moonslav59

I'm not so convinced on KMarte, anymore. Paredes kinda reminds me of Abreu- still waiting for that elusive career bust out season. BLowe would be nice but he's not really a major big bat- just a major improvement. Jeffers & BLowe would be nice improvements, but we'd still need a big bat (SS or DH?)

I'm not sure we deserve 4 guys on the AS team, and Suarez would make 5, so probably no to him, Contreras and Ceddanne. Just Gray and Chapman, IMO. Suarez does have better numbers than Gray in many categories, but not the traditional W-L and ERA.

Some felt the money spent on Suarez should have been spent on a bat, so not all wanted or expected more money spent. I do think the Suarez signing was not in the top plans, and we would not have traded for Oviedo, had we known we would be adding Gray & Suarez. That trade capital could have been used on a bat upgrade. One more major trade could have been made that did not mean more money spent. Yes, many did want or demand more money be spent, but not all thought is was needed to better balance the roster.

Was Ole Red on B.com?

Thanks. I still think this is a type of deal we might make, but the other "sells" would have to be more 2027-centric.

Despite last nights win, I'm still in the "sell camp." That could change with a sweep, but even then, I'd be on the fence.

He has his own meanings for words and apparently punctuation, now too. If you call him out, you are "over analyzing." It's his fallback rather than adjusting or defending his comment. He's not worth responding to. Look up the word "Churlish" and his picture is there.

Congrats to Chapman for breaking the RP'er K record. He's been struggling his last 6 games (5IP: 5 Ks, 3BB and a 9.00 ERA with 3 saves and 2 BS,) but he's still having a very nice season. He had an 0.44 ERA in his first 21 games and 28 Ks in 20.2 IP (9BB and just 10 hits- zero HRs) Overall: 25.2 IP 33Ks and 12 BBs w 21 hits and still no HRs allowed. 2.10 ERA and 2.06 FIP

How close to the bigs are the two prospects SEA sends to BOS?

Here is one way to compare 2025 to 2026 on offense: 2025>>>/<<< 2026 .905 Devers (334 PAs) >>> ___________ .790 NLowe (119) .659 Toro (284) .580 Casas (112) <<< .912 Contreras (347 PAs) .825 Bregman (495) >>>.688 Durbin (282) .705 IKF (132) .664 KC (263) & ,590 DHam (194) <<< .705 IKF (132) .888 Seigler (49) .627 Monasterio (145) .859 Anthony (303) & .826 Romy >>> .675 Anthony (130) & .800 Romy (15) .681 Yoshida & .838 Ref (209) >>> .696 Yoshida (205) & .613 Gasper (119) .786 Abreu (417)>>> .763 Abreu (363) .774 Duran (696) >>>.599 Duran (343)*** .741 Story (654)>>> .547 Story (176)*** .708 Rafaela (587) << .767 Rafaela (329) .674 Mayer (136)>>> .594 Mayer (228)*** .500 Wong (188) <<<.777 Wong (114) .731 Narvaez (446) >>>.540 Narvaez (162)*** .731 Eaton (90) .661 Sogard (104) = .616 Eaton (34) .721 Sogard (41) Too many major swings and too many to the bad.

Missing a "D" and an "L" and maybe a Suarez.

Good questions. Going into this season, I knew we lacked a big bat, and I actually had hoped we'd have added two more, but I felt the upgrades to Gray and Suarez made the need for two bats less of an issue. I looked at our everyday players and was impressed by the fact that just about everyone was under team control to 2027 or beyond. Most were young (Anthony, Mayer & Rafaela) or younger players approaching prime (Durbin, Narvaez & Abreu) or at peak prime (Duran, Romy & Wong) while our older players (Story, Contreras, Yoshida and IKF) were not so far beyond prime that major decline should have been expected. In short, I expected an overall improvement over their 2025 numbers and not a net decline. I wasn't the only one disappointed by my expectations not being met by our everyday players, and projecting forward has to take into account what we are seeing this season. Not seeing Anthony play at all makes projecting him about the same as where I was in March, but with more worries about his health, and whether he needed, needs or should have had surgery. I see major upside to his outlook, but his value is mostly speculative. Contreras will be older, so expecting the same from him (a career year) is wishful thinking. Story is toast, IMO. If he's our 2Bman in 2027, it might be okay, if we have some depth (Mayer) and have filled the big bat addition needs at other positions. (yes, that is in the plural form.) Prime players, Duran, Romy and Wong, should be viewed as bench or platoon players for 2027, assuming they are back. I used to think Abreu was poised for a career year at near .875 with 30 HRs. I don't anymore. Expecting .800 with 25 HRs might be pushing it. I like what I'm seeing from Durbin, but it's only been 3-4 weeks. His defense looks better than very good, but we need help on offense. Can he hit .750 plus? We likely need that. In March, I had high expectations for Narvaez- not anymore. He seems fine as a defensive #2 catcher, but Wong is okay as one, too, so maybe one is dealt or becomes AAA depth in '27. The young guys, Anthony & Mayer have to make jumps in 2027, and Rafaela has to keep this up for us to have a legit chance. This assumes Brez will not add 2-3 major bats, this winter, and only adds 1 big bat or 2 pretty good ones. If he adds 3 good ones, the pressure on the 3 young players is minimized to some extent. To me, adding a 2 big bats is the bare minimum we need. It makes sense to try and fit them to our needs at Catcher, Middle Infield or DH, but if Duran is traded, we can add just about anywhere except maybe 1B, assuming Contreras is not traded. The need for big bats supersedes the positional needs, but we do need a major middle infield add, so it might as well be a good bat or major upgrade on O over Story/Mayer/Moansterio/Seigler. Maybe this for 2027? C Jeffers (Narvaez/Wong) 1B Contreras (Romy) 2B BLowe/Torres/Chisholm (Romy) 3B Durbin (Mayer) SS JP Crawford (Mayer) LF Anthony/Duran (traded?) CF Rafaela RF Abreu DH Duran/Anthony/Romy & a RHB (Suzuki?) Suzuki would make 4 additions, which WILL NOT happen, but maybe we add him and settle on Mayer at SS (not Crawford) or Mayer at 2B (not Lowe) or find a cheaper catcher than Jeffers.

Cease was just a rental, and Salas is under .700 in over 1000 minor league PAs. Had Duran done well this year, we'd be treating this like the Sale and Harrison trades.

No way he'd put him back, but Cora was considering Bregman at 2B, so I'm not so sure how "clear" that idea was to him. IMO, he didn't want to face Devers to tell him to move to DH or 1B. He must have valued "team peace" close to as highly as what the best defensive alignment was. He did ultimately decide on Bregman at 3B, so yes, he valued defense more than keeping Devers happy. Maybe he relented to Brez, and 'really want to do it, but I find it hard to imagine a defensive-minded player like Cora would not see what was best for the team defense. Team harmony & peace are important, too, and keeping your top stars happy is part of the job. Cora & Brez missed the boat on that one, and obviously handled the whole situation like a train wreck. The media didn't help either, and I do think some comments by Devers were taken out of context and nuance, but it ended up becoming a cluster you-know-what. Intentionally orchestrated or not, Nudges a little bit or not, just plain botched as more likely, we ended up losing a big bat we sorely needed, this year. If we figure the money saved gained us Contreras and Suarez, then okay, but we still needed another bat. That makes losing Devers more painful.

To me, the frustrating part of this season is how bad the AL is, and how easy it should have been to make the playoffs or even be a top 3 or 4 team in the AL. Our run differential points to us being better than our record indicates, but that only goes so far, Pythagorean has us at 43-43, which is pretty pathetic in a league like this, too. It's hard to write this team off in early July due to the weaknesses of the teams ahead of us, but even if by some miracle we do advance into the playoffs, nobody thinks we can do anything magical once there. It is frustrating as all hell to watch this team flounder. It worse, because most of us felt the carry-over base from the 2025 team and the decent additions made would get us to at least about the same record. Hell, even you predicted 90 wins, so it's not like any of us felt this team was going to be this bad. If every team finishes with the same winning % as now, SEA makes the WC with 82 wins. Texas wins the ALW with 83 wins. CLE wins the ALC with 85-86 wins, and the Rays win the ALE with 99 wins. What a major lost opportunity, here! It's hard to know if Alonso or BLowe & Paredes would have made a big enough difference. If the rest of the team played like they have, I doubt it.

Our lack of big bats has been beaten to death by posters, and rightfully so. To get the sample size to 9 players per team, the PA cutoff is 160 PAs. Here is how our 8 batters rank in OPS: 11. Contreras (ahead of Judge, Harper and others) 104. Rafaela (whodathunk he'd be our #2 batter?) 109. Abreu (moving in the wrong direction) 181. Durbin (This is top of the 7th tier out of 9! Pretty sad for our 4th best bat!) 186. Yoshida (Maybe dumping him will not help.) 252. Duran (This is bottom 9th tier out of 9.) 255. Mayer (The second of 3 bottom tier bats on the team) 265. Story (Only 5 batters have more PAs and a worse OPS.) It's not just about having just one batter in the top 100, but we have 3 in the bottom 9th tier. We have two bats (Rafaela & Abreu) in the 4th of 9 tiers, but we have 5 batters in the bottom 7-8-9 tiers. Our 9th batter by PAs did not qualify, but it's Narvaez, who is just below Story in OPS! That essentially gives us 6 of our top 9 bats, by PAs ranked in the bottom 3rd tier.

Gotta like how our starting 5 is looking, now. When you look to 2027 and figure Crochet replaces Gray, not needed to add a solid rotation piece makes focusing on hitting an easier task. That's not to say Brez will live up to the task, or that JH will allow him to spend enough to fix the major hole in the roster, but it is a good thing to have. (We also will need to build out the pen and as always keep adding SP'er depth pieces.) Our current SP'er ERA- (FIP) 62 Gray (3.58) 67 Suarez (2.72) 71 Bennett (3.14) 78 Tolle (3.53) 79 Early (4.62) 5 starters per team= 150 (The IP has to be 40+ to get 150 SP'ers in the sample size.) Our 5 SP'ers rank in ERA- 15 Gray (above Yamamoto) 24 Suarez (just above Harrison) 29 Bennett (just barely over the 40IP cut off and above Skubal) 40 Tolle & 41 Early (Ranking them as solid #2's if you go by the 30 pitcher tiers.)

Even if Brez & Co want to move players under control after 2027, most notably Contreras & Whitlock, I'm not sure they can give the appearance this is a total tear-down rebuild to the fanbase. (Trading Duran is in a different category.)

He thinks Cora would have moved Raffy back to 3B upong Breggie's departure. That's too funny, and would have been reason enough to fire Cora the day after opening day.

I do think the Price inclusion often gets overlooked. One poster, I think it was 700, claimed Price was worth more to the Dodgers than the cost of his contract they paid (half-Price.) The return was meager, despite the hopes Verdugo and Downs offered, but to me, it looked better than the Padres offer.

Notin, in all seriousness, why bother with the resident clown, anymore? He can't read. He misrepresents others' positions. He goes off on me for years for saying he "hates Bloom" because he never said he did, and now says I am a "Devers hater." That's just the tip of the iceberg of clownishness at best and just plain malice or contempt, at its worst.

Beltre was more a wrecking ball, but I'd give the nod to him over JI.

Even if we got 16-7 to end the month (fat chance, right?) I'm still not sure I'd want us to be buyers.

I'm no expert on even our own farm, but this seems like the type of deal Brez might or should make. The big drawback is that this is a punt down the road deal, as Whitlock has 2 years left, and our pen needs help now on top of having an 80 year old closer with just 1 year of possible control left, too. I'm not sure the plan will be about 2028 and beyond. There needs to be 2027 included. Maybe that comes from the Gray trade, or maybe a Chapman trade. Maybe it comes from a Contreras trade. Duran, IKF & Coulombe trades won't move the needle much.

Not many poster put almost all the blame on one guy, and certainly what has happened after the trade has shifted some views on the percentages of blame each guy gets. I'm not sure any of the big 3 (Brez, Cora and Devers) should even get over 50%. They all messed up, and we lost a big bat as a result of it. To me, a player needs to do what is asked of him to do, whether he agrees with it or not. Whether he thinks its best for the team or not. Whether other fans and baseball "experts" agree with him or not. He needs to do what management thinks is best for the team. This is coming from a union guy who hardly ever sides with management. Devers deserves 33%+ blame. I put it near 40%. Although I blame Cora for not even talking to Devers about it, manager often disagree with the GM and play who they want and where they want him. Not supporting or doing what Brez wanted has a little more gray area, but he still wimped out and made the situation worse. (It might be one reason he is gone, too.) I would not put 33% of the blame on Cora. Maybe 20%. Brez has some serious issues, and one is interpersonal relations and communication, in general. The minute they signed Bregman, he or Cora needed to talk to Devers about the plan. He should have foreseen the possible need at 1B and told DFevers to prepare to DH and be the back-up 1Bman. This is on Brez. If Cora disagreed with that plan or was too chicken to talk to Devers about it, then Brez needed to deal with that issue and or communicate with Devers himself. To me, that gives him 33%+ of the blame. I'd put him at 40%- same as Devers. I happen to agree that the best plan was Bregman at 3B, but I also felt Devers would be better at 1B than Casas in the long run, so the idea of Devers at 1B was more appealing to me than several posters, here and more importantly more appealing that it was to Devers. Who knows: maybe if they told Devers he was going to be the first option at 1B and maybe DH some, from day one, he'd have been more accepting of the idea than the way it ended up going down. Bloom should never have promised 3B to Devers, and Brez & Co should never have told him to put his glove away and be the FT DH. Casas has been hurt enough, and we've needed to add a 1Bman mid season for like 10 years in a row. Not seeing that was a major mistake by management, but injuries happen, and players are asked to move positions for the benefit of the team. It shouldn't matter if you agree that it was the best idea or not- a player is asked/told to play a position- he needs to do it.