moonslav59

No. I think someone would take him, if we pay a big chunk of his salary. I'd prefer we do that. Maybe he can stay on the 26 for a while- maybe to PH, but I don't think he deserves to start or even platoon. IMO, as of right now, he's a better batter than Dalbec, but he can't play 1B. He's better than McGuire but can't catch. I'm not sure he's better than DHam, right now. He might be, but I'd stay with the hot hand, and I'd prefer Rafaela stay in CF. He's is likely better than Romy, but Romy is not competition with him to DH: Valdez, Ref and O'Neill are, and Abreu will be soon.

Better to just leave those to you: the MVP of Wankster.

LOL. My fat fingers!

Only the last 7 days count, because that's a "week."

I was kind of surprised how badly our O was doing over the first 2 months. I knew the loss of Turner, and to some extent Dugo & Duvall would hurt, but I felt upticks from some younger players might keep us top 8-10ish.

Personally, I think the pitching was overperforming, the batting was underperforming and the defense has done as expected, but just not in a balanced way. (The first month was worse than they are, and maybe now they are around 20th.

So a week has more significance than 4 days or 8 or 9 days, because it's named a "week?" Baseball has nothing to do with a "week" vs other time frames. Have a shot of whiskey.

I would not predict that, unless we sell, but it certainly is possible, when you figure we have a lot games left vs NYY, BAL and other good teams. I wonder if HOU catches on fire, just as we start to play them. Our last 22 games of '24: 3 v BAL 4 @ NYY 3 @TBR 3 v MIN 3 @ TOR (last year, we won the first 7 and lost the last 8 w TOR) 3 v TBR

The P theory also supports your skepticism on Cora being "amazing."

Why is 7 days a magical number? .780 in 4 days .800 in 1 day .708 in 8 days .782 in 9 days .902 in 10 games .912 in 11 games Plus, I like Rafaela in CF not SS.

We all know a couple blowouts have skewed our run differential, but here are the rankings, anyway: + 125 NYY 113 BAL 106 LAD 101 PHI 91 CLE 66 MIL 55 KCR 47 BOS Even if you took away 20 runs, we'd still be ranked 8th. 16 MIN (+1.5 gms on BOS) 14 SEA (+3.5 gms on BOS) 11 SDP 10 CIN (35-39) 6 AZ (STL is -29 and just 1 game under .500) Take away the unearned runs and maybe we pass KCR and MIL.

I know the risks. I'm not sure it would take 2 of the Big 3 to land a promising young pitcher. It might take one plus a guy like Bleis, Campbell or Cespedes, but we are overloaded at everyday players and short on Pitching. I'm not for trading one top prospect plus several lower ones for a 1 or 2 year proven SP'er. I just can't be okay with that. I liked the Castillo trade AND extension, so that type of trade & sign, yes.

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 %.