John Means 2024

[Frobby]

3 minutes ago, Bemorewins said:

I know that you know this but probably don’t care. But the facts are 2019 was A LONG TIME AGO. And his initial injury was now 2 years ago.

I’m not sure how relevant those 2019 numbers are to the ineffective pitcher that he is right now.

We waited on him all season last year and that didn’t prove to be wise. If we get something from him that will probably be a great bonus. But I hope that there is now a plan A that doesn’t include waiting for a now off injury pitcher to turn back into the player that he was 5 years ago.

Was there something wrong with his 2021 season?  Why are we talking about 5 years ago?  

[Bemorewins]

2 minutes ago, Frobby said:

Was there something wrong with his 2021 season?  Why are we talking about 5 years ago?  

He brought up what happened in 2019. 

No 2021 was fine. But even that was a long time ago.

I’m not saying that Means can never become an effective starter again. I have no idea what will happen in the future as I do not own a crystal ball or posses any prescient/predictive ability. But what I am saying is that at this point, given all the injuries and his current ineffectiveness, it would be best not to count on Means being the old Means for the rest of 2024. 

If it happens at some point this year, great. But I don’t think it would be wise to expect/anticipate that.

[Frobby]

Just now, Bemorewins said:

He brought up what happened in 2019. 

No 2021 was fine. But even that was a long time ago.

I’m not saying that Means can never become an effective starter again. I have no idea what will happen in the future as I do not own a crystal ball or posses any prescient/predictive ability. But what I am saying is that at this point, given all the injuries and his current ineffectiveness, it would be best not to count on Means being the old Means for the rest of 2024. 

If it happens at some point this year, great. But I don’t think it would be wise to expect/anticipate that.

Well, I agree with that.   But it doesn’t really matter who any of the fans are counting on.   

[wildcard]

The importance of  2019 is that it shows that Means does not need high velocity to be effective with his pitch mix.

[kidrock]

4 minutes ago, Frobby said:

Well, I agree with that.   But it doesn’t really matter who any of the fans are counting on.   

I took his comment as more of a hope that the powers that be/Elias have not put too many eggs in the Means basket.  Which, to be fair, I have a lot of faith in Elias.

[Matt Bennett]

25 minutes ago, Bemorewins said:

I’m not sure how relevant those 2019 numbers are to the ineffective pitcher that he is right now.

I think this is a little presumptuous. Means has only ever been effective at the big league level. So he had a couple duds on his rehab assignment. I never watch spring training games or peek at spring training stats and that has been a useful allocation of my time over the course of my fandom. Let's at least let his rehab play out before declaring him 2017-2018 Chris Tillman. 

[Safelykept]

25 minutes ago, Bemorewins said:

I know that you know this but probably don’t care. But the facts are 2019 was A LONG TIME AGO. And his initial injury was now 2 years ago.

I’m not sure how relevant those 2019 numbers are to the ineffective pitcher that he is right now.

We waited on him all season last year and that didn’t prove to be wise. If we get something from him that will probably be a great bonus. But I hope that there is now a plan A that doesn’t include waiting for a now off injury pitcher to turn back into the player that he was 5 years ago.

What was unwise about waiting for him last season? 5 years ago? The end of 2021 was technically 2 years plus 1 month of Baseball or 2 and a half years ago which is a long way from 5 years. Talk about piling on.

[Frobby]

7 minutes ago, Matt Bennett said:

I think this is a little presumptuous. Means has only ever been effective at the big league level. So he had a couple duds on his rehab assignment. I never watch spring training games or peek at spring training stats and that has been a useful allocation of my time over the course of my fandom. Let's at least let his rehab play out before declaring him 2017-2018 Chris Tillman. 

I generally agree we shouldn’t read too much into it.  However, I’m very nervous.  

[Bemorewins]

20 minutes ago, Matt Bennett said:

I think this is a little presumptuous. Means has only ever been effective at the big league level. So he had a couple duds on his rehab assignment. I never watch spring training games or peek at spring training stats and that has been a useful allocation of my time over the course of my fandom. Let's at least let his rehab play out before declaring him 2017-2018 Chris Tillman. 

Umm… I never declared him anything about Chris Tillman. Never brought the man’s name up. I also never said anything about Spring Training. 

What I said is that he isn’t an effective starting pitcher against AAA hitters right now. If you believe that will change as he faces much better/more skilled competition at the Major League level, more power to you.

There’s nothing “presumptuous” about what I said.

[Bemorewins]

21 minutes ago, Safelykept said:

What was unwise about waiting for him last season? 5 years ago? The end of 2021 was technically 2 years plus 1 month of Baseball or 2 and a half years ago which is a long way from 5 years. Talk about piling on.

It was unwise because he didn’t help us for the playoffs due to his unavailability. We could have acquired a better starting pitcher instead of waiting for him. Flaherty was so bad he didn’t even pitch in the Texas series.

@wildcard mentioned 2019, that was what I was responding to. 2019 is 5 years ago according to the calendar that I have which says that it is the year 2024.

Maybe you misread other exchange between he and I? But there’s no pilling on here.

[RVAOsFan]

1 hour ago, Sports Guy said:

You had the same info we have now. You knew he missed the playoffs because of an injury. 
 

You knew we had barely seen him since the TJ surgery. 
 

And that was part of the point but you dismissed it.

Come on man, why you gotta rub his nose in it like a puppy who peed on the carpet?  You tried to give away Kremer this offseason for a bag of balls and now we are on our 8th starter, no one is coming after you for it. 

[Sports Guy]

15 minutes ago, RVAOsFan said:

Come on man, why you gotta rub his nose in it like a puppy who peed on the carpet?  You tried to give away Kremer this offseason for a bag of balls and now we are on our 8th starter, no one is coming after you for it. 

I didn’t try to give him away for a bag of balls but I would have happily traded Kremer…and I still would happily trade him.

Of course, I also wanted to trade Kremer while upgrading on him with a guy like Cease, so you need to make sure you don’t leave out the complete context of the decision making.

[interloper]

49 minutes ago, Matt Bennett said:

I think this is a little presumptuous. Means has only ever been effective at the big league level. So he had a couple duds on his rehab assignment. I never watch spring training games or peek at spring training stats and that has been a useful allocation of my time over the course of my fandom. Let's at least let his rehab play out before declaring him 2017-2018 Chris Tillman. 

While I mostly agree that it could be a one-off, I think it's a litttttle hand-wavey to call his last outing a mere "dud". You'd expect him to find a way to get AAA guys out without having his best command. That kind of outing in a ML setting has the potential to ruin a bullpen and reverberate across several games. Just can't happen. 

[Moose Milligan]

I'd of course prefer to see Means have good starts before getting promoted.  

But really, I just want to make sure the dude is healthy and ready to go and hopefully can last the rest of the season.  I think he'll be solid if he can.  

That seems to be a big question and a lot to ask for, though.  Means is a big wildcard for me right now, I can see his season going either way.  But I'm not really reading too much into what stats he puts up in his rehab efforts.

[Matt Bennett]

57 minutes ago, Bemorewins said:

Umm… I never declared him anything about Chris Tillman. Never brought the man’s name up. I also never said anything about Spring Training. 

What I said is that he isn’t an effective starting pitcher against AAA hitters right now. If you believe that will change as he faces much better/more skilled competition at the Major League level, more power to you.

There’s nothing “presumptuous” about what I said.

Sorry. I’m treating John Means rehab assignment like Spring Training, which it is for him. And I ignore those numbers. There’s a chance Means shows no ability to get minor league hitters out like Dillon Tate last year and management has to make a decision. His AAA Era will not be good. But if he followed up this performance with a couple good ones, I won’t really care that his overall ERA is 10.00+ on his rehab assignment. 

the reference to 2017-2018 Tillman = good pitcher that didn’t have it anymore.