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OT: Raise the Jolly Roger: New season of plundering begins

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WickedWrister

WickedWrister

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bigdaddyk88 said:
https://x.com/i/web/status/1797444209835995295
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Not trying to defend Cherington, but apart from Chapman, the rest of those guys were bargain bin shopping. He's taking up a third of that 30 million dollar figure. Like, it's still definitely bad evaluation and roster management given the financial constraints this team is under, but I feel like we got what we paid for.
 
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bigdaddyk88

bigdaddyk88

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WickedWrister said:
Not trying to defend Cherington, but apart from Chapman, the rest of those guys were bargain bin shopping. He's taking up a third of that 30 million dollar figure. Like, it's still definitely bad evaluation and roster management given the financial constraints this team is under, but I feel like we got what we paid for.
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Yeah it basically Chapman and Perez who make 18 million combined that money should have went to an actual MLB hitter.
 
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Ulf5

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bigdaddyk88 said:
https://x.com/i/web/status/1797444209835995295
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laughing-crying-laughing.gif


GilbertSeinfeld said:
If Marcano bet ON the Pirates he probably lost a lot.
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No one can be THAT dumb. Can they?
 
ImporterExporter

ImporterExporter

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Typical league shitting on a few bums to "cover" up the massive scandal of the once in a 100 year player they don't want to lose. And notice there was a few months in between so as to not look conspicuous.

MLB and NBA are equally shit products at this point. The NFL is getting there.
 
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DJ Spinoza

DJ Spinoza

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Looks like Davis will start tonight and also Suwinski is back and presumably starting, as Bae is going on the IL and Taylor is on paternity leave.

Relatedly to Davis/Suwinski probably playing and gambling, it would likely be a good investment to hammer the over for Glasnow's strikeouts.
 
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DJ Spinoza

DJ Spinoza

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DJ Spinoza said:
As always, quoting for continuity/consistency. I'll be honest: this is the first time I've really done more than a quick skim of the previous write-up, because I think things were pretty cut and dry and not much was changing. While it could be argued that is still the case, I think there has been a significant shit in terms of the overall tone and expectations of the team. IMO, this is most reflected in the fact that we went 5-5 over this stretch and it feels like something of a letdown, even though I said above (and I don't think it's presumptuous to attribute the same feeling to others) that I thought 4-6 was the most optimism I could muster. Here's the breakdown:

Starting record: 17-21
Record over stretch: 5-5
Ending record: 22-26

I said this in another reply earlier today, but I think the main takeaway from this stretch of 10 games is that while we came in hobbled and on the heels of a terrible wasted opportunity against some bad teams on the west coast trip, we pretty much played neck and neck with both of the division leaders and really took it to the Cubs this weekend.

The same warts are still prevalent, and we have had some bullpen issues and some issues where a starter basically singlehandedly loses the game for us -- Perez obviously, and probably Priester too.

I'm not going to go microscopic on the stretch of games, but we were certainly robbed of a shot at a win yesterday, and the really big wasted opportunity was Falter's previous start against the Cubs at home last Sunday. Tip both those games to wins and we are tied with the Cubs right now, but that's not the way anything works.

Looking ahead: 3 vs. SFG, 3 vs. ATL (6 home) + 3 vs. DET, 3 vs. TOR (6 road)
As always, this partitioning is just me trying to carve it up as best as I can based on off days. series', home/road, etc. My rationale is always that 6 games is too short, but I try not to stretch beyond 12. The stretch before the one we just finished was a 12-gamer and it was disastrous with 4-8 vs. Oakland, SF, LAA, and Colorado.

This stretch will be really important, because my hunch is that if we can keep the momentum going, we can claw back some ground against the Cubs at least. I like the way that it is set up, with the first 6 games coming at home on the heels of this 3-1 big series win.

It's still time to put up or shut up. Holding serve is ok, but the blown opportunities have really not given us a ton of cushion. It's still too early to be worried about this stuff, especially until the team actually gives us a big reason to think it can make a push, but Milwaukee is 8 games over .500 with a very easy schedule on the horizon. .500 baseball probably causes us to lose more ground, so the baseline needs to be higher even if we are going to need some kind of winning streak or really great stretch at some point no matter what.

I'm not going to say that I think we can do that on this stretch, but we have some momentum and there is opportunity. We get a tough draw in game 1 vs. SF Tuesday, as it's Perez vs. Webb. But if we can steal that game, then we have Jones and Skenes going. Atlanta is going to be tough, but they have dropped two and a row, so maybe we'll get lucky. Pitching will be magnified there since presumably it's Falter, Keller, Perez, but we can cross that bridge when we come to it.

So, I'll cut to the chase: I think we need a 7-5 performance over these games. If we do that, it may not put much of a dent in the divisional situation, but I think we'll be right on the heels of the Cubs, and more importantly we'll show that we can sustain a solid record over a decent stretch of games. 7-5 is 3 series wins and 1 series loss. If we can somehow steal the first game of Perez vs. Webb, then maybe that sets us up for a chance to sweep the Giants, which would make it possible to get greedy for more than 7-5, but for starters we need to take care of business and win a series at home.
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Quoting only for continuity. I finally ran out of time for the recap, but yet again, we've settled into a pretty predictable and frustrating form of mediocrity and I don't really think there's much that needs said.

Starting record: 22-26
Record over stretch: 5-6
Ending record: 27-32

I overlooked that the Tigers series was just the other 2 games rather than 3, so there ended up being 11 games here and not 12. The previous arbitrary stretch had 10 games, and we were 5-5, so us being 5-6 in these games kinda speaks for itself.

It continues to be maddening that we have the difficult foundation in starting pitching to be much better than this, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to look at the offense and the bullpen and draw a conclusion. In a way, I think the 27-32 record tells you more than any written analysis kind of can at this point, because (at least to me) it indicates a rather middling team that is more likely than not to have that under .500 record doubled over the next 60ish games, which would make any kind of improbable WC run very challenging over the last 60ish games of the season.

If we maintain .500ish play and claw enough over .500 stretches to make up for the kinds of series losses we are capable of with the Giants and Jays ones recently, then just by virtue of how crowded the NL is, we probably remain in the WC race as we enter the stretch run.

But that is getting too far ahead of things, and really, I think there's pressure to have a good month of June and prove something before we even start to worry about how the trade deadline looks and how the WC race shapes up. I'll get into this more below, but most anybody is beatable and the current homestand might be the most important stretch of games this season.

Being about 1/3rd of the season into the schedule, there's some good opportunity for a more hard-nosed look at numbers than I am doing in this off-the-cuff recap posts. To throw some quick ones together: in March/April, we were 14-17, buoyed by 4-0 vs the Marlins in March at the beginning of their free fall. May was 12-14.

I'm actually surprised that May wasn't as bad as April, with April actually being 10-17. The end of April and early May were a true horror show that I just don't see how we won't look back and wonder what could have been, in the event that we are able to maintain anything like a 12-14 pace for a while. So many blown opportunities vs the Red Sox, A's, Angels, not to mention winnable games vs the Mets and others.

Everybody can play that game, but turning even a handful of those winnable games into Ws puts us potentially right at the top of the WC with the Braves. Still, the season moves forwards rather than backwards, and if you want to look to the horizon, then the bloodbath of the NL WC race actually favors the kinds of troubles we've had. While it's easy to point to the bottom of the stack and wonder when we'll be closer to there than in the heart of the race, it stands to reason that the next 6-8 weeks will be a total dog fight. A bad week for the Braves or Padres will pull them right back with everybody else. A team that goes on a huge winning streak will give themselves a big leg up as we get to the deadline.

I think it's also a reasonable assumption that most NL teams will keep things tight. The Rockies and Marlins are terrible, but even the Rockies have a decent enough offense at home to win games. Other than a scorching hot streak, I don't see anyone pulling away from the pack in a decisive way.

Looking ahead: 3 vs. LAD, 3 vs. MIN (6 home) + 3 vs. STL, 3 vs. COL (6 road)
I think this upcoming stretch of games will be the most important of the season, especially this current home stand, and will loom large in how long we can keep up the competition for the WC. I think you will be able to keep saying this for every stretch of games as we close on the trade deadline in 2 months, just because I think if you are in our situation, a 3-9 or 4-8 type of stretch is going to create an insurmountable situation.

Until the All Star Break, we have 3 pretty even and balanced home/road chunks of games: this stretch of 12, another stretch of 12, and a final stretch of 13. That's 37 games, where 21-16 puts us right back at .500. For me, that kind of small but sustainable clawing back is what it will take to feel like there's a little bit of urgency again, whereas at the moment I think it's all kind of a blah soup, and I expect the 3-9 type stretch at some point, even if it doesn't happen in the random slice of games I carve up for these recaps.

I'll be a bit bold here: the Pirates need a little bit of a surge, to the tun of 8-4 in these games. MIN, STL, and COL are all very beatable teams, especially the latter who we should be sweeping if the pitching lines up nicely. LAD recently got swept by the Reds. We seem to get up for these games against the bigger teams and the unfortunate thing is that we're catching Glasnow, Paxton, and Buehler even as we have Jones/Skenes lined up.

People wrote the Cardinals off and then they have been on a torrid streak, so it's easy to see how this stretch of games could go completely sideways. There's sweep danger as well as the kind of series squandering that we've seen over and over again. I truly don't think we've had sustained, consistent baseball over something like a 12-15 game stretch other than that first few weeks of the season. 6-6 would probably be an optimistic hope for these games and keep us right in line with the wheel-spinning mediocrity that the previous month or so has been.

Davis and Suwinski are back, which feels like a lesser version of the potential shift that was waiting in the wings when Skenes officially got the call. Any offensive improvement is going to need to be driven by them performing closer to where they are capable rather than completely automatic outs. They had some success in their minor league stints, but they also struck out at a huge clip. In a way it's almost fitting that the ace who got away with some of the best swing and miss stuff in baseball is on the mound to kick off this upcoming stretch.
 
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DJ Spinoza

DJ Spinoza

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Jones has not been perfectly sharp, but still relatively effective. The 4th inning seems like it will be huge. A 1-2-3 inning will give you the 9th batter before the top of the order again, which I think would be nice.
 
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