moonslav59

And since he made a few early in the season, and it was widely reported, the casual fan who only looks at high/lowlights and boxscores comes to the wrong conclusions.

May should not be viewed as more important than April- not that you were even implying that- but if it is a sign of a continuing trend, it can be a source of optimism on some players, especially Duran & IKF. To me, Rafaela looks like a complete player, now. I realize he may slump at any time and fall back to .700 or even below, but I see him as a .725+ batter over the long haul. With that superb defense, he's a big plus and a solid block to the team's foundation. I know Fred disagrees, but it looks that way to me. Contreras has been the biggest reason our offense is not the worst in all of MLB. He was a great addition. At his age, decline could start, at any moment, but he looks sharp on O and D. Duran and Abreu might hold the keys to the season. Right now, they are headed in different directions, but I think Wilyer will come around. That's really the only 4 guys I fully trust as everyday players. We can hope Anthony returns and plays like 2025 not 2026, although that OBP was nice. We can hope Narvaez or Durbin bats more like 2025, but counting on it seems highly speculative. We can hope for Yoshida or Mayer to step up, but hope is not a good strategy or plan. We will need to add a couple pen pieces at the deadline, and of course a big bat to have any chance, but I'm not sure we will be buyers in July.

The lack of the second big bat has been beaten to death, and for good reason. Here are just some of the lowlights of this offense by batting slots: .315 OBP from the one slot. (Duran .290/Anthony .347) .632 OPS from the all-important #2 slot, but what sticks out to me is that out of 265 PAs from the #2 slot, the leader is Contreras at 78 PAs (.856) The next 4 leaders in PAs? Rafaela .591, Story .333, Gasper .575 & Durbin .515! The 3 slot is at .719 with Abreu getting about half the PAs (.672) Contreras has raked (1.369) from this slot but is 5th in PAs with just 22. The 4 slot is about the same as #3 (.717) and Contreras has over half the PAs there (.834.) Story (.530) and Abreu (.614) are next and sucked. The 5 slot is viewed as more important than the 3 slot by some studies, and this is the one slot we have done very well, but nobody has even 1/3. Abreu 1.061 w 74 PAs, Story .590 w 54 and Yoshida .726 w 39. Rafaela has done well in this slot at 1.385 in 30 PAs. Maybe we should flip Abreu vs R and Rafaela v L in the 5 slot, every game .710 in 6 slot .617 in 7 .659 in 8 .644 in 9

It hasn't been too much fun, so far- I agree, but I'm having fun watching Tolle & Early, Gray & Suarez, Chapman & Rafaela, as well as Contreras & the recent Duran.

Brez did not trade Betts. Bregman was and is not the big bat we need(ed.) Bregman IS S*** for offense. HELL, IKF has a higher OPS. Bregman is at ,705 in 2026 and .714 in his last 365 days. The Devers trade was a salary/cancer dump trade. Harrison was a good get: it's just too bad he traded him afterwards. The Sale trade was an injury-prone player dump that back-fired spectacularly on at least 3 levels (Sale rebound, Grissom's cliff dive & the money we paid for Sale to play for ATL.) Almost every GM has 2-3 bad or really bad moves. Brez also has more than 2-3 good moves: Tolle Crochet O'Neill Romy Chapman Gray Contreras Lesser pluses: Signing Bregman Nate Lowe Criswell IKF TBD: Eyanson, Witherspoon, Godbout & others. It's easy to remember just the bad. Name the last time a Sox GM added more pluses in any winter than Contreras, Gray & Suarez (not even counting the Chapman and Crochet extensions that kicked in this year.)

He certainly could miss the whole season and become Chris Frail II, but I asked Duran the Man for evidence on why he thinks he will/might become him.

Indeed. He has put himself back on top in CF DRS and will likely win the 2026 GG. His batting has been more consistent, while he continues to improve on his BB% and OBP over his career. He used to be historically awful on his BB/K rate. He's still near the bottom 15%, but his .29 is better than Duran & Devers.

The same thing happens here in HOU with every Astro injury, and they have more than us.

Famous last words, I know! The point made is that it's not the original injury that he seems to not be able to recover from that Duran the Man was saying looks like a season ending and career altering injury.

Indeed and more so in 2003, 2006, 2012 and 2017. The worst in a long time was before 2021. Before and during 2025 was pretty bad, too.

Maybe the idea was to find pen arms from our bottomless SP'er depth... LOL!

As is often the case, people see the early numbers and pre determine a player's season based on it.

So, the all in plan.

Yes, we've talked about the bad stats, but u mentioned no good stats.

His setback was a different issue, I believe.

OPS Against Last 4 Weeks (30+ PAs unless specified) .268 Chapman .408 Coulombe (13 PAs) .517 Tolle .527 Whitlock .596 Early .613 Bello .632 Gray .679 Bennett (22) .682 Suarez (.873 last 14 days, not counting today) .736 Kelly (25) .743 Watson (.593 last 14 days) .754 Weissert .764 Moran (.621 in last 14 days) .783 Guerrero (21) .829 Slaten (29) .906 Samaniego

Last 2 weeks (not counting today) 1.254 IKF (1.059 lst 4 wks) 1.104 Contreras 1.092 Duran .762 Wong .748 Yoshida .736 Durbin .724 Rafaela .721 Sogard .703 Gasper .532 Monasterio .511 Abreu .497 Mayer .485 Narvaez

As of now, the Jays have the last WC slot at 29-31. Counting the Jays, there are six teams between us and that WC slot. 0.5 TEX & Athletics 1.0 BAL 2.0 MIN 2.5 HOU 3.0 BOS

14 scoreless IP is a good stat. 19.1 IP and no HRs allowed.

MVP does watch the games, though.

Why will he not pitch this year? His lat strain?

18 runs scored in 2 games. 31 in 5. 42 in 7. 61 in 11. Who is this team?

WOO lost 1-0 as Gamboa did fine. The staff K'd 11 and walked 2, while allowing just 4 hits and a first inning HR. The bats mustered 3 hits as Cheng was 1-2 w a BB. POR won 3-1. Ziehl, Carlson & Adames K'd 13, walked 1 and allowed just 6 hits. GRE is up 1-0 after 4. Gonzales hit his 7th HR and Witherspoon is pitching. SAL is just getting started.

Not based on 2026 only... 1. Crochet 2. Gray 3. Suarez 4. Tolle 5. Early 2-3-4 are very close to each other. If Early can stop walking so many batters, he'd be closer to 2-3-4.

And maybe Tolle takes the #2 slot away from Gray?