moonslav59

'24 O'Neill (jury still out) '23 Duvall '22 JBJ (BUST) '21 Kike & Renfroe '20 Pillar

44 games and right at .500. That's about what many of us expected for the season, but how we got here was a little surprising- a lot in some cases. 4 Game Report Card: A+ The rotation (2.62 ERA, 1.07 WHIP and a .623 OPS Against) Wong (Only O'Neill and Devers have more PAs and a better OPS than his .900 line.) A O'Neill and Refsnyder (would be A+ had they not been hurt. .964 Ref and .924 O'Neill) Duran (He has had a nice all around start to '24. Good D, 21 XGHs, 9 SBs and a decent .784 OPS) A- The pen (.620 OPS Against is actually better than our rotation! 1.17 WHIP is not bad) Devers (.902 OPS and better D maybe should place him at A, but untimely hitting & key errors have hurt.) Abreu (His D has looked better than I expected and the .830 OPS is solid.) B+ (Big gap between A- and C) B None B- McGuire (His O has dipped, of late (.663 OPS,) but his defense and staff-handling has been superb.) C+ None C Rafaela (Tough to grade this highly with a .595 OPS and so many errors, but he has made a lot of plays nobody else makes, and he leads the team in RBI.) C- D+ Base running (due to several costly blunders) D Our defense (better than the F of 2023) D- Cooper (He could easily be an F with his .584 OPS, but when you compare him to Smith & Dalbec...) F Henry (no explanation needed) D Smith (.450) and Dalbec (.377) have really hurt the team over 100 PAs. DHam (.563,) Valdez (.452,) and Reyes (.451) have hurt as much as our 1Bmen, and they have 216 PAs! INC Casas (.857 was a good start, and his D looked better, but missing 2-3+ months will hurt like HELL!) Yoshida (.736 was okay, but all those ground outs to 2B are getting annoying.) Grissom (starting off like an F, despite decent defense in his SSS) Romy (He has looked good on D and has some key hits in his short time on the field.) Breslow (too early to tell but starting out like an A to A-) Cora (too early to tell but has looked decent, B+ to Pitcher score card: (I'm factoring in what was expected to a certain degree) with OPS Against listed A+ Houck .542 Crawford .579 Bernardino .400 A Slaten .476 A- B+ Weissert .659 B Criswell .671 (Maybe an A- based on expectations and a B- without) B- Bello .658 (He did better in the second half, last year) Booser .594 Anderson .604 C+ Jansen .542 OPS Against is awesome but too many let downs (too many BBs) C Martin .664 (Turning things around, after a bad start to year) C- Winckowski (Could be INC or D+) D+ D D- F Joely Campbell (could be INC) Jacques INC Pivetta .763 Whitlock .616 Kelly .470 Uwasawa .464

He has looked weak and off balance. Maybe this is sort of his ST'ing, but 41 PAs is a pretty small sample size. He does need to start showing something, at some point, soon. He has looked better on D than most of what we've seen over the past 2-3 years.

Most likely, yes. We've done okay with one year OF'ers: O'Neill, Duvall, Renfroe...

We are losing too many winnable games like this one. We need to turn it around quickly.

More Romy magic?

Have fun! I love watching the Sox at away parks.

It was in 2023, too.

I think trading JD would have meant paying part of his deal. Having Schwarber would certainly have been nice, but I still think spending on good pitching is the way I would do some what if hindsight ideas.

How many times are these guys tested? I'm not saying I know he's been clean his whole life, but who knows for sure, otherwise?

O'Neill sitting. No Wong at DH.

You've been waiting a while for him to have a 10 day slump.

Yes, almost anyone would be better than Franchy/Arroyo at 1B for that long stretch. It seemed obvious in '22, we needed to shift the plan, but sometimes giving a struggling player a longer look works... like Bobby D was given in '21. In 2021, our "problem" was not 1B in 2021, especially after mid May. We stuck with Dalbec and it worked. The plan in '22 did not. Bobby D was on a pretty long warm to hot streak in 2021, which was maybe one reason we stuck with him for so long in '22: .867 May 13 to end of season .916 June 10 to end of season .988 July 21 to end of season 1.087 after August 5th It's easy to think all choices that fail were bad choices. It is not really that simple.

We repeatedly asked who should have been signed for $10M, instead, and go nothing, as usual.

Criswell goes tonight, as we try to split with the Rays. No O'Neill. Cooper and Smith both playing, instead of Wong at DH. Refsnyder starting against a RH'er, as he has done very well, so far, this year vs them.

Don't forget the same person who complain when strength of schedule is mentioned, then poo-poo our record due to playing an easy schedule to start the season.

I did not like the Gio signing, but in terms of durability, yes. He seemed like as durable as you can get.

Yes, a healthy balance of both is best, but the quantity thing hasn't worked very well for over a decade. (One could argue we lacked quantity, too, unless you're talking quantity of mediocrity or worse.)

I'd have preferred singing a durable SP'er to any of these guys, and with Bogey bolting, we did need a SS, but I can't disagree with your opinion.

Indeed, and the point is, it is not easy finding competent players in mid May. Teams are generally not looking to trade away good players, at that time. It can and does happen, but it is rare. A certain person and others were upset when we played Schwarber at 1B, out of desperation, and that ended up working out okay, and they went silent on he matter. Throwing things at the wall, sometimes works. More often than not, it does not. HRam in LF Swihart in LF. Arroyo in RF. AGon in RF. Turner at 2B. Kike at SS. Rafaela at SS. Wong at 2B. Mookie in CF/ RF GG'er Yaz at 1B Devers at 1B... ooops, that slipped out. Some work: some don't. Bloom chose to roll the dice with Cordero & Arroyo for way too long. Maybe he expected Casas to return earlier. Maybe few options were open, and none were good ones. May his indecision got the best of him, once again. This wasn't his worst choice made, but it clearly failed.

Remember, Casas was in AAA and healthy, at this time, that year. He got hurt May 17th. I'm not sure they knew how long Casas would be out, but the issue should be about from about May 20 to the Hosmer trade. GS at 1B in 2022 64 Dalbec (coming off a very nice final 4 months of 2021 and a career OPS over .800, at that time.) 3 T Shaw (had a nice finish to the 2021 season) 47 Cordero (a failed experiment, to say the least) 22 Casas (after returning from injury) 14 Hosmer (after trade) 6 Arroyo, 5 Vazquez and 1 Chang (trying anything) It was about a third of a season (59 games.)

I've never been a fan of quantity over quality with building pitching staffs and farm systems, but we seem to have a lot of pitchers who are not considered top prospects but who have some hopes. Maybe some will turn into the next Crawford or Criswell. (I would have mentioned Wink, but he's in AAA, now.)

More... Run Support per IP 6.4 Criswell 5.8 Bello 4.1 Wink 4.0 Houck 4.0 Crawford (3.9 league avg) 3.3 Whitlock 1.8 Pivetta When you figure Houck and Crawford have ERAs in the low 2's, we should be than 7-11 in their starts, with them having 4 run support per IP. (Unearned runs and pen letdowns hurt.) Whitlock and Pivetta have been hurt more than Houck and Crawford, although their sample sizes are much smaller. Game Score. Team W-L% 60.6/.444 Houck 59.2/.333 Crawford 58.2/1.00 Criswell 56.3/.250 Whitlock 55.0/.500 Pivetta 54.8/.833 Bello 53 league average 52.7/.667 Wink Amazing how nearly all our SP'ers are above the league avg, except Wink, who has 3 GS and missed by 0.3! IP/GS 6.4 Houck (96 pitches per game) 5.8 Crawford (91) 5.3 Bello (89) (5.3 league avg) 5.2 Pivetta (78) 4.7 Criswell (79) 4.6 Whitlock (80) 3.6 Wink (50)

The good news from thos games: Whitlock: 4.2 IP 2H 0ER 1BB 5K Wink 2.1 3H 1ER 1BB 2K (not too bad) Bastardo 5IP 3H, 1ER 1BB 8K (3.60 ERA) Liu 3IP 0H 0ER 1BB 5K (0.00 ERA) GRE lost 6-3 as Perales did not do great. K Campbell 2-4 w 2B (I hope he gets the call to POR, soon.) SAL was the only winning team in the org, yesterday (4-1) Paez 4IP, 5H, 0ER, 0BB, 4K Bleis 2-4 and up to .730, after a poor start to '24.

We should just play Ref at 1B, even near FT. Maybe give Wong a rest as a catcher, somedays and play him there. They should DFA one of Cooper or Smith, and try something else. I doubt Ref will be as bad as Cordero was.