moonslav59

When do Stanley Tucker (1.066) and Andrews Opata (1.020) start getting some attention? I realize their sample sizes are around 50 PAs, but still... How about the uptick from Yophery Rodriguez? He's batting .304 with 4HRs in 56 ABs. (OPS .986) Holobetz was starting to get all the attention, and despite his last start being a bad one, he's still at a 2.45 ERA and .566 OPS Against while leading the Sox farm in IP at 22 in AA. The sample sizes are small, but take a look at some of these K/IP numbers: 17/9.1 Valera (on the IL) 25/17.2 Dylan Brown 26/22 Holobetz 22/12 Wyatt Olds 22/14.1 Ethan Walker 16/9 Erik Rivera & Griffin Kilander 16/9.1 patrick Halligan 17/12.1 Gage Ziehl (Grissom trade) The lowest OPS Against for pitchers with 12+ IP: .338 Eyanson .354 Futrell .380 Bickerstaff .391 Bennett .495 E Walker .514 Rogers .539 Brown .545 Mullins .566 Holobetz .571 Olds .616 Gartrell .619 Tolle .637 Finley .668 Adams .673 Sansone .692 S Martinez .698 J Webb

Whodathunk with Rafaela leading off, Story batting clean-up, Monasterio 5th and 3 of the bottom 4 batters all batting under .552 OPS?

37 out of Story's 86 outs made this year are Ks.

What team am I watching, here?

Sounds like a good idea. (Who gets Gray's or Bello's next start? Anderson? Bennett? Pen game?) I don't see many other in-house tweeks that can be made, except maybe IL'ing or DFA'ing Watson or swapping Story from SS to 2B, but we all know Cora will not even ask Story if he's willing to even think about moving positions. I don't see the streaking Gasper as a solution. Cheng, Sogard, Delay and Ward are very long shots. Waiting for Slaten, Crawford or Sandoval to come to the rescue seems pointless.

Brez has certainly shifted the focus to pitching, and he's made dozens and dozens of moves to add or swap out pitchers. He was bound to get some wrong, but as of now, it seems he was wrong on way too many, especially the ones he paid the most for, except Crochet & Chapman, maybe. Some moves like Sale and Priester (traded and not the traded for deal) looked real bad, at first, but might be hard to judge at the time of the trade (Sale) or in hindsight (Priester.) I think if blame must be assigned, and in this culture, it is unavoidable, it seems JH, Brez, Cora and others all share in the blame. JH's cut in spending set us so far back, that recent spending upticks seem like a drop in the bucket. Brez has not spent much of that uptick spending wisely. He's made some good and some bad deals, but has built up the farm pitching outlook, which is speculative value and not actual value, yet. Cora has let his favoritism/loyalty cloud his judgement and actions. DD left us with some serious budget issues and a pretty lowly ranked farm, although the prospects he did not trade turned out to be better than the higher ranked ones he traded away to give us those 3 very nice seasons. Bloom did some good building back up the roster depth but failed at adding the right mix of star power with the too few chances he did get to spend more (Story & Yoshida.) Add this all up and we get the perfect storm of futility.

Nobody here, for sure.

Keeping all these guys we'd still suck.

This is really no fun at all.

I didn't see any clearly better option, either.

Try something!

He's next to go on the IL.

Bello should maybe be called "Below."

DHam was very good at 2B defense, too, but his look at SS and 3B were kinda scary with the Sox. He is +16 DRS at 2B in just 695 innings.

I do agree that Ceddanne could be a damn good defender at 2B or SS or even 3B, if allowed to play there FT for a long enough while. I do know he's a great defensive CF'er, or at least I thought I knew. I'm not sure what to think of his recent fielding slump in CF. I'm not sure moving Ceddanne just to accommodate Duran and Masa having a FT slot is worth the time and effort to get Ceddanne to where he needs to be at for a FT infield slot. I like your theory on playing the top 9 bats, and right now Ceddanne is top 9. Hell, he's been top 4-6 for a couple years. I'm just not so sure his offense is that good to focus all this attention on finding another slot for him. Of course, if Durbin stays under .500 and Story & Mayer stay under .600, he'd be a major upgrade on offense playing in the infield. A few times, this past winter, I suggested we trade Ceddanne and not Duran or Abreu, so our offense would be better off, but he's currently outhitting Duran, and Abreu's OPS is falling to near Ceddanne's number. It's hard to be optimistic about this offense, but I do think it's better than 25th to 30th. I thought it would easily be top 20. I even suggested we might end up near 10-12, before the season started, but so many players are doing way worse than even the most pessimistic fans thought could happen. I know- I know: small sample sizes. We're 15% through the season, so when does small become not so small?

Thanks. I mentioned keeping Cheng ready to fill in, if needed, but not as meaning he's blocking Arias. If Gasper is still over .900 by June, does he get a call?

Some selected player OPS to start 2026... .335 Refsnyder .341 Carson Williams (I'm not sure anyone mentioned him, last winter, but he's a SS.) .436 Bohm .503 Stott .508 Keashchall .516 Ozuna .522 Rengifo .532 Polanco .538 Rooker .549 J Naylor .556 Chisholm .568 E Tovar .583 McLain .584 Bichette .587 Devers .601 Matthews .622 Okamoto .624 Vientos .629 Semien ______________________ .653 Torres .664 W Castro .679 Moncada .687 Adames .693 Paredes .694 KMarte .698 O'Neill .699 Alonso, Hoskins & K Tucker .703 J Baez .704 Bregman .710 Betts, Meidroth .713 Arenado .719 Swanson .726 R Lewis .731 Teoscar H ____________________ I'm not trying to bust anybody for suggesting some of the names above: I suggested several of them, but choosing correctly is not easy as a GM. Some of the next names were suggested several times, too... .761 Josh Bell .765 Seager .789 Andujar .810 Neto .823 T Gray .836 M Shaw .847 Schwarber .849 Kurtz __________________ .852 Harper .871 Hoerner .886 HS Kim .888 Jeffers .899 B Lowe .915 Yandy Diaz .930 O'Hearn .955 Donovan .975 CJ Abram .981 Max Muncy .990 Dom Smith ___________________ 1.010 Wood 1.054 C Vazquez 1.647 Rushing

We shoulda and coulda given up enough to get KMarte or Neto. Even Paredes or Hoerner would have been better than Durbin/IKF. Donovan and BLowe were options, too. To be fair, so were E Suarez and Polanco, who I mentioned, but have sucked, so far. The great Pete Alonso is now at .700.

I'm just clowning around. I do prefer Mayer at SS and Ceddanne at 2B, if we make such a move. I was fine with getting Schwarber. I wanted a big bat and viewed Contreras as a good get but should not be counted as the big bat we needed.

Running back the same line-up, tonight.

I fixed it for you.

I'm not ready to call the season over, but I'm about as far away from "optimistic" as I've been since 2020, so that says a lot.

I fixed it for you. (We all knew Ceddanne's CF defense was going to implode, this year.)

MVP, do you see Arias going to AAA mid season? I'm not sure it's much of a bigger challenge for Arias, and we want to keep Cheng ready, in case Story gets hurt, but I'd like to see how Arias does against older/better pitchers.

Yes, but unless you felt we were a 10-12 team in these areas to begin with, and they play like a 10-12 for the rest of the season, they won't finish 14th. We have played over 15% of the season. That is a SSS, but a lot of "making up" has to occur.