almagest

Barons win! Gladney with the game winning single!

Blown save. Tied 1-1. Damn.

Hell of a catch by Nishida. 1-0 Barons, 1 out top 9.

Vargas :chef's kiss: on that popup

I like to think that both "the Bears needed to move on from Fields and pick a QB with a higher ceiling than him", and "Fields was held back a bit by this joke of a franchise" are true.

363 yards and 2 TDs for a rookie QB in his third game with zero running game, questionable play calling (OMG that 4th and goal call), and a porous offensive line. Downfield still an issue at times, but better today. First INT was awful. Second was a questionable throw but he hit Rome. Colts secondary isn't bad and made a play there - still think Rome had a chance on that one. Strip sack not his fault. Kmet shouldn't be blocking their first round defensive end on a slow developing play action. I'm trying to be encouraged by Williams' play overall and the somewhat competent offense shown at the end of the game. Hopefully that continues, but Eberflus is not a good head coach.

Barons take a 6-3 lead into the 9th after a 3 run 8th

AJ hinted that Brooks Boyer is the one who signed the plane contract with United. He also mentioned it wasn’t that bad, because veterans would get a row to themselves in the back of the plane.

Sure, they weren't going to compete for most of the high priced free agents, but they had money to spend, and spent it like complete idiots. They never got a RF or 2B, but traded for/signed a parade of guys on the margins and failed with each one. They kept pouring money into the bullpen and it never managed to be anywhere close to a top 5 unit. They already had a lock down closer with Hendricks, and used Madrigal, who was (theoretically) still a trade chip to acquire ANOTHER closer in Kimbrel, who was a disaster. They completely misread the market on Harper and Machado, and focused on the wrong one. They blew the Kahnle/Robertson/Frazier trade.

More of this. Bring in high level talent, good culture, good coaching and player development. Savvy minor league signings and undrafted players. Bring these kids up in a winning culture.

I figured this was coming eventually. Hahn did a lot of things we should all like - recognizing the need to rebuild and acquiring high end prospects to kick start it being at the top. He also was unable to build any sort of minor league pipeline to help fill in for the players he acquired. The team's medical staff took a quality nosedive and no one could stay healthy. He apparently could not affect change in areas he wanted to - scouting and analytics in particular. He allowed Marco Paddy to phone it in and our LatAm scouting was atrocious. Overall, he had 10 years to build a contender and the end result was a lucky 60 game 2020 with an undeserved playoff appearance (and a complete collapse against Cleveland and in the last two games against Oakland), a good 2021 first half, a mediocre 2022, a disaster 2023, and the seeds for the dumpster fire of 2024. Almost every player he drafted or acquired was either injured all year or was absolutely terrible, to the point where replacing most of them with 0 WAR AAA filler would have been an improvement. There's no "apology" needed here. It's good he's gone.

I get it - there's so much talent everywhere they just can't find spots for all these guys.

Yeah, that was really vague. He was asked to provide more detail later and didn't. I can excuse some of it because its not the end of the season yet, but you should still know what you want. The decision has probably been made for him already.

He's days away from turning 26 and he's not performing while repeating AAA. He's been terrible in majors in 300 PAs. He's a non-prospect.

And they traded him for Ted Lilly, who had one decent and one bad year for the As.

I want to talk about that...

The Angels are "We're the Yankees but better! Now let's find someone who can't stay on the field or is actually 45 years old to spend half a billion on!"

I'm still trying to hold onto him turning it around next year, but HOO BOY.

The lack of offensive production in the minors is absolutely the biggest concern for the future. There's no way out of this futility if they can't draft and develop their own hitters. We've already seen trading for "finished" products or for highly or intelligently drafted players doesn't work if you can't do any of that yourself. Teams also are apparently super reluctant to trade top 100 prospect level offensive talent, so you'd better be good at scouting and developing lottery tickets. This is likely the most impactful offseason we've ever seen for scouting and player development hires. I wish it was someone more qualified than Getz running the show, but here we are. Hopefully he makes the right moves - I hope with better staff in place we see a turnaround from the hitting prospects that struggled this year.

He didn't tell you to wait and see. No one is telling you to wait and see. People are throwing a fit because some people are saying "I'm going to wait and see".

We're finally seeing the personnel changes happen that should have been happening for a long time, and people with some internal connections (like Jimmy and Harold) have been telling us these changes need to happen. It sounds like KW and Hahn did NOT want to make these changes, or couldn't get Reinsdorf buy in. Getz seems to understand at least some of what needs to happen, and/or managed to finally convince Jerry. These are positives for the future of the franchise, assuming Getz can hire the right people - and I fully understand why people are skeptical he will.

Hopefully it's not all just musical chairs and they find some actual good scouts.

This team just beat the probable best team in the AL by SEVEN RUNS. The rebuild is over, boys! Pop the champagne!

If Getz just ends up hiring a bunch of scouts from KC I'll grab my torch and pitchfork and jump fully on the "fire Getz" bandwagon. Hopefully we see them pry some high value scouts from good organizations.