Ray

Has to be corresponding move coming soon here to address CF.

Kelenic + Marco Gonzales is my guess.

This relief market is making the Garcia and Bass/Pop deals age very well. Yimi would probably get significantly more than $5.5M today.

Robert Suarez's contract is an early indicator that this free agency market is going to be absolutely nuts.

I don't pay attention to every teams 40-man, but I find it hard to believe that competing teams have 5 net negatives like these rostered on their 40-man the way we do. Casey Lawrence is the definition of a 40th man so he's whatever, but the rest are in an awkward phase right now. You can trade them for scraps. You'd likely have to DFA them, but they're intriguing to get picked up by other teams. The org has protected them through roster crunches when they easily could've moved on though, so they clearly like them, but they've also given you less than nothing for the last two years. Anthony Kay is turning 28 next year and has been rostered on this team since 2019(!!!).

Surely a team with back-asswards views on hitting philosophy like the Royals can trade an expendable arm for 1 year of Raimel Tapia. Tapia for Brad Keller, who says no.

Probably non tender Raimel Tapia ($5.2M) and Bradley Zimmer ($1.3M), but pick up Bass’s option ($3M). That’ll put our payroll at $187.5M and luxury tax hit at $213.5M (1st luxury tax threshold is $233M). We probably have $17M to spend as of now to avoid the luxury tax. Unless we move another contract. Either way, I’d guess we make most moves via trade as opposed to free agency.

lol @ whichever team gives Dansby Swanson $144M.

Shocked that our luxury tax number is at $215M without adding a single player (luxury tax threshold is $233M for reference). Keep an eye out for Jose Urquidy getting moved. Apparently, he was almost traded for Willson Contreras 1-for-1 at the deadline before ownership nixed it. Maybe Danny Jansen for Urquidy+? Could fit the back of our rotation nicely.

Mind-boggling to me how well the Phillies are doing this postseason. They don't even make the postseason under last years rules. If that doesn't tell you how much of a crapshoot baseball playoffs are, I don't know what will. Any team can get hot and win it all.

Ideal scenario would've been to elevate Schneider to manager in 2019 and hire away Montoyo to be our bench coach. I think Montoyo is a valuable guy to have on a coaching staff. Just not as a manager.

Atkins has done a lot of good, and I feel fine about him going forward as GM, but it's really disappointing to see the lack of homegrown pitching in his 7-year tenure, especially considering the org he was coming from has had fantastic pitching development. It's unfair to have the GM shoulder the blame alone. There's a lot that goes into pitching development including having good drafts, the right player development methodologies, good training staff, analytics, technological infrastructure, and some level of good luck. It takes a village for sure, but our record with developing pitchers is so dismal when you zoom in: Failure(s)/didn't pan out: - TJ Zeuch - Ryan Borucki - Anthony Kay - Thomas Hatch - Bowden Francis - Patrick Murphy - Jacob Waguespack - Sean Reid-Foley - Trent Thornton - Hector Perez - David Paulino TBD/still some hope: - Nate Pearson - Julian Merryweather Success stories: - Tim Mayza - Jordan Romano - Alek Manoah Maybe if you play the percentages and compare it to other orgs, we are comparable. But to have 3 real homegrown success stories on the pitching side the last 7 years seems like a really bad track record. There is very clearly a proven process with developing pitchers that works as evidenced by the Rays, Astros, Dodgers, Yankees, Guardians who churn out key members of rotations/bullpens every year. Our process in identifying and developing pitchers seems to be broken somewhere.

I think it’ll be interesting to see if we QO Ross Stripling. My leaning is no, but I’m not confident on it. He really saved our rotation in the regular season by stepping up to be the 3rd starter with Berrios and Kikuchi struggling, but close to $20M for a soon to be a 33 year old coming off a career best season is risky. Swing and miss + velo out of the bullpen is a must. I think that goes without saying. We need a good lefty bat to balance the lineup. Don’t have to meddle with the offense too much other than that. Need another starter. Stripling would be fine, but I would aim higher and try to get a guy like Justin Verlander. Apparently he said he really considered us last offseason. Big offseason for this front office. Wouldn’t be surprised if a major piece of this core is moved to shake things up. Teoscar and Lourdes going into their final year of arb. Vlad/Bo only having 3 years of control left with zero postseason success. Feels like this offseason could be a big inflection point for our near term future.

Middle relief really picked a bad game to become hot trash. Hard to believe we were up 8-1 at one point.

Mariners showcasing maybe some of the best pitching we'll see this playoffs. Castillo and Munoz are just unfair.

Wondering if they even get in the remaining two games with the weather the way it is right now in Baltimore. We’ve clinched Wild Card 1 and our games effectively don’t matter for the AL bracket. The only scenario where the games matter for us is home field advantage if we meet the Cardinals in the World Series. Cards are up 0.5 games on us.

I hope to god Judge signs with the Giants or something this offseason. What an absolute monster season. I still think Ohtani is MVP, but Judge will probably win it based on narrative.

Jesus Christ Pirates.

The division is still within reach with a little luck going our way. I wouldn’t bet on it, but theres more hope than a month ago for sure. The media outcry in New York will be legendary if they do manage to blow the division after a historically great 1st half. I would love to see it even if the Rays end up winning the division and not us.

Richards has been elite the last couple months. Great job to get out of that inning

They need to call the game

Bo Bichette literally giving a hearty f*** you to BJMB with his play this last week.

Yankees lose again lol. Tampa Bay 4 games back.

Rays clobber the Yankees 9-0. They're now only 5 games back for the AL East lead. The Yankees were 15.5 games up literally July 8th. Holy s*** what a collapse.