moonslav59

Time for Bogey to make this a game, again.

Next May or June might be just the right time. He may get a September look-see, as with Duran.

I'm not a knee-jerk fan, but the time is now. DFA Santana: call up Chavis Demote Rios: call up Gonsalves or Ort (taking Santana's 40 man roster slot) Think about DFA'ing Andriese or Workman: call up Houck, if ready or Phillips Valdez.

Yup. Hand it over to them on a platter.

Why is he still in there, now? This game is not over.

...or to allow Cora to just yank a starter who gives up 3 in the first or second. (There have been plenty of those, recently.)

I wouldn't expect VTek to say anything bad about any of our young starters, but the accolades are so detailed, you have to believe he means all of this. If we can get Sale back to near normal by 2022, and Whitlock is all he promises to be, maybe we don't need to spend large and long on a top starter, this winter. (It still might be a good idea.) Funny how Whiltock just jumped right over Houck, Seabold, Ward, Groome and others, including and eventually a vet or two.

We had Thursday off and have tomorrow off. Why is Rios pitching (again)!

The A's have the best record in the AL, despite their numbers not matching their record. Their starting line up, today, had these BA's: .253 .222 .306 .254 .238 .240 .215 .225 .200 (They are down to the Yanks 2-1 in the 7th.)

Hard for a manager to decide: should I pull him and burn up the pen, or will he turn it around? We did have Thursday off and have tomorrow off, too. Maybe I just answered my own question.

Of course the Molting Rays are a worthy contender, but I'd still put my money on the Yanks to finish ahead of them.

There are lots of good "top starters." Most are old or very old, but that would play into our no long term deal guidelines.

Maybe someday. Maybe 2022, if Casas explodes his way to the bigs.

Believe it or not, that's him admitting he was wrong.

Sox OPS in the last 10 days: 1.258 Dalbec- Mr. Comeback 1.112 Bogey- Mr. Consistency .977 Devers- Mr. Fun .916 Arroyo- Mr. Full Time Second Baseman .820 Vaz- Mr. Over-worked .796 JD- Mr. Coming back to life .775 Renfroe- Mr. Steady since April .769 Verdugo- Mr. Clutch .587 Kike- Mr. Need you to do something .513 Marwin- Mr. Do-it-all but hit .400 Plawecki- Mr. back-up .368 Santana- Mr. DFA

Scherzer will cost too much in prospects and would mean a $9.5M hit on the tax budget- putting us over. He's not coming to Boston.

I do think our top 5 hitters should include the big 4 + Renfroe, but that would seriously shorten the line-up and put more emphasis on how bad the bottom of the order can be. That being said, one can argue that makes little sense, because putting a weak hitter first, still creates a 4 straight batter funk, be it 6 to 9 or 7 to 1. Going by modern analytics, where your 5th best hitter bats 3rd, this seems like the optimal start to our line-up: 1. Verdugo 2. Bogey (our best hitter) 3. Renfroe (5th best) 4. JD v LHP/Devers v RHP 5. Devers v LHP/ JD v RHP I'd try this for the bottom 4: 6. Dalbec 7. Arroyo 8. Vaz 9. Kike

To me, the Yanks are still the AL team to beat. They've struggled for 70 games. We're still 10 games from the halfway point. They get Sevvy back and will likely make some deadline moves. The Yanks are 5 down in the loss column and 4 down in losses from the WC slot. Anyone who thinks they can't make that up over the last 90 games of the season hasn't been paying attention to the history of playoff races.

That could be the answer, but watching him play 1B gives me doubts about him at 3B. He'd probably have a better arm than Devers, there, but worse range and glove work. Hard to know. I thought the word was, he was a plus defender at 3B.

For good reason, and just because a player's OPS goes up 50 points in June does not mean the stat should be diminished. If we had taken OPS/2 to basically make it an average of OBP and SLG, a 25 point jump might not have caught your eye.

Then the bashing has been misplaced. I'm a huge Cora fan, but keeping Kike at leadoff was worthy of heavy criticism. Kike is hitting 80 points below his career norm, but most of the league is 20-50 below, so in that context, Kike may not deserve even moderate criticism. I was a big supporter of trying Arroyo at lead off, which Cora did a couple times, but even he has not gotten on base all that much in the last week or two, so it's hard to show that position was a sure winner. I think we all kind of believe Renfroe should stay hitting behind the big 4, so leading him off, or putting Verdugo 1st and Renfroe somewhere else in the top 5, may not have helped much, either. That would also create an even worse 6-9 potion of the order. It's not such an easy call for Cora. Sure, in hindsight, we can scream "Anyone is better than Kike or Santana!" and we'd probably be right, but nobody know who will be hot going forward. Look at the Dalbec example. Here is a look at some chosen sample sizes and OBP... (Note Arroyo's OBP in the last week) Last 7 days .316 Vaz (Never heard a sould advocate Vaz leading off) .308 Marwin (We were all in shock when Cora put him leading off) .294 Kike (Better than Arroyo by 63 pts) .231 Arroyo .231 Santana (equal to Arroyo, surprisingly) How about the week before (Yes! to Arroyo!) .391 Vaz .360 Arroyo .310 Kike .136 Marwin .125 Santana The week before last... .385 Arroyo .286 Marwin .278 Vaz .136 Santana .125 Kike May 23-29 .333 Cordero .333 Marwin .300 Santana .211 Kike .143 Arroyo (Cora was supposed to know Arroyo would heat up by this?) May 16-22 .500 Arauz (4 PAs) .444 Chavis (9 PAs) .421 Vaz .381 Kike (Maybe this is why they left him leading off the next week) .333 Santana .250 Cordero .118 Marwin May 9-15 (no winners, this week) .333 Arauz (6 PA) .280 Marwin .250 Chavis .174 Vaz .118 Cordero (Kike & Arroyo on IL) May 2-8 .636 Plawecki .500 Vaz .500 Kike (right before IL) .333 Cordero .321 Marwin .143 Arroyo Is there any rhyme or reason to these trends? If we go by how well someone did the previous week or two, we'd be flipping a coin. Nobody jumps out as having a consistently high OBP. Nobody. .071 Vaz

To the "replacement" mix, is what he meant.

Just win, baby!

He was better on defense in 2019. I had thought he had turned the corner, then, but he looks worse now and did in 2020, too. It's all about the arm. His glove and reflexes are fine. He seems to have good footwork, except maybe to set himself to throw. His DRS shows +1, this year, but his UZR/150 shows a big drop from 2019. That being said, I seem to recall hi starting off 2019 a bit slowly on D, so maybe he can turn things around, again, this year. That's why I think he can still make a case for staying at 3B by showing it over the next 90 games.

Well said, Kimmi. I think we make a small move or two at the deadline. We have about $4-5M to add to the budget without getting taxed, and I think we look for a salary dump player or two that won't demand a very promising prospect in return. We probably already have a good idea on who will not be part of the 2022 forty man roster (like maybe Chavis, Ward or Groome) and trading them in July won't really be sacrificing any of our future growth. Adding Sale, Houck, Brasier, Bazardo and maybe even Ort, Duran, Gonsalves or Wilson may be the biggest boosts we get in the next coming month or two.