Dojji

I want to make a point of reminding people that I wanted this team to go after Ben Zobrist. Guy like that you can always find a place to play, and he's just so useful.

I would like this game to end soonish. I do have work tomorrow.

Aaaaaand rain. Why the hell not?

That bunt is inexcusable. Get the ball into the outfield. Bring in a good reliever. Win the game. This is the opposite of rocket science. Sandlot dreams, right here. Bottom of the 9th, tie game, everything depends on your at bat. 3 or more Guardians hitters are about to live the dream of generations.

Looks like the Cubs are going to have to exorcise their demons directly, just like we had to in the 04 ALCS. We had to face our choke against NYY and overcome it, and the Cubs are going to have to face their historic problem with sudden death chokes in elimination games.

Chapman blew it. Wow. Wow. Just wow. Chapman. Blew. It.

Lester has been incredible.

Every number I've seen said that Shaw had an above average season playing defense at third. The only possible debate between the various metrics is how far above the average he was. Considering that the below replacement level defense he furnished at third last year can be written off to mere rust and small sample size, I don't think it's particularly unreasonable to approach next season with reasonably optimistic expectations of Shaw defensively as a third baseman. Holt was, unfortunately, well below average as a third baseman. His thing is about being able to show up at multiple positions without being a major liability in any of them, but third base is one of his weaker ones. There is simply other, better ways to use the talent that is Brock Holt. Shaw also outhit Holt on the season for what that's worth. As for Sandoval -- talk to me when he's above replacement level again, which he hasn't been since we signed him. Shaw does not really have very much actual competition at third base until Sandoval begins to seriously redeem himself. Which he has not yet done.

Well as near as I can figure, the Natives definitely don't. What we name our sports teams is the least of their worries. So the question remains, who the heck are you white knighting for if most Natives don't give a damn?

Oh we have the pieces to make an attractive offer to CWS. Swihart and Bradley are players CWS needs more than we technically do. My resistence to the notion of bringing in Sale has more to do with a combination of an assessment of Sale's attitude and an assessment that the White Sox are likely to be in try-to-win mode and would be looking to offer other assets instead of Sale or Quintana to bring in those two players.

Agreed. I expect the Chisox to be in up to the elbows on EE and be looking for other ways to add offense. You'd think that might mean we could get a trade done, but if 2 players under contract for CWS are unavailable, the first one is Quintana and the second one is Sale. As for Frazier, the goal in the offseason for CWS is to IMPROVE the offense, so he's likely off the table until the deadline at least. They'll give themselves at least that long to solve their other problems before they sell off major assets.

I live in a small town trading center right in the middle of 3 Native reservations and have yet to meat a single actual Native American that gives half a damn about the sports logo. This is all much ado about nothing. You know damn well that if the Guardians were no longer the Guardians and the Redskins were no longer the Redskins these same bleeding hearts would be complaining that Native heritage was unrepresented on the national sports scene. You can't win with these people. So why play their game?

I still do not see a trade that makes sense. No matter how many times people will say "just trade for a Starter", I don't see "A. Starter" anywhere on the players list, and my search for an ace in a tradeable position keeps coming up empty no matter how many times I run it.

I know hot stove is the domain of coulda-woulda-shoulda, but this Miller stuff is getting a bit old.

No he didn't. Lugo was barely over replacement level in 2007. He was never worth the money he was paid. But we didn't have anyone better to turn the job over to, so we had no choice but to keep rolling him out there.

Which isn't a particularly unreasonable assumption. He's already had periods where he's struggled, then adjusted to get back to productivity . I honestly believe that part of the reason he couldn't pull out of his slump in the last month of the season is that the team couldn't afford to give him the at bats to work on it while in the middle of a pennant chase. Shaw's got a good base of defense to justify his spot in the lineup while he works on his offensive approach. I hear Sandoval's looking much more svelte these days but he's still going to have to brush up his toes to win his job back.

Lugo, Peavy and Dempster are the price you pay for trying to find that piece to put your team over the top. Sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't, but the times it works are worth making a lot of the attempts that fail.

That's nothing Travis Shaw can't do, even assuming he doesn't gain any consistency from one year to the next. Shaw isn't very satisfying for fans that need CIF's to show a lot of stick, but the overall package is adequate for a bridge guy.

It is the job of management to do hard things. Even though it's hard, a FEW successes isn't, you'd think, be too much to ask. Again, no SP from our own draft has stuck on the team since Buchholz and no ace since Lester (a 2nd rounder I might point out) who was drafted well over a decade ago. That's pretty damning.

It was probably real, but that doesn't mean it wasn't pumped into a big "story" and blown out of all proportion by the media until someone had to go.

Wright's track record so far in his short career is that he tacks a full run onto his ERA when he appears in relief. It would be a criminal misuse of Steven Wright to try to pitch him out of the pen to start the season. You know why this is even a debate right? You know why everyone keeps saying "6 good starters." It's because Clay Buchholz has fooled us again. AGAIN! Always that man finds a way to do just enough actual work to fool the gullible into thinkiing we can count on him. You'd think the results year after year would dissuade all but the most brain-dead but -- well, here we are again! Actual intelligent people, people whose baseball acumen I acknowledge and respect, somehow fall into the small sample size trap that is Buchholz, over and ov er again, buying the good bits and ignoring the bad ones, wich *they themselves know is bad sense* if they stop and think about it -- but where Buchholz is concerned they never seem to. And I have literally no idea how he keeps doing this to actually intelligent fans. 7 straight years he keeps fooling us, and he just did it again. It's literally unbelievable. How many times does this parasite have to fool us before we admit that we were fooled? Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me? This is number 7. What the hell does that say about us? If you can start a guy like Wright who's a great bet to get 180-200 innings of acceptable ball, or you can start a boom-or-bust-and-then-hurt guy like Clay Buchholz, you start Wright 25 times out of 10. That is NOT hyperbole. That is simply what you do. Wright >>>>>>> Buchholz as a vector of present pitching value for this franchise. AINEC. I cannot process the concept of why I seem to be in the minority on this If Clay Buchholz manages to undeservedly weasel his way into the rotation once more even with 5 other ACTUALLY decent options, and I honest-to-God have no way of knowing how he actually manages to keep doing that right in the face of the most knowledgeable fans in all of baseball, I really hope it's at Pomeranz' expense. At least Pom has extensive esperience as an effective RP

I was arguing that all last offseason campaigning for Wright to get the open spot in the rotation. Validation is a wonderful feeling sometimes I think that Wright is a better knuckleballer than Wakefield. He has a greater range of speeds with his knuckleball (he throws a Dickey-style hard knuckler and a Wakefield style slowpitch knuckler) and he has a more-or-less-average fastball to go with it rather than Wake's 75mph offering. The overall package is a much better set of tools in the toolshed to keep hitters off balance than Wake ever had.

Yeah that's what I'm hoping for. Lots of innings will be great, if we get lots of innings and sub-4, I'll be thrilled.

I wouldn't bet any large sums on Wright pitching like an ace again this year, but anything that has been done once has a chance of happening again, so "zero chance" is a bit of hyperbole.