moonslav59

Ok, on that sample size, yes, but... Since May 17th: 2.81 Giolito 3.11 Ryan Since June 5th: 2.17 Gio 2.73 Ryan

When Houck is healthy, he knows how to pitch, too. He's got some of the nastiest breaking stuff on the whole team. Did we ever find out what Crawford's non-pitching injury was? As of now, it looks like... Houck is out for the 2026 season. Crawford & Dobbins may miss start of the season. Sandoval should be ready. We have Crochet & Bello returning, and it looks like Gio won't reach 140 IP and opt out. Criswell, Fitts, Harrison offer experienced depth. We have 3-4 prospects that will be ML ready, too.

I totally agree. The weird thing about Wong is that in past years, his defense was in question, but he's really stepped that up this year, and catcher defense is super important- maybe even more than SS defense, if you include how pitchers do better with certain catchers, which I have always valued. The .423 OPS is worse than anything Sandy Leon or other defensive back-ups gave us, but I don't think he will remain that bad.

Some view Wong as weak, and certainly his bat has been epic weak. I don't think Wong's bat will be this bad, forever, now was it as good as it looked, last year. He's maybe a .650-.675 guy. Maybe we can do better, but we don't need a top catcher, if we do look for one.

I don't think we'll have a Rule 5 crunch. We lose a lot of players, and not all need to be replaced in kind, such as Buehler, Matz, May and maybe Refsnyder, and guys like Alcala, Burdi, Kelly, Guerrero, I Campbell, Eaton, Sogard, Toro and maybe even Hicks & Wink could be let go or traded. We only have 3-4 major additions needed: Closer, SP, P, 1B Our most known Rule 5's: Sandlin, Bleis, Paez, Uberstine, Mullins, Monegro (IL) Hickey, Castro, I Coffey, Drohan, Dean, Rogers, Hoppe, Song We may just protect Sandlin, Bleis & Unberstine. Maybe not Uber.

Here is a cursory look at the other AL team weaknesses. I could be wrong on some, as players are injured or returned from injury, that I may not know about, and maybe I missed a key tarde or two, but here it goes: TEX ranked 12th of 15th in everyday player fWAR, but 2nd in pitching (avg 7th) Weak areas: 15th DH, 10th Catcher & RF, 9th at 1B, 8th at 3B & LF (6 or 9 slots are below average) SP 1st/4th pen (enough to offset all the other weak areas?) SEA 5th in everyday and 9th in pitching (Ang 7th) Weak areas: 13th RF, 12th at 1B (added Suarez), 10th at 3B, 8th at SS & DH (5 of 9) SP 7th/10th pen OUCH! (I think we are better, here.) NYY 1st in everyday and 8th in pitching (avg 4th/5th) Weak areas: 12th at 3B, 11th at SS, 8th at 1B (3 of 9) SP 6th/12th in pen (added 2 guys) Hard to know with them. HOU 6th in everyday FWAR but 1st in pitching (avg 4th) Weaknesses: 13th in LF (added someone) and DH, 10th at 1B, 9th at 2B, 9th at 3B (added Correa), 8th RF (5 of 9 slots are below avg.) SP 4th/1st pen Looks like the best on paper, but we just swept them! DET 4th and 6th (avg 5th) Weak areas: 11th CF, 10th at SS, 9th at DH (3 of 9) SP 2nd/14th in pen (Not sure a weak pen and 3 other is much better than us.) TOR 2nd and 12th (avg 7th) Weaknesses: 9th in LF, 8th at 2B (2 of 9, but look at pitching) SP 13th/ 8th in pen (Gotta think the pitching will hurt them, too much) BOS is 5th and 5th- a perfect balance. nobody averages even 4th. 9th in SP, before today/ 3rd in pen

More OF depth on an already crowded ML roster. If we didn't need Rafaela at 2B, not trading an OF'er could have ended up being grounds for a criminal investigation.

Agreed, and what is also amazing is how some of the players leading this team were considered "depth" before the season started: Narvaez was our "back-up" catcher. Romy was a 26 man bubble player. Anthony, Mayer and Campbell were considered farm depth, until Campbell's surprise promotion. When Bregman went down, Mayer was called up a bit later. Toro held down the 1B job for a while, along with Romy and a little from Sogard. Our rotation depth has been put to the test and has passed, for the most part. One could argue our healthy 5 might have been Crochet, Houck, Buhler, Gio and Crawford (maybe Bello) with Sandoval at #7, Fitts & Priester 8 & 9, Criswell 10, and then Newcomb jumped over everyone to win a slot. Dobbins was maybe #12, depending on how you viewed Wink or even Whitlock as starters, Dobbins, Fitts and Criswell have done pretty well as deep depth starters. The pen needs no explanation. Most of us were horrified at the lack of solid pen additions over the winter, and some of us figured the plan was to convert our SP'er depth to cover pen weaknesses, but that could never happen. Our "all healthy 8" was likely expected to be Chapman, Hendriks, Slaten, Whitlock, Wilson, Weissert, Bernardino & maybe Wink, Kelly or a SP'er like Criswell. Slaten has missed over half the season and Hendriks more. Wink as well. Kelly, Guerrero and others have been hurt, but guys like Wilson, Murphy, Burdi and even Alcala for a bit stepped up when needed. Dobbins did okay, too, in relief. I can't say the depth of the pen has been great. It's been more about solid seasons from Chapman, Whitlock, Wilson & Weissert, but you can't be ranked a top 5 to 7 pen without the rest of the guys doing well enough. We may see Harrison, May and Matz take on meaningful roles, before the season is over. Maybe Criswell can repeat his last start a few more times, or close to it. It's taken 5 years to build up this depth. We hoarded depth, perhaps at the expense of making package deals for one guy or quick fix deadline rentals, but we are reaping the rewards, now.

Actually, Max did.

He has 75 Ks in 401 PAs. Last year, he had 151 in 571 (OVER 26% K Rate.) Yes, he had 45 in his last 169 PAs, when he may have tired, but if he does that again, he'll end up with 120 in 570, which is a big improvement. I'm not saying we should expect further improvement, but I think we can safely think he may stay near his current K rate, which is under 19%. Last year, he was ranked 22nd out of 129 qualified batters in K rate- now it's 96th out of 158. He's actually in the lower half! The K:BB went from 151-15 to 75:17. That was one of the worst ratios in MLB history (about 10 to 1) to 4.4 to 1. The league BB/K is now 0.38. Rafaela is at 0.23, this year (17th worst) WITH ANOTHER 14 players within 0.05 from his mark. Last year he was dead last at 0.10 with only 2 players near him. Why do you seem to discount the chance of a young player improving on his weakest area?

Even when trying to "discuss," it's never a true discussion. It's a waste of time. I was responding to SK who thought his post was satirical, or maybe he was being satirical saying it was satirical. Man- my head is spinning.

No problem having an ace and three #2 in my book. Plus, someone will get hurt or struggle: they always do. This year, we lost Houck (our preseason #2) Crawford (our preseason #4 or 5) and Sandoval, who was supposed to be ready by August to be slotted 4/5. We then lost Dobbins, who was pitching like our #2/3, at the time. We tried Newcomb, Fitts and a couple of pen games before giving Criswell a shot in August. To me, we should put a #2 SP as our #1 priority after a closer.

We still have control of Story beyond 2025, even if he opts out. Sounds weird, huh? If he opts out, the Sox can negate his opt out by exercising his 2028 option at $25M, thereby giving him 3 x $25M left not 2 x $25M left.

Even we don't get a SP'er at the deadline, we end up wishing we did...or even "another one." It's not rocket science- just look at every deadline we've had since Peavy. Why not just get an extra one or two during the winter, when they are cheaper to trade for. Or, just sign an extra one or two. This year, it looked like Brez got us 11-12 deep, then traded Priester, cut Newcomb and 4 went on the season ending IL. We still ended up trading for a SP'er and giving Criswell his first start. If this season did not prove that the need for SP'er depth is more important than OF depth, then nothing will convince some posters. The next point is this: I love Duran and Abreu, but assume we trade one, look at the depth we'd still have. Yes, some is speculative or lacking in one area, but it's still more than enough and better than decent. Trade Duran: LF Anthony-Garcia-Campbell (Yoshida/Refsnyder) CF Rafaela-Campbell-Garcia (Anthony) RF- Abreu-Anthony-Refsnyder (Garcia) Trade Abreu: LF: Duran-Garcia-Campbell (Yoshida/Refsnyder) CF: Rafaela- Campbell-Garcia (Duran) RF: Anthony-Refsnyder-Garcia We'd need 2 major OF injuries to be in trade mode at the deadline. We know we will have 2-3 pitching injuries. I am not about trading Duran or Abreu out of anything wrong with them: we have a surplus of OF strength and will have a big need at SP'er, just like we have one now, post trade deadline.

I've all but given up responding to TadJizzPuppyMoppy. The others are fine.

Max, just because we may be able to overcome a couple or three weak areas, does not mean we have none. 1. 1B: You keep clinging to the season numbers by Toro that were greatly inflated by a 9 game stretch nearly 2 months ago. Romy is great vs LHPs, but he may be needed at 2B, so 1B, especially vs RHPs is a big weakness. Campbell may be a fix, but no way do we know. 2. 2B: Mayer may need surgery. Even if not, he has an injury issue with his wrist. Campbell sucks at 2B D, so I doubt he is a solution. We may end up with DHam-Romy at 2B or go with Rafaela at 2B all season. That pretty much means Yoshida is the DH, all year. 3. DH: Yoshida- nuff said. 4. Buehler: May might be a fix, but right now our 4/5 slots are 2 weak areas, despite one nice start by Criswell, who is now at AAA. That's at least 5 weak areas of varying degrees. (I'm not even counting Wong's bat as a weakness.) We clearly have 3 weak areas and 2-3 minor ones. It's my contention that every other AL team has 3 or more.

Funny thing is, it wasn't "satirical."

We could be right back to a major 2B issue. The position has been jinxed since the Machado- Pedey incident. A couple nice partial seasons by Story and Kike is the only times we've looked good at 2B since Pedey in 2017. This is year 8!

I seriously doubt PIT trades Skenes, but if they do, not many teams have the young talent they'd want in return. I agree, we go hard after Ryan with Keller being the "fall back." Would you trade Yoshida, Duran and Sandlin for Keller & Reynolds?

While I don't think the Yanks are THIS BAD, they lost to MIA, today and ate 21-28 in their last 49 games! They are close to losing their WC slot. TOR lost, as well. First place in ALE is certainly in reach. 65-48 TOR 62-51 BOS -3.0 (Sox are 0.5 GB HOU for the 3rd best AL record) 60-52 NYY -4.5 WC Race 62-51 BOS (+3.5 on TEX, who is losing.) 60-52 NYY 59-53 SEA (up 5-3 v TEX) 58-54 TEX (down 5-3 to SEA) 56-55 CLE 56-56 KCR

The next decisions may be... 1. When Mayer returns DHam will be demoted. 2. Will Campbell replace Toro at 1B vs RHPs (and maybe LHPs, too as Romy plays 2B or DH v LHPs.) 3. When Criswell's 10 days in the minors is up (or some pitcher goes on the IL) who gets demoted (Murphy?) or DFA'd (Alcala?) 4. Does Harrison get a 2026 look? (for who, if no IL?) 5. Same with Burdi, Kelly and Fitts. ( think Burdi > Alcala and maybe the others, too.) 6. What's up with Grissom? 7. Does JH Garcia get a shot, if no IL?

We can beat good teams. We do still have some weak areas, but just maybe other teams have more. We are no longer looking for "help from pitchers coming off the IL." (They are all out for the season.) Only Mayer remains as an IL hopeful. Our AAA depth is now (on the 40): SP: Criswell, Harrison & Fitts RP: SP'ers above + Bernardino, Burdi, Kelly, I Campbell 1B/2B/OF: Campbell 2B: Grissom SS: Sogard OF: Eaton & Jh Garcia

How many times have we heard about a drop in morale after recent lackluster deadlines, especially after other teams seemed to go overboard to improve their rosters? I think a poster or two mentioned it, this season. We did add two players and demote two others, so it's not like no clubhouse changes were made. One also wonders how trading non 26 man roster players would affect the clubhouse morale, or if we got better players than M & M.

Someone mentioned trying Wong with Buehler, but maybe spreading out his non Bello work is a good idea, too. Narvaez needs some rest. I'm also worried about Crochet leading the league in IP.

Fred, Rafaela is now at .761. What is your projection for his final OPS for 2026? (I'd say .740 to .770. Give me a 30 point range.)