Tnetennba

Banks Ks the side in the 1st!

Well said. Watching this FO basically sit on their hands all winter and once again spend only on the periphery has made some of us recalibrate. They seem to be resting on their laurels instead of doing everything possible to push this team over the top. Division titles and multiple playoff appearances are great, but I don't know if I can call them a championship contender, let alone competing for multiple championships.

I'm not down on them per se, but I have adjusted my overall expectations. If they don't add anything significant before opening day there are still too many superior teams for me to rationally expect more than a central division winner and maybe a playoff series win. Anything can happen, but I don't think this is an ALCS team as is.

Palka was a lot of fun on those rebuilding squads. But I sure as hell don't want him in RF for a club with real aspirations. Same goes for Sheets.

Less about wanting him gone and recognizing a time to sell high. Sign Conforto, trade Kimbrel away, & trade Sheets + Burger for a starting pitcher. Vaughn needs every day ABs and he and Eloy can split time between LF & DH, with AV filling in occasionally at 1B. There are too many DH types on the roster.

Oh he's not great out there. I'd really prefer he doesn't play OF at all. But I'll still take the adventures of Leury in RF over the second coming of Daniel Palka pretty much every time.

I'm not expecting him to light the world on fire or anything, but any defense and rebounding help is welcome.

This wouldn't surprise me. While it doesn't make up for getting a real RF, I'll take Leury out there over Sheets any day of the week.

Let hope this really is the case.

It's hard to overcome the level of injury the Sox had last year, and no one can plan to carry that level of depth. But those guys are 4th & 5th OFs for a reason, and need to stay that way. Some level of foresight is needed with our OF.

Engel's D in theory does help balance out the others, but we have no idea how readily available that will be throughout a season any more. Which is why counting on it also seems like a bad idea. But bad ideas never stopped this org.

I'll agree that the offensive production might be adequate enough, but calling it slightly below average defense is too generous IMO. I hope its not as abysmal as the Vaughn/Sheets combo was in RF last year, but I'm not overly hopeful that it will be noticeably better this time around.

Rend our garments and shake our collective fists at the sky!

We saw how thin the OF depth was all of last season, and have they done anything to address that? No one in AAA/AA is any closer and the AAAA guys are all gone. One major injury and we are right back to scrap heap pick-ups starting large chunks of games for a so called title contender.

Who needs regulars anyway??

Very bad defense to boot!

Oh gawd, I can totally see TLR going RF by committee too.

That did cross my mind as well. I don’t think we are getting Conforto at this point, and I wouldn’t be shocked to see something silly like this.

While I still want Conforto and think they’ve played this dumb again, I agree 100% with what you are saying here. They still need a quality RF addition even if it’s not a perfect fit like Conforto.