moonslav59

We passed BAL. With 5 teams worse than us, we are now a mid tier AL team at #10. Pretty sad league when 7 games under .500 is mid tier. I guess the NL has 4-5 real crappy teams, too. We'd be 11th there.

We passed BAL and the A's tonight. DET caught the A's, too. The Tigers are playing well, now. Things are getting interesting, despite being 7 games under .500. 47-45 CLE (2nd WC and 1 GB CWS 47-43) 46-45 TEX (3rd WC) -1.5 HOU 46-48 -1.5 MIN 45-47 (have won 8 of 10) -3.5 TOR 43-49 -4.0 BOS 41-48 (Have won 9 of 11) -4.5 BAL 42-50 -5.0 DET & A's at 41-50

It's like trying to pound square pegs into round holes.

Thanks.

Yes, very SSS, but Romy did have some rehab games.

Call me weird, but the 7 walks impressed me most, tonight.

Ingrassia is looking good. Through 5 he had 10 Ks, 0BBs and 0 hits, then let up a single and HR, but GRE won as Cespedes hit his 15th dinger. Sal won 14-5 as Finley was wild (6BB in 3.1) 21 hits and 5 BB has a way of making up for bad pitching. WOO & POR Rained out.

He's at .810 after that K. That was a pretty quick come back.

Seigler is better!

Wow, we have a line-up with 6 guys over .758! .871 Seagler .763 Rafaela .759 Abreu .920 Contreras .850 Romy .670 Durbin .620 Duran .624 Monasterio .767 Wong Best bench bat: .696 Yoshida

There was also the cost we paid for including him in on the Betts trade, but you make a good point. FAs and Extensions $170M Crochet $156M Price $145M Sale (needs adjusting, too) $130M Suarez $101M Dice-K (counting posting fee) $82.5M Lackey $82.5M Porcello $75M Pedro (largest deal by 1997) $68M Beckett 2011 $68M Eovaldi $38.5M Giolito $32M Jansen $30M Beckett 2007 $30M Lester 2012 $30M Buchholz $26.5M Dempster (retired after 2013) $25M Chapman (including '27 option) $24.5 Schilling $24M Foulke $21M Buehler $18.9M Barnes $18.8M Whitlock $18.3M Sandoval $18M Uehara $17.5M C Martin Did I miss anyone making over $17M?

I'm glad for him. Maybe Gray gets added for Suarez.

My bad. I see now, where I went wrong.

My top 1 Arias 2 Eyanson 3 Bennett 4 Gonzales 5 Witherspoon 6 Valera 7 Primera 8 Azocar 9 Delzine 10 Soto 11 Godbout 12 Rivas 13 Silverio 14 Phillips 15 GRod 16 Heyman 17 Jo Garcia 18 Brannon 19. Cespedes 20. Futrell 21. Holobetz 22. M White 23. Winnay 24. Ramos 25. Brown 26. Brito 27. BMorgan 28 Ziehl 29 Y Rod 30 J Rodrigues Not in my top 30: Paez, Bastardo, Wehunt, Rivera, Romero, Uberstine, Mullins

Soxprospects.com updated it's rankings: (Early & Tolle graduated, so +2 by attrition for most) Jumpers: 6>2 Eyanson 10>4 Bennett 15>6 Azocar 36>7 Primera 23>10 Delzine 34>14 Cespedes 32>18 Rivera 29>22 G Rod 31>23 Heyman NR>25 Winnay 38>27 Mason White 60>30 Dylan Brown 51>34 Jo Garcia 53>36 Brannon _________________ NR to 20 Paez _________________ Sliders: 5>9 Valera 7>12 Phillips 12>16 Romero 13>19 Uberstine 16>31 Castro (finally) 22>46 Taylor (ouch) 28>35 Ziehl 33>37 Bleis (finally)

7 AL teams have less losses than the Sox and 7 have the same or more losses, including 4 teams ahead of us in the standings. You gotta figure the Yanks(50-40) and Rays (52-36) are in. SEA (47-44) will likely win the est, but it's not a given. The rest is pretty much a free-for-all, including the CWS at 47-42 and the 3rd best record in the AL. 47-42 CWS & 47-44 CLE: One will win the division, so we need to pass the other one. 47-44 SEA & 45-45 TEX: One will win the ALW, so the same applies. Texas is the 3rd WC, now at 45-45. I'm assuming we need to pass them or CWS/CLE, plus all these others... 45-48 HOU 44-47 MIN 42-49 TOR 42-49 BAL 41-49 A's 40-48 BOS (+1 in loss column vs 3 above teams, equal to HOU and -1 to MIN.) DET at 40-50 cannot be counted out, either. Here are the pre-deadline (6 pm AUG 3rd, this year) schedules of each contender: BOS: 3 at CWS, 3 at NYM, 4 v TBR, 3 v BAL, 3 v TOR, 4 at A's & 3 at LAD BAL: 3 v CHC, 3 v KCR, 3 at HOU, 3 at BOS, 3 v ATL, 3 at DET, 3 v PHI TOR: 3 at SFG, 3 at SDP, 3 v CWS, 4 v TBR, 3 at BOS, 3 at WSH, 3 v STL MIN: 3 v CLE, 3 v LAA, 3 at CHC, 4 at CLE, 3 v A's, 3 v KCR, 3 at SEA HOU: 3 at WSH, 3 at TEX, 3 v BAL, 3 v MIA, 3 at CWS, 3 at LAA, 3 v TEX A's: 3 at DET, 3 at CWS, 3 v WSH, 3 at AZ, 3 at MIN, 4 v BOS, 3 v DET CWS: 3 v BOS, 3 vs A's, 3 at TOR, 3 at TEX, 3 at HOU, 4 v NYY, 3 at TBR CLE: 3 at MIN, 3 at MIA, 3 v PIT, 4 v MIN, 3 at TBR, 3 at CIN, 3 v AZ TEX: 3 v LAA, 3 v HOU, 3 at A's, 3 v CWS, 4 v SEA, 3 at TBR, 3 at HOU Lots to unravel here, but it's amazing how many of these teams play each other, so if we keep winning, someone is losing, and we gain ground. CWS play 5 contenders plus NYY & TBR, so big ouch to them. TEX plays 5 contenders plus TBR- another big ouchie! MIN plays 4 contenders plus the Cubs HOU plays 4 plus WSH and MIA BAL plays 3 contenders plus the Phillies, Braves & Cubs TOR plays 2 contenders plus SDP, TBR & WSH The A's play 3 plus WSH & AZ (DET twice) The Sox play 4 contenders plus the LAD, so no easy month ahead.

To get top talent, we will need to part with top pitching- likely the younger ones. I'd do it for the right piece(s) as I have some faith in our rotation depth and pitching pipeline, but that faith is based on speculative value. Guys like Tolle, Early and Bennett are not know greats, but they do have some legit value and not all is speculative.

You make good points, but the part about being "a long way from competing" is not something everyone agrees on. We made the playoffs, last year, added some plus players and are generally a young team. Even if management agrees with your point, they have a rabid fanbase that is near fully against a total rebuild geared towards 4 years down the road. If we are looking at 4 years, then Crochet, Suarez and several other players have "wasted" years of control. We might as well trade them, too. I look around at other teams and see several that have more and way more top quality players than we do, so I get the point about "not being close," but I also look at the weak AL and some of the teams looking better than us about to hit a wall with their budget and post prime movement of their starts. A few select teams are poised to just keep spending to refill, but some will soon hit a wall. I don't see our outlook as looking worse than most teams, and maybe we look better than 20+ teams, in terms of budget and future talent- projected and in terms of under control years. It's hard for me to think we need a total rebuild, but the idea does have some merit.

Shaw and his 3.5 years of control was one of the trades I suggested. He's no sure bet, though. He's already showing signs he could be the next Vaughn Grissom, but we need to take some risks to improve on the everyday player side of the roster. Paredes only has 1.5 years, and KMarte is another year older. Plus, his AAV is recalculated after a trade, and is no longer a really good number for the bat we'd get. Most likely, we sell for prospects and then hope to trade prospects for ML talent, this winter, much like we did last winter. Those trades for Contreras, Gray and Durbin, as a whole, are looking good, despite the loss of Harrison and others.

Brez did start the shift towards higher spending on pitching, while making a major shift on farm pitching improvement. The $38.5M/2 for Giolito and even the $18.5M/2 on Sandoval was way more than Bloom ever spent on 1-2 pitchers. Hell, those two alone was more money spent on SP'ers than Kluber, Richards, Paxton, Martin Perez x 2, Wacha and Hill combined. While the $21M/1 on Buehler back-fired badly, it was a significant upgrade in effort and focus. He also signed and extended Chapman, while trading for extending Crochet. He then followed up all this up with the largest FA pitcher signing since Price- Ranger Suarez was the second highest pitcher signed, last winter (to Cease.) He's doing about as well as Cease and about 2/3 the cost. Tolle has already given us quick returns on Brez's farm building strategy focused on pitching. Bennett was a fantastic get. Eyanson, Witherspoon, Phillips and several other pitching prospects added by Brez has helped our future pitching pipeline look as good as ever, and this after graduating Tolle & Early! Now, we need that focus and dedication pointed to the offense.

That is what he did, but the Breggie to Suarez pivot indicated he was planning on an upgrade on offense, and pivoted to more pitching. I actually liked our depth, but not much was offensively focused, except for the Duran/Anthony/Yoshida/Romy DH mix and OF/1B/2B back-ups. There was no offensive back-up at SS/3B/ C, and we knew Romy was out and Ref was gone, so there was a gap that even Brez must have seen. I think his calculation was more about thinking the improved pitching and defense could outweigh a known loss (even if thought to be minor) on offense. On paper, a healthy and productive Anthony and upticks from our vast young player depth looked good, but you know injuries occur, unexpected down ticks occur, and adding Durbin and IKF over offense was a choice he made. That was D over O, when he had already unbalanced the team by adding way more pitching than offense. While true, most of us did not foresee this bad of an offense, we did see it as one of our weakest areas (along with pen depth beyond our top 2-3 RP'ers.) O'Hearn was not costly. BLowe or Donovan might have been a bit costly, but not trading for Oviedo might have allowed us to put a package together to land one of them. Paredes is the big what if to me, and he'd have helped the line-up and given is this infield on day one: 1B Contreras (Paredes/Romy) 2B Durbin/Mayer (Romy to come) 3B Paredes/Mayer SS Story/Mayer The improvement to the offense, even if he hit just .750 would have been very significant.

True, but 5 years in a row hurts, and for some of those winters, $10M was a major chunk of the new spending budgets. It was the largest signings is maybe 2-3 of those years. (I'm sure I'll be corrected, if wrong.) The Price and Sale contracts were big chunks, too, and both crippled us for years to come, much more so than the 5 I just listed, but the pattern of consistently hoping for returns to greatness by aging and oft-injured pitchers and an o for 5 record hits home. (Okay, Wacha & Hill were half hits.) To make matters worse, we recognized the need to stop counting on injured pitchers returning to greatness just in time to decide to trade Sale a split second before he actually did return to greatness...making or record on such choices oh for a big 6!

Plus, his "fresh start" has not been without controversy and further incidents that call to mind the idea of selfishness or pride getting in the way of what the Giants view as what's best for the team. Devers thought he was a good defensive 3Bman. That's not unusual for good to great players to think that. It's part of the psyche that makes them good to begin with. I prided myself on my good defense, as I sucked at hitting a baseball, but Devers would blow me away on defense. It's only when comparing to other MLB 3Bmen that he pales. It wasn't about convincing him he was not good at 3B defense. It was obvious to everyone that Bregman was better and actually way better. Everyone but Devers, of if by chance he did know Breggie was better, it makes what he did even worse. Cora ended up playing Breggie at 3B, whether he wanted to or not. It was a mistake to tell Devers to put his glove away, when there was that window where they could have told him, we need you to be prepared to DH, play 1B and be Breggie's back-up at 3B. That may have hit Devers harder than telling him he was going to be the FT DH, but I kinda think Devers would have rather played 1B than DH, but that is just my opinion. I never liked Casas as our 1Bman and felt he should DH over Devers to begin with. The Casas fragility question was known for years. Not foreseeing the need for Devers to work out at 1B was a major blunder. Maybe the fragility of the Devers ego made them think they better not even ask too much of him, until they need to, but that was the ultimate mistake by Brez, Cora or whoever you want to blame for not making it happen- like the Giants were able to do.

That's been one of my main points, and while we can play the hindsight game all day and cry about not adding Murakami (who nobody here wanted) Okamoto (who a few suggested) BLowe or Donovan (LHB not many advocated for) or O'Hearn/Arraez/ ______, the fact that we didn't even try and miss, which is Fred's good point, is a stain on Brez & Co's winter report card. A big fat coffee stain that hides the A's he got for Suarez, Gray and Contreras, or at least 1 of them.

Oh, I'm for selling, as of now, and even if we get back in the race, I still may be for selling. Perhaps we end up doing some of both. Trade for pitching for a bat (buying.) Trade the now for the future (selling)- likely bats, too. Gray & Chapman Duran, Sandoval & IKF Coulombe & Guerrero Even losing Gray leaves us very well set for the 2027 and beyond rotation. We have to determine who to keep and use some of that value to add a bat or two. I know some hate the idea of trading rotation depth, and it is a tough call. We've seemingly missed on a few, lately, namely Sale Harrison & Priester, but we've also added more, especially on the farm. Crochet, Suarez, Tolle, Early & Bennett Houck, Crawford, Oviedo, Bello, Anderson Eyanson, Witherspoon, Valera, Futrell, Phillips Holobetz, Paez, Wehunt, Rivera, Uberstine Delzine, Ziehl, Monegro, Brown, Finley, Morgan/Ingrassia/Montero/Mayers Teams would give up a nice bat for a couple of these arms.