MLB Thread - 2022

SLAB

Hall of Famer
I almost feel bad for Joey at this point. He’s clearly so far in his head. He needs an extended vacation in Sacramento to get right, because this extended majors stay is going to destroy him, if it already hasn’t.
 

SLAB

Hall of Famer
Casali full-time. Better defensive catcher and he's been raking all season. The hitting probably won't last, but ride it as long as you can.
Send Bort to AAA to attempt to regroup. He needs to build confidence. I don’t think he’ll be a good long-term answer, but dude isn’t this bad.
 
I almost feel bad for Joey at this point. He’s clearly so far in his head. He needs an extended vacation in Sacramento to get right, because this extended majors stay is going to destroy him, if it already hasn’t.
I'm slowly starting to think that he needs to go all the way down. Meaning...Send him to Single A and have him work his way back up. This funk is so god dang weird, and annoying, that I am wondering if he needs to go back to the basics???
 

SLAB

Hall of Famer
I’m gonna need Farhan to go get Williams Astudillo on this team right now.



Don Walton is no Williams Astudillo, that’s for sure.
 
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hrdboild

Moloch in whom I dream Angels!
Staff member
I hate this bullpen.
It could be worse... the Angels have the two best players in baseball and yet they've made the playoffs just once in the Mike Trout era (they got swept) and they just fired the manager who was supposed to rescue them from irrelevancy because the team lost 12 games in a row. Or you could be an A's fan. My experience has been that a bullpen which is lights out in June probably won't be by September anyway so it's not a bad problem to have in the first half of the season when you still have time to address it. Bullpen help is always plentiful at the trade deadline.
 
It could be worse... the Angels have the two best players in baseball and yet they've made the playoffs just once in the Mike Trout era (they got swept) and they just fired the manager who was supposed to rescue them from irrelevancy because the team lost 12 games in a row. Or you could be an A's fan. My experience has been that a bullpen which is lights out in June probably won't be by September anyway so it's not a bad problem to have in the first half of the season when you still have time to address it. Bullpen help is always plentiful at the trade deadline.
I sometimes feel like teams lose 12 games in a row just because of the coach. It seems like they sabotage the game on purpose to get the coach fired. Or is that just how it seems?
 

hrdboild

Moloch in whom I dream Angels!
Staff member
I sometimes feel like teams lose 12 games in a row just because of the coach. It seems like they sabotage the game on purpose to get the coach fired. Or is that just how it seems?
It's certainly evidence that something isn't working. I don't know that a team in first place (or close to it) would intentionally sabotage their chances of making the playoffs just because a guy rubs them the wrong way but if players don't like their roles, don't feel prepared game-to-game, and disagree with the lineups and pitching substitutions they're probably going to underperform and the effect is the same. So it could be a subconscious thing....

Or maybe it's just baseball and they've been unlucky. A first ballot hall-of-famer with nearly 5000 career ABs going 0 for 26 during the win-less streak just seems like bad luck to me. But as we've seen multiple times in Sacramento, it doesn't take much for an owner or general manager to fire a coach if they don't have a great relationship anyway,
 

hrdboild

Moloch in whom I dream Angels!
Staff member
Congrats to John Fisher! Your Oakland A;s are officially the worst team in baseball, just in time for the start of the draft lottery era.
 

SLAB

Hall of Famer
I can’t even get too pumped on this because I’m still stomach punched about winning 107 games, winning the division and home field advantage… then still losing to these ********s in the playoffs on our own field.
 
I can’t even get too pumped on this because I’m still stomach punched about winning 107 games, winning the division and home field advantage… then still losing to these ********s in the playoffs on our own field.
Yeah just a strange season all-around. Injuries haven't been kind with Longo/Belt/La Stella/Wade missing a good chunk of the year, it's been a little difficult trying to replace Posey/Bryant offensive production, Desclafani has been hurt all year, the BP horses from last season haven't been the same... yet we're still 5 games over .500.

Fully healthy, this is probably a 90 or so win team. Our depth and some surprise years out of Junis/Gonzalez have kept this thing afloat, but we really need to get those bats healthy and the BP arms back on track.