On a dull thud, projected wins, some positive Manoah-jo, the leadoff hitter, Erik Swanson, Ross Atkins, John Schneider, fun with (minimal) bat speed, and more!
With seemingly half the team sick with a "flu-like illness" (HMMMMM what could that be, couldn't be the extremely contagious virus that's still circulating after the pandemic was declared "over", no, it's a total mystery what they're sick with), why - WHY - is the team not implementing any kind of health protocol to prevent spread between players? Sick guys are hanging out with healthy guys, spitting, breathing germs, and so on. Just ask the sick guys to stay in the hotel, or at least wear a mask (and don't participate in the post-game high fives...).
Makes no sense to be paying these guys big bucks to ride the bench and infect their teammates.
Can we please please please break up this team and start again. It turns out watching plucky underdogs win occasionally is way more fun than watching top prospects and big free agents suck ass.
I legit enjoyed the 2017 season, or even the 2019 season when an "opener and a guy" would go out there and get absolutely shelled as often as not, or they rolled out Edwin Jackson again because they "didn't have anyone else" more than the 2023 season. Jury's still out on this season, but uh, yeah, signs so far are iffy.
Not saying I'm ready to break this team up, but Atkins has not put together a fun-to-watch roster.
1) The overall performance was really impressive, but what I really like to see was how quickly he righted himself after the four-pitch walk in the second inning. We’ve seen that spiral into a blowup inning in previous starts.
2) I don’t have the stats on this, but the fielders seem to commit an inordinately high number of errors behind Manoah in his starts. Almost like they think they think they need to be perfect behind him and are too tense and not relaxed enough to field properly.
I didn't look at errors, but to your point, Manaoah has not received the best defence (not including catchers) after 2022. The Outs Above Average of the defence was as follows:
(Note that 0 is average, a plus number means better than average, and a minus number means below average)
With seemingly half the team sick with a "flu-like illness" (HMMMMM what could that be, couldn't be the extremely contagious virus that's still circulating after the pandemic was declared "over", no, it's a total mystery what they're sick with), why - WHY - is the team not implementing any kind of health protocol to prevent spread between players? Sick guys are hanging out with healthy guys, spitting, breathing germs, and so on. Just ask the sick guys to stay in the hotel, or at least wear a mask (and don't participate in the post-game high fives...).
Makes no sense to be paying these guys big bucks to ride the bench and infect their teammates.
Can we please please please break up this team and start again. It turns out watching plucky underdogs win occasionally is way more fun than watching top prospects and big free agents suck ass.
I legit enjoyed the 2017 season, or even the 2019 season when an "opener and a guy" would go out there and get absolutely shelled as often as not, or they rolled out Edwin Jackson again because they "didn't have anyone else" more than the 2023 season. Jury's still out on this season, but uh, yeah, signs so far are iffy.
Not saying I'm ready to break this team up, but Atkins has not put together a fun-to-watch roster.
Couple of points on Manoah’s start:
1) The overall performance was really impressive, but what I really like to see was how quickly he righted himself after the four-pitch walk in the second inning. We’ve seen that spiral into a blowup inning in previous starts.
2) I don’t have the stats on this, but the fielders seem to commit an inordinately high number of errors behind Manoah in his starts. Almost like they think they think they need to be perfect behind him and are too tense and not relaxed enough to field properly.
I didn't look at errors, but to your point, Manaoah has not received the best defence (not including catchers) after 2022. The Outs Above Average of the defence was as follows:
(Note that 0 is average, a plus number means better than average, and a minus number means below average)
- 2021 > +1
- 2022 > +2
- 2023 > -6
- 2024 > -2
Vogel-Bye.