Oh I wasn't really arguing against that, just that it's disingenuous to remove guys who played for our team and were replaced with better players and claim that without the former we've been a bottom 4 team. I agree, the core has some players which are/will be very good but it's not totally consolidated. We need someone like Teoscar to continue playing anywhere close to his second half performance, second half Grichuk to show up for more than half the season, Gurriel to continue a level close to this season's performance, or one of Fisher/McKinney to break out (or at least be average). Then there's Vlad's defense not being a tire fire, Biggio showing some more in-game power, and acquiring a replacement for Smoak.
The core has the potential to be very good but has a lot of question marks, at the very least we know that every team in baseball would kill to have Bo and Vlad, and we've got those two studs for the foreseeable future.