drewski6

I sincerely hope, Kimmi, that you are "particularly interested" in eligibility due to wanting to celebrate diversity and not coming from a place of wanting more scrutiny of who gets to call themselves what or what countries/ethnicities people are allowed to claim/represent. Unfortunately, the way you phrased this, Im getting the gist that you are more interested in critiquing the nuances of the "rules" or maybe even the enforcement of them. Thats a pretty dark path and your comment made me uncomfortable. It seems like if one of your parents was born in a country (or one of their territories), you can play. Netherlands is getting good players out of Curacao and Aruba, 2 Dutch territories that are kind of independent but kind of still part of the Netherlands. It does not bother me. In fact, I think the diversity on the Netherlands team is cool. Like Jazz on Britain, another example. Bahamas isnt part of Britain today, but it was when Jazz Sr was born there. And Jazz's grandma was a Bahamian softball star for 30 years, and for most of that span the Bahamas was British territory. The fact that Jazz gets to play for Britain and add diversity to that team is cool. The rule is simply this, and it need not change: To represent a country/team in the WBC, you have to be invited to represent that country/team. If that invitation is made and the player accepts - you are on the team. Good enough for me.

How dare you. He said "very"

I have trouble locating a 12-6 in the show. I also cant tell if i even want to throw it for a strike catching the corner low and away or bury it in the dirt. That pitch gives me trouble with its utilization. I do love backdooring a more standard curveball (or slurve or sweeper) to lefties to start the count 0-1.

well, you had me at (in my) "very" (honest opinion). You had me at "very"

Cedanne , mayer, duran, contreras all look particularly primed to me. Even the guys with less than stellar stat lines like Abreu and Kc have hit a few line-outs.

I want to reiterate: we are looking strong guys.

The only solution here is to petition the league to up the active roster max to 30 and maybe have an extra DH lineup spot or 2. I want Masa, KC, Monasterio, Eaton, IKF, Ward, Castro, Romy, Wong all to have some kind of role and be successful! 30 may not even be enough. This spring has turned me into Kimmi. Everyone gets support! (no offense, Kimmi)

Im with you, but Eaton is catching too many stray bullets. Hes hit .305 last year + this spring

Right, Moon and Joe (and I guess Schilling) have said or implied that the teams that get the most starts out of their regular rotation will be the most successful ..... My point is that the construction of the team and the depth kind of matter and these high level nuggets of wisdom, while cute, generally overlook some nuance, such as: If you build a strong starting 5 and assume no injuries and then get hit with 2 big ones and now you have like unready prospects or career 5ERA journeyman off the scrap heap making a ton of starts - yeah, trouble. For sure. But in our case, Im not even sure who our top 5 SP even are. And Im not sure that the starters who start each of the first 5 games are our top 5 sp. Early may not be there for extra year of control games, but that doesnt necessarily mean that he isnt one of the top 5. That expression that Schilling said and Joe said was 100% true doesnt feel extremely true in our case, this year. Not every team is equally equipped to handle a SP injury. It effects some more than others. Im happy for our depth. But these high level nuggets of wisdom can be wise and cute and generally true - but they are also usually overly simplistic. If the team that got the most starts out of its sp rotation always won the most games, I woudl start the year with a 17 man SP rotation. Because even if i have 12 SP injuries, I still got 162 games started by guys who were included in my regular (out of the gate) rotation. So is that the cheat code or do these super high level "truisms" break down?

Yes, the pressure starts building once the games start counting agreed. But you dont go all in to win game 1 at the cost of the other 161. Roster battles usually continue into the season and guys get sent down for extra year of team control games and also due to who has options vs who doesnt....And then after you send these guys down who were sent down for unfair reasons, the roster battles still continue. Assessment continues.

That makes sense. But to moon/Joes point, we have great years when we get starts from our regular rotation....If Early has been anointed one of our best starting 5 but hes held back to gain an extra year of control.....it starts becoming murky to me which 5 are our "regular rotation" and if one is early.

The bench doesnt need to be ideal on March 5th, or even April 5th.

You strike me as someone who has been in management. Have you ever pushed your staff and then they responded well to it? You dont stop pushing them. YOu keep doing whats getting you (the manager) results. Management 101: you manage everyone differently , customized to how/what they respond to. Some people do best with the stick and some people do best with the carrot. Mayer got some stick/tough love, and he seems like a much better player for it.

I feel like right now, Tolle could be the third best closer in MLB.

Mayer is helping his case. They told him to bulk up, he did. Mayer did not come to spring looking like a guy who nursed a wrist injury all winter. He looks like a guy who got in better shape and worked hard. Hes looked good to me. Better than I thought he would. The truth is: we're looking pretty strong right now..

I agree 100%.

I think this is a good point. I want to go back to soemthing I jsut said because i think it adds to your point here, that being that maybe 2 months ago, it was decision time, but right now, its "no rush" We made the decision, to let Refsnyder walk. That alone might save Masas bacon (for now). Because to your point, our OF starts looking more complete with Ref, and its one less spot for masa and one more person in front of masa.

WE have two elite bullpen pitchers and 9 good starters. SOme of them will become good bullpen pitchers. We could use maybe one more established pen arm, but I wouldnt call it a glaring weakness that went unadressed. We resigned Chapman. Signing one of hte best closers isnt exaclty not addressing a glaring weakness if that weakness is back half of bullpen.

Im not in a rush to trade our fifth best bat (per you) because he doesnt have a spot right now. If Masa accepts a AAA role, there is no reason to trade him at all. But if he doenst accept that, and we have 4 obvious bettter bench players, we can cross that bridge when we come to it.

In the WBC

Casas will have to do more than get healthy enough to play a game. But I more-or-less agree. Theres also other dudes who can emerge and challenge his spot on the 26.

Thats fair. My real point is that if Masa can be sent down or agrees, great. If not, any decision on him cannot be undone. Like if we trade him for 4m of salary relief. And we ended up kind of needing him last year. So Im not in a rush to send him out, but I may depending on the twists / turns of the season. I dont like making decisions that cant be undone when I dont have to make those decisions as a general rule. But that doesnt men there arent exceptions. But even once the games start counting, the auditioning and jiggsaw pieces falling into place continue. The guys will find their roles, and if Masa is outside of the top 26 and wont get sent down, and it makes sense lets say in mid-may or something to ship him out based on so many variables , then do it then. The rush isnt right now. Maybe a couple months ago because there was opportunity cost (not signing Ozuna for example). So in free agency you kind of have to project ahead a bit to know who to sign. But right now, Im not seeing a huge rush to project ahead.

This is a good post, but this year feels different because it feels like our starting 5 is a starting 6 in crochet, ranger, gray, bello, early, oviedo....and then you have like 2-3 more guys that could be most teams #5 starter. So its not as black/white to me in 2026 who you are talking about when you say starting 5. I guess we'll know by game 6 who started the first 5, but Im not sure its a settled "this our 5" (being the 5 pitchers who start each of the first 5 games). I think that the battles for #4 and 5 can continue into the season. For example, right now, I think that Bello may not be a top 5 SP on this team ,but he might start game 4 due to not willing to make the swap yet (bello out, early in). You can send Early down and have him make a couple starts in AAA just to buy you time. ANd its not necessarily an ominous sign if he ends up getting 20 starts despite not getting one of our first five spots.

Im not in a rush to trade our fifth best hitter on March 5th, regardless of who plays where / positionally. Now if we get everybody back from WBC healthy, and stay healthy and our bench is Eaton, IKF, Wong, Masa and Romy comes back...I may take action with Masa at that point, but it depends on things like is anyone in AAA screaming call me back (ward, monasterio, kc)....how is eaton doing? How does the offense look overall. If Story start the year on fire, im more willing to trade Masa for example. Because positions aside, im trying to avoid a situation where we get to the playoffs but have a couple injuries, and we're like ...we're gonna have to hit masa clean up again like we did last year....oh shoot we sold him for 4m salary relief and now we have to hit a lower ops+ bat fourth. Its not all about position to me , its about getting enough runs from somewhere. This is why I always say the value of a great DH is underrated and improves your defense. Becuase having a stud DH allows you to play more glove first players at other positions. For exmple, in a hypothetical world where we have prime manny, ortiz, story, ikf (on bench) - then story gets hurt.....because of manny/ortiz , im more fine with plugging in ikf because we'll get our runs elsewhere. So im not really looking at our outfield rotation and our infield rotation and dh options completely separate from each other.

What major weak spot is glaringly unattended?