moonslav59

POR got crushed 18-4 and Teel went 0-5 w 3 Ks. Anthony homered and walked twice Mayer 2-3 w 2B Campbell 1-3 w BB GRE lost 6-4 Coffey 2-4 w 2B Garica 2-4

I think Abreu is ready. He homered, twice, last night. The demoted Westbrook went 2-3 w a homer, 5 rbi and 2 BBs. Wink pitched 6 scoreless innings 6Hits 2BB 4K

I doubt we trade for 1 and dones. Maybe not even 2 and dones. I think we will have to sacrifice some of our top farm everyday talent to get a younger pitcher with 3+ years of control. Just bite the bullet, knowing it will look like an overpay, and just hope the pitcher we get stays healthy and doesn't decline. We have so many everyday prospects ranked highly or on the serious upswing. Our 26 and 40 man roster looks as deep as it has in a long time, especially non-pitchers. It seems like an obvious path to take.

So, to get Yoshi a slot against RHPs, you play Rafaela at SS and bench O"Neill, who is at .745 v RHPs w 9 HRs in 131 ABs? You bench DHam at .822 v RHPs, too? Yoshi is at .716 v RHPs. I get the idea that he should get a chance to show he can still play, but I'm not for benching our hottest hands. Good to see you came around on Ref v RHPs (.856,) at least until he shows he should go back to a platoon.

Play here? Why? Who do you sit, so Yoshi can play? When Casas and Abreu return, he won't even belong on a theoretical 28 man roster.

Yup, and I fully expect this team to have more tough stretches, going forward, maybe even against worse teams. It is very likely, this team is not as bad as many felt it was, but also not as good as they look, right now. Nobody should be surprised, if we still end up at .500 or a little below.

I think the ALE had been so strong for so many years, that we just assumed the Rays would keep "finding a way" to stay very good. (They still may rebound.) I've never bought the hype on TOR, and thought they overperformed, last year. I knew BAL would be good, but I did not expect the Yanks to play this well, especially w/o Cole. The injury bug is starting to creep in on them, and with their ages and injury history, anything can happen. I mean look at HOU and TEX, this year! WTF!!!! I knew our team had a ton of question marks, but in March, I listed them all out, and asked, how many of them need to work out well and pointed out how most did not really look like longshot wishful thinking asks. As it turned out, many did not work out, or haven't so far (Bello, Casas, Grissom, Story, Gio and maybe the most predictable guy, Martin, has not done well. What I feel most happy about is how many of the players leading this tam, right now, are under team control for 3-4+ years- some at pre-arb or arb costs for all of them. I know people do not want to hear about the budget, but the reality is, it might be the only way we can ever win, again, is by having 17-18 players on the 26 not making FA money. The hopes on the farm are fanning my optimism, too.

Indeed, and with back-ups to back-ups in some cases, giving us key contributions. To think that Houck was likely going to be in the pen, had Gio not gotten hurt. Criswell was probably not intended to be our 7th starter. Bernardino started the season in AAA. Slaten was not supposed to be our #2/3 pen arm, this quickly. I think D Smith is the 4th 1Bman used, this year (Casas>Dalbec>Cooper>) EValdez was maybe the #2 2Bman, who played due to Grissom's IL stint, but then was demoted to AAA and became like our 6th choice at middle IF, after trying Reyes, Short, Romy, DHam-twice and Westbrook. DHam fell down the depth charts, like Valdez, only to return with fury. Abreu started the season on the bench. Ref was maybe our 5th OF'er/platoon type player. How far down the depth chart was Booser and Uwasawa in March? This team is as deep as we've been since before the tear down in 2020.

Agreed. To me, what might have the best chance of working is to pay $10-13M of his $18M per year for basically nothing. Add someone like Wink, and maybe we pay $6-10M of his contract, each year.

Dare we say the team looks like it is improving and might be even better, next year? Oh, the horror!

Very true. We seem to play up (and down) to our opponents, just about evenly.

It seemed, at the time, many posters were against that move. For some, it was about the idea of "selling." Many were more pissed about how we handle notifying him he was traded. I liked Vaz. He was a decent hitter, for a catcher, despite some serious ups and downs. His defense was okay, but I never liked how he handled the staff. His back-up almost always had better numbers with the rotation. Certainly Bloom made enough mistakes to not be here anymore. The budget restrictions, aside, he just did not do what he was signed to do: find bargain basement players that overperform, He did find a few more than Abreu & Valdez, but missed on too many, especially his bigger money deals. Other good deals besides Vaz for Abreu & Vadlez: Sam Travis for Jeffery Springs (before he was traded away and got good w TBR) 2 months of Workman & Hembree for Pivetta Beni for Wink, Gambrell and others (saved money that allowed for Renfroe signing) Dare I say, Renfroe for Hamilton & others? Ottavino for cash/nothing Whitlock off Rule 5 draft Schreiber off waivers was very good (later traded for Sandlin by Brez) Y Rios for cash (June '21) H Robles for Scherff Aldo Ramirez for Schwarber (rental) Travis Shaw off waivers (Aug '21) Jaylin Davis off waivers T Pham for Northcut McGuire for Diekman Bernardino off waivers P Reyes for cash Urias for B Blaylock (Brez traded him for ICampbell) Signings that worked okay or better: Zach Kelly Moreland (traded at '20 deadline) Pillar (traded at '20 deadline) Renfroe (trade the next winter for JBJ, Hamilton and Binelas) Kike at $14M/2 (2021-2022, not the extension) Iggy (Sept 2021) Refsnyder (DEC '21) Wacha R Hill M Strahm Justin Turner A Duvall Paxton (borderline ok) Jansen Martin Come to think of it, there were more okay to goods than I thought, but he still feel short.

I have to admit being surprised we have not lost a series since BAL from May 27 to 29. We are on a current pace of an 86 win team. We have one real tough series before the AS break (NYY 7/5 to 7/7,) but you know how this team is. We can't ease up on anyone. 3 @ CIN 3 v TOR 3 v SDP 3 @ MIA 3 @ NYY 3 v OAK 3 v KCR AS Break. The Royals, Padres and Jays should not be easy, and beyond the Yanks, the others seem beatable. In these 21 games, we should be able to at least maintain the .533 Win %.

Is it still too early for some to post the WC Standings? +8.0 BAL +0.5 MIN ---- KCR -1.0 BOS -5.5 TBR & TOR -6.5 TEX, HOU & DET It's the closest we've been since when? Week 2?

What about Dan D who handed over Nomar to Theo, who traded him for OCab, who netted us the draft pick Jacoby, who netted us the draft pick for Kopech, who was traded for Sale, who later netted us the fearsome Grissom?

lol!

Nice game. I watched it at a friends house, here in Portland, ME. I'm not sure how many people said the F word, tonight. Fun this... Fun that...

Only Ruth and the cheater Bonds has a high fWAR? Do you think they got that wrong?

All fans who criticise it no jack about it.

I guess the word”fun” is no longer banned. We all know this team will hit some more hard times, again, and the bay-sayers will come out of the word work. To me, there was a lot of fun going on, even when we were losing and playing near .500 ball. Hell, we are still near .500 ball, now. Certainly it’s more fun when we win more than we lose, but even in many of our losses, this team has shown heart and soul and mangy exciting moments. Let’s win one tonight!

Just wondering, what chance you think Grissom has to win a significant role on the 26- maybe not FT, but possible more GS at 2B than anyone else over the next 4 seasons. A lot depends on others like Story, Mayer and players doing well, recently, like DHam and Valdez. I get that, but still I'm curious how far I'm off from other's opinions. I say 33-40% chance he starts more games at 2B from 2025-2028 than anyone else.

Houck's ERA is up to 2.14, now, and our rotation numbers have come back down to earth, over the last few weeks, but this still looks rather decent, even beyond the lense of what was expected: 2.14 Houck 3.54 Crawford 3.88 Pivetta 4.15 Criswell 5.00 Bello A lot of talk has been about Criswell getting lucky, and in a few ways, he has, but a 1.21 WHIP is not bad, and we all know some of those hits should have been outs, with a better D. His .708 OPS Against is better than Crawford and Bello. His .299 BAbip is higher than all other Sox current SP'ers. OPS Against Last 28 Days .523 Houck .754 Criswell .765 Pivetta .776 Crawford .796 Bello The team is 3 games over .500 and 8-3 in Criswell's starts. Our rotation is still ranked T4 in fWAR. As bad as the rotation has done, recently, they are still ranked T8th in fWAR is their last 37 games (cutting our current season in half.) 40+ IP 1. Houck 3.3 fWAR T23. Crawford 1.8 (same if you count SP'ers with under 40 IP) T68. Criswell 0.9 (T73, if you count all SP) T87. Pivetta 0.6 (T104) T100. Bello 0.4 (T119 out of 206 SP'ers with 10+ IP) Guys like Criswell are the ones I expected Bloom to find. True, he got Pivetta, but one in 4 years was not very good.

You mean "field well." MLB 53 gms at SS 9 gms at 2B Minors 229 at SS 91 at 2B 8 in CF

Agreed, and since we look like a team trying to keep our budget low, getting more prime years out of our younger players over calling them up earlier and starting their "clocks," pre-prime might be a factor as well.

That could very well be the case, but I will add this... Lugo plays LF, now. He will not play 2B for Boston. Valdez and DHam have a lot of improvement to do on D and prove they can hit over the long haul. (So does Grissom.) Yorke was just recently dropped in the prospect rankings, but has been on a 2 week tear in AAA. He is not great on D, either. Romy seems like a career 26 man, utility guy. That leaves the oft-injured Story and highly-regarded prospect, Mayer. There is a good chance Grissom never wins a FT role among all these other options, but I'm not sure the chances are under 50-50. At worst, he might have a 33-40% chance at becoming our starting 2Bman over the next 4 years. (I wont argue, if someone says his chances are 20-25%. 15% might get a reply.)