Well, we suck again...

[Philip]

Good teams don’t make careless mistakes.

Well, they DO...remember what AJ said. “Sometimes you suck.”

But only sometimes. Bad teams suck a lot, often, in many areas. Miscommunication, sloppy defense, careless base-running.

I was hoping we could keep up the facade for a longer while than this. Scott, Armstrong, Sulser are doing well, and Santander, but no one else is really producing.
Why don’t we bring some guys up? Why don’t we?

This could be a fun and encouraging season, even if we’re not winning, if we are letting the future get some Shine.

We’re not. We just suck. And if we are gonna suck, let Stewart and Mountcastle and Zimmerman and Lowther suck instead of Smith and Phillips and Hess.

(sigh)

Thank you for reading this far, if you did.

[GuidoSarducci]

"Nobody else is really producing" is a bit harsh.  We have 6 hitters with OPS > 800.   I think thats pretty good production. 

The Toronto series was of course, disappointing, but one of those was a coin flip game.  Eovaldi owns us, so today's result was not surprising.

I still think this team can be around .500 at the end of the year.

[Roll Tide]

Was looking at standings ....After going 9-5 to start the Tigers have lost 9 in a row

[ScGO's]

Losing Iglesias and Hayes has hurt the D pretty significantly.  We are very thin in our starting pitching as Means hasn't really gotten going yet.  I believe the O's are better this year, but its starting to look a lot like last year because there isn't really a new wave of younger players being cycled through this year, and I don't see a lot of "strategy" towards winning as much as cycling players through to get their reps.  Maybe Elias is going to wait till 2021 to start the clocks of some of our younger prospects and he's using this short season to cycle in another round of waiver pick ups and former prospects.  Its not a bad idea as this year features Susler, Valaika, Valazquez, Lakins, and Urias getting a tryout, while guys like Sisco, Mullins, Stewart, Smith, Wojo, Tate, Fry, Armstrong, Ruiz, Scott, etc, get another shot to "find it."  This is probably the final year to see which players on the current roster could be part of the future before starting to call up our prospects.

[Philip]

7 hours ago, GuidoSarducci said:

"Nobody else is really producing" is a bit harsh.  We have 6 hitters with OPS > 800.   I think thats pretty good production. 

The Toronto series was of course, disappointing, but one of those was a coin flip game.  Eovaldi owns us, so today's result was not surprising.

I still think this team can be around .500 at the end of the year.

“Producing” refers to the overall. Our hitting is ok, but we are giving up outs on the bases and giving up runs on defense and looking bad while we do it.

[Can_of_corn]

 

[Aristotelian]

Not a huge surprise when you are starting with 100+ loss baseline and your roster is Chris Davis and a bunch of leftovers from other organizations. I think the team has improved some by attrition and maybe gets better when we get Hays and Iglesias back. In a short season though the damage may already be done. I have a hard time seeing .500 with this starting rotation and defense. 

[oriole]

I think we all knew it was coming, we were just hoping otherwise. It won’t be terribly hard to get into the playoffs this year so hopefully they can turn it around enough to get a wild card spot to keep things interesting? I totally agree though. I’d much rather watch someone like Mountcastle or Zimmerman suck than Smith Jr or Wojo

[Tony-OH]

It's almost like talent will eventually win out over the long run. 

I believe Hyde will try to win every game with the personnel he has. I don't believe Elias wants to win this year and prefers at least one more year of great draft position. 

 

[Moose Milligan]

Hey, look, another post about bringing up prospects.

[Sports Guy]

9 minutes ago, Tony-OH said:

It's almost like talent will eventually win out over the long run. 

I believe Hyde will try to win every game with the personnel he has. I don't believe Elias wants to win this year and prefers at least one more year of great draft position. 

 

They may have already won too many games for that.  They probably can’t afford to win more than 8-10 more games if they want to draft in the top 5

[drjohnnyfeva]

Luckily, Chris Davis will be taking on the Terry Crowley role...  That should get us back on track.

[bpilktree]

This just makes the decision to trade guys much easier.  The Phillies are in need of some major bullpen help which we could help them with.  Givens is the guy that could bring back a half decent prospect, I like a few of their middle infield guys that are in A ball that have some tools in Garcia and Gamboa who both are ready around when we should be competing,    

[Moose Milligan]

3 minutes ago, bpilktree said:

This just makes the decision to trade guys much easier.  The Phillies are in need of some major bullpen help which we could help them with.  Givens is the guy that could bring back a half decent prospect, I like a few of their middle infield guys that are in A ball that have some tools in Garcia and Gamboa who both are ready around when we should be competing,    

I don't think Givens is a guy that can get us a decent prospect back.  Maybe 3-4 years ago, not so much now.

I wouldn't mind selling off players now but I think, per usual, that we overrate what we have here and will be underwhelmed at the type of talent we would get back.

 

[eddie83]

1 hour ago, Sports Guy said:

They may have already won too many games for that.  They probably can’t afford to win more than 8-10 more games if they want to draft in the top 5

Still not set in stone how they will set up draft positions. Curious what they do. Hope is they combine with last year. Would suck to see Boston have a chance to pick ahead of us.