But we're clinging to the ledge by our fingertips. If we come out of the break and sweep the Rangers, we might have a little more to say about the AL West race. If we get swept...
That's basically curtains.
The problem for me is that we have plenty of tradable assets in the minors to use to GET someone, but far less major league talent available to go out. We need all our young big-leaguers for ourselves, and our older players are either playing terribly or injured. Bedard needed his health in order to get full value, and we won’t get that now. League is a FA after next year, I believe, so we could trade him this year…but then who stays in the pen the rest of the season?
I’d still like to try a Bedard-as-closer experiment, but if he thinks he can get a multi-year contract as a starter after the great first half he’s had I doubt he’d agree to that. So if Bedard doesn’t net us anything and we feel that we can’t replace League internally thanks to the Aardsma and Kelley injuries, then what?
I do believe there’s a large trade in our future, whether at the deadline or in the offseason.
But right now, we’re kinda in no-man’s land. We have few-to-no veteran assets worth parting with, and we can’t be realistic buyers of talent if we’re sitting 10 games back and in 3rd place at the deadline.
Cust, Wilson and Figgins are not a part of our future. Guti is losing his grip on that future with us if he can’t pull out of this nosedive. The top two levels of the minors have Liddi, Catricala and Franklin…but all have deficiencies that need work before they are ready to come up and contribute.
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For immediate help (within 12 months), we need to go outside…and we need immediate offensive help.
OPS+:
Ackley: 154 (smalllll sample size, but yes, he's a plus bat)
Halman: 113 (I don't understand this, but I support it)
Smoak: 111 (OUCH has he had a bad month)
...
Kennedy: 100
Olivo: 85
Ichiro: 84
Ryan: 79
Peguero: 76
Gutierrez: 28
Any bets on whether Halman can keep it up this year and next? Or Kennedy?
Smoak + Ackley + 7 guys under 90 OPS+ does not = a championship. I don't care how good our pitching is.
Which is why I still think Peguero and Liddi are our best options for trading bats, but that it's more likely that we need to move an arm or two, and it might hurt.
No Rendon + drafting glove-position hitters almost exclusively means that we DON'T have a guaranteed plus corner bat lying around someplace. I like Catricala, but you're praying he can be Raul Ibanez. Prime Raul Ibanez would not carry this team to greatness.
Franklin is a SS, and not in the A-Rod mold. He'll be plus for his position IMO, but I wouldn't rely on him to be a MOTO hitter either.
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Jack's mission: to find us at least one and preferrably two plus bats. The offense is at 76 OPS+ and falling, more than wiping out the 115 ERA+ the arms are providing. Yes, Smoak could find his mojo again (and will at some point, once his BABIP crawls out of the gutter and he stops being a weak out at the plate). Yes, Ackley could be a rookie death machine.
Like you said, Doc, those are long odds, and getting longer. Bedard is injured, Pineda is gonna hit his Mariners-imposed innings ceiling soon. If Smoak plans to become a fire-breather once again he needs to do it right after the ASB.
And a few of his teammates are gonna have to help out. We got some bad breaks in the Angels series to get swept, but we can't rely on only getting good breaks to make a theoretical run. We need some margin for error, and right now there's zero.
Time for Jack to impress us once again.
~G
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