2023 Game Thread

[fish16]

Rehashing again, and with hindsight, but the rebuild should've been done around JT and Yelich.

I was also concerned about Sixto and his injury history at the time.

And no, I think he did make it to the market, but Philly resigned him. And that 5/115 is what he ended up signing.

5/115 for a guy that good at that premium position is an absolute steal.

[fish16]

so far in a weeks worth of games, we are 24th in OPS, 20th in slugging, 27th in OBP, 20th in BA, most k's in baseball (11 in front of the number 2 team), 25th in walks.

Pitching we have the 14th best overall ERA, 8th in starter ERA, but 5th most walks in baseball, 9th best in WHIP, bullpen ERA is 25th.

Lets see where these numbers are at the end of the month.

[fish16]

and with the o'neill thing, if it is still being discussed, dont discount the fact that skip was in st louis for years. Id assume he would have major input on any of those guys potentially coming here.

[rmc523]

so far in a weeks worth of games, we are 24th in OPS, 20th in slugging, 27th in OBP, 20th in BA, most k's in baseball (11 in front of the number 2 team), 25th in walks.

Pitching we have the 14th best overall ERA, 8th in starter ERA, but 5th most walks in baseball, 9th best in WHIP, bullpen ERA is 25th.

Lets see where these numbers are at the end of the month.

crazy how many K's they'v ehad

[fish16]

crazy how many K's they'v ehad

yup. 74 k's to 14 walks in 7 games is awful. We have played 1 more game than all but 4 other teams so that's why we are so far ahead of everyone else, but we have struck out far too much. the giants has also struck out 63 times in just 5 games, so they are actually on pace for more than us, but still, we have been pretty bad in an area they did a lot to try and improve on this offseason. We've also faced a lot of really good pitchers too.

[Namaste]

We haven’t played a bad team yet and won’t play one until April 14th (the Phillies went to the World Series they’re not a bad team because they had a slow start).

So I’m not ultra worried about our team numbers (yet).

[Nick]

We haven’t played a bad team yet and won’t play one until April 14th (the Phillies went to the World Series they’re not a bad team because they had a slow start).

So I’m not ultra worried about our team numbers (yet).

I mean, I get only 7 games in, small sample size and such, but this is mostly the same team as we had last year. It's not small sample size with these guys at this point. This will not be a good hitting team, and will struggle with K's despite the acquisitions of Arraez and Segura.

[lou]

Rehashing again, and with hindsight, but the rebuild should've been done around JT and Yelich.

I was also concerned about Sixto and his injury history at the time.

And no, I think he did make it to the market, but Philly resigned him. And that 5/115 is what he ended up signing.

If they had kept Yelich like any normal team, yes a Realmuto extension would have made sense (if they then would have signed a third major guy in free agency and then built around that Anderson, Rojas, Cooper, etc. as a pretty interesting core, with the SP + Jazz coming). But without Yelich, it was at the time a clear trade him and don't bank on the older catcher. We can't have hindsight bias, but we can fault them that Sixto has clearly done nothing so far so they just picked the wrong player.

[Namaste]

I mean, I get only 7 games in, small sample size and such, but this is mostly the same team as we had last year. It's not small sample size with these guys at this point. This will not be a good hitting team, and will struggle with K's despite the acquisitions of Arraez and Segura.

I agree. I’m just saying we have a relatively brutal schedule to start the season and we won’t remain as abysmal in all of these offensive categories.

[Namaste]

Do we make the 2020 playoffs (and win a playoff series against the Cubs) without Sixto, though?

[lou]

I mean, I get only 7 games in, small sample size and such, but this is mostly the same team as we had last year. It's not small sample size with these guys at this point. This will not be a good hitting team, and will struggle with K's despite the acquisitions of Arraez and Segura.

I think they will be a bad offensive team, but I do think they are going to make a lot more contact. It's a SSS for me and if the predominant lineup has Arraez, Berti, Segura, Cooper, Wendle, we get "the best" Soler, Fortes eventually gets the lion's share, and they play some splits with Jazz/Garcia/DLC/Sanchez, that's going to be a pretty solid "K" grouping and dare I say, could be above average. Still a below average offense for poor OBP potential and maybe middle of the pack slugging, but it'll regress to the mean.

They were 5th worst in whiffing last year. If they decrease strikeouts as a team 1.6%, they hit that above average threshold just to note. So we're not talking about a monumental change here if they strike out 1.6 times less per 100 AB (that's 50-60 whiffs less on the season). I do think they can do that (hell Arraez and Segura may do that alone) and this will show over the course of the season.

[rmc523]

Do we make the 2020 playoffs (and win a playoff series against the Cubs) without Sixto, though?

who knows....does JT provide enough offense to overcome a lesser pitcher?

[fish16]

We haven’t played a bad team yet and won’t play one until April 14th (the Phillies went to the World Series they’re not a bad team because they had a slow start).

So I’m not ultra worried about our team numbers (yet).

completely agree, i was just laying them out there to show where we currently stand and to see where we stand after the first month or so. I dont expect a huge increase in offense but like lou said, i doubt we strike out quite this much (it would be hard to continue being that bad), and guys like segura and Jazz will pick it up a little. Very interested to see in a month or 2 where we stand and if the offseason additions of arraez and segura make a difference in terms of our overall position in the league on batting average and on base percentage and k%. I doubt we see any meaningful improvement slugging wise because thats just not the roster Ng put together, but the whole goal of the offseason was to go station to station and to make more contact, so time will tell whether it made any difference.

If Soler is going to be this good though, it does notch up the potential of the team a bit. We so desperately need a middle of the order masher, he doesnt need to be what he was that 1 royals season, but if he can be mid to high .800's ops and cooper stays healthy, they can provide enough for us to be competitive.

[fish16]

who knows....does JT provide enough offense to overcome a lesser pitcher?

i checked the stats and our offense was worse than i remembered. It seemed like that small sample size season we were fairly decent offensively. Rojas had a great 2 months, anderson hit the shit out of the ball, dickerson was steady but nothing special, aguilar was good, berti was good, and marte was brought in mid way through that year. The overall numbers were bad compared to the rest of the league though.

But no, that team doesnt make the playoffs without sixto. He was tremendous. That was my favorite year watching this team since 03. The 60 game sprint made every game a ton of fun.

[fish16]

dax fulton is starting the AA team opening day. Im hoping that is not indicative of some health issue for Eury and that eury pitches game 2. Eury getting hurt would be very bad.