moonslav59

Pedro was an ace. Sale was an ace for 2 years with us. Lester was for more than one season. BTW, ERod was better in 2018, except for IP.

The had serious affects from COVID- something nobody really knows about. He may never come close to 2018 or even 2019. He could end up in a hospital at any moment. He may start feeling great and regain form. None of us know. I’m hoping for the best, and it’s not impossible the best might occur.

It felt nice scoring early and actually having a lead, then poof, right back to slumpsville, USA.

Pivetta has always walked too many, even earlier this year. This is not new.

another lead off walk

Again, there is no evidence the Rays draft all that well, especially in round one. They develop players very well and no how and when to trade their players right before decline and pick up players right before career years.

Not sure what that has to do with the NLE vs the ALE and the NLE vs everyone else.

I still think they win the division and probably the AL.

It’s both, and I felt that way before the season even began.

Exactly, and now Cashman is to blame for the s***** offense we all thought was top 3.

Bernie Brewer- the mascot.

Just cut Brewer loose. Or, Wilson, Brennan.

Maybe the NLE sucks because we killed them. If they played the ALW instead of ALE, they'd be much better.

The one thing TB has not been all that great at doing is drafting well, especially in the first round. There are various factors involved, but still, their history is not all that great over the last decade. Their famed 2011 draft where they had so many comp picks they ended up with 12 picks in the top 90 netted next to nothing, next to Snell, taken with their 6th pick in the first round & bonus picks. 2012: R Shaffer 3B (25th pick)- first pitcher taken in 4th rd (N Gannon) 2013: N Ciuffo C (21) and Stanek (P) picked 29th overall 2014: C Gillaspie 1B (20) 2015: G Whitley OF (13) 2016: J Lowe 3B (13) 2017: B McKay LHP (4) 2018: M Liberatore LHP (16) 2019: G Jones SS (22) 2020: N Bitsko RHP (24)

Plus, a few other factors: A 60 game season, last year never allowed some players to shake off the rust, work on faults, get over an injury or "find a groove." Younger players had no minor league games to play. The change in balls used.

A 100 PA sample size is really not enough to know much about anybody. Once someone sucks for 100 PAs, people say, "Why did Cora play that bum for so long?" I'm glad he played Renfroe more than 100 PAs. Maybe Cordero or dalbec were 1-2 games away from busting out, too. It's a hard line to determine when enough is enough. I'm sure Cora wanted to give Cordero and Dalbec more time, but the team needs to win, too. If managers went solely by what a player has done for him over the last week or two, plenty of great players would have been benched, often. If baseball is anything, it's an exercise in patience. 4-5 hour games, 27 -29 games a month, 162 games a year...

It's a certainty.

I don't doubt Cashman is more deserving than Boone, but to me, they both are long past "deserving," and usually trying to can the manager to "light a fire" is worth a try, first. They both should have been gone, already.

Exactly, only true studs seem worthy of calling up more quickly. Not players hot for a couple weeks.

Agreed, but is he the poster boy for bringing up players more quickly?

On paper (only) the two players that are on the 26 man roster who could possible help the offense by playing more than Marwin & Dalbec are Arroyo (.273/.702) and Plawecki (.260/.695). Santana has a decent OPS (.791) but low BA (.174). Imagine, if at the start of the season, I told you I'd bearguing batting Plawecki and Arroyo might be the best solution to boosting a slumping offense! Even these two have OPS around .700, but they beat Marwin's sub ..560 mark and Dalbec's recent numbers. Arroyo is easy: just play him at 2B and sit marwin, assuming Arroyo is healthy enough to play everyday. Playing Plawecki means DH'ing Vaz or benching him. Vaz is not even close to our weakest batter, and if you DH Vaz, JD has to play OF, and for who? (Kike to 2B means Arroyo doesn't play.) Folks, there's not many options for Cora. If you put our best hitters up 1-5, which I assume means Renfroe batting 5th, or third, if you follow the analytics, our 6-9 hitters will be worse than they are now. I'm not a fan of Kike up first. If you look at just 2021's OBP (not my way of choosing), Arroyo's .325 OPS wins the prize, and while .325 certainly beats Kike's .291 OBP, we're talking one more time on base 23 more times over 650 PAs- or about one more time a week. It's worth a try, but don't expect miracles. Is this worth a try? 1. Verdugo LF 2. Arroyo 2B 3. JD DH 4. Bogey SS 5. Devers 3B 6. Renfroe RF 7. Santana 1B 8. Vaz/Plawecki C 9. Kike CF (or flip Arroyo and Verdugo)

You think he likes playing sub .200 hitters? It's all he has! Renfroe was once a sub .200 hitter, but the only was we found out he wasn't was by playing him despite his hitting .200. (He was at .191 on May 2nd, and after his big game on May 3rd, he hit .143 the next 3 games, before finally getting on track.) It's easy to look back and say, "Why did he play this guy," or "Why is he still playing this guy?" The answer is that small sample sizes are not a reason to bench someone. That being said, I'm glad Cora is sitting Dalbec more vs tough righties. I'd like to see Arroyo play more than Marwin, but he just came off the IL, so maybe there is a health concern, there. I don't like Kike leading off, either but moving Verdugo to the 1 slot just opens up the 2 slot- a slot the studies show is the most important slot. What do we do? Put Bogey, Renfroe or Devers there? That would "shorten" the line-up. The big 4: .316 JD (.955 OPS) .314 Bogey (.919) .292 Verdugo (.813) .274 Devers (.927) The meh's: .258 Renfroe (.755) .273 Arroyo (.702) .234 Kike (.683) .252 Vaz (.657) The wtf's: .174 Santana (.791) .207 Dalbec (.646) .190 Marwin (.554) .179 Cardero (.501) Without Dalbec playing, it's literally impossible to have a line-up without a sub .200 batter. If Arroyo can't play everyday, it has to be 2 batters. We have to hope 1-2 of these weak hitters pull a Renfroe on us, but by then, maybe Renfroe is back in a slump. Newsflash: other teams have much worse or plentiful blackholes in their line-ups, too. Even teams with better records than ours.

Moncada is not an example that proves your position. Others would be better choices. Yoan did not help the CWS in 3 of his first 4 years in the bigs. .513 .750 .915 .705 While .783 over his first 5 seasons is pretty good, that ie weighted by his 4th season's .915. He was .719 in his first 3 years. Maybe keeping him down would have worked better. Also, nobody came close to anointing Dalbec as out 10 year 1Bman after a tiny sample size in 2020.

I did not deny they had weaknesses or that they were mentioned, but just about everyone thought their weaknesses were less than every other AL team or that their strengths outweighed the weaknesses enough to think they had the best opening day roster in the AL. Now, people are saying it sucked all along.

I don't disagree that Cashman needs to go, too, but everybody- even Sox fans- thought the Yankee roster was the best in the AL. It seems weird to be now saying the roster was and is crap. Every AL roster had some serious weak areas. That's one reason I felt we had an outside chance at doing something special, this year. We all knew the Yanks had a weak defense, weak left side hitting and some questions in the rotation. Now, that they are struggling, we suddenly say their roster sucked all along.