moonslav59

Falling below .500 sucks, bigtime. It's been a while, and hopefully tomorrow we get back to .500. We are still 2 up on TOR, but that offers very little solace, to me. We are 2.5 from the last WC slot, but we'd have to pass 4 teams to be in that seat.. 24-24-20 MIN (3rd slot) 24-22 TBR -1.0 (We had a shot at keeping them in the mirror and blew it.) 23-23 TEX -2.0 (Could be harder to pass than MIN & TBR) 22-22 DET -2.0 (Might be the only team we can pass by season's end.) 22-23 BOS -2.5 20-25 HOU -4.5 (Won 5 in a row, before tonight's loss.) 19-24 TOR -4.5 (I'm thinking they finish 5th in the ALE.)

Agreed. Many very good players go through stretches where they look horrible vs breaking balls, especially after missing time. I'm not saying I am not concerned, but this sample size is still small.

Crawford needs to stop the bleeding. The bats seem to be waking up, a little as the staff falters a bit. We need to put it all together. Go SOX!

45 PAs ain't proof of nutin'

I suggest to my students to study for a test. They don't and do poorly. I guess I am wrong. Red suggested the Sox not hire Bloom, but they did. Red was right. Got it.

Indeed. Deep in mediocrity can help, if you have more of that than other teams and injuries are rampant, everywhere, but we do need quality, too.

No, I did not think that, but with 3 OF'ers, as "balanced you can get is 2-1 or 1-2. I brought up Ref to show it can be viewed as 2-2, if we find a way to start and PH him vs LHPs.

Yes, it is one of the few bad starts we've seen, this year. Losing 3 of 4 to a formerly struggling Rays team, and now this, does not bode well for our future.

Rafaela and Ref bat RH'd. It would be nice to be more balanced, but we should be okay.

Very true, but no HRs allowed (0.0 HR/9 vs career 0.8) His 6.3 H/9 is above his career 5.8 mark but is his 2nd best number in the last 6 seasons. (it was 8.1, last year.) He's pushing his luck with all the BBs, but not letting up the key hits has saved hime, more often than not. BTW... 8 BBs in his first 5.2 IP 2 BBs in his last 10 IP (2 in his last 5 or 6 IP) He did miss some ST'ing, so maybe he is okay, now.

Jansen has had 4 bad games out of 16. He had 3 other games with 2 BBs but no runs allowed. He's not the same guy he was years ago, but he seems to be okay. A .542 OPS Against is awesome.

He looked much better in 2023, as compared to before, so this does not appear to be a fluke. He reminds me of Jacoby's turn-around on D. I still prefer him in LF, especially, if a Rafaela/Anthony CF and Abreu/Anthony RF materializes, as we hope it does.

Here are the OPS in order of most PAs for 2024. Rafaela being 2nd in PAs is both surprising and a big hit to the team's OPS. Red= likely to get the same or more PAs, going forward, assuming minimal injuries Black= unknown Blue= likely to get less PAs, going forward 135-200 PAs .784 Duran (continue FT) .595 Rafaela (continue FT, likely batting 9th) .902 Devers (continue FT) .924 O'Neill (despite missing time) .830 Abreu (should end up in the top 4-5 in PAs) 85-110 PAs .900 Wong (hopefully, he continues hitting well and gets some PAs as a DH) .452 Valdez (may not play much more for BOS in 2024) .857 Casas (will miss a lot more time) .736 Yoshida (a big question mark) .663 McGuire (may catch more as we use Wong at DH. he has been slumping.) 40-65 PAs .964 Refsnyder (with leading the team in hitting RHPs, he may play near FT, going forward- DH/LF) .451 Reyes (may not get another PA with BOS, this year) .377 Dalbec (see Reyes comment) .563 DHam (Romy should take away many of his PAs, going forward) .317 Grissom (likely to be FT'er going forward) .450 Smith and .584 Copper (likely to get almost all the PAs at 1B, unless we make a change.) 20-40 .617 Story (out for the year) .664 Romy (looks to be the primary IF utility player)

Yes. Unless, we find a middle infielder, but maybe Story fills that role. As everyone knows, I'm big on L-R splits and platoons, but we have a lot of reverse splits going on with this team. We do look pretty bad vs LHPs. 2024 splits: .717 v RHPs (.411 SLG w 38 HRs in 1237 PAs)) .698 v LHPs (.362 SLG w just 7 HRs in 443 PAs) More remarkable: .744 when a RHP starts .623 when a LHP starts. I think we will put our hopes on Rafaela, Story and Grissom to improve on these splits for 2025. Ref has a very surprising reverse split, this year: .726 v L 1.139 v R (leads team, and his 37 PAs is 6th on the team)

I have not given up, either, and I expected about a .500 team for 2024. Before the year started, I mentioned how we had so many "what if" players, and how that might not be as bad as it looked, because we did not need all of them to come true, at the same time. Obviously, a few things not only did not go right, but they went into the toilet with season ending injuries to Gio and Story and a near season ending injury to Casas. Those were 3 of the 3 biggest what ifs to start the winter/spring hopes list. Others have struggled out of the gate in one or more areas (O and/or D.) As much as losing Gio, Pivetta, Whitlock and a few other pitchers, here and there, our staff has almost all been good to great "what ifs." Our catchers have come through in mighty fashion. Devers looks a little better on D and is over .900, but needs more timely hits. Our OF has been spectacular, especially Abreu, Duran, O'Neill and Refsnyder. Big misses at 1B, 2B and SS have hurt us, and one could imagine 2B and SS being better over the next 3/4ths of the season, but maybe some standout player(s) take a dip to counter that. Overall, I'm liking what our future looks like, more now than last year or up to March/April. To me, that makes watching losses, this year, a little easier to handle. Plus, there are some exciting younger players to watch, this season.

We expected losing. Accepting it as what it is, is harder, but that seems to be happening, too- to varying degrees with each of us.

We'd likely try to find the next Renfroe/Duvall/O'Neill over paying an OF'er over $10M, let alone a QO. More likely, we just roll the dice with what we have coming back: LF: Duran, Refsnyder, Yoshida CF: Rafaela, Duran (Anthony) RF: Abreu (Anthony) If Anthony comes through, we can even handle an injury or two. As well as our staff is doing, now, I'd still invest in pitching and maybe middle infield, again.

Yes, Kike's first deal was for 2 years, and JBJ had an option with a huge buy out for year 2. My bad. Pillar did not stay for all of 2020.

I guess Story would get an F, because he is not coming back- same with Gio.

.680 OPS after 277 MLB PAs

'24 O'Neill (jury still out) '23 Duvall '22 JBJ (BUST) '21 Kike & Renfroe '20 Pillar

44 games and right at .500. That's about what many of us expected for the season, but how we got here was a little surprising- a lot in some cases. 4 Game Report Card: A+ The rotation (2.62 ERA, 1.07 WHIP and a .623 OPS Against) Wong (Only O'Neill and Devers have more PAs and a better OPS than his .900 line.) A O'Neill and Refsnyder (would be A+ had they not been hurt. .964 Ref and .924 O'Neill) Duran (He has had a nice all around start to '24. Good D, 21 XGHs, 9 SBs and a decent .784 OPS) A- The pen (.620 OPS Against is actually better than our rotation! 1.17 WHIP is not bad) Devers (.902 OPS and better D maybe should place him at A, but untimely hitting & key errors have hurt.) Abreu (His D has looked better than I expected and the .830 OPS is solid.) B+ (Big gap between A- and C) B None B- McGuire (His O has dipped, of late (.663 OPS,) but his defense and staff-handling has been superb.) C+ None C Rafaela (Tough to grade this highly with a .595 OPS and so many errors, but he has made a lot of plays nobody else makes, and he leads the team in RBI.) C- D+ Base running (due to several costly blunders) D Our defense (better than the F of 2023) D- Cooper (He could easily be an F with his .584 OPS, but when you compare him to Smith & Dalbec...) F Henry (no explanation needed) D Smith (.450) and Dalbec (.377) have really hurt the team over 100 PAs. DHam (.563,) Valdez (.452,) and Reyes (.451) have hurt as much as our 1Bmen, and they have 216 PAs! INC Casas (.857 was a good start, and his D looked better, but missing 2-3+ months will hurt like HELL!) Yoshida (.736 was okay, but all those ground outs to 2B are getting annoying.) Grissom (starting off like an F, despite decent defense in his SSS) Romy (He has looked good on D and has some key hits in his short time on the field.) Breslow (too early to tell but starting out like an A to A-) Cora (too early to tell but has looked decent, B+ to Pitcher score card: (I'm factoring in what was expected to a certain degree) with OPS Against listed A+ Houck .542 Crawford .579 Bernardino .400 A Slaten .476 A- B+ Weissert .659 B Criswell .671 (Maybe an A- based on expectations and a B- without) B- Bello .658 (He did better in the second half, last year) Booser .594 Anderson .604 C+ Jansen .542 OPS Against is awesome but too many let downs (too many BBs) C Martin .664 (Turning things around, after a bad start to year) C- Winckowski (Could be INC or D+) D+ D D- F Joely Campbell (could be INC) Jacques INC Pivetta .763 Whitlock .616 Kelly .470 Uwasawa .464

He has looked weak and off balance. Maybe this is sort of his ST'ing, but 41 PAs is a pretty small sample size. He does need to start showing something, at some point, soon. He has looked better on D than most of what we've seen over the past 2-3 years.

Most likely, yes. We've done okay with one year OF'ers: O'Neill, Duvall, Renfroe...

We are losing too many winnable games like this one. We need to turn it around quickly.