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Posted
1 minute ago, Firemans4Horn said:

Marte hit the shit out of that homer. Impressive shot. 

that was a horrible middle middle spinner with 2 strikes.  absolutely awful pitch.

Posted
2 minutes ago, Firemans4Horn said:

78 MPH. Even 3 or 4 of our guys could have made contact. 

especially when you are sitting on it.  It really sucks we are going to waste what seems to be a historic pitching year.

Posted
Just now, Firemans4Horn said:

Ozuna had 10-5 rights and vetoed 3 trades. Didn’t list out the 3 teams. 

Didn't know that. I thought I had seen an article where he said the Braves never approached him with a deal.

Posted

Seriously, what is the fucking plan for this team? The offense needs a complete overhaul. I’m getting pissed sitting here thinking about it. We’re going to waste an historically good pitching staff by not even making the fucking playoffs. 

We have exactly one hitter in the organization that scares anyone and  Smith hits well for a utilityman. That’s about it. Semien and Adolis are washed and it ain’t coming back. I had such high hopes for Langford but it looks more and more like he’s going to end up closer to decent than star. Jung’s ceiling is league average bat. Heim sucks. Carter is frail and useless against lefties. Our two big free agent additions flopped super hard, and we’re stuck with the worse of the two again next year.

  • Like 1
Posted

Watched the end of last night. Fun.

I couldn't watch this game, but predictable. Any "this could shift momentum" game on 2025 has been inevitably followed by anemic, pathetic offense.

And this? This here? The dude needs to be demoted or hung by the nuts. If a 12 year old did this I'd be thinking what the fuck are you doing? A pro pitcher? Shouldn't pitch again this year for them.

 

 

Posted (edited)

I'm still fucking on tilt this morning. I need someone to talk me down off the ledge. A serious ballclub that is interested in winning simply cannot run it back with this same offense next year. Look at what we have under contract:

  • Seager, $31.5m: Fine, he's great
  • Semien, $26m: We're fucked on this one. Defense is still fine but the bat is well below average at this point and it ain't gonna magically come back for a guy that is 35 years old.
  • Pederson, $18.5m: LOL, might as well light this money on fire
  • Adolis, arbitration (probably $8-9m?): Might be the rare guy whose salary actually goes down in arbitration. 2023 was a fluke. We absolutely cannot continue giving this guy 600 PA every year.
  • Higashioka, $6.7m: This is fine. League average bat. Has yet to surpass 300 PA in his career though.
  • Heim, arbitration: Below average bat. Again, 2023 looks like a fluke.
  • Burger, arbitration: Will be cheap, but has not been good.
  • Jung, arbitration: Will be cheap, but has not been good. Decent defense I suppose. Hitting all downhill since 2023 (see a theme?).
  • Smith, arbitration: Hooray! A useful utility guy with an above-average bat. Not exactly fearsome at the plate, but useful.
  • Langford, arbitration: I'm down on him. We're almost 1000 PA into his major league career. At this point, I don't think something will click and he becomes the offensive force we all dreamed he might be. Looks likely to end up as a solid regular that occasionally has scorching hot months. That's very useful, especially while cost-controlled, but a bit disappointing.
  • Carter, arbitration: Even more down on him. He'd be fine as a 4th OF/platoon bat, except he cannot stay healthy, which is kinda what you need from your 4th OF. I think it's likely that his rookie season ends up being the high point of his career.

So you have 11 hitters under contract. One star (Seager), two that are above average but not killers (Langford, Smith), a league average but part-time C (Higgy), a guy that you can squint and maybe see league average (Jung), and six(!!!) fucking black holes (Semien, Adolis, Heim, Burger, Pederson, Carter). If we go into next season with our main strategy being the hope that those 6 guys will improve, I'm going to rip my fucking hair out.

 

Edit: Adding more, still pissed. I feel like the mantra this past offseason was "basically all our hitters regressed last year (2024), so the pendulum will swing back the other way". Which, OK, fine, that makes some sense. But now we're in year two of these guys sucking ass. At some point 2023 becomes the outlier, not 2024. The black holes are 34, 32, 30, 29, 33, and 22 years old (the 22-year-old has an extensive history of back injuries). They are not going to magically improve at this point in their careers.

There is absolutely nothing in the minors anywhere close to helping, either. If there were, they'd have been called up this year. Justin Foscue is probably the closest, I'm serious. He's 26 and has been...decent in AAA this year? Not incredible, but fine. Walcott is 19 and has been mostly outmatched at AA this year. He's still at excellent prospect but nowhere close to helping.

Edited by tokamak
Posted
19 minutes ago, tokamak said:

I'm still fucking on tilt this morning. I need someone to talk me down off the ledge. A serious ballclub that is interested in winning simply cannot run it back with this same offense next year. Look at what we have under contract:

  • Seager, $31.5m: Fine, he's great
  • Semien, $26m: We're fucked on this one. Defense is still fine but the bat is well below average at this point and it ain't gonna magically come back for a guy that is 35 years old.
  • Pederson, $18.5m: LOL, might as well light this money on fire
  • Adolis, arbitration (probably $8-9m?): Might be the rare guy whose salary actually goes down in arbitration. 2023 was a fluke. We absolutely cannot continue giving this guy 600 PA every year.
  • Higashioka, $6.7m: This is fine. League average bat. Has yet to surpass 300 PA in his career though.
  • Heim, arbitration: Below average bat. Again, 2023 looks like a fluke.
  • Burger, arbitration: Will be cheap, but has not been good.
  • Jung, arbitration: Will be cheap, but has not been good. Decent defense I suppose. Hitting all downhill since 2023 (see a theme?).
  • Smith, arbitration: Hooray! A useful utility guy with an above-average bat. Not exactly fearsome at the plate, but useful.
  • Langford, arbitration: I'm down on him. We're almost 1000 PA into his major league career. At this point, I don't think something will click and he becomes the offensive force we all dreamed he might be. Looks likely to end up as a solid regular that occasionally has scorching hot months. That's very useful, especially while cost-controlled, but a bit disappointing.
  • Carter, arbitration: Even more down on him. He'd be fine as a 4th OF/platoon bat, except he cannot stay healthy, which is kinda what you need from your 4th OF. I think it's likely that his rookie season ends up being the high point of his career.

So you have 11 hitters under contract. One star (Seager), two that are above average but not killers (Langford, Smith), a league average but part-time C (Higgy), a guy that you can squint and maybe see league average (Jung), and six(!!!) fucking black holes (Semien, Adolis, Heim, Burger, Pederson, Carter). If we go into next season with our main strategy being the hope that those 6 guys will improve, I'm going to rip my fucking hair out.

If I'm attempting to talk you off the ledge I would say that the FO seems to give a shit and hasn't been afraid to spend money. Which is more than you can say about a lot of franchises.

I'm not sure I disagree with any takes on the lineup. It's a mess and needs to be completely retooled. I don't think I'd mind keeping Adolis at a reasonable number because he's so good in right but we can't have a bunch of guys hitting .200 sitting around him in the lineup. 

We need a new manager, too. 

  • Hook 'Em 1
Posted

Not in disagreement at all. But imagine if the Rangers had a decent regular closer, say top 1/3 of the league guy, they would have several more wins in in decent position. Yet it doesn't look like a team that would get far in any playoff, other than a repeat of everyone just getting scorching hot career streaks at the right time, like a couple of years ago.

Posted

I feel like that's just making additional excuses for the hitting. We've had some ass starting pitching outings lately, too. 

Obviously a competent closer would help but if this team had been even remotely on the same page all season it wouldn't be a glaring issue. 

Absolutely something that needs to be addressed in the offseason, however. 

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