wsnydes

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Yes.

Good point. If that's the case, perhaps they should put him next to the medical box. If he moves, tape him to the bench to make sure that he can't move.

C'mon North. Puke and rally! Puke and rally! Watching this team at times, that's a valuable skill.

Hopefully sit next to the tub of bubble gum and not move from that spot.

Ha! I haven't seen the lineups yet. Nice catch.

Not that I want to defend this, but Rosario was supposed to have yesterday off. Edit: I've been informed that Rosario is in LF. See what happens when you try to defend something around here? You get blasted!

Unless mechanical issues set him back...

Speaking of inefficient, how about the number of rabbits that you had to shoot to bring in a decent haul. With how difficult they were to hit, it's just a waste of ammunition. I'm sure it took 10 year old me far too long to come to that conclusion.

I keep finding myself back over there for some reason. Perhaps I'm looking for my sanity figuring that is where I last saw it.

Of the three phases of the game; pitching, defense, and hitting, if you're going to tell me that hitting was at the top of the priority list of areas to improve heading into last offseason you're nuts. The bats finished middle of the pack last year while the pitching was near the bottom and defense wasn't far behind. TR himself even said that pitching was a priority. Hitting would have been at the bottom of my priority list with pitching being far and away the highest priority. The biggest weaknesses of this team from a year ago were ignored and the one decent aspect was "improved". I do agree that this FO doesn't do everything wrong. Their decisions shouldn't be generalized with a broad brush.

The point you're missing on Sano in RF is that they had in-house options for RF (Arcia and Kepler). They had in-house options for 3B even if Sano couldn't play 3B and they traded Plouffe (Nunez, Escobar, Polanco to fill out two positions). They signed Park, which filled the one spot you could fall back on should Sano be unable to field a position. Instead, they left themselves with no good options on what to do with Sano and created a log jam at 1B/DH all because you didn't move on from Plouffe. With Hughes, TR believed in the lone outlier year and believed that to be the new norm. That flies in the face of a much larger sample that more closely resembles the Hughes that appeared last year. Plan for the worst, hope for the best. TR made a habit of planning for the best hoping to avoid the worst. That leaves you no margin for error. If the plan was to fit pieces of different puzzles together to try to make one puzzle and having no backup plan should that fail, that isn't much of a plan.

Tell that to the season ticket holders that have endured this for half a decade's worth of years that just weren't theirs.

Haha! I was driving, so I wasn't going to be that guy. I was constantly asking my wife if she was still feeling okay. I believe one of my lame jokes was that I needed to buy feed for the oxen when I needed to fill the gas tank. Hunting jokes were prevalent given the number of pronghorn in the area. I asked how we should ford the river at every river crossing. Looking back, I'm not sure why she didn't kill me for her own sanity. Texting would have been pretty epic. I wish we would have thought about that.

Nothing was better than Oregon Trail. The disappointment that ensued if we were led to the computer lab and handed floppy disks with Number Munchers on it was immeasurable. I liked Number Munchers, but it's no Oregon Trail. A few years ago, my wife and I went on a road trip out west and followed the Oregon Trail from Casper, WY through South Pass. I kept making Oregon Trail jokes. I'm half surprised that she didn't leave me at Independence Rock when we stopped there.

It was both. The game inspired a game show. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where_in_the_World_Is_Carmen_Sandiego%3F_(game_show)

If you've never gone to a game in which you have no rooting interest, I highly recommend it. It's great to just sit and watch a game for the pure enjoyment of it.

Would this also work if he drove a run in?

Now I have the Carmen San Diego jingle in my head. I didn't catch it often, but that TV show was pretty good from what I recall. I could have done without the musical numbers half of the time, but I enjoyed the geography lessons.

Didn't we just get a really nice piece on Alex Wimmers the other day?

I hope that it was a universal GPS device because if it's Garmin exclusive, given the number of people that still use Garmin, nobody will ever know where he is.

I didn't look at the boxscore, but was Nolan Ryan pitching for S-WB? Sheesh.

I'm about as ranted out about this topic as can be. I'm typically a guy that is very patient with coaches and GM decisions and rarely actually calls for a guys head. But after sitting through 6 years of same old, same old putrid baseball without any real plan to get better, my patience is gone. For five years, instead of admitting mistakes and working to improve the team, signings largely felt as a band-aid meant to keep the team afloat, treading water if you will. Then we get last season, an unexpected winning season where the team overachieved. Instead of trying to improve upon that and fill obvious holes, the signings tried to fill holes that didn't exist. The result of this is a team that could no longer even tread water effectively, so now they're drowning. Even with TR gone, the franchise refuses to admit that they need to play for the future instead of a meaningless game in August. Decisions, call ups, and line construction don't reflect a team that is trying to build for the future. Prospects have to earn playing time as if this team is about to win 90 games instead of lose them. Guys like Logan Shafer and Danny Santana roam the outfield instead of giving a shot to the likes of Walker or Palka. Vargas and his .955 OPS get demoted to the minors because this team is apparently so stacked. All of these things have left me without patience and no confidence in this teams front office or coaching staff. A plan, even if it's a bad one, is still a plan. This franchise can't even claim that.

Agreed. I'm not into the advanced metrics as much as many, I think gut and passing the eye test is also important. Numbers are helpful, but I'm not a believer of relying on them solely. There are things that the numbers can't show that are required to make a successful major league player.

How many of that Rays FO are left though? Didn't several leave with Friedman? Or at least at the same time or since? If not, that's a great place to look. Even if some did go with Friedman, that would be a place to look too.