2025 Game Thread

[Namaste]

Peter is gonna get a call from the Yankees this week about Sandy now that Cole will be getting TJ surgery

[Namaste]

Derek Hill needs to start every game against LHP until he shows he can’t hit LHP

[fish16]

You give him every opportunity to stick, but I say if he's still struggling come mid-season, try him in the bullpen.

For sure, but he just has such awful inconsistent control. Hope he turns it around at some point but you can’t count on it anymore

[Nick]

edward cabrera doesnt look like he will ever put it together. not exactly young anymore and has 0 control. will have stretches where he looks dominant but you cant count on that guy. maybe he has an andrew miller esque awakening one day

You give him every opportunity to stick, but I say if he's still struggling come mid-season, try him in the bullpen.

[fish16]

edward cabrera doesnt look like he will ever put it together. not exactly young anymore and has 0 control. will have stretches where he looks dominant but you cant count on that guy. maybe he has an andrew miller esque awakening one day

[Todd]

Cool. They were still among the worst offensive teams in baseball, a below average pitching staff, and among the worst teams in run differential.

And yes, it needed to be torn down. If you want to use advance stats, Bell and Burger both regressed to their career norms and were mediocre bats the following year. Hampson and his .379 BABIP came back down hard in Kansas City. MLB cover athlete Jazz Chisholm had a 99 OPS+ in 2023 and 97 in 2024.

It was a bad team by basically every measure. It had some good starting pitching.

You also have some of the most selective acceptance of advanced stats. Careful tho, once you start using advanced stats you won't like Alcantra as much as you feverently do.

[fish16]

26th in runs scored. 16th in team ERA. -66 run differential. One of the worst defensive teams if memory serves, too.

It was a very bad team. It wasn't mediocre. It was bad.

And bad teams can make the playoffs when the playoffs are expanded and that really bad team has an unexplainable and unrepeatable record in one run games.

They had the 9th best fip and the 5th best era + that year. They had 4 sp who were tremendous if you include eury who they brilliantly shut down to keep healthy and then immediately got hurt in spring.

their bullpen blew a lot of games with puk and Robertson but Scott and nardi were unbelievable that year combining for 5.7 war per baseball reference. They were lucky in 1 run games, but it wasn’t at all unexplainable, they had a great back end of the bullpen and one of the best averages in baseball with arraez that got key hits in big spots

by the end of the year they had 7 every day guys with an ops above .748. They got absolutely walloped by the braves just about every single time they played but to act as if that team was bad is just wrong. Mediocre because of the lineup limitations and no true star, but that team didn’t need to be completely blown up into a 3 year rebuild

[Todd]

26th in runs scored. 16th in team ERA. -66 run differential. One of the worst defensive teams if memory serves, too.

It was a very bad team. It wasn't mediocre. It was bad.

And bad teams can make the playoffs when the playoffs are expanded and that really bad team has an unexplainable and unrepeatable record in one run games.

[fish16]

But it was.

Bad teams don’t make the playoffs in 162 game seasons. Mediocre teams might, which is what happened that year. They had a damn good rotation and a tremendous back end of the bullpen that year with Scott and nardi, and their lineup wasn’t awful once they got bell and burger to replace segura. That team didn’t need to be completely blown up. They did it because the owner is a joke who shouldn’t own a professional franchise. He used the first opportunity to blow up the team after he did nothing to help them in the offseason and then had the entire rotation get hurt in spring training

[Todd]

but it wasnt bad

But it was.

[fish16]

Of course many of them are unproven. They’re prospects (some of them are teenagers).

Unimpressive is subjective.

i mean unproven and impressive in the sense that they havent even put up impressive numbers in the minors. obviously all of them are unproven on the major league level. dillon head has done nothing in the minors. Same with johnson and obviously Salas and morlando.

To trade off just about every big piece other than sandy on the major league roster and still have a mediocre farm is ridiculous. there was no reason to enter into a multi year rebuild instad of rebuilding on the fly and signing some of those pieces long term to not lose the trust of the fanbase once again, on top of once again having by far the lowest payroll in the league.

you can say the team wasnt all that good, and it wasnt, but it wasnt bad, and blowing it up to merely have a mediocre farm AND A terrible major league roster for the forseeable future is just stupid business and a complete inability to read this market.

[Namaste]

call me a hater if you want, but that's a thoroughly unimpressive/unproven top 10 list for a team that has dealt every single piece with real value on the roster outside of Sandy over the last year. Outside of white and Meyer you have a ton of guys who havent done much of anything prolific in the minors (Caba, Head, Morlando, Carter Johnson, Salas) or other guys who either are coming off a down year or might not stick at the position that makes them most valuable (Ramirez and Snelling).

Of course many of them are unproven. They’re prospects (some of them are teenagers).

Unimpressive is subjective.

[Todd]

call me a hater if you want, but that's a thoroughly unimpressive/unproven top 10 list for a team that has dealt every single piece with real value on the roster outside of Sandy over the last year. Outside of white and Meyer you have a ton of guys who havent done much of anything prolific in the minors (Caba, Head, Morlando, Carter Johnson, Salas) or other guys who either are coming off a down year or might not stick at the position that makes them most valuable (Ramirez and Snelling).

It's possible you might be overvaluing the pieces traded, as well.

[fish16]

call me a hater if you want, but that's a thoroughly unimpressive/unproven top 10 list for a team that has dealt every single piece with real value on the roster outside of Sandy over the last year. Outside of white and Meyer you have a ton of guys who havent done much of anything prolific in the minors (Caba, Head, Morlando, Carter Johnson, Salas) or other guys who either are coming off a down year or might not stick at the position that makes them most valuable (Ramirez and Snelling).

[fish16]

5 of Top 10 MLB.com prospects are SS or C

only 2 of those guys are actually SS or C. Salas will grow out of SS, Carter Johnson will be a 3b, and Agustin Ramirez is not likely to stick at C. Joe Mack and Caba are good prospects though. Mack really put it together last year so hopefully he continues. We've had lots of C's put up big numbers in AA only to flounder above that level.