BTS

Man, when I was shopping Jose Abreu I was a bit concerned about the power and obviously trying to de-risk. But I still thought he'd be above average this year and pick up a lot of counting stats in the Houston lineup. He looks completely cooked. One of the biggest sudden declines in recent memory that wasn't precipitated by injury.

This is going to get bites

I would never debase myself by rostering Brad Keller in fantasy baseball.

Now he just hit Machado. And walked Soto. Dude is going to be DFA'd after this.

Brad Keller has 4 walks and 2 wild pitches and it's the second inning

He's a stud

ESPN crew going on about how there are no breaks in a Boston lineup that includes Casas, Enmanuel Valdez, Pablo Lopez, and Reese McGuire.

The team is a circus. We're to believe he learned how to catch in his week as a DH?

We're like 25% of the way through the season and it's rermarkable how almost every contract has been a disaster so far. Trea Turner (11/300) - K-rate up like 7% and basically a slap hitter right now per Statcast Carlos Correa (6/100)- has been replacement-level trash Jake deGrom (6/185) - shut down after 30 innings because of multiple injuries Carlos Rodon (6/162) - immediately diagnosed with chronic back issue and hasn't pitched Edwin Diaz (5/102) - blew out his knee, hasn't pitched Willson Contreras (5/87.5) - scapegoated for Cards pitching being terrible and moved off catcher for a week Justin Verlander (2/86.6) - has only thrown 12 mediocre innnings Andrew Benintendi (5/75) - replacement-level slap hitter Kodai Senga (5/75) - no command, looks like a 1-2 WAR SP Taijuan Walker (4/72) - the same 1-2 WAR SP he's always been outside of a decent 2022 Chris Bassitt (3/60) - showing signs of significant skill erosion Jose Abreu (3/60) - looks completely cooked Robert Suarez (5/46) - injured and hasn't thrown a pitch Mitch Haniger (3/43.5) - has been injured and terrible Tyler Anderson (3/39) - doesn't even look like a viable SP anymore Well over $1 billion paid out to the above players, and they're cumulatively hovering around replacement level. Draft and develop, kids. Building through FA is a recipe for being very bad for a very long time. There were some value signings out there: The Rays seem to have got it right with Eflin. Strahm, Lugo, and Bellinger all look shrewd. Some vets re-signing with their former teams for reasons other than $ look good (Kershaw and Rizzo).

Juan Soto has a 152 wRC+ now. 400M contract back in play?

Leafs have like half a roster to acquire this offseason.

Mike Clevinger looks absolutely terrible. Like, physically. He looks unhealthy.

I don’t know. Florida and Carolina are pretty legit teams with fun rosters.

Your bats absolutely went off last week

Scherzer scratched from his start today with a neck issue

Mason Miller is broken already

The situation reads like pitchers have been complaining to management about Contreras.

lmao

Done

St. Louis basically became a dumpster fire overnight. Imagine realizing a month in that the catcher you just paid 90M can't catch.

TODAY: St. Louis president of baseball operations John Mozeliak specified that Contreras will be a designated hitter rather than an outfielder “unless there’s some sort of emergency,” Katie Woo and Ken Rosenthal of the Athletic report. Mozeliak also shed some more light on the decision to make the position change, saying that “obviously the Cardinals were used to [Molina] behind the plate for close to two decades. The nuances of that position, maybe very subtle, are what a lot of our pitchers were used to. What we were seeing was a lack of confidence. “Normally, you would say, why didn’t you address this in Spring Training? But in Spring Training, it’s so different in terms of what people are trying to work on. Pitchers are going a couple of innings. It doesn’t really count….We just decided to do it head on, put it out there. Do we think we’ve seen Willson catch his last game? No. But this is going to take a little time to get him to where we feel he understands the expectations of what this role is for us.” Like manager Oliver Marmol said yesterday, Mozeliak reiterated that Contreras wasn’t being singled out as a cause of the team’s struggles. “What I don’t want to have happen is a finger-point, this is all Willson’s fault. It’s not. There are many parts of our team right now that are not performing to what we expected,” Mozeliak said.

That contract is going to be a massive sunk cost for NY

Also Rodon apparently has a degenerative back issue and is not sure when he’ll pitch again

Cards getting absolutely blasted again today. Jack Flaherty f***ing sucks.