2063.3 TWC Releases D-Lab Lineup

[ae37jr]

It's that time of year again. Time to send all the kiddies to the lump and bump factory. In previous seasons we very strict about minimizing risk. We focused on speed, defense and position changes. All while avoiding pitching projects for the most part. We were extremely satisfied with the results. But this year there seems to be a lot of changes to the D-Lab. Defense has gone from easy to hard.

I am actually a bit trepid to even send my players this year. I'm not on the BETA team, run test leagues or examine data from other online leagues. I just know that I didn't like the results when I used medium and hard projects. Seemed like more harm than good was done in long run. But here we go, Gulp. I'm diving back headfirst trying to gain value in several of my flawed pitchers.

Improve Movement
Palmer Granger, Jose Lopez, Dillon Jenkins

Granger needs help in a few areas. He is stuck and a bit behind in Movement, Control and his changeup. At age 23, it's now or never. Ideally I send him to get work at all 3. But I can only choose 1 here. I picked movement because outside of his putrid HRA, he could maybe pitch in the BBA right now. So a big gain there may kickstart everything else.

Lopez is one of our more polished RP who we hope can make an impact late in 2063. Hopefully in the playoffs. Like everyone I guess, he needs work in a few areas. I chose movement again here. Traditionally I love high movement pitchers. Recently I've been on a moneyball kick investing a lot in high stuff/ low movement pitchers with workable movement. So the goal here is just to get him to 5 and let the other stuff shine.

Jenkins is another guy we have high hopes for. He is a bit further off in development. But he is hitting his goal posts thus far. Again, I feel confident his stuff will play out on it's own. So we're going to take his HRA here. At just 19 years old, we'll get a couple of more cracks down the road at fixing his stamina and control, maybe add a 3rd mix.

Improve Control
Rich Ashe, Bartolo Martinez

Going into this, I thought I was going to throw all these guys into an improve control class and call it a day. To the surprise of myself, only two players are headed that way. Rich Ashe is an obvious choice. Besides his wildness, Ashe has all the makings of a frontline starter. In fact, with his 10 HRA rating, I kinda hope he is the one teaching the movement class. But anyways. As of now Ashe is either a RP or an heir apparent to Enzo Bouton. He currently projects to 7/9/2 with 4 plus pitches and 7 stamina. Getting him up to like 4 control would be a giant leap to his value.

Martinez was the last guy we added to the d-lab. I called him up too early and thus he only has one option left. He has 3 plus pitches and 9 stamina. So like Ashe, if he can get that control up, he might be able to start in the back of a second division rotation. Like a lot of these pitchers, he is very close to becoming useful.. but not really.

Improve Endurance
Wayne Humphries, Jorge Duran, Angelo McKinzie

The big knock on this new generation of stuff pitchers is that none of them are starters. Well, Humphries is dangerously close to becoming a starter. He has 11/5/5 potential with 3 pitches rated 11. I know what you are saying... 5 movement and 5 control is not a SP. Not in recent generations. But we are seeing a shift in the tide. If I can get Humpty hump up to 4-5 stamina, he can be a dangerous 5 inning pitcher or a stud RP.

Duran I threw in cause I love Stamina in RP. Right now he is a 3. Any gain will just lead to more quality innings.

McKinzie I literally just changed on the fly. I had him set to add a 3rd pitch and then if successful I'd have him do endurance next time. But that is ass backwards. If i have him do stamina now and he bumps to 5, I have the option of not even adding a 3rd pitch and doing it via a SP conversion with PP.

Secondary Pitch Improvement
Carlos Martinez, Min Sui

Martinez has the dreaded stuck changeup. Maybe I would have been better off scrapping it and adding another pitch? I dunno. He is very fringe as is. Probably doesn't matter either way.

Sui on the other hand has a lot of upside. He's going to need to work on his control down the road also. I chose secondary pitch here because I'd like to see that changeup move in the right direction before trying anything else.

[Trebro]

I think we've talked about this but I am also risk adverse but I opted to go with more "hard" assignments than I typically do. If I end up breaking people again, the dev lab will be for long-shots and simple changes only. So we'll see. Will also be interesting - if enough of these changes work, it would definitely impact on overall BBA talent levels.