Blake Murphy

They have nine viable starters.

What are they going to do?

And now it's like, well...

I mean, you really have three starters that you trust, and then you have Patrick Corbin kind of keeping that fourth rotation spot warm and just trying to gut his way through another one more summer in the big leagues, a la Billy Chappell, and then you don't have a fifth starter.

You said it once, you said it a million times, there's no such thing as too much starting pitching depth in the league.

Yeah, and it also doesn't mean that this stretch of six weeks hasn't been consequential in terms of his performance

lack of impact and the chase one loss record.

Yeah, dude, like let's just skip this combo and go have a coffee and you can just clip one of the countless other discussions we've had over the years about Vlad underperforming because this exercise is getting tired and it's more of the same.

It's really tough sledding for him right now.

And you know, John Schneider said the other day that he thinks Vlad is trying to do too much.

I think there is merit to that.

And how does that manifest?

Really in the chase rate, Vlad just isn't choosing good pitches to attack right now.

His chase rate is at the highest rate that he's had since 2022.

And I think critically as well, his chase contact rate is higher than it's ever been.

So not only is he offering at more pitches outside the strike zone, he's putting more of those balls in play than ever before.

That does not lead to good outcomes when you're putting pitches that are outside the strike zone in play.

So that's one thing.

Rather be 0-1 than 0-4-1, right?

Yeah.