JoeC

I still get goosebumps hearing Farmio's "light it up!" call.

Colas seems like he'd be on that list.

Also an amazing stat: TLR put TWO "resting" guys into the game.

If we can keep taking 1 of 3 from the Twins and take care of the rest of the AL Central, we should be able to have our hearts broken AFTER the trading deadline now.

Glad we're trying to get Engel to 3rd to set up Leury.

Who would you rather see here? Also, I'm OK with ReyLo in high-ish leverage situations.

If we can win this... and keep taking 1 of 3 from the Twins, we can sort of almost think we're contenders.

Luis makes that irrelevant.

I'm going outside the box and going with Darin Erstad.

...or '84 sox?

To break this down.... He is showing that the "leader" had a lack of legitimacy. Translation: the "leader" was not qualified. I guess this is a positive. Cynicism aside, strike #2. If you're working so hard to prove you belong in a leadership position that you're neglecting your actual duties as a leader, you've just admitted that you're not doing your job. Levine's support in this is literally "come on guys - give him some slack. He wasn't qualified, so he had to neglect doing his job so that he could prove he was qualified!"

Just leaving this here.

I hope we keep 3 catchers, though I'm not sure at whose expense Grandal is also clearly a leader on this team. Hopefully he can find any of the magic he brought to the table in the second half of last year.

Liking Cueto going as the calm veteran presence today. High stakes series, and the whole team knows it. It’s like we’ve been procrastinating for exam week, and now it’s upon us… except it’s an entire month.

Also, wasn’t Kelly basically a TLR decision? Like, TLR was the one who essentially recruited him to come?

Thankfully I am once again wrong on this

I honestly don't really fault TLR for leaving starters in too long. He's not the only manager to do that. Questionable moves? Yes. But not "outlier" bad, and I feel like they take away from the legitimacy of the truly awful decisions he's making.

Someone who clearly knows that he isn't delivering results.

Knowing this org, I feel like this is not going to be Hahn's decision to make.

...or he's just not happy about how horrible minor league conditions are.

Big fan of Boston's jellyfish graph. Detroit's sitting pretty at 7:15. AM or PM? Houston's graph was drawn by someone shutting their eyes and trying to draw what they thought was the outline of Abe Lincoln on the penny. Baltimore's looks like a stingray, and Tampa's looks like a bird in flight (if you squint really hard)

I read it more as "do what the other guy told you to do before I started coaching you."

I could have saved myself a lot of keystrokes with a simple "ditto."

I don't know - I'm not seeing this as as big of an error as others are seeing it. Yes - he gets added to the 40-man a year early. Yes - he burns an option. As someone else said, though - he now has 2.5 years basically to prove he's a worthy major league player. If in 2025 he's still a borderline AAA / 4A player, then hemming and hawing about a burned option when he's 22 isn't really that big of a deal. As for "why call someone up for 5 days?" - who knows? Optimistically, maybe there's something personal that he can benefit from for his development as a player (conduct, advice, coaching from someone like Abreu and definitely not Menechino, etc.) that he can take back with him to the minors?? My guess is that there was no better option with Sanchez hurt (not a good thing to not have sufficient organizational depth) so he was the next guy available. Bad spot for the organization to be in, but IMO the downside isn't as catastrophic as others make it out to be.