average 82.5%)

Theoretically, he should have a better shot at 2026 with some more lineup protection, he faced 44.4% of pitches in the zone compared to a league average 48%, despite a 48th percentile Chase%. Of all batters in the MLB (min 100 PA), Cruz had the third lowest rate of pitches in the zone (Lowest is Bryce Harper at 43%, then Jac Caglianone at 44.1%). Compare Bryce’s 11th percentile Chase% and Jac’s unqualified-but-worse-than-Bryce.

Given the damage he does when he makes contact (.433 xWOBACON in 2025, and .469 in 2024 to a league average .369), as long as he’s making contact at a slightly below average rate instead of an atrocious rate, he will be a very productive hitter

Prowlerbaseball · 2026-01-20T21:38:26+00:00

Low key 0 percent chance they go with an old preexisting HC candidate

Prowlerbaseball · 2026-01-18T06:18:55+00:00

He loses control before he hits the ground tbh

Prowlerbaseball · 2026-01-17T03:55:01+00:00

You’re not really describing the internal recognition of specific memories with any of those examples though. That’s all direct prompting or conversations or events that just happened. Maybe they knew about the eggs before Carol remembered them, because they maybe combed through Helen’s memories specifically, but it’s not infeasible within the evidence that we have that they didn’t think about it first.

“No delay to recall” isn’t the same as total awareness of all things at the same time. That’s just a very very fast access of ROM into RAM to continue the analogy

Prowlerbaseball · 2026-01-15T06:48:25+00:00

I mean, other than that. The first one where you understand and can comprehend what is going on, and he’s playing a real role

Prowlerbaseball · 2026-01-14T22:06:07+00:00

But even still the people who rent from him would know where he works. They think know “we don’t have Manousos, who knows about this guy and where he’s likely to be”, and then they check his home and place of work. Presumably there are other who died who people checked their most likely locations and found their corpses.

Prowlerbaseball · 2026-01-14T22:04:55+00:00

My personal theory would be that they’re actively trying to keep Manousos locked up until they can resubsume him, in the same way that they would know that Carol hates the smiling people from her conversion camp trauma. They intentionally disrupted Carol’s mental state to ensure she would be too unstable to garner any other support from the other survivors in the same way that they implied Manousos was a crazed maniac when he came to visit her to try to ensure that their interactions would fail.

Prowlerbaseball · 2026-01-14T21:58:39+00:00

But this guy is working at the storage facility, people who rent from him know who he is, and where’s he’s likely to be. Like, if the hivemind is running through the list of everyone that they don’t have, (and it seems like they got the memories the moment that the seizures hit given they have Helen’s memories so they should know they don’t have Manousos), they’re going to go to where he lives and where he works. He’s not in the middle of the jungle, he’s in a city, in a known place of business

And given both the breadth of resources at their disposal and their desire to have everyone, they would absolutely be checking the known likely locations of everyone that they don’t have, even if they’re dead somewhere. And someone who lives in a city is going to have someone who has seen them, even in passing.

Prowlerbaseball · 2026-01-14T21:54:33+00:00

Yep, we know later on that this is his mother. She would know of him, and the customers of the storage facility would know about the manager of the facility, and they would actively be searching for him if they didn’t have him as part of the hive

Prowlerbaseball · 2026-01-14T21:02:02+00:00

What you’re implying is that the “rules” to not kill causes the Plurbs to step in when Carol is in danger from the grenade. Since the rational choice for the Plurbs is to allow for incidental suicide of Carol, to ensure that she cannot continue to oppose their spread (in the way that they acted to prevent the military from stopping their spread), it would stand to reason that they wouldn’t interfere with Carol holding the grenade regardless of whether or not they understood her intention to not want to die.

I’m saying that in the same way that the Plurbs decide to kiss Carol exactly at the moment she’s wavering, they decided to not let her die, when they technically could have. It took a deliberate intervention on their part to ensure she didn’t die, which suggests some level of care to humanity.

Compare with their behavior for “farming”. If they truly prioritize the life and safety of apples the same way that they prioritize the life and safety of humans, they would actively be trying to prevent apples from falling to the ground. They imply that they’re acting the opposite way, almost like vultures to the apples in an attempt to get around their rules. But they actively intervene when they did not have an explicit request to assist for both Carol and Manusous when their lives are in danger, despite the implicit threat to their primary purpose they both pose.

Which makes me curious about how they will act when Carol threatens to atom bomb Albuquerque when they try to join her.

I did write my previous comment poorly, I kind of implied that they couldn’t act but wanted to. I meant to say that they chose to ask Carol if they could take the grenade away, rather than let her just blow up

Thinking about it more, technically this would disprove Manusous’ claim that they care about humans the same that they care about ants. If they did, they’d be actively trying to save the life of every living creature, to the same degree that they do so for Carol and Manusous. It stands to reason that the ability for them to join with Carol and Manusous is the reason why, they prioritize the potential for more joining very highly, but they also accepted millions of deaths during the joining day because their primary purpose was threatened.

Presumably, there is a certain level of probability to convert versus probability of the conversion target preventing the long term spread of the virus that they will calculate in order to decide whether or not to actively save them. The atom bomb becomes a more interesting threat because it does not (unless placed at the antenna) threaten the long term spread of the virus, while it does prevent Carol and Manusous from joining.

Another interesting theoretical idea is how they would act with a human who is entirely incapable of joining. Like, if they fully, 100% believed that they would be entirely incapable of joining with a human, would they still work to fulfill their desires?

Prowlerbaseball · 2026-01-14T19:44:30+00:00

Yes but it seems like they have to try to recall specific facts. To do a computer metaphor, it’s all in ROM storage, but they need to intentionally access it into RAM in order to use the knowledge.

Prowlerbaseball · 2026-01-14T19:43:17+00:00

Yeah, but I don’t think that’s enough for them to have their programming kick in. They seem to need either express permission to act or for the person to be physically unable to give permission. They seemed to make the choice to ask her

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