decosabute

DFA him now or keep him exclusively to DH or pinch hit? Even though right now, I mostly never want to see him again, I'd probably still go for the latter. But is there a roster advantage to just cutting ties now?

We don't need 3 wins from these 6. Going 2-4 vs the Rays and Yankees on the road is totally acceptable, as long as we then start doing the business against the garbage we play the last five weeks.

If we somehow make it to the postseason, would this possibly be the worst offense in history to get a playoff spot?

It's hard though. If you take, say, Springer out of the meat of the order, then who do you put in there instead? We have absolutely no reliable power. Before today, I couldn't remember the last time Kaz had an extra base hit. Vlad absolutely sucks and injured. Sanchez is completely unreliable and a terrible fielder. You can't just put contact hitters and rookies in 3-4-5 spots. I don't blame JS for any of our offensive woes. It's pretty much all on the individuals.

Yeah I feel like we really could've done with winning today, especially as the next six could be ugly. But like you say, sweeps are tough at the best of times, and they're especially tough when you've been absolutely flogging your bullpen to death. I'm not going to hold this one against Little or Fisher - those are the situations we're facing when we've asked all the relievers (not just the leverage guys) to go to the well day after day after day. Probably if we'd had Miles, Rogers and Varland available, I could've seen us win today too. I'd take two from the next six and only being three games or less back right now if you offered it to me. From late August we should get back to winning.

Springer will rightly be remembered for the great moments as a Blue Jay, but right now I can't stand the sight of the guy. If we even had one reliable big bat this season, we'd have comfortably been in the playoffs. The lesser hitters in the lineup have generally been fine and performed to what you might expect overall. But then you have Springer, Vlad, Kirk (obviously better lately) and Okamoto making me want to gouge out my eyes whenever they come up in big spots. It's genuinely incredible how lobsided this roster is. The pitching staff have been heroes and the lineup has been attempting to out-villain each other all season.

Of course in hindsight it looks bad throwing Lee in there. But I gotta admit I was OK with it when the call was made. Our offense has been pretty pathetic today - one of the most anaemic hitting performances in a season full of them. I really didnt see us tieing it up and Rogers and Varland are getting destroyed in terms of workload. Sure, it backfired, but I can understand Schneider's thinking at least.

Yeah this can't just be explained away as bad roster management from RA or bad bench management from JS. What we're seeing is spectacular, nearly all-time historic levels of awful offense. Look at some of our lineup's OPS, WAR and HRs this season compared to not just what they did last season, but just to (in brackets) career average and normal expectations: Biggest producers not producing: George Springer .725 OPS (.825), 0.3 WAR (4.5), 12 HRs (~25 HRs for the season) Vlad Guerrero .687 OPS (.844), 0.6 WAR (3.9), 6 HRs (~25-30 for the season) Alejandro Kirk .667 OPS (.738), 0.4 WAR (3.1), 4 HRs (~15 for the season) Daulton Varsho .682 OPS (.719), 0.8 WAR (4.0), 7 HRs (~20-25 for the season) From the above, you can see a pathetic combined 2.1 WAR from the four players. Basically we've gotten very little from them that replacement players couldn't have given us. Also, we could've reasonably expected around a combined 30-35 HRs more so far from these players alone, just based on their career average level, and what they've done over the past few years. Another 30-35 HRs puts us up in the top 10 of all MLB teams. Players who haven't played at all due injury: Anthony Santander (.762 OPS and ~30 HRs for the season) Addison Barger (.694 OPS and ~15-20 HRs for the season) Obviously you can't simply add on all of the HRs that Santander and Barger might have hit if they'd been healthy, because others have played those games. But them playing a normal amount of games and producing at a level you'd reasonably expect from them might have added approximately 10-15 HRs. Add that on to what we're missing from our underperfomers, and we'd be in the top few teams for HRs. What we're seeing this season is the wheels coming off to varying degrees for four of our biggest run producers offensively. And two of the other big bats missing the entire season. The only true run producer we have who has actually produced is Okamoto, and even he is extremely frustrating and streaky, with only a 1.4 WAR. While they're clearly getting overpaid, our problem isn't the likes of Jesus Sanchez or Andres Gimenez - they're very mediocre overall, but they're at least somewhat doing what they were expected to. The problem is those who should be carrying the offense simply aren't. We can moan about Atkins and Schneider all we like, and some of it will be fair. But if you basically remove six of the seven biggest hitters from any team and replace them with league-average players for an entire season, which is effectively what has happened, then I don't care who that team is, they'll struggle. No team in the history of baseball could cope with pretty much all their run producers not producing anything above league average, all at the same time.

I turned it off as soon as we lost and only just saw it back. I hadn't seen it clearly and just assumed Valenzuela had airmailed it, but it was definitely at least a catchable throw. Smith is a joke of a player - completely useless.

$300m for nothing, and your chicks for free.

I had the same thought going into the 9th inning - somehow I felt very similar to Game 7 and it played out almost the exact same way. Except that we're awful now and I dislike pretty much all of them, not just Jeff Hoffman.

A lot of what you say is fair, but I do think the injuries have been pretty insane in total. Just because there haven't been as many new ones lately, doesn't mean it's been a normal season. It may not be why we suck so bad now, but it has screwed up the season. We've had zero contribution whatsoever from Santander and Barger, who could've reasonably been expected to combine for at least 40-45HRs if healthy. Kirk broke his thumb, which is one of the worst injuries a catcher can get, and it's only now he looks like he isn't totally awful both with the glove and bat. We had what looked like an 8 man rotation and ridiculous starting pitcher depth in Spring Training, and we still ended up scrambling around getting Patrick Corbin in when basically all of our starters got injured. Other stuff like Yimi Garcia was more predictable I guess, but I do think we've had it go as badly as it possibly could have with injuries, and I don't think any team could've coped with what we've had all that much better than us. I don't want to be the one defending Atkins necessarily - I don't have any emotional need to defend him and you're definitely right about the lack of pipeline. But I do think this season needs to be acknowledged as a crazy one. Just so many abnormal things have made it go worse than anyone's most pessimistic expectations.

Can understand this feeling of course, but it's not Atkins' fault that Springer and Kirk have been mostly awful, that Vlad has inexplicably been a complete disgrace, that Santander has missed yet another full season, that Varsho was also atrocious until we traded him. Where Atkins really does deserve criticism is not getting one more bat in that we clearly needed. But so much of this dumpster fire is on players who should really have been way, way better than they have been. We already had a roster (Bichette aside) that came within two outs of the world series, and we added a potential Cy Young winner, possibly a 30HR bat and an elite setup man. It really shouldn't be this bad, and the fact that it is, is at least 80% on the players.

It's completely irrational I know, but I genuinely hate Smith already. Just dfa immediately. Also, as great as Straw did with the throw in the 11th, his at-bat in the 9th was horrific. This offense is just hysterically bad.

Don't understand why he doesn't even try. He looks like he'll never get a hit the rest of his life.