Jose Abreu

Also, Ryan Cordell has been pretty solid since returning from injury

Eloy pinch hit single

That wasn't an attempt at me to add Hamilton but rather to protect the guys for this offseason. I now understand the value of waiting until next season for Hamilton- but what I meant is that I don't think it will be too difficult to find guys to cut in order to protect the Kopech/Cease/Frare/Ruiz/Zavala etc. guys. Not this season, at least.

Even after reading Fegan's piece I really don't see this as a problem yet. Ridding of Danish, Farquhar, Gomez, Gonzalez, Shields, Santiago, Garneau, Smith, Skole, Engel, LaMarre, Tilson, and Davidson would leave more than enough room for us to protect those who need protection. Then there are the guys like Avilan, Cedeno, and Avi Garcia who are fine players but might be traded. The 9 names listed in the post above probably all need the protection aside from Medeiros, but it probably wouldn't hurt to add him too. There's still just so much garbage on the current 40 man that this seems like a non-issue to me.

Moncada is batting .800 with a 2.833 OPS versus Junis, Kansas City's starting pitcher.

Never been too big on Burdi. To me it's easily Hamilton, and Johnson has the potential to get to that point by this time next year. Ruiz is nice too

Strictly offensively, how can you not? If you don't hit for power, you need to get on base. He projects to do neither. Edit: If he can just lay off those and walk, I'd be a fan. But he has said that he has no desire to stop swinging, which gives me the impression that he won't be taking many walks. His approach needs to be overhauled, much like our current second baseman

My concern is that he never gets to that 340 OBP since he doesn't really draw walks much

Welington Castillo is batting 2nd for Charlotte

No reason he shouldn't be in the Majors right now. Service time for a reliever? Please, he's ready and he has been ready for weeks

Moncada

I do agree that he should swing more with 2 strikes. But not on pitches that are called strikes 0% of the time, because they're nearly unhittable anyway. That's more what I was getting at, those 15-25 calls that were just indefensible for an umpire. If the pitch is like an inch off the zone, then yes, he should expand and swing.

Posts like these make it clear to me as to who watches games and who doesn't. If he were getting rung up on pitches that were an inch off the zone I wouldn't care as much. But when he routinely gets called out on pitches quite literally 5-6 inches off the zone, pitches that are called a strike in their respective locations 0-5% of the time, I really can't fault him for it, and neither should you

I'm sorry, I guess I didn't consider that thinking that Abreu is a good hitter and not an awful person makes me biased. Sorry I don't go out of my way to rail on him for every slump or every off the field choice he makes. It's so unfortunate that he's an above average baseball player, and he's such a monster for helping special needs children in his off time. Better?

According to baseball-reference he hasn't played a game with us

No, my point is that Ozzie Albies hasn't been that good since May (I used the last month because it happened to be a little worse). Yet to the Longo's of the world, he's some sort of cult god even though Moncada has a much higher ceiling.

The same Albies who has a sub-685 OPS over the last month? No, I'm not ready for that.

But he's smart enough to not take a Ron-like approach to Abreu, otherwise it would be obvious that he just hates Cubans

Yes he is but he allows weak contact and therefore the regression isn’t as major as you’d expect. FIP overweights strikeouts in my opinion

this is a good thread

Meanwhile, Carlos Rodon is really, really good.

They’re not excuses when they’re quantifiable and objective. sure, it doesn’t mean he’d be an all-star with normal umps, but they certainly have played a role

And from all reports, Moncada is motivated, hard working, determined, etc. but apparently he’s lazy and doesn’t care because some people don’t like his facial expressions