moonslav59

Love this post, and I'm not even a big fan of fretting about high K rates (or low ones for pitchers who get outs in other ways.)

Do you feel better about our extended future than you did near the end of 2019? (I'm pretty sure most do as compared to after 2020.) Does that have any value?

To each his own. I like paying attention to how we are doing compared to others, but I would not think it's "worrying" to any extent.

Sounds right, but I do have higher expectations for the future than I did starting about midway through 2019 to midway 2021 and then again after the midway point of 2022 to now. I know that ain't worth squat to some posters, but it does give me some comfort. Don't get me wrong: this sucks. It has for 4 out of the last 5 years, and counting. I am not getting my hopes up that JH will change his recent ways, which are not as bad as many make it out to be, but I'm not convinced he will never spend bigly, again, either.

We needed/need too many things to go right, all at once. The Casas, Story and Gio major injuries will likely outweigh a whole bunch of things going right.,

Going into the season with lower or much lower expectations may or may not affect how we view this season's results. I'm enjoying the good pitching and watching the growth of some of our newbies- like Abreu and Rafaela. I'm liking our catching tandem, much more, this year. I'd rather watch O'Neill than Dugo dog it up the line. Duran seems to be up and down, but I'm beginning to think we can actually count on him to be pretty good, going forward. Devers is always fun to watch at the plate. The losing sucks, of course, but feeling better about the extended future helps me get through it a bit easier. I know I may be in the minority on this opinion, and watching teams like the Braves play so well, does not make it easier, as they have some outstanding younger players that makes their extended future look better than ours. (The O's, too.) It's not all fluffy going forward, but to me, it looks a little better now than I felt over the winter.

Why assume I'm worrying?

Good one!

Over years, yes, but the rival match-ups are every year. (They switched it up so we play PHI every other year and ATL the other, and so does TOR.) The Yanks get the Mets and BAL gets WSH.

We are hanging onto 3rd place by a thread- thanks to everybody else losing, too.

1 for 20 is very consistent.

We all know jack.

Glad you finally are seeing the light.

It really sucks we have to play the Braves, every year, while other teams get patsies.

Agreed. I'm not sure MIN is as good as their record indicates, either. I wish we got to play them, when they were sucking. I wish we played the Astros, already.

Van Belle let up 9 runs in 4 IP. Zeferjahn: 2 IP, 3H, 0ER, 1BB, 2K EValdez & Koloz homered, and Kavadas went 2-2 w BB Woo won the second game 4-0 as Shugart pitched 5 scoreless. Kavadas homered (1.107) POR lost 3-2 as Dobbins did okay (5IP 2 ER) Mayer homered (1-3) w BB Teel had a 2B (1-4) Anthony 2-4 Yorke 1-3 w BB Lugo 1-3 (1.165)

We are 6-0 vs 2 teams that are at .500 against everyone but us: PIT & OAK.

You jinxed the staff.

I'm not sure the Sox FO expected Sale to be way worse than he has been. It's mostly been about missed games. 3.93 ERA/3.72 FIP 2021-2023 w Sox (31 GS) 3.61 ERA/3.62 FIP in last 11 starts of '23 1.13 ERA/3.26 FIP last 3 starts of '23 3.44 ERA/3.01 FIP first 4 starts of '24

I argued with notin against signing him, as I wanted 90% or more of all money spent on the rotation. I was okay with the O'Neill trade as it basically evened out the money from the Dugo trade. How do those two deals combined look, now? Alex Verdugo .275 5 17 (.812 OPS) in 141 PAs ($8.7M) Nick Robertson (AAA 6.1 IP & 5.2 IP MLB at 0.00 ERA/1.56 FIP) Victor Santos (AAA 27.1 IP 6.59 ERA for O'Neill .292 9 13 (1.023 OPS leads AL) in 113 PAs ($5.85M) Weissert (15.1 IP in MLB 1.17 ERA/3.34 FIP) Fitts (29 IP in AAA 3.72 ERA/ 1.241 WHIP) Judice (Has not pitched, this year)

LOL. This was notin's baby... the Chapman part. Others joined in on moving Devers to 1B or 1B/DH and Casas to DH or 1B/DH. It was just a suggestion not a prediction.

Maybe this post will satisfy the need: Game Logs for our SP’ers/Openers up to May 7th ** 3 Bad starts in our first 36 Games Started IP/ER/H+BB/K 5/2/5/2 Bello W 6/1/3/10 Pivetta L (left tied 0-0) 6/0/4/7 Crawford L (left with lead) 5/1/3/8 Whitlock W 6/0/3/10 Houck W **5/4/6/6 Bello W 5/0/6/3 Pivetta W 4.2/1/5/5 Crawford W (first GS under 5 IP) 4.1/0/8/4 Whitlock L (second game under 5 IP) left with lead 6/0/6/7 Houck W 5.1/1/5/3 Bello L 5/0/6/6 Crawford L (left with the lead) 5/1/6/4 Whitlock L (left with the lead) **5.1/4/12/2 Houck L 4/2/6/4 Criswell W (3rd game under 5 IP) 5.1/2/8/8 Bello W 5.2/0/2/6 Crawford L (left tied 0-0) 4/2/4/1 Whitlock L (4th game under 5 IP) 9/0/3/9 Houck W (shutout) 2/0/1/2 Bernardino L (opener, left with lead) 6/0/3/7 Bello W 6/1/10/6 Crawford W 3.1/1/4/1 Wink W 6/2/8/4 Houck L 5/0/3/3 Criswell W **1.2/5/6/0 Anderson L 6/3/10/4 Crawford L 3/0/3/1 Wink W 6/3/8/5 Houck L 1/0/1/1 Bernardino L (opener/pen game) 4.1/1/6/5 Criswell W 6/2/7/6 Crawford L Team Record is Starts by… (ERA as a SP'er ONLY 2.13 team) 4-0 Criswell (1.47) 4-1 Bello (3.04) 2-1 Winckowski (1.69) 4-3 Houck (1.99) 1-1 Pivetta (0.82) 3-5 Crawford (1.75) 1-3 Whitlock (1.96) 0-2 Bernardino (0.00) /Anderson (27.00) OPS Against is an amazing .587 by SP'ers .384 Bernardino (1 IP) .520 Pivetta .529 Houck .553 Crawford (above team mark) .605 Criswell (below team mark) .616 Whitlock .620 Winckowski .646 Bello 1.708 Anderson OPS Against as RP'er ONLY (.649 team) 10+ PAs .434 Bernardino (45 PAs Against) .447 Slaten (74 leads team) .460 Jansen (amazingly, he leads all RP'ers with 8 BBs) .465 Kelly (31) .519 Anderson (58) .560 Weissert (57) (There is no middle ground) .747 Booser (36) .811 Martin (52) .852 Wink (67) has been better as a SP'er .875 Joely (51, about 50 too many.) 1.039 Campbell (33) on IL

notin was talking about D not overall sucktitude.

Well, the idea was Casas would DH, and with Yoshida MIA, it's not really a revision.

Last night on the farm... Woo lost 7-5. Gambrell saw his ERA drop to 4.62 (6IP, 4ER, 7H, 3BB, 5K) Benitez 1.1 IP, 3ER, 2H, 4BB, 2K, now has an ERA of 5.82 EValdez 2-4 w 2B Dalbec & Westbrook homered. POR lost 4-1 Bello started (2.2 IP, 4H, 2ER, 2BB, 5K) Oilvarez 4.0 IP, 0ER, 0H, 5BB, 5K Teel 2-3 w 2B & BB Anthony 1-4 w 2B & BB Mayer 1-4 w rbi GRE won 9-1 Early 4.2IP, 1ER, 4H, 2BB, 5K K Campbell 0-4 w BB Liendo 2-4 SAL lost 2-1 E R-C 4.2 IP, 1ER, 4H, 3BB, 8K Bleis 2-5 w HR Jh Garcia 2-4 w 2B