drewski6

That would be hard to do again even if they tried lol

Trade Cedanne straight up for Brent Rooker. Championship. Duran is better in CF than he is in LF.

Maybe even the next duran !

That doesn look like .825 to me, I guess Abreu and Refsnyder weighing it down hard? Fair enough though, I thought it was more Duran than Bregman.

I said that in my post. That you always need a little injury luck. All teams. But I dont think we're particularly balanced or deep. I think we hinge on Duran, mr doubles and triples.

Id Duran/Abreu/Contreras/Story/Anthony stay healthy , we'll be fine this year. But smart money is that 1 or 2 will not, and I just hope we get bats should that happen again.

Duran hit .850 last year against righites. He was the reason our 3 hole was .825 OPS (he didnt hit 3 hole against lefties). The underrated mistake is Refsnyder walking. Im not sure why everyone except us is so anti-platoon. Give me a guy who hits .900 against righties and .600 against lefties vs a guy who hits .775 against both ALL DAY. For the third year in a row, Duran is the key. Hit him 8th against lefties (or not at all), dont care. BUT DO NOT F'ING TRADE HIM.

That .825 in the 3 hole really stands out. I wonder who it was that caused that number to be substantially higher than other lineup spots.

And it will be fine again this year, unless there are 2-3 injuries to key players and we take a lineup that would be "fine" if everyone was healthy into a series against the yankees. So we'll need some injury luck or to aggressively replace contributors who go down (which we didnt do last year).

I liked the Padres/Bogey contract because it made me feel better that we didnt land him because we were never going to compete with that offer. Like when you ask out the cute blonde who smiles at you in math class, and she says no, and youre surprised, then you see her walk down the hallway holding hands with captain of football team. You feel better about your miss.

How you luck into Trout and Ohtani and have like nothing to show for it.....Im not even mad, Im impressed.

Absolutely. This is why they added things like prospect promotion incentives. It made too much sense to keep dudes down as long as possible , so you get their prime years under rookie contracts and their late prime in arb years lol. It was too exploitable. It was unfair to the players becaue they couldnt hit FA before 31 and everyone took advantage....... .....except the Angels (lololol)

How about this? This year, we be the team that goes and gets the Devers should one become available and not the team looking to dump offense. And I honestly dont care if we have to bench Cedanne or send Mayer to AAA to make a spot. This team still needs a bat, and a good one, and I care not what position that bat plays. Get me Brent Rooker.

I think they had a bad october.

Depending on righty or lefty on the mound last year, we had either Narvaez (0/8) or Cedanne (0/10) hitting fifth. The guys hitting below them (6,7,8,9) was like Eaton, Sogard, Romy (vs righties), Duran (vs lefties)....Not great. The top 4 wasnt particularly great either and included 2 guys no longer here (Bregman, Refsnyder) and one guy who isnt expected to get much PT (Masa). The only returning offensive player , who is projected to have a big role this year, who did really anything with the bat in the series was Story. Hope he stays healthy and NO IKF is not good insurance here, lol. Because if you replace Story with IKF in that series, scoring 0 runs in 3 games combined becomes a real possibility. This team flubbed at the plate against the Yankees injured pitching staff. The bar I was at cleared out after the 4th inning in game 3, when the yanks hung a crooked number because eveyone but me knew we didnt have it to come back. I stuck around like a sucker and watched the year ended on a whimper just like the previous 3. No fight. I know there were injuries, I know the team is different. But dont tell me that the offnse that finished the year was fine. The only dangerous hitter was Story. You wanna talk about Duran dropping the ball? How about Cedanne going 0/10? Okay Bregman out and Contreras in. We'll call that a wash. But at the end of the day, this year, you have like 4-5 bats (again), and its very unlikely all will be healthy next year playoffs and again we're likely to see a lineup that falls off after like the first 3-4 batters. And I understand that this offense, at full strength or even minus a couple injuries, is like middle of the pack and not like dead last in baseball. I understand that. But are we trying to win postsseason series? Because last year, the offense wasnt strong enough to win a series because the bar of what is acceptable goes up when you are trying to win playoff series. And we turned around focused mostly on upgrading the pitching. We are going to need one of three things for a deep run, either a) very good injury luck b)internal breakouts c) in season acquisitions. Not implying that we'll need all 3. Its okay because I do agree that you look around the league and you see teams that need stuff to break in their favor to win a championship (you almost always do). Nobody is throwing in the towel (except maybe Fred). But all Im asking is dont gaslight me by trying to tell me that offense was not a problem last year. And dont say that Im a "chicken little" when I have said the sox are the 5th-6th best team in baseball which is better/higher than any power rankings/standing projections that Ive seen. Dodgers Yankees Mariners Mets Red Sox Braves Jays Tigers Cubs Phillies Orioles Astros Brewers Athletics Guardians Padres Rangers Royals Reds Giants Rays Pirates Dbacks (Carroll injury, ouch) Twins White Sox Marlins Cardinals Angels Nats Rockies

Okay. The team that entered the playoffs had no hope of scoring enough runs to win a playoff series last year.

Not a lock, just that I think they are most likely to win. Havent seen something by fangraphs to the contrary, but I do see that their projected standings are only like 1-2 games against other AL teams.

Ive seen plenty of neutral / no dog in the fight sources predict fourth place. Its not chicken little. Its not optimistic, but Ive seen it too many times to call it out as nonsensical. Still, smart money is on third because most likely outcomes are: Yanks, Red Sox, Jay, Orioles, Rays Yanks, Jay, Red Sox, Orioles, Rays Yanks, Orioles, Rred Sox, Jays, Rays Yanks, Jay, Orioles, Red Sox, Rays Not saying we cant come in first (or last), just saying that to me, the four final ALE standings presented above are more liely than any other outcome, and 2/4 of those have us in 3rd vs 1/4 in first and 1/4 in second. Just law of averages. If you flip 2 coins, you are most likely to get one heads and one tails (because 2/4 outcomes for 1 ofeach (HT, TH) vs 1/4 for HH and 1/4 for TT)

The offense that ended the year last year, was not fine. It was pathetic. However, that was after injries to Roman, Mayer, Bregman (even though he ame back, he came a different player), no durbin, Casas. I think we should expect some injuries, not as bad as lat year, and whether or not we will be "fine" entering next playoffs will depend on injuries, in-season acquistions, and what one personally means by "fine". Of course, fine offense for a playoff team is a higher bar. Because if going into the playoffs you say offense is fine , I would think that means can keep up wth most other playoff teams.

To be clear, I only meant that with the contreras acquisition - it feels to me that we are comparable to tier 2 MLB teams, with a half step on most of them (Tigers, Orioles, Phillies, Cubs) and had we not aquired Contreras, the team would feel more like a bottom T2 team and the teams that we would be comparable to (while having an advantage over) would be like the Astros, Brewers, Rangers, Royals..... And this doesnt imply that we are a contreras injury away from being where we sould had we never got contreras, because the tiers are based on going into the season with no attrition but with future attrition expected

Honestly, its hard for me to see this team trade any of Duran, Cedanne, Roman, Abreu and get better , which is probably why we still have all 4.

Durans go way up if you play him in CF though.

I think its cuz Duran has a higher % of PAs vs lefties. Duran had an .850 vs righty OPS last year. Understand Abreu has a higher HR rate, but Duran gets 15 triples to Abreus 0, so thats the equiv of 12 extra HRs from a slg perspective. I love em both dont get me wrong, but I think that people who think of Duran as expendable overlook the doubles and triples. I think Duran will lead the team in RBIs this year and I think hes a better choice to hit 3rd than RA (at least vs righties, vs lefties you can make a case to even sit Duran).

They wouldnt, except maybe if a lefty was on the mound. I was just wondering if Abreu had a higher OPS because he faced almost exclusively righties. If someone has to sit against a righty because everyone is healthy, for me , in a game 7 situation, I prob do put Contreras at catcher. I certainly wouldnt take my 3 hitter out. But >90% someone will be hurt, so im happy to have the options/depth/versatility.

Abreu platooning vs Duran not platooning? Anthony granted, but lets see it full season. Duran is not superfluous on this team. He'll hit third most nights.