Terminator

Attendance was up on the year. I assume TV viewership was up or at least held steady. Rogers probably cares about the missing playoff revenue, whatever what that may be, but on the business side it seems like things are going well.

Oh I agree I just didn't want to start a whole different argument. When I said "hitting philosophy" I mainly mean Vlad and others hitting so many flyballs to deep CF.

Can't you just read it yourself? -You bring up Max Scherzer like it's somehow relevant to pulling Berrios. -Brownie points out that Scherzer should in fact have been pulled from his last playoff game bc he got destroyed. -You then pivot and make 3 posts in a row (the last of which was pretty snarky) pointing out how Brownie thought it was the elimination game when it was actually Game 1. That's the definition of a red herring argument. It's not a big deal I just though it was kind of funny.

Lol he blows up your point so you resort to getting nitpicky because he mistakenly thought it was the elimination game but not Game 1

Agreed and that's why I've been telling the posters who have been attacking me that the lack of runs is due to underperformance (which is due to the hitting philosophy as you point out). It's not due to "sacrificing too much offense" with trades prior to the season or not trading for Tommy Pham at the deadline. You've got to correctly identify the problems before you can address them.

I like Atkins and he is mostly fine. But it's not like he's been so good that he's irreplaceable. The FA signings, the trades and the roster construction have all been very good for the most part. But the analytical on field performance was atrocious this year. The player development is just decent. Click would be a very easy move to make and I would support it. His familiarity with the organization wouldn't be a huge reset since he's already been here for a year. Instead he could come in and tweak the analytics dept (keep some of the nerds), clean out the coaching staff (esp the hitting coaches) and tweak a few things with player development to try and take this organization to the next level. It wouldn't be a full blown tear down of the front office but rather injecting some new blood.

Great point. His velo was def up. All told we can argue the Berrios pull until the cows come home. I think it was the wrong move but it did force Minnesota to burn their pinch hitters and our righty relievers mowed them down the rest of the game. So we may have given up the two runs but it did help us keep them off the board the rest of the game. The offense and a colossal baserunning blunder is what truly screwed us.

Pulling Berrios made Vlad Jr. emotional and as a result he got picked off of 2nd lol

There has to be something in the profiles that makes them think Espinal is better suited for pinch hitting. Perhaps they feel his low K rate gives him a chance to hit a single whereas with Schneider since he already strikes out a lot, if you apply the pinch hitting penalty to him (pinch hitters are about 20% worse on average I believe), it makes him a pretty poor pinch hitter?

If we traded for Tommy Pham (who put up 0.3 WAR after the ASB) we probably don't even give Davis Schneider a chance (put up 2 WAR after the ASB) and we would have missed the playoffs lol Also, I think it's also a false assumption to think that Tommy Pham helps us advance against Minnesota. He might have helped but he probably wouldn't have, he's a worse player than most of our starters after all. Hence my point that this team was only going as far as our underperforming core was going to take it. All the moves made in the offseason didn't "sacrifice" offense as you constantly harp on. It was the underperformance of the core guys we already had in place.

ok thanks

Lol come on. If you took the Rays model and applied it to our payroll you end up with something close to the Dodgers.

I agree. We need to get why so many offensive players underperformed. If Atkins doesn't have a plan to fix that then he needs to go.

They were outhit by KK and Belt. He out WAR'd Teoscar and Gurriel. Do you get how stupid your argument about "we shouldn't have sacrificed so much offense" is now? Too late I already did.

The other thing you are dead wrong about is acquiring more offense at the trade deadline but that's because you can't get it through your head that the actual issue was underperformance. And you're compounding it by making a false assumption. The best bat to move at the deadline was Tommy Pham I believe. You are assuming he actually would have made a difference. But even if we had overpaid for someone else, that likely prevents Schneider from getting a chance and we probably miss the playoffs altogether. You can't just assume that a better bat equals an automatically better offense. A lot of the Buffalo guys came up big down the stretch. Would have trading Tiedemann or Orelvis Martinez for a bat have been worth it? This offense was so bad (again, due to numerous guys underperforming) that I'm not sure it would have been worth it anyway. But you just assume that it would have worked for some reason when that's a tough assumption to make when 6 key players are all underperforming.

You really just don't have any clue what you are talking about. The offense was bad, but it was due to underperformance not due to "sacrificing too much offense." The guys Atkins acquired hit or were at least expected to. -KK had a 104 wRC+. -Belt was 138 wRC+. -You act like acquiring Varsho was a purely defensive run prevention move but he had a 107 wRC+ last year and the thought was that he would improve heading into his age 26 season. He's one of the prime underachievers. Then look at who we gave up: -Teoscar had a 105 wRC+ and 1.7 WAR. Was not missed. -Gurriel had a 106 wRC+ and 2.1 WAR. -Gabriel Moreno had 103 wRC+ and 1.7 WAR. So it's not like we shipped out a ton of offense and didn't replace it. All of the above doesn't factor in that we also acquired Swanson who is a good setup man with 3 years of control. Yeah the Varsho move looks like crap now but it wasn't an intentional downgrade of the offense. He projected to hit well but he just didn't do it. Which leads me to my point which is that the real issue is underperformance. The analytics aren't translating to on field production. Vlad, Springer, Varsho, Whit, Kirk and Espinal all severely underperformed this year. So you are just dead wrong. The offense didn't suck because we "sacrificed that much offense." We sucked because we had multiple guys underperform.

I agree. The pitching decision was a little too cute for its own good but it really did screw the Twins for the rest of the game. They burned their pinch hitters and our right handed relievers mowed them down. I agree on the offense but I don't think it's a matter of the front office sacrificing too much. It's a matter of underperformance. Why did so many guys underperform?

I wonder what you could get for Vlad. He might not even be providing surplus value anymore as his final arb years eclipse 20 million.

Pulling Berrios was creative but it was too cute by half. Kooch came in and the righty bats got some ground balls through. But those same righty bats were in the rest of the game and got mowed down. Too smart for their own good but I at least can see the reasoning. What really pisses me off is Vlad getting picked off. Just totally inexcusable. He's a dumbass and he's not going to be worth 20 mil next year when he's one of the dumbest players in the game who has a bad approach (fueled by his low IQ), bad defense and horrible baserunning (because he's fat and also low IQ). I honestly hope they explore trade offers for him this offseason.

I wanted them to win just won game so bad so you couldn't use that line anymore. Bummer. Looks like I'll be hearing that all winter.

Pulling Berrios was stupid. BUT Kikuchi got some ground balls that just happened to squirt through. And then it allowed them to mow down the Twins the rest of the game with their right handed relievers. Just couldn't get hits with runners in scoring position and couldn't get extra base hits either. I think we had 1 all series which was a double.

Varsho is our worst hitter. Why pinch run with Whit? They could have used him to pinch hit for Varsho

Kirk is framing his ass off this series

Michael Kay and A-Rod praised the ump for it on the ESPN broadcast lol

Why does it matter if it hit the dirt? Only if it's a foul ball right? I don't think Polanco made contact with it