And they proved that they're just flat out stupid or incredibly cheap by doing nothing when Giolito went down.
Credit to Houck, Crawford and Bello for making nearly all their starts and pitching as well as you could expect given their talent levels. They kept it from being even more of a debacle than it could have been.
Hate to beat the dead horse, but trading Sale was a disastrous blunder that ended up sinking the whole season.
You're not supposed to trade from an area of need. It was stupid and the stupidity was punished.
I'm surprised the yellow jerseys are as popular as they seem to be. I fail to see any visual appeal whatsoever. They'd look better on a Swedish national team.
But there's not much use complaining about it. There are bigger issues in the world.
Let me just clarify it once and for all:
Past injuries do not NECESSARILY predict future injuries.
As for Houck, Crawford and Bello's innings, there are 2 things in play:
1) Increases in innings can sometimes have adverse effects.
2) Law of averages/s*** Happens factors.
We're marginally better this year. But saying that you're better than two 78-84 teams isn't saying much.
The Fab 4 is exciting, I'm not trying to downplay that.
But our pitching outlook remains highly suspect. Houck and Crawford are probably excellent candidates for regression simply because of their increased workloads this year. Our bullpen is losing its two most reliable performers.
We always tend toward optimism when looking ahead and we tend to ignore all the bad things that could happen. But happen they do and will.
Bottom line: much easier to make the playoffs in the AL this year than the NL.
But still not easy enough for the Red Sox.
Anyone who thinks it's a positive development that we're not eliminated yet has been nicely indoctrinated by John Henry.
(I realize I'm laying it on a little thick with that last part. 😉 )
O'Neill has been OK. He has a ton of power and that's where most of his value comes from. He missed a lot of games, he struck out a ton and his defense was surprisingly bad. It wasn't all good by any means.
I think it's just the opposite. The CWS bulked up KC, Detroit and Minnesota. Otherwise the AL wild card hunt would feature teams with even crappier records.
In the NL Atlanta is 14 games over .500 but out of a wild card spot.
Yeah, but we only have O'Neill for one year and he'll be much more costly to retain. I just can't get excited about a move that benefited us for one season in which we miss the playoffs.
Getting those pitchers for Verdugo could definitely be a big plus, credit to Breslow for that one.
I guess it's interesting that the 3 wild card system has made this possible for .500 teams?
I guess it's interesting that the AL was generally inferior to the NL this year?
Who knows, maybe a sub .500 team will make the playoffs eventually.
I see no WOW, other than maybe the deletion of the 2024 NL Cy Young winner.
I see plenty of churn at the margins and not much needle-moving.
The only significant improvements we had were from Houck, Crawford and Duran getting better.
"Anyone can be traded in the right deal" posts are the absolute worst. I would rather read 10 posts by Fred Lynn about Rafaela's poor strike zone recognition than one of them.
I might have to start deleting such posts, in a shameless abuse of my new powers as moderator. OK, I'm kidding about that part. 😎