G-Snarls

We all know JP has to go. It's sad but it's plainly obvious. He's hurting this team. I can see AA keeping him as the backup and probably non-tendering Thole. I don't imagine has any trade value. Regardless, this is a pretty good year to pick up a free agent catcher. The large number available probably lowers the price too by simple supply and demand. I think it's critical that whoever we sign be signed early in the off season, meet the picthers, review data and video this winter, and be there bright and early for pitchers and catchers report day in spring training to get a feel for our pitching staff. From cot's, available free agent catchers this off season: Rod Barajas Henry Blanco John Buck Jesus Flores Ramon Hernandez Gerald Laird Brian McCann Jose Molina Dioner Navarro Wil Nieves Miguel Olivo Ronny Paulino Brayan Pena A.J. Pierzynski Humberto Quintero Carlos Ruiz Jarrod Saltalamacchia Kelly Shoppach Chris Snyder Geovany Soto Kurt Suzuki * Yorvit Torrealba Who's your pick?

Yep. You called it. Stupid ass team...

Good job LTBF What a terrible night to pick Lawrie

Can't deal with failure. Bad pitches/innings/outings eat at him.

At least Hill has had success elsewhere

Till his back broke

Yep. Here's hoping the pitching (especially Sanchez, Osuna, Stroman) stick.

Speaking of whom... Snider .607 OPS this year for Pittsburgh. But he could get a WS ring. That would be something.

What falls from grace of this team's two top position player prospects of the past decade. The names Snider and Arencibia will remain in infamy forever.

This is why we needed Ricky Cause Morrow came back late last year and won like 5 games and cost us 2-3 spots in the draft. f***er.

At this rate, the Goins thread will be larger than the around baseball thread by the end of September.

Yeah, me too...

It's happening! Per Rogers radio. Ricky up.

He means Gose

Who do you get though?

Idiot

Goins generates 10x the posts that Lawrie does these days. Hilarious.

I don't know what to hope for here. If Goins continues to impress I just hope he's for real and can sustain above average defense and league average batting next year. That would make him an acceptable starting 2B next year. The problem is if he impresses the FO with unsustainable hitting and they don't bother trying to upgrade this off season even though maybe they should. Izturis should stay on the team no matter what, but preferably on the bench as utility. He would still get plenty of playing time due to injury-prone starters in Lawrie and ReyesI like him due to his reasonable ability to play 2B, SS and 3B, something that Bonifacio certainly couldn't do, and neither can Kawasaki realistically (his arm is too weak for 3B especially). For his career (this year is an outlier), his splits vs LHP and RHP show no difference so I don't think "platooning" with Goins makes sense. Given that we aren't getting Matt Carpenter, Dustin Pedroia, or Robinson Cano, there's no top notch 2B we can snag. Going with 2 of Goins, Kawasaki and Izturis might be the best we can hope for. (Heck, we won a World Series with Manny Lee at SS) I've said it so many times I'm tired of typing it, the best money is probably spent on a SP to shore up the rotation and catcher.

For sure. He could easily become the best defensive 3B in baseball.

Which is odd because it seems like the one area scouts can tell you something that the numbers can't

It's also sort of hard to be "lucky" on defense. Everyone makes errors, and someone can come up and look bad over a small sample size if they're nervous and make some bad throws or something. But you can't fake smooth defense like that. I think it's real. Batting? Different story. Very easy to come up and overperform (Goins) or underperform (Pillar) your true ability in a small sample.

I'm also going on scouting reports on very good defense in the minors.

Yech

What? Wow. Cause that translates at the big league level. Nice. It was always command and walks that killed him, his stuff is very good. Has a shot at starting rotation 2014 I suppose.