Unsurprisingly had to go back quite a ways for this one. I've mostly said my piece with a couple of long posts last night, so I'll try to keep this recap as brief as possible and then enjoy the off day while we wait for a massive series this weekend.
Starting record: 48-48
Record over stretch: 7-5
Ending record: 55-53
I'm pretty content with my preview from last time. I thought we needed 7-5 and we managed to get 7-5. We ended on a sour note after wasting an opportunity for 8-4 and a sweep of the Astros to propel momentum into the new "most important games of the year", but I don't think we need to let that drag us down too much.
Getting out of Houston with a series win while having Falter's first start back and a YOLO spot start as the rotation gets resettled is pretty great. And perhaps even better, Falter showed signs that he might be reliable down the stretch. This is getting ahead of myself, but if you can depend more and more on him and Ortiz, that's a pretty big x-factor to the equation, which is effectively that we need to win all the games that Skenes and Keller start. Both of them being dependable could alleviate some of the pressure when we inevitably don't win one of Skenes/Keller's games, and provide the possibility for a nice little run. It lets Marco be a hopeful innings eater as much as possible, and maybe we can get creative by pushing Burrows or Ashcraft up for a two-headed monster type start once or twice.
The last thing I'll say by way of recap is that I think it's not an overstatement to say that pulling out/being gifted the win on Sunday in Arizona and then doing the same on Monday in Houston probably saved the season. If we had gotten swept and then lost Skenes' start for a 4-game skid, I don't know that we even do the small buying that we did. Maybe we still pick up BDLC but instead of adding IKF, we dump Perez's salary and trade Chapman for interesting prospects who don't debut until 2025 or beyond.
We've all said our piece and then some about the deadline, so I won't touch on that here. I feel somewhat vindicated in my various speculations about Kyle Stowers, specifically for Priester, though it looks like he was more of a throw-in for Miami. I will be curious to see how he performs. Part of me does wonder if we could have gotten a similar package for Falter, but Rogers has a much better track record. I think the deadline could be more exciting if we got aggressive and gave Yorke a callup in August, but neither him or Cook is on the 40-man so I do not expect it unless there's some more injuries or Gonzales is done for the year and goes on the 60-day IL.
Looking ahead: 3 vs. ARI, 3 vs. SDP (6 home) + 3 vs. LAD, 3 vs. SDP (6 road)
We have a very symmetrical upcoming schedule to the one we had last time, facing off against all playoff teams and starting with a short home stand before going out on the road for an equally short home stand.
I said a few times last night that I think anyone would gladly take a repeat performance of 7-5 in this upcoming stretch. The Padres are in great form since the break, so the games against them take on some extra importance. Unless I am not looking at things right, I believe neither Keller nor Skenes will face them at all with how the schedule works, which is certainly going to amplify Falter, Ortiz, and Gonzales, because the Padres look to have a firm grasp on one of the WC spots and their schedule is not too tough.
I don't want to get too much into playoff prognostication and guessing here, other than to say that we just need to keep winning for the time being. This is obvious to say, but I think a divisional push is both in the cards and maybe more feasible than leapfrogging several good teams. Milwaukee didn't do a ton at the deadline and have really been scuffling -- their fan base is worried. I am curious to see how the division looks in the next set of games, but we need to take care of our own business.
To wrap up, I think we again need 7-5 here. 6-6 or even 5-7 probably holds enough ground, but it makes everything harder. If we can get 7-5, I really think we'll be 3-4 games back in the division and at worst 1.5-2 back in the WC, but more likely in or tied with somebody.
Without getting too granular, I see these games as needing a win in the Dbacks series, a win in the Dodgers series, and a W-L in SDP. The x-factor is if we can pull off a sweep of the Dbacks given that we have home field advantage and a pretty decent pitching advantage in all the games. Tomorrow's game is massive: we hit Pfaadt very well in Arizona, but Perez basically singlehandedly took us out of the game. He's capable of bouncing back and shutting us down, so the rematch will be significant.
If we can pick up the win, we'll have the wind at our backs and I might revise what I said above to say 7-5 is the baseline, but 8-4 is really within reason if we pull off a sweep and carry the momentum with some consistency. I think the Dodgers are beatable and that they are not going to rush Mookie Betts back from a hand injury to face us (he's taking batting practice). The only wrinkle there is that the Padres are starting to put pressure on them in the division, so I'll say here that the added formula for us is that we want the Dodgers playing well: handle business and sweep the A's, then have a dog fight against Philly that they win just before us, giving them more like a 6-7 game cushion heading into our series if we are able to beat the Padres early next week.
Barring a skid, all the games are going to have intensity from here on out. I agree with most of the sentiment that the deadline was the bare minimum, but from now on, hope springs eternal. Here's to IKF returning tomorrow night and kicking off a stretch run in which he's hitting .340, while Bryan De La Cruz gets scorching hot playing meaningful games and being inserted into a prime RBI spot!
Had to go digging a while back for this, almost solely out of duty, but I was curious to glance through my "Looking ahead" because I knew it would read like it was from a different era.
Starting record: 55-53
Record over stretch: 1-11
Ending record: 56-64
We went 1-11 over the final part of the major gauntlet of this post-ASB stretch. The season is effectively over, and barring some kind of miracle turnaround or other angle I can find, I think so are my breakdown/recaps/previews.
The state of the team is so bad that I will confess to barely even being able to track the box scores while these games were on. Some of that was due to even less interest in being bothered with the west coast time difference, but it's also just not a fun watch for obvious reasons.
While many "what went wrongs" are flying, I think a simpler story within this set of games is that Colin Holderman and David Bednar cost us the entire season. We should have won the Arizona series and you can make an argument that we should have swept it. The home Padres series was very winnable and the Dodgers series should have at worst been 1-2.
Even this final Padres road series had two "baseball losses" in the first two games that were winnable, but the wheels had come off. For all the other faults of the team and ways that this current spell might continue (even if it's more of a 3-7 type 10-game stretch), the bullpen failed while the offense mostly held up its end of the bargain.
I haven't paid a lot of attention to the thread recently, but elsewhere I have seen some takes along the lines of Shelton losing the clubhouse, and I don't think that really holds up, unless it comes out that guys are getting in fights or other stuff like that. I think a part of the team just went to shit and the razor thin margin that everything was being held up by could not withstand it. Other, better teams were able to go for the throat in order to pile up very easy wins, even when the teams themselves weren't firing on all cylinders (I would exclude the Diamondbacks from this, but despite the Padres winning a lot, I don't think they have really been that imposing... we should have won 3-4 of the games, and they got gifted wins by Miami).
Looking ahead: 3 vs. SEA (3 home), 3 vs. TEX (3 road) + 4 vs. CIN, 3 vs. CHC (7 home)
I'm including this purely for perfunctory reasons and in case there's some kind of miracle turnaround that makes the Cleveland series at the turn of the month actually mean anything at all besides "will this be Skenes' last start of 2024"?
It's a weird yo-yoing of games, as we're home to maybe recuperate and then on the road quickly and back home again for a long stretch.
The only path to meaningful September games is an immediate turnaround. All four of these opponents are beatable, but it's more likely that we serve as fodder for the AL teams to try and claw back into it -- Seattle badly needs wins to keep pace, though Texas is basically out of it. Then it will be divisional dogfights against Chicago and Cincinnati who are both basically out of the race like us, but also like us, might be able to seize something by rattling off a ton of wins.
Basically what it looks like is that there's one WC spot up for grabs between Atlanta, SF, NYM, and then all of the NL Central non-Brewers teams, though we've shot ourselves in the foot by not being able to just lose some series instead of getting swept in all of them, as we have an extra 3 games to make up.
When you factor in the likelihood of Skenes just being ramped down, uncertainty around Jones, who knows around Keller... it all adds up to the logical thing being to just secure losses and recoup the best possible draft lottery position again, especially since some teams are gonna get screwed by the new rules, so if we finish where we are at or worse, there's a decent chance we hop into the top 6.
To put a pin in this, we need to completely turn our fate around, and then we'll have to do it again with a similar stretch afterwards. It's no exaggeration to say that it will basically take "best record in baseball" to dig out of the hole we dug in this last stretch. For the next 13, I think it would take something like this: win the Seattle series, run the table against Texas, and drop 1 game on the long homestand. That would be 11-2, i.e. a 67-66 record in two weeks on August 29th. If you do that, then there are 29 games left to maybe try and get to 85 wins or so, with 7 being against the Marlins and Nationals, and a good chunk against divisional teams.
It won't happen, and I am not sure there's much intrigue for 2025 to be seen in the coming weeks. I guess maybe we should shuffle some guys off the roster and get a look at guys like Yorke and Cook, and maybe we'll see Ashcraft get an MLB cup of coffee. What a shitshow everything turned into.
