2024 Game Thread

[lou]

Overcoming 4/5 of your rotation being out is exactly what you'd be overcoming right now. It's the same thing as overcoming april currently, as they are without 4 of their top 5 guys in april. Lorenzen, for the 10th time, is not ready. He was shit for the 2nd half last year, isnt stretched out, and just got rocked in AAA for texas. This is not the difference between 0-4 and 2-2. He's a thoroughly mediocre pitcher. If they really wanted to compete, they should have made a play for a steadying mid rotation guy impact guy like montgomery. But these 5th starter innings eaters arent making up for the impact talent they are currently missing in the rotation. They are down like 10 WAR currently in the rotation over a full season. You dont overcome that.

None of these guys are doing anything to help a team that is without 4 of their top 5 pitches. Full stop. That is the team's biggest issue. You can quibble about the fringes, and they still have a golden opportunity to add a guy like Pham and get rid of DLC's ass already, but the reason they are 0-4 is because their starting pitching was terrible. They just gave up 6, 7, 9, and 9 runs in 4 games. The major reason for that is their rotation is missing 4 out of their top 5 pieces and their situational hitting was abysmal. It's not that deep.

You do realize they could have signed Lorenzen or Clevinger in February, negating any argument "he isn't ready." It's an irrelevant point. This roster spot was an obvious need, and that's before guys got hurt.

They are going to be missing Garrett, Cabrera, and Eury for 15+ starts, maybe 18-20. And importantly, they won't be losing much of their innings really as if they stay healthy once back they can probably get to what was earmarked anyways and won't have to be babied as much to keep them standing in September as they were all going to be on innings limits early on and now they don't really need to once stretched. Eury probably will probably be down 15-20+ innings but frankly that could be it here so long as he's cruising (and I think he'll be great). All of this has been mentioned on this message board already. Whatever point you are trying to make falls flat. See again - comments on culture, not letting your players and fans down, etc. They could have done a lot for under $10m more when they have the 28th payroll in baseball. What are you missing here? Look at what the Royals did - they signed viable MLB free agents to help their kids develop and just created midseason trade assets. The Royals is the offseason that should have happened here. It's a HUGE difference going 2-2 and 0-4. You realize how razor thin their margin of error is after their 1 run luck which is something you in particular gloss over? Bendix is a hack and Bruce is even worse. The only footnote which I keep saying is, if its a ploy to 2025 I get it.

Also I don't get how your idea is to not spend a penny unless they are a world series contender as that is what you're suggesting that none of these players matter to the bottom line of winning it all with these 4 major SP hurt, because then why did they sign Tim Anderson which is a transaction you love? If this is the bar to do nothing unless its a radical over the top improvement, Luzardo, Scott, Arraez, Bell, Anderson, Bethancourt, and Chargois should be traded today and let's just drool over saving $35-45m saved in 2024 (because some Bell would have to be ate, the rest are moveable) and the $60-65m 2025 payroll needing 3-5 bats and and a closer in 2025. I would appreciate the honesty from the front office TBH if they did this. This would be an unapologetic baseball move and makes more rational sense then the bullshit that is happening right now. Bendix is a hack and Bruce is even worse.

(And if they sign Pham, Garcia would be the replacement not DLC. DLC is an issue, but there are greater battles to fight here.)

[fish16]

You do realize they could have signed Lorenzen or Clevinger in February, negating any argument "he isn't ready." It's an irrelevant point. This roster spot was an obvious need, and that's before guys got hurt.

They are going to be missing Garrett, Cabrera, and Eury for 15+ starts, maybe 18-20. And importantly, they won't be losing much of their innings really as if they stay healthy once back they can probably get to what was earmarked anyways and won't have to be babied as much to keep them standing in September as they were all going to be on innings limits early on and now they don't really need to once stretched. Eury probably will probably be down 15-20+ innings but frankly that could be it here so long as he's cruising (and I think he'll be great). All of this has been mentioned on this message board already. Whatever point you are trying to make falls flat. See again - comments on culture, not letting your players and fans down, etc. They could have done a lot for under $10m more when they have the 28th payroll in baseball. What are you missing here? Look at what the Royals did - they signed viable MLB free agents to help their kids develop and just created midseason trade assets. The Royals is the offseason that should have happened here. It's a HUGE difference going 2-2 and 0-4. You realize how razor thin their margin of error is after their 1 run luck which is something you in particular gloss over? Bendix is a hack and Bruce is even worse. The only footnote which I keep saying is, if its a ploy to 2025 I get it.

Also I don't get how your idea is to not spend a penny unless they are a world series contender as that is what you're suggesting that none of these players matter to the bottom line of winning it all with these 4 major SP hurt, because then why did they sign Tim Anderson which is a transaction you love? If this is the bar to do nothing unless its a radical over the top improvement, Luzardo, Scott, Arraez, Bell, Anderson, Bethancourt, and Chargois should be traded today and let's just drool over saving $35-45m saved in 2024 (because some Bell would have to be ate, the rest are moveable) and the $60-65m 2025 payroll needing 3-5 bats and and a closer in 2025. I would appreciate the honesty from the front office TBH if they did this. This would be an unapologetic baseball move and makes more rational sense then the bullshit that is happening right now. Bendix is a hack and Bruce is even worse.

(And if they sign Pham, Garcia would be the replacement not DLC. DLC is an issue, but there are greater battles to fight here.)

Did i miss when Mike Clevinger and Michael lorenzen became greg maddux reincarnate? Mike Clevinger has had a 4.76 XFIP and 5.15 XFIP each of the last 2 years. Since he missed 2021 due to injury he has been a middling borderline SP. Michael Lorenzen was fucking awful for the phillies down the stretch and had a 4.68 XFIP for the year with a nonexistent K rate. There is a reason Clevinger is unemployed. None of those guys is helping overcome losing Sandy, Garrett, Cabrera, and Eury for significant time off a season that was, by your own viewpoint, already extremely lucky.

I have never said dont spend a penny unless they are a world series contender. I said these innings eating 5th starters arent the difference between us contending and not contending if we are going to be missing 10+ WAR out of a rotation from a team that had a pythagorean W/L last year of 76 games.

I like Anderson because he has a high ceiling and the alternative was Jon Berti and Vidal Brujan. The bigger issue than fringe SP's is that this team refuses to spend on impact talent, not on the fringes. There has been no shortage of impactful guys available in free agency or through trading from the SP surplus for the last 2-3 years, and we havent done a single fucking thing outside of Burger, which was great. They need 2-3 more of those moves. They need to develop from within for the fringes on guys like Myers, Edwards, Johnston, etc and start spending or dealing for legitimately impactful bats and SP's.

This team's issue is not the fringes, it's the star level talent. We have it in the rotation when healthy, we absolutely do not have it in the lineup. We have a bunch of decent pieces, we are missing like 2-3 legitimate all star level bats to actually compete at the necessary level to win anything of significance. And they need to sign their own guys to long term deals early to allow for the combination of good home grown talent along with these more expensive outside of the organization type pieces.

[Nick]

Because he's your cy young pitcher who is part of the group of injured pitchers you are trying to replace the innings of from last year to form a competent team this year. They are down 580 innings of last year's team starters between Sandy, Garrett, Cabrera, Eury and Cueto, the majority of which they found out about like 2 weeks before opening day.

Please enlighten me who you would have signed in the offseason and what they ended up getting for their contract, not knowing that you would be losing 3 of those guys in spring training, to replace not only all those innings, but at the quality in which they were pitched. Not to mention, i will remind you this team was already apparently so lucky as to be the actual pythagorean W/L equivalent of like 76 games.

They should have signed a guy to eat innings, yes. That would not have made 1 difference if they did that and Eury, Garrett, and Cabrera each still got hurt in spring training. How were they supposed to prepare for that? If anything, they are in decent shape to replace those guys if Rogers, Puk, Weathers, and Meyer can pitch like they did in spring. But they need to get healthy. If Eury, Garrett, and Cabrera are out for significant time, whoever they would have signed is meaningless. That is the biggest issue right now.

They would’ve been out for some period of time either way. Injuries happen, especially like I’ve said with our reliance on young pitching. That a bunch happened in Spring Training is irrelevant. Point is the innings would be needed, everyone knew that. Let’s fill those innings with quality innings and the Front Office failed. We all know this, I’m not giving some hot take.

[fish16]

They would’ve been out for some period of time either way. Injuries happen, especially like I’ve said with our reliance on young pitching. That a bunch happened in Spring Training is irrelevant. Point is the innings would be needed, everyone knew that. Let’s fill those innings with quality innings and the Front Office failed. We all know this, I’m not giving some hot take.

I'll ask again- "Please enlighten me who you would have signed in the offseason and what they ended up getting for their contract, not knowing that you would be losing 3 of those guys in spring training, to replace not only all those innings, but at the quality in which they were pitched."

[fish16]

just FYI, Rogers had an XFIP of 4.94 yesterday and Weathers a 4.61 the day before. That is what borderline 4th/5th starters with XFIPS in that range look like. That is what you all are clamoring for as the pieces that keep us in the hunt while we lose Sandy, Garrett, Cabrera, and Eury. It's absurd.

[lou]

just FYI, Rogers had an XFIP of 4.94 yesterday and Weathers a 4.61 the day before. That is what borderline 4th/5th starters with XFIPS in that range look like. That is what you all are clamoring for as the pieces that keep us in the hunt while we lose Sandy, Garrett, Cabrera, and Eury. It's absurd.

Given your past history of yelling at Lee about small sample sizes, I'd like to point out this is a small sample size.

Also I already pointed out how you missed Rogers had kind of a good start with the swings/misses and contact rates via statcast which all were good omens. If he does that 30 more times with a few less walks, he's going to radically drop that xFIP. Radically. Weathers wasn't as good, but like you said, he's throwing harder and that's usually a good omen. And regardless those two guys innings wouldn't be replaced. It's Guitterez, Burch, and Hoeing. How you cannot see upgrading AAAA players with viable MLB arms even if not spectaculr ones is beyond me (as well as everyone else on this board).

[lou]

I'll ask again- "Please enlighten me who you would have signed in the offseason and what they ended up getting for their contract, not knowing that you would be losing 3 of those guys in spring training, to replace not only all those innings, but at the quality in which they were pitched."

Michael Lorenzen for $5-7m. Easy.

[lou]

They would’ve been out for some period of time either way. Injuries happen, especially like I’ve said with our reliance on young pitching. That a bunch happened in Spring Training is irrelevant. Point is the innings would be needed, everyone knew that. Let’s fill those innings with quality innings and the Front Office failed. We all know this, I’m not giving some hot take.

I can confirm, this is not a hot take that the front office failed for obvious reasons

[fish16]

Michael Lorenzen for $5-7m. Easy.

Lorenzen has XFIP of 4.55, 4.92, 4.20 and 4.68 the last 4 years. He has a career K Rate below 7.5/9 despite being a reliever most of his career, and a walk rate of 3.58/9. Prior to last year where he completely broke down as his work load got bigger, he had never pitched more than 113 innings. This whole revisionist history of this guy being some stud pitcher is fucking absurd based off a couple months of sample size.

You think that is making the difference between us staying in it or not while Eury, Sandy, Garrett, and Cabrera miss the whole year or significant time?

[fish16]

Given your past history of yelling at Lee about small sample sizes, I'd like to point out this is a small sample size.

Also I already pointed out how you missed Rogers had kind of a good start with the swings/misses and contact rates via statcast which all were good omens. If he does that 30 more times with a few less walks, he's going to radically drop that xFIP. Radically. Weathers wasn't as good, but like you said, he's throwing harder and that's usually a good omen. And regardless those two guys innings wouldn't be replaced. It's Guitterez, Burch, and Hoeing. How you cannot see upgrading AAAA players with viable MLB arms even if not spectaculr ones is beyond me (as well as everyone else on this board).

XFIP takes into consideration all the stuff that are such good omens. He still had a 4.91 XFIP. Yes, if you walk fewer guys you get better peripherals. Groundbreaking stuff. That is what a 5th starter does and looks like. He's been the same pitcher for 2.5 years. he is who he is.

Weathers was better than Rogers. Both had very high BABIP which indicate they will go back to normal and be passable for the time being until we get those guys back from injury. They are better options than Lorenzen and Clevinger.

Maybe let's wait until guys have more than 1 turn in the rotation before we freak out. They need to get healthy for anything to be successful. But these guys should be fine for a month, then figure out who sticks and who makes the bullpen much better when we are finally healthy. They are more talented than most teams have in their backend of the rotation. A fringe rotation guy isnt the difference between this going well and going poorly, Eury, Garrett, and Cabrera are.

[lou]

Did i miss when Mike Clevinger and Michael lorenzen became greg maddux reincarnate? Mike Clevinger has had a 4.76 XFIP and 5.15 XFIP each of the last 2 years. Since he missed 2021 due to injury he has been a middling borderline SP. Michael Lorenzen was fucking awful for the phillies down the stretch and had a 4.68 XFIP for the year with a nonexistent K rate. There is a reason Clevinger is unemployed. None of those guys is helping overcome losing Sandy, Garrett, Cabrera, and Eury for significant time off a season that was, by your own viewpoint, already extremely lucky.

I have never said dont spend a penny unless they are a world series contender. I said these innings eating 5th starters arent the difference between us contending and not contending if we are going to be missing 10+ WAR out of a rotation from a team that had a pythagorean W/L last year of 76 games.

I like Anderson because he has a high ceiling and the alternative was Jon Berti and Vidal Brujan. The bigger issue than fringe SP's is that this team refuses to spend on impact talent, not on the fringes. There has been no shortage of impactful guys available in free agency or through trading from the SP surplus for the last 2-3 years, and we havent done a single fucking thing outside of Burger, which was great. They need 2-3 more of those moves. They need to develop from within for the fringes on guys like Myers, Edwards, Johnston, etc and start spending or dealing for legitimately impactful bats and SP's.

This team's issue is not the fringes, it's the star level talent. We have it in the rotation when healthy, we absolutely do not have it in the lineup. We have a bunch of decent pieces, we are missing like 2-3 legitimate all star level bats to actually compete at the necessary level to win anything of significance. And they need to sign their own guys to long term deals early to allow for the combination of good home grown talent along with these more expensive outside of the organization type pieces.

I've already answered this 20 times, but the idea would be signing them to deploy 1-2 times through the lineup for 100-120 innings and not let them go much into a 2nd time through the lineup and never a third time through. Set them up as more max effort 60-70 pitch bulk guys not stretched out more. Max effort to not reserve 5th/6th inning stamina, etc. I/we as in the board, can't keep pointing out the obvious nature that the team needed another arm before the injuries, and it's now excruciatingly bad they didn't do that for a few weeks until Brax/Cabrera are back. No one, and I mean no one, is saying they are Greg Maddux and all that is is a deflection tactic from your end to try and shift the narrative to suggest there are unrealistic expectations. There are not. But if used correctly you can probably get some legitimate innings out of those kind of guys closer to a 4 than 5.15 era. And that frankly, would be huge benefit right now. The reason they are unemployed also is major union bargaining issues and team's being cheap. Brandon Belt - who was great last year - was unsigned and didn't get calls. That's insane. He just did an interview about this and is perplexed. JD Davis ended up with Oakland for $2.5m. He's objectively pretty good? None of this shit makes sense and don't extrapolate cheap ownership and idiocy in various front offices changing that a lot of these cheap guys have great value at these rock bottom prices. Bruce sucks and Bendix is a clueless first year GM who forgot about the on the field product. Not much more to say here.

And again, and again, and again here. It's not about the difference between contending and not contending - build culture, do something for your fans, help develop your younger guys by having more viable big leaguers around which is a net benefit, and yes Davis/M. Taylor/Lorenzen would have been worthwhile for this and no one is confusing them for Chapman, Bellinger, and Snell. I'm also ignoring they did nothing after the playoff momentum which is just spectacular malpractice. It was a big swing and a miss not upgrading Garcia, Bride, and Guitterez/Smith as the last 3 roster spots for likely $10m or under in guys who would help or become trade assets like the Cooper, Bass, or Yimi deals. Some of those deals turn into Groshans, but just keeping making bets there to you know, develop within the fringes of guys like Edwards.

[lou]

XFIP takes into consideration all the stuff that are such good omens. He still had a 4.91 XFIP. Yes, if you walk fewer guys you get better peripherals. Groundbreaking stuff. That is what a 5th starter does and looks like. He's been the same pitcher for 2.5 years. he is who he is.

Weathers was better than Rogers. Both had very high BABIP which indicate they will go back to normal and be passable for the time being until we get those guys back from injury. They are better options than Lorenzen and Clevinger.

Maybe let's wait until guys have more than 1 turn in the rotation before we freak out. They need to get healthy for anything to be successful. But these guys should be fine for a month, then figure out who sticks and who makes the bullpen much better when we are finally healthy. They are more talented than most teams have in their backend of the rotation. A fringe rotation guy isnt the difference between this going well and going poorly, Eury, Garrett, and Cabrera are.

Am I being punked?

[fish16]

I've already answered this 20 times, but the idea would be signing them to deploy 1-2 times through the lineup for 100-120 innings and not let them go much into a 2nd time through the lineup and never a third time through. Set them up as more max effort 60-70 pitch bulk guys not stretched out more. Max effort to not reserve 5th/6th inning stamina, etc. I/we as in the board, can't keep pointing out the obvious nature that the team needed another arm before the injuries, and it's now excruciatingly bad they didn't do that for a few weeks until Brax/Cabrera are back. No one, and I mean no one, is saying they are Greg Maddux and all that is is a deflection tactic from your end to try and shift the narrative to suggest there are unrealistic expectations. There are not. But if used correctly you can probably get some legitimate innings out of those kind of guys closer to a 4 than 5.15 era. And that frankly, would be huge benefit right now. The reason they are unemployed also is major union bargaining issues and team's being cheap. Brandon Belt - who was great last year - was unsigned and didn't get calls. That's insane. He just did an interview about this and is perplexed. JD Davis ended up with Oakland for $2.5m. He's objectively pretty good? None of this shit makes sense and don't extrapolate cheap ownership and idiocy in various front offices changing that a lot of these cheap guys have great value at these rock bottom prices. Bruce sucks and Bendix is a clueless first year GM who forgot about the on the field product. Not much more to say here.

And again, and again, and again here. It's not about the difference between contending and not contending - build culture, do something for your fans, help develop your younger guys by having more viable big leaguers around which is a net benefit, and yes Davis/M. Taylor/Lorenzen would have been worthwhile for this and no one is confusing them for Chapman, Bellinger, and Snell. I'm also ignoring they did nothing after the playoff momentum which is just spectacular malpractice. It was a big swing and a miss not upgrading Garcia, Bride, and Guitterez/Smith as the last 3 roster spots for likely $10m or under in guys who would help or become trade assets like the Cooper, Bass, or Yimi deals. Some of those deals turn into Groshans, but just keeping making bets there to you know, develop within the fringes of guys like Edwards.

How many times do you have to suggest this strategy before you realize they are not doing that? You've been suggesting these creative SP inning deflecting strategies for like 4 years. They arent doing that. It's just a different version of the werth signing. Just a waste of your time.

Yes, they needed an arm before the injuries. As i've said 20 times, we all agree on that. There are now 4 injuries to 4 of your top 5 SP's, and nothing they would have done in adding an innings eater is going to overcome the fact that they are down 4/5 SP's. That is the major and much more significant issue. Michael Lorenzen's mediocre innings are not overcoming significant injuries to Garrett, Eury, and Cabrera on top of Sandy being out for the year. That is the issue here, and it's an issue that will hopefully be fixed by the end of april. Weathers, Meyer, Rogers, and Puk should hopefully calm down and give them passable starts until then, and then you have them out of the bullpen which will make all of this look much better.

[lou]

Lorenzen has XFIP of 4.55, 4.92, 4.20 and 4.68 the last 4 years. He has a career K Rate below 7.5/9 despite being a reliever most of his career, and a walk rate of 3.58/9. Prior to last year where he completely broke down as his work load got bigger, he had never pitched more than 113 innings. This whole revisionist history of this guy being some stud pitcher is fucking absurd based off a couple months of sample size.

You think that is making the difference between us staying in it or not while Eury, Sandy, Garrett, and Cabrera miss the whole year or significant time?

He also had a 3.4 WAR those last 4 seasons in right around 300 innings which is objectively, really solid. What are you doing here? Who the fuck is saying he is a stud pitcher beyond you trying to as a defensive tactic to get out of this hole you have dug yourself suggesting we all think any of these guys are more than they are. Greg Maddux, get out of here my dude. This one is easy - they needed another arm before the injuries. They didn't do it. They are assholes.

Is Lorenzen worth $4.5m and incentives to try and eat 100-120 innings, which is basically what he has done the last 2 seasons on average and is producing 1+ WAR for that time per season? I mean, this is a looooow bar but you want to see Kent Emmanuel pitch game 5???

[fish16]

He also had a 3.4 WAR those last 4 seasons in right around 300 innings which is objectively, really solid. What are you doing here? Who the fuck is saying he is a stud pitcher beyond you trying to as a defensive tactic to get out of this hole you have dug yourself suggesting we all think any of these guys are more than they are. Greg Maddux, get out of here my dude. This one is easy - they needed another arm before the injuries. They didn't do it. They are assholes.

Is Lorenzen worth $4.5m and incentives to try and eat 100-120 innings, which is basically what he has done the last 2 seasons on average and is producing 1+ WAR for that time per season? I mean, this is a looooow bar but you want to see Kent Emmanuel pitch game 5???

Yes, they needed innings. No, it isnt making a difference when 4 impact SP's are out. That's the point here. They are down about 10 SP WAR over a full season and you're bitching about April innings fillers. That's the issue. They also should have signed innings. Ive said that numerous times. Those 15-20 innings he might throw in April are not the bigger impact than the guys they have injured currently who give you 10 WAR+ over a full year, more if Cabrera ever gets his shit together. You're worried about maybe 20 innings when they are down close to 600 fucking great innings. There is no replacing 600 innings like that. The health is by far and away the bigger issue than the difference between Michael Lorenzen throwing those garbage innings as opposed to Declan Cronin, Gutierrez, or Enmanuel.