Balta1701

I don’t like it when people talk out of both sides of their mouth because the front office needs their brave defense. He was clearly shilling for them at the time and wanted us all to stop calling him out on it.

At the very least we’ve seen how much your word is worth.

If you go back to his posts, I and others were saying that putting him in the bullpen would probably lock him there forever because there wouldn’t be enough innings. He was insisting that they would have to get him to 100, 110 innings, probably not 120, if they wanted him to start in 2022. I can link those if you’d like. He then picked 80-90 as a range so unbelievably low that even he would have to admit they locked him permanently into the bullpen if they didn’t get to it. They missed even that, and then took no steps (like giving him extra starts or time in the minors) to correct it. So I’m sorry, by our physical trainers standards, Kopech isn’t ready to be a starter next year and putting him in the bullpen was a “mistake”.

Unfortunately our resident physical trainer disagrees with you. Here's where he says that if Kopech fails to reach 80-90 innings, he will call it a mistake.

If I go back to the spring where we had this discussion and I insisted that they wouldn’t get him to 80 innings because there wouldn’t be enough innings to go around, am I going to find you assuring me that he will get way more than 55? this u?

This is a “sunk cost”. You don’t compound it by continuing to sink money into it.

That’s what happens when you don’t put a guy in the minor leagues to build stamina and work on secondary stuff.

The Cubs reportedly had a choice between Madrigal and Crochet and went with Madrigal.

So which starter are you referring to who was benched, Keuchel or Greinke?

The Rays would not do that now.

Bench ≠ start in a home game.

Personally I would have first actually cared about home field advantage, second I I would have gone Giolito and then Rodon in game 2 if at all humanly possible - game 2 was coming off a long break so the bullpen should have been the most able to cover innings there. Cease pitching game 2 would have been my 3rd option - I preferred him at the Rate, but we saw that didn’t go well. Lynn pitching in Houston was the absolute worst option, you were better off starting Keuchel as it was a white flag either way.

What they gave up to get him does not matter. This is called the “sunk cost” fallacy. What matters now is if he is worth his option. He is not.

The Rays taking on $15 million? You better hope there’s a salary floor in the next CBA. They would have considered him this year because they wouldn’t have picked up his option under any circumstances.

Well I don’t think there will be a market for Kimbrel without the White Sox chipping in money so…?

I will bet you that he will not be an all star with us. Combination of his performance, catchers he can’t work with, and probably something about the coaching staff all adds up to the debacle we got.

Prediction: if they pick up his option he’s still on the team in June.

Who is giving up a lot for Hendriks? Is Hendriks more valuable after this season than he was after 2020? With the home run balls he threw, probably not. So who would take on his contract and give you something back? We know his free agent value, because we were the top bidder for him. Teams will only pay more than that if they think they are getting something even better. He’s probably movable - for basically no return.

Giolito and Rodon did their jobs and gave you everything they could. I literally wrote Friday morning that if Giolito gives you 4 innings and then gives up the lead, it’s on the manager not on him. That is exactly how that game went. Lynn should not have been asked to pitch in Houston. That one I had back in August. I should not be this much better at predicting how games will go than guys paid 7 figures.

That was all about Tony LaRussa not believing in it. ?

He would be a perfect fit for Tampa Bay or Milwaukee, but you’re not getting a ton for him.

Kopech was bad…in a game 2 days after he threw 50+ High stress pitches to slow down an offense that was on fire and where the manager said he wouldn’t be ready to go.

If Kimbrel had been who he was supposed to be, they come into that series in Chicago. As it was, Game 2 partially turned on Kimbrel, along with LaRussa (5th inning), LaRussa (Crochet back to back nights), LaRussa (pinch hitting Hernandez and moving Leury to RF), and LaRussa (defensive positioning, esp when Bummer came in).

The number of pitchers who did their job in this series and are getting blamed for not being able to do things they should not have been asked to do is astonishing.

Well,