Sao Paolo Parrots Week 1 Recap

The Sao Paolo Parrots played their first ever games as a franchise this week, and it was a less than ideal start. They faced off against a Dallas Drillers team that was widely picked to be one of the worst in the entire league during the preseason. They came out with a vengeance as they tried to prove that wrong and took 3 of 4 games from the Parrots in a divisional matchup to start the season off. Let’s get into what happened for the Parrots this week.

The Good

When you looked at this team in the preseason, one of the weaker parts of the team was definitely the starting pitching. That largely didn’t show itself in Week 1 (if you ignore game 4) as the Drillers were held to 7 runs over the first 6 games, just 6 of which were earned. Yu Darvish had an ok start to the season allowing 3 ER over 7 innings, while striking out 7 along the way. The real praise belongs to German Marquez and Julio Urias though, as they combined for 11.1 innings with 1 run allowed between the 2 of them. Urias specifically was fantastic as he went 5.1 scoreless innings. Things got ugly with Justus Sheffield, but the starters kept the Parrots in this series which not many people would’ve called beforehand.
Unlike the starters, this was a bullpen that looked strong preseason and they proved it Week 1 with a dominant showing, allowing just 2 runs over 12 innings. Tom Hatch pitch 4 innings over 2 games, allowing just 1 run, while Daniel Norris went 3.1 innings in the 12 inning game 2 allowing just 1. The bullpen did what they were supposed to do the entire series to show their potential to really protect the starters who will not always pitch this well.
I’ll get into this shortly, but the feared Parrots lineup did not show up whatsoever this week, however Charlie Blackmon was a light in the darkness, batting 6/14 with 2 BBs for a .500 OBP in the series and was the only batter that I can really speak of positively at all besides Hanser Alberto in a tiny sample size. Everyone knows Blackmon is a liability in the field, but it appears he’ll keep redeeming that with his skill at the plate just as he has in previous seasons.

The Bad

The Parrots built a team around their park, where hits are aplenty, with plenty of home runs. The team hit only 1 in their first 4 games with a solo shot from Corey Seager in a losing effort proving to be the only dinger from the vaunted lineup, even against a left hander in game 4.
The pitchers were small balled to death in this series. The Drillers have a team built to manufacture runs, and they did just that on their way to this series win. The walk off hit in the bottom of the 12th in game 2 came after Daniel Norris walked the bases loaded. The Parrots played directly into how Dallas wants to play, and it bit them this time. They’ll have to do much better next time when they face the Drillers in Brazil to cap off the season.

The Ugly

There’s plenty of options here, but where could we start except with #1 overall pick, Ke’Bryan Hayes? Hayes is without a doubt, the best hitting card in the entire league, but his first week was nothing short of ugly. He went 0-16 with 1 walk to start off his season with 6 Ks. It was simply an atrocious start for a player expected to anchor this Parrots lineup. He will need to turn it around quick or else Parrots management will have no choice but to look at moving him and his massive cap hit.

To be fair to Hayes, he did have some awful luck against Dallas, rolling on the pitcher card for 14 of his 17 PAs, so he will likely start to return towards the average and turn things around. One would think that Hayes would at least be able to keep himself afloat in the field if his bat was struggling, but even that was too much for him, as he allowed a hit in one of his three fielding checks. It was a bad week for Hayes, and one that Sao Paolo fans may not forget for a while if he doesn’t start doing what was expected of him soon.

The Parrots only had one other pick before the 8th round, and they selected Justus Sheffield 3rd overall. His start to the season went just as badly as Hayes’ as he was demolished by the Drillers’ bats in Game 4. He allowed 9 runs as the Parrots management left him out to dry for 7 innings. He gave up 10 hits, 7 walks, hit 2 batters, and threw a wild pitch. It was just an awful outing and although he wasn’t helped at all by the bats as they once again failed to show up, Sheffield did nothing to help himself. Sheffield was chosen so highly in the draft because Sao Paolo’s management thought he offered great value for his cap hit, but after an outing like this they may be regretting not just going for a true ace and getting cute with it.
No one thought the Parrots were going to be the best team in the league after the draft, but many thought that they would be at least a strong playoff contender, and that GMs, Joe and Derek, had done a nice job.

All of that goodwill is gone after this week.

All of the Parrots’ big moves seemed to backfire on them this week. Corey Seager may have hit a home run, but he allowed hits in the field and went 4-18 for the series while Bryce Harper, the man they passed on for Seager hit 2 home runs for Philadelphia. We’ve already talked about Hayes and Sheffield, but the first two picks couldn’t have possibly done any worse to start their seasons, and ignoring fielding repeatedly came back to bite the Parrots as they allowed countless hits off of fielding checks. There will be plenty of opportunities for the Parrots to redeem themselves, but this week exposed the Parrots badly and showed there may be plenty of work left to do for the front office to build this team into a contender.