In My La Z boy

I hope so! I am concerned we are rebuilding, and no one is telling us this. #1 off season priority is signing Buxton. All other priorities should be signing pitching.

Well, I guess you take that up with the TD staff and writers. I do think it is fair to hammer Falvey and Levine over this season. Maybe each individual player we lost is nickel and diming, but in the end it was a suck year and it is their fault. Gil and Ynoa were the biggest 2 sickening failed evaluations, and I can't help but think that is what keeps Cave on the roster - which makes one mistake become two.

Whines is a pretty strong indictment against your fellow brethren here during one of the biggest failed seasons ever according to expectations. I just want them to keep the ones that seem to magically be excellent the minute they don another jersey. Identify talent and coach it up, and construct a winning roster. It is quite fair to whine about the failure this year. We aren't in the player personnel department. We are in the rabid fan department.

We've missed on many the last few years. Reed isn't one of them. However I agree it's been very frustrating to see "our guys" succeed on other team's the last couple years - Littell and Wade, and seeing the Giants success ticks me off. The Cave/Gil trade ticks me off. Giving Ynoa away ticks me off. If other teams can pull guys off our scrap heap, I expect we should be able to do the same. So far, fail.

Reading this made me smile. Great take, I like each of these players a lot. Begs the question, if we are offered a ton of pitching for either Polanco or Arraez do we do it? Both these guys need to be in the lineup everyday. I love both, we do have depth as you describe, and others - we could list another 4 or 5 good looking, hopefully shortstops, but maybe not. Thanks for the positive piece!

I cannot believe we go much longer w/Simmons at short. Give someone a look please. Who do we have that is rule 5 eligible coming up that plays short? Give him a look. Give Gordon a look. This Simmons thing is frustrating.

Agree with this - other than the take on Arraez. I am old enough to recall the same take on Carew - but back then it was a positive. I disagree with many of the new paradigm's. The value, or lack thereof in the singles hitter. I also can see the same potential in Arraez that Rodney reached in '77. As to Rocco, lets hope all of this years troubles pay dividends next year for him, and he is provided with quality pitching.

Who do you think decided to start Burrows last night? I'm betting the front office. Who decided Colome was our April closer instead of Rogers? Who is deciding our best contact hitter and lead off batter wouldn't get a position? Arraez gets a few more ab's and he just might win the silver slugger - and he is our utility player. I simply was attempting to give Rocco some benefit of the doubt here. He is tentative during games. Must be someone looking over his shoulder - or he thinks so.

To add - I was as done with Terry Ryan as most, but it seems to me Terry didn't micro manage the on field game stuff. Watching most games this year, I feel like Rocco is being told what to do more often than not. This front office wants to manage games and I think that's a problem.

It comes down to choices. We traded Gil for Cave, so Cave needs to make it, therefore we picked Cave over Wade. We signed Donaldson & Sano, so Cron/Schoop don't make it. We choose not to spend money on relievers (because of Addison Reed) so we let May go and we sign reclamation projects. Not sure what to say on Baddoo - but Terry Ryan would have protected him. Front offices are very partial to their own players. Baddoo wasn't Falvey's.

Starting Burrows last night was simply ridiculous. If you need an opener John Gant has been begging to start, and has starter experience. Not to mention perhaps giving an AAA guy a chance last night? I noticed Zack Littell got a save the other night for SF - why we give up on him, and don't give up on some others I'll never know? I agree we hired Falvey to completely revamp the org, bring us into the future, and to develop pitching. This cannot be evaluated yet - and we need to stick with them. But it looks to me like we've been slinging a lot of spaghetti against the wall lately. As an observer, I am not seeing a cohesive plan coming together - and why is Simmons still playing shortstop? We very much need to develop shortstops. Why aren't we working on that?

I agree with Brock in another thread - the only way Nick remains valuable on this roster is to master shortstop. We need to construct a better roster next year. If Arraez stays here we need to give him 2B. Our best lead off, and our best contact hitter needs a position. 2B is the only spot for him in my opinion. This means Polanco gets shortstop. I think Gordon is competing with Refsnyder for the all around utility guy job. Remember, Refsnyder has played a lot of 2B. What we do not have is an excellent back up shortstop. Keeping Simmons is holding back some shortstop experimentation. I hope they give Nick SS in St Paul. We have plenty of back up 2B/OF options.

Great article! No question in my mind he is the heart and soul of this team, and our best all around player. No one suits up for more games and can be counted on more than Jorge. I love this player!

I don't consider trading Jose Berrios as winning in any way. That said - the stats say we won. I will miss him. I will hope we take a run at him when he hits free agency. Also sad to let Cruz go - but the return was over the top - and we can also sign him if we choose for next year. Smart day yesterday for the FO - and good on them for keeping Big Mike. I expect to see him back next year.

I don't see it this way. Giving up on 2022 would have looked like selling low on someone. Buxton, Kepler, Donaldson - moving pieces to dump salary - that would have looked like giving up on next year - and trading Cruz doesn't count, you could not plan on him being here next year. We kept everyone who matters to the offense for next year. We seem to signal that Big Mike will come back - we did what had to be done without giving in on next year in any way. Jose Berrios and our FO were looking at 2022 being a one and done. We blasted a grand slam in getting these 2 Top 100 prospects - and the 2 we got back for Cruz, another marvel to me. It is a lost season, but today's deals, and more importantly, todays no deals say we are definitely competing next year. Now sign Buxton - in the next week. That will say for sure.

I think we can all agree we'd rather have Berrios on this team forever. That isn't remotely the point, that isn't possible, and Jose wasn't taking us to the World Series this year. Business of baseball is important. You and I don't have to like it. I am sad about losing him, but not taking this deal would have been front office malpractice of the highest order.

This trade and the Cruz trade were a clear win in a year to forget. By next spring we could have just received our top 3 prospects - we'll certainly have 5 in the major league top 100, and we even got players for Robles and Happ. Now I'd get Big Mike locked up, Byron locked up, and give the ball to Windor, Barnes et all, and also let's see big mouth Shoemaker on the mound this weekend.

Throw in Joe Ryan and we now have 3 new prospects for our top 10. Where will these new guys slot in do you think?

2 future maybe studs. I think this is good. I will be rooting this fall for the Jays. We can still make a run at Jose when he is a free agent. Sad day really. Good outcome here I think.

I would miss him. Problem is our FO has stockpiled lefthanded corner outfielders. It sounds likely we will receive a haul for Berrios, and nothing stops us from trying to sign him in a year 1/2. I agree he is determined to test free agency.

Tigers took a shot at a formerly highly discussed 5-tool guy. Worst that happens is they pay a small charge and give him back. We didn't screw up here. Sucks.

Biggest takeaway of this year just may be the blockbuster Berrios trade. New post at mlbtraderumors sounds like the offers on the table are exceeding expectations. We can only hope for a best case scenario and we may have come upon one. Multiple teams, bidding war. It all sounds like a perfect storm. Oh boy. I'm a little nervous. And maybe excited. Not sure.

Demoralizing loss yesterday. I feel for our batters, and to hear a trade of Berrios isn't going to be helpful. What are we doing? Seems impossible to believe a trade this week of Berrios helps us next year. Pohlad just said we're competing next year, no blow up. We already have no pitching. Yesterday was just stupid. FO literally made the worst signings they could. We will get zero for all of them, Happ/Robles/Colome/Shoemaker.

"In April, this club seemed to be dealt a good amount of bad luck" That is a very generous way to assess the 1st 24 games of the season. For whatever reason Rocco/FO was obsessed with deeming Colome as our closer. This didn't have to be the decision. It should have been Rogers job to lose. For whatever reason, it was Colome's job to lose, and he should have lost it at least 2 weeks before he did. Our best starter in March wasn't given a starting job (the Dobber) - but they gave the 5th spot to Shoemaker. The rest is history, Shoemaker stunk, and Dobs never helped us and is now wrecked. For whatever reason we decided that our best leadoff hitter, and our best contact guy (Arraez) would NOT be given a starting position on the field. This led to spending 10M on a shortstop - so, instead of signing a 12M starting pitcher, we signed a 2M starting pitcher. This also led to the ever changing by the day line up, and led to a very decent 2b man having to be a very average to poor LF'er. And of course going back to the prior year, we tried to land a stud pitcher, we could not, so we jumped at adding Donaldson, which moved Sano to 1st - now blocking both Kirilloff (not anymore), and now blocking Miranda - and putting a 24M hole in our pitching budget. The proof of these personnel mistakes is here. We'd love to trade both Simmons and Donaldson. Proof we blew the roster construction game. Would we have been much better off this year with Arraez at leadoff every game and playing 2b - former all-star ss Polanco at short - Sano was a 3b until a couple weeks ago, now Miranda is playing there - Kirilloff now manning 1b daily. Just a shame really - not to mention the LF difficulty's we wouldn't have if Lamont Wade and/or Eddie Rosario were still here. Personnel roster blunders, and managerial mistakes are everywhere. We made our own bad luck Ted.

I have heard this before. I think the Giants are one of those teams who've been known to covet Kepler for a while to some degree. I suppose a lot depends on the field you play on, and how right-handed you are. We've got a mess on our hands. Unless we could acquire some much needed pitching help, dealing Max would be a mistake in my opinion. We are the team that needs affordable quality. I think Max looks like affordable quality for 3 more years to come. Now if we can surround him with enough quality for him to be our 4th outfielder, then we've built a better team.