moonslav59

You mean in the stands watching?

I've kinda written off Yoshida for 2025. I'm looking at a Duran/Refsnyder DH as our best solution for this moment, anyway. v R: Duran DH, Anthony LF, Rafaela CF, Abreu RF vs L: Refsnyder DH, Duran LF, Rafaela CF, Anthony RF (I'd also be okay with leaving Anthony in LF, FT and having Duran in CF vs lefties, with Rafaela in RF.) When Bregman returns, we need to decide on who plays SS and who plays 2B. I'd go with Mayer SS/Story 2B, but that could wait until 2026. Someone suggested Romy/Yoshida at DH or maybe even think of Romy/Toro at DH, if we add a 1Bman.

I'm not for trading any top prospects for a rental. Romero, Bleis, Cespedes and Jordan might be the highest I go for everyday players and maybe Rule 5 guys Monegro and Mullins as pitchers I'd part with. This may not be enough to get what we need, and by the deadline, I might be arguing we should be sellers or mostly sellers. I'm fine with clearing up some logjams, but again, not for a better player who is just a rental. Trading Duran or Abreu for a multi year player who plays 2B, 1B or is a sild SP'er might be an idea. I'd even add some prospects I mentioned above to grow the return, but I'm not sure I can come up with a fit with another contending team, of a rebuilding team willing to take on guys about to start making increasing arb money. We aren't getting anything of value for Grissom or DHam. While I don't have much faith that Toro/Romy can continue over .800 the rest of the way, I'm not sure trading anything valuable for a 1Bman or DH is a good idea, or if they will do better than our current platoon. Our 2B position is jinxed. I'm convinced. Our 5th starter is a mess, and replacing him with a solid #2 would be a huge boost. Who might that be, that won't cost us KC or Arias + Jh Garcia? This won't be easy. We fixed ourselves into a hole, I'm not sure any GM can get us out of.

We have a great defensive Catcher hitting over .800 and under team control for 4+ years. He may win ROY. Of all the positions we need upgraded, catcher is down on my list. To get a good one will be very costly.

I mentioned 2B as a reason not to trade Story. I fully understand your point, and am not sure we'd be much better with the trade, except financially after 2025. I'd much prefer a deal like Grissom & Mullins for Hoskins.

We need the pitching with Devers or without. You stated you don't think the pitching got better as a result of the trade, so certainly, if our pitching keeps doing well the rest of the way, having Devers would not change that and would help them get mor wins, due to more run support, than they will likely get, now that he is gone. The loss of Devers does not "prevent" a playoff shot, but the odds are diminished with him gone.

LOL, true. Mullins is not trash, though, but is Rule 5.

I'd give Grissom & Kelly for Hoskins...maybe even Mullins over Kelly.

I'll take a bite at this... BA (Your choice of stats, not mine) since April 30th (a significant sample size that is larger than April alone's.) .222 DHam .220 Mayer .207 Abreu .200 Story .190 Wong .154 Campbell .074 Anthony DHam >> KC on 2b Defense, too. .983 DHam>> .968 KC using your stat, not mine, Flg% OPS? DHam .564> Campbell .451

True, but .700 at BOS would beat KC, and his D is no worse than KC. .600 would beat DHam, but not his D.

Agreed. It's the same pitching staff, mildy improved by the hope that Hicks or Harrison can and will help a tiny bit. I'm totally done counting on returning pitchers from long IL stints- Houck, Crawford, Sandoval, Murphy, Hendriks and now Slaten. We need to add a SP'er and a bat to be back to close to what we had with Devers, and that still might not be enough. Since I'm against trading top prospects for rentals, we are in a near impossible bind. Even trades for multiple year players cost way more, now, than in the winter. It looks like wait till next year, all over again, and I'm sick of it. Nothing is good about this trade, in terms of our team on the field in 2025. Nothing. If we happen to spend $30M AAV in deadline trades, without losing top prospects, it's still highly doubtful we can get back to square one, and the next point is that "square one" was a highly doubtful chance at squeaking into that playoffs, as it was. This sucks, and no sugarcoating how Devers was slumping changes a thing. He was our best, healthy bat. He knocked in runs. He killed the Yankees, year in and year out. He sucked on D and he was overpaid for a DH. That's all true, but we still lost out bigtime, this year.

The trade sucked for us. There are too many ifs, ands and buts involved, with the main one being if and how we "spend the savings," that will ultimately complete the grade on this trade. The Betts trade sucked, bigtime- all by itself, but it was made worse by not only failing to replace the $30M we offered him, but falling way short of replacing it, along with Porcello, Kimbrel, Kelly, and many that came afterwards. I was a huge Devers Froevers fan and defended him as much as anyone. I cut him slack on the translation and perhaps cultural context of his initial comments about "being the 3Bman." I avoided piling on, since reports claimed they never directly asked him to play 1B. The FO chose to attack via the media, once again. I was shocked and saddened when I heard of the trade and am still far from happy, despite our moderator claiming I'm "happy" attacking Devers, now. There is plenty of blame to go around, and I assigned less than half on Devers, until he said, "I'll play anywhere they want me to play" in the SFG presser. That was when I flipped to blaming Devers more. He obviously was about sticking it to the FO and ultimately the team, to send a message, and it wasn't really about his thinking he shouldn't be "asked to play every position." Sure, he was playing tit for tat against a FO that deserved it, but in the end, the bottom line is, he hurt the team on the field by not jumping up and saying, "I'll play 1B to help the team," and by dogging it more than once, as well as in the clubhouse as the perfect non example as a role model to the many rookies and 1-3 year players on the team. Maybe I'm at 50-50, and I'm fine being called a "flipper." I think I've tried hard to spread the blame, check posters out to bash Devers as a batter, and keep a fair and balanced opinion on what went down. I've corrected my mistaken comments, and may change my opinion, again, if new information comes out. I'm pissed we lost his bat in out line-up, during the first season in a long time, where I thought we had a legit chance at making it to the WS. I'm pissed our FO keeps repeating the same mistakes, over and over with no hint of learning a lesson. I'm pissed that I'm back to the drawing board trying to figure out what sort of plan the team could take to help us get back to being a legit contender, now, without losing a top prospect or needed vet. I'm back to the same question, again, sadly... "How Soon Is Now?

The second one is about run differentials in 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025. They were/are: +80 in 2021; -52 in 2022; -4 in 2023; +4 in 2024, and +18 in 2025. Devers was on all 4 of the previous teams, whose cumulative run differentials add up to +28 total or an average of +7 per season. Now it's +18 in half a season. So it's a bunch of crap that Devers was or is superman. -Max 1. Nobody calls Devers "superman," but he has been a top 15-20 hitter in MLB in just about any timeframe you choose larger than 100 games. 2. Blaming him for our poor run differentials over the past few years is not fair, at all. 3. He hit .740 after Bregman went down, as teams pitched around him (19BBs in 24 games.) He hit .702 in his first 24 games of the season with Bregman on the team. I don't equate a mini funk to Devers not being a huge force those last or first 24 games. We don't need to tear down Devers the batter to justify why the trade needed to be done.

Buehler and Houck (and Newcomb and Fitts and ...)

I hear you. That stretch after the ASB and beyond the trade deadline is as tough as can be, so I still think we should be as best positioned as possible by then. but we could say the same if the two stretches were reversed.

Someone like Mitch Keller might eb available, as his pay goes up and out of PIT's reach, soon, but he's not an impact starter. If they added Bednar, who has one arb year left, maybe we could make it worth their while. We need to find controllable guys, who might be high end on salary for teams looking to trim salary, but they have to be good players, who rate to still be good over the rest of their contract. How many guys/teams like that are there? Even if TEX turns seller, they won't trade Nate. If STL turns seller, there is still Arenado (3B until Breg returns then 1B?) and Sonny Gray? Helsley is a rental, but we have Chapman. Willson Contreras is a salary dump, who now plays 1B and could be our 3rd catcher (2nd? Hmmmm.) MIN won't trade Lopez. Maybe Cincy parts with a Sp'er, if we take on Candelario, who I'm not even sure is healthy or can play 3B/1B. Any other ideas like this?

I'm not sure he will be Schwarber '21 cheap, but I'm okay with rentals, if they don't cost us Arias, Tolle, Clarke of any higher ranked prospects. Bleis for Ozuna? Sure. Cespedes? Probably. Mullins & Jordan? Probably.

Huh? Saying a guy was indecisive is not praise. Pointing out how he missed on just about every major signing, several times, is not praise. The only thing he did well was build up the farm, which was made easier when you finish in last place, so often and you trade players for prospects and get comp picks for letting all your stars walk.

.757 is borderline elite, these days... LOL! He's got 37 HRs in his last 680 ABs, If he stinks, then we can get him for peanuts.

You think he'd be selected, if not protected? We do have a pretty full OF, even 2 years from now, and Jh Garcia is in front of Bleis. (Cespedes and KC may end up in the OF, too.) I could see Bleis included in a deadline trade.

SEA wouldn't take Nav, KC, Masas and $5M a year for Cal.

We could have traded Casas, but I think we insisted on including Masa without enough cash going the other way. I can't remember all the trade suggestions I made to SEA, many involving taking back salary like Garver's and or Haniger's to help balance out Masa. I think one was Masa, Casas & Abreu for Woo plus their two salary dumps. I think the main talk was Masa & Casas for Castillo and his big contract, but SEA did not want Masa, or maybe they wanted us to pay way more cash than we wanted to include. I'm not sure what else was out there. I tried things like Masa and ___ for Arenado, but not Casas.

Bloom, and it's not even a close call. Grissom wilted. Gio wilted. Sale was grafted onto Jack's beanstalk.

Depends on a lot of things. Trades. We could trade for O'hearn or Hoskins and play Romy/Toro at 2B. (DHam when Toro is at 3B, but that is not an optimistic sight to see.) KC's play in AAA. How well the guy(s) playing 2B do from now until AUG 1st.

Good point, but I just don't like the idea of trading for a rental. Now, getting out from under a big chunk of Story's contract has real appeal. Opening up SS for Mayer, does, too, but the idea made much better sense, when we viewed Campbell as our FT 2Bman. Now, Story looks better there. Romero is to iffy. Arias is too far away. Cespedes might be worse on D than Campbell. Romy/DHam does not have much umf. If we got a 1Bman, I'm not sure Romy/Toro at 2B does either.