nrockway

I thought for sure Treinen was gonna blow game 1 😅

Right, I think the idea is that the Jays can simply pop off 10+ runs at a moment's notice in a 7 game series. Low probability, but that's the MLB playoffs. The Dodgers have also gotten very little from the top part of the lineup and I don't think you can expect that to stay the same. Ohtani has been dreadful the last two series and he's too good to stay that way. I just don't see any team beating them unless something wild happens.

What a performance from Yamamoto. This is what $325,000,000 gets you. $182mil from the last guy. $137mil from the next guy, $700mil from the game 4 starter.

Any rumors as to who the Sox might hire? The Mets cleaned house in a similar way and announced some hires today. I'm thinking it'll be internal guys but that would be pretty boring.

Dodgers are a titan. Their starting pitching is healthy and simply too good. This Brewers offense is none too good to boot. I think the only way the Dodgers don't win the World Series is if the Blue Jays pull it out and their bats catch on fire. It could happen. Seattle and Milwaukee's pedestrian bats aren't getting the job done. I don't think the Jays are a better team that Seattle or the Dodgers, but they can get hot in an instant.

Great game. Swift was incredible. Although I think a big part of it was a lot of clutch blocking, good play design. Next 4 are against the Saints, Ravens, Bengals, Giants. In my mind, the Bears are the favorite in all of those games and could go up to 7-2. I'm cautiously optimistic about this team.

he was arguably a better manager during the amphetamines era. are we calling it that?

my prediction was wrong! i thought bryce miller was going to get rekt. gave up a solo shot immediately and i was thinking 'see, i told ya' but that was the only damage.

EZ win for the Jays tonight, right? Seattle is out of pitching. Jays offense is on fire. Seattle’s bats are cold but maybe bound to warm up?

Good lineup of games today. Bucs I think are under the radar legit. Mayfield might be on his way to an mvp.

I think, to my eye, his 'sweeper' (just call it a slider, stats people) is absolutely nasty and his fastball is simply OK. Statcast tells me that his fastball is more successful than his sweeper, both are pretty successful, but his changeup gets smashed...an insane 1.450 OPS against with a pretty large sample size. I thought instituting a new changeup was a Bannister point of emphasis which might reflect on Katz's coaching ability. Maybe more relevant in that other thread, but there had to be some butting of heads between Katz and Bannister and the new guy won out. Fair enough to me.

Steven Wilson being pretty good at baseball is the hill I'm going to die on lol

that's way down there! now i'm thinking of wisconsin's lettered highways.

He's pretty much 'some guy' and I think we'll have a crowded bullpen of useful righties next season, but $1.5mil is nothing based on the comps. If he performs like he did this past season over the first half, he is an easy trade candidate. I really liked the Tanner Banks trade (Bergolla will be an MLB player) and Wilson is simply better at baseball than he is, sans left-handedness. That being said, I think we could really use a guy like Banks next season.

I figured this thread might be about the marathon lol. I can hear the festivities out my window, I live along the route about where it turns around and heads back north; I'm inspired to try and run it next year. I met up with some friends last night and we had a similar discussion. I'm not even that big a hater, I was apologetic for their loss although excited for what our friends up north might do vs the Goliath Dodgers, yet my remarks were received with "why do you hate Chicago, @nrockway why don't you just move to Wisconsin already?". Which I might. But I also asked why they never go to streets in Chicago with numbers in the name. The Sox/Cubs don't actually compete against each other, but the rivalry is very fun and analogous to a real world, omnipresent North/South Side divide. I was rooting for the Tigers, an actual rival, but could never in a million years support the Cubs. As a kid, we listened to more Cubs games on the radio to simply root for whoever they were facing.

hmmm Happy for Vaughnie and the Brew Crew. He seems like a nice guy all things considered and I’m glad to see him contributing in a big way to a winning team. Same as Kopech last year. Too bad those guys didn’t work out here like we might have expected. I don’t know that we “won” the trade though considering Civale was a net negative here and Vaughn turned into Frank Thomas upon moving north of the border. But I’m glad we moved on from him in whatever fashion. It was time for him to go. It was an interesting swap but I’m not sure it was a W. Civale actually pitched 4.1 scoreless vs the Brewers after Boyd got rekt in 0.2 and our old friend Soroka did too. Honestly funny for the cubs that they gave Soroka meaningful innings in a postseason game. That org is even cheaper than ours with worse (virulently racist, interferes with elections to boot) ownership. They’re actually competitive right now and spent the same on their roster as we did with our recent 81-81 team. Did nothing at the deadline or last offseason. They’re going to completely blow their competitive window.

That's awesome!

that's cool. doing what? I just like Wisconsin lol

The Brewers are my favorite non-Sox team, the Cubs are my least favorite organization in any sport...and I totally forgot this game was on. d'oh. Congrats to the Brewers though and our friends in Wisconsin! Very respectable organization. Might be worth taking a day off and catching the Hiawatha up to Milwaukee for one of these games. I've never been to a postseason game but I don't think I can justify to myself spending $200+ to watch a baseball game.

I think it's a reasonable point of view, I also think we have better options for the 7th through 9th in actual close games. Wikelman, Leasure, Taylor. I'd put Wilson firmly below them. Also perhaps some guys who didn't pitch out of the bullpen last year whether due to injury, because they haven't debuted yet or because they might be bumped to the bullpen (Yoendrys, Burke as examples). I just wouldn't non-tender a useful player if his salary is that low. Hill? No reason to tender. If you want him back, sign him to a MILB contract. The Tauchman debate is interesting. It's also not a lot of money and he was solid last year. But he's getting older, his bat was fading as the season went on, he's bad at defense and he's currently injured. I might rather see Dom Fletcher keeping the RF spot warm for Braden Montgomery. But I'm also not mad if Tauch is back. He's a cool dude to be sure, the young players seem to really like him.

Well, he did have nearly a 6 ERA last season and then returned to his career averages. Who knows what was going on with him but it appears to be an outlier. Relief pitchers are inconsistent anyway, Greg Santos looked like a stud with us and has posted a 5+ ERA since playing for Seattle. A savvy team that needed pitching and thought they could 'fix him' might've picked him up. The Mets probably wish they had him. My definition of 'above average' is a reasonable one that many people might look at: earned run average. Specifically ERA+ since it normalizes ERAs to a comparable scale. If '100' is average, Wilson's '123' is literally 'above average'. 8.3 K/9 to 3.6 BB/9 is pretty good. His peripheral numbers are above average. I'm not calling him a stud. I think he's a low leverage arm, hence the 'blown saves' is not really a relevant statistic. Pitchers give up runs sometimes, right? In our team's case, there isn't any run support. Hard to hold onto 2-1 leads on a consistent basis. It might be akin to thinking Garrett Crochet's 6-12 W/L record in 2024 was 'bad'.

well, the point is simply...why would you non-tender an above average pitcher making next to nothing? feels spiteful because the Cease trade wasn't that hot.

I'm thinking about Orion Kerkering, who just made a huge mistake on the highest level, but the guy is simply a really good pitcher. The Phillies will be happy to have him back next year. Wilson at $1.5mil is nothing. He's not a superstar, but he isn't being paid like one either. He's on the exact arbitration scale you would expect. If the Sox non-tendered him (which they obviously won't, no team would), some other team would pick him up and probably for more money in an instant. It's just a weird take. Personal vendetta-ish. He's not expected to be the closer, we recently paid Liam Hendricks 12 times more to fill that role. Wilson was by all metrics an above average reliever last year.

$1.5mil for a guy with a 3.42 ERA in 55 IP is a bargain in any setting. Luis Garcia had almost exactly the same stats and was paid $4.5mil last year. As did Kyle Finnegan and he was paid $6mil. Andrew "Olive" Kittredge was paid $10mil to post the same numbers. Nick Mears is on the same arbitration scale, will earn $1.6mil next year, pitched to a 3.99 ERA. This is far less than the going rate for comparable relief pitchers. It would be a poor baseball decision to non-tender him.

The only free agent in this class I’d be interested in. Or one of the top of the market starting pitchers. Go big or go home!