jacksonianmarch

My answer to this question is mostly rhetorical, but here goes. What does "pushing the panic button" mean? If it means sell off the farm and get some help for the club, who do you have to sell off? In early June, prices for the trade market are astronomical. They almost always come down come the deadline, especially this year with no waiver deals. Then you have to look at the sox farm system and see what kind of player you can get. Casas is your top talent and holding his own, but he's in A ball with an over 30% K rate. Dalbec is a big time power guy with an enormous K rate as well in AA. He might be your best trade chip, albeit he is flawed hence why he's not a top 100 guy. Duran might end up fetching you something. Hernandez is all stuff and hype and no production. He's a reliever IMO. Groome is still on the mend. The sox have no top 5 tool prospect. All have warts. Push a few to the center of the table and you can get a bite, but not right now. They will have to wait til the deadline for that. Then the question becomes, are the sox allowed to surpass the final threshold again? That remains to be seen, clearly. There is no such thing as a panic button in June outside of becoming a seller and letting everyone know it. The sox will need to bide their time into July and pick and choose their upgrades once the teams with big talent in the minors sell off some of their minor league talent to get the big time rentals. The sox will be stuck in the secondary market. I told you guys from the beginning of the season, the way DD built your squad essentially means your team from opening day is the team you are gonna have, more or less, come the end of the year. The only thing that can be pushed is the production from your current players

Those projections are almost entirely based on the Orioles and the AL west ones are horribly wrong. The Mariners were 13-2 at one point and have since gone 15-39 and have already traded off a piece in Bruce. They’re gonna deal off more. The O’s are going to be historically bad. There’s no avoiding that. But you can only play them 18 times. It’s not like you get an extra 5 games vs them due to how s***** they are. The frequency at which a division rival plays each other is set. My bet Harmony is as follows. Orioles 50-112 Toronto 65-97 Seattle 60-102 Angels 75-87 Texas 76-86

So we gut out the win when our pen allows 6 runs after giving up nothing through the opener and follower through 5. I will take the win. Tanaka tonight against the Mets. We will have an opener spot going forward until one of our starters returns. While I understand the logic of the opener, I don't know why we aren't allowing our follower to go more than 3 innings. Yesterday we had a 5 run lead, our follower was perfect through 3 and we pulled him. I get the need for a win, but let him go more with the fact that he hasn't allowed a baserunner. I like this Cortes kid. He is a plucky pitcher with all sorts of arm angles and great command. Maybe he is a future starter for us? Maybe he stays in this role. I don't know and don't really care right now, but we need some momentum before we see the A's after the CWS series

And if Manaea can return close to what he was, the A's are going to return a top flight starter in time for the stretch run. The A's have done this before. They are either god awful all year or they start out average and then the balls start flying once the weather warms. They are gonna go on another run this year, especially once the Mariners deal off their useable parts and the Angels fold like the s*** team they are. One of the bigger things to look at is the divisional teams that are going to finish the year. I have been touting the Jays as a s***** team, but after watching them play the Yanks, they are gonna be a good spoiler as the season goes along. With Biggio and Guerrero there and with Bichette likely not far behind, they wont be the standard terrible club selling off all their parts. They are going to be the squad with a plucky offense who deals off their starting pitching. They will not be a bag of loose diarrhea like some of the squads will be. The O's will suck the rest of the way and likely will suck worse once they deal off Cashner and maybe Cobb (if he can stay healthy). The Angels and Mariners will finish the season as terrible teams. This will allow the AL West clubs to pad their win totals. If Texas falls out as I expect them too, they will become seller too. Their entire pitching staff (outside of Lance Lynn) is on one year deals, so their bad pitching minus Mike Minor will be even worse. This will mean that come the final two months, the A's and Astros will have 3 teams in division to just rout. The White Sox have talent and are playing well. They will probably try to keep Abreu and make a run for next year. They will be tough in the ALC. Detroit and KC are abysmal and will get worse. The Guardians and Twins will go for it. Looking at the divisions like this will help handicap the races. If Texas fades, the A's will have the best shot at picking up garbage wins with 3 teams sinking. For us in the ALE, we have the Orioles and Jays, although the Jays going through their rebuild got better when they brought up their kids. The O's are the only easy win. In the AL Central, the Tigers and Royals will be easy wins with the White Sox being a Jays +1 year team likely not making the playoffs but progressing through a rebuild and likely not to sink. The only WC2 team right now that has two other contenders in division is the sox and they have to play the Rays and Yanks a bunch more. Their road is toughest at this point

The dark horse for the spot is right behind you in Oakland. Texas is a paper tiger.

Windows end due to lack of depth. JD and Moreland get hurt and all of a sudden, your lineup has no punch and rolls over vs good pitching. Your great hitters are currently only good. The rest of the lineup isn’t good enough to step up. Your minor league system doesn’t have enough reserve to withstand the blow. Your GM didn’t find enough big league capable reserves to step in. When your team costs as much as it does, getting good depth is hard. You don’t have the money and since your team essentially returned everyone, most fringe players won’t sign on because of lack of opportunity. Also, with JD being only good this year and now with a back issue, there is no way in hell he opts out.

If you isolate Chicago and use gun deaths per capita, it’s akin to Afghanistan and Iraq. The crazy thing is, the cities with the highest rates of gun violence are in states with incredibly strict gun laws. Gang members don’t care about gun laws and the overwhelming majority of the perpetrators and victims are due to gang affiliation. The DR is different. If you look like you have money, you’re a target. Papi was different than what the standard narrative usually is. That narrative is the rich guy is mugged and shot. This was no robbery. This looked like a hit.

The reports that there was no organ damage didn’t make sense initially. Now, the real report is out. They had to remove some colon and his gallbladder. His liver was injured as well. He’s in intensive care. Good luck Papi

That guy lasts maybe a month. They’ll get info, try to find out whose idea this was. Then the guards and inmates will kill this punk

This is something I am sadly very familiar with. The initial management is to stop bleeding and resect any damaged bowel. After this, you worry about healing and infection or a leak. If I were his dad, I would profusely thank the doctors who stabilized him and send his ass out via fixed wing medevac to Miami

Unreal. All that he’s done for that island and some asshat shoots him. Terrible. Get well Papi

Great job adding Didi for defensive purposes Boone. He boots what was the final out of the game and allows the tying run to score. f***ing A

5-0 lead handed over to Kahnle and Ottavino and they can’t hold it. Wtf

Stanton to restart his rehab stint in the minors on Tuesday Judge to start a rehab stint in 2 weeks assuming no setbacks. Betances had a setback and his rehab is on hold

German to IL with hip soreness. Maybe that’s why he hasnt been finishing his pitches

The Astros do not have McCullers. He is out for the entire year

It is time to move on from Morales. Logan Morrison has his power stroke back and is OPS'ing above .900 in AAA. He cannot be worse than the slowest man in the league in Morales

Our staff is third in the AL in ERA, so the rotation is not a heel of any sort. Our offense has gone to s*** lately and the vaunted pen has been anything but the last 6 games

He has a hole in his swing. He hasn’t faced failure yet (outside of getting caught). This is what a demotion is for. Fix the hole in your swing and we will call you up

Estrada is way better than I thought. Really pesky at bats, sneaky power, slick glove. I think he’s done his job. He’s gonna be a prime trade piece. Stick him back in AAA and move him for a big piece. He’s redundant here through the end of 2020.

Pedey had trouble adjusting which is true. But I doubt Pedey had a singular hole in his swing like Chavis does. Chavis is almost an auto out if you throw high heat. He needs to go down to the minors and fix it. Everyone knows it now. Everyone is going up there now. And because Chavis is aware of it and trying to cheat up to it, he’s now vulnerable everywhere

Keuchel gets $13 mil for what will amount to half a season. Wow. Braves are desperate. Yanks offered a prorated $17.9 mil, which by the time he’s gonna be ready for big league action, would have been less than $10 mil

Yup, the winds of change

Tulo is going home. He was about to head out on a rehab assignment and from the sounds of it, had another setback. He’s going to pull a Pedroia and go home for a bit before resuming his rehab. With Didi returning, henis seeing the writing on the wall. Nice knowing you Tulo

Holder sucked. Ottavino couldn’t give length. Neither could Kahnle. Britton have up a cheapie single and a walk and then Vlad hit a missile. Britton is hard to lift and Vlad just golfed it out. It’s a Sox series hangover here