Thoughts For A Sunday Morning

•  This team is suffering a lot of bad luck right now.  McKenzie, Beiber, Quantrill all down with injuries.  That is a lot to put on a team whose performanc has to be near-perfect to win with their offense.  Plus, it really has tied our hands as far as the trade deadline goes.  
• Speaking of the trade deadline, I read where the Cardinals' president said their deadline strategy to acquire players who can help them in 2024.  So they are sellers, but with a goal.  He also said they are just not going to give players away.  It reminded me of when Cleveland traded Ricardo Rincon to Oakland for a bag of magic beans.  That was clearly a deadline deal to save a couple of bucks, literally in baseball terms.  So when our biggest trading chip is likely out of the trade picture, all we have is really Rosario and Myles Straw to trade if you don't want to count Civale, who is needed just to make it through the season.  I would rather keep those guys than just give them away for a couple of tier two prospects.  I hate trades where the team GETTING the veteran is helped significantly while the team LOSING the veteran gets literally nothing that will help now and, unless their scouting is shrewd, not in the future, either.  Rosario and Straw seem to be the kind of guys who would bring back peanuts.  I would rather just keep them and limp through the rest of the season with them than give them away now.  Individually, they are pretty worthless, trade-wise.  Packaged together with Beiber as I proposed before in suggested trades with the Dodgers, these guys have significant value to push the Dodgers to give us better prospects.
• It is unfair to his development to keep Gabriel Arias on the big league roster.  He needs to play every day and get his hitting together.   At the same time I think calling Oscar Gonzalez up to form a platoon with Will Brennan in RF is the right thing to do.  I worry that what is holding this up is that Francona doesn't like Gonzalez and doesn't want him.  If Tito doesn't think he needs you he won't play you.  Just ask Tyler Freeman. But Gonzalez should have been the starting RFer on Saturday.  That is a FACT.
• Chase DeLauter is putting up good numbers at Lake County.  For those of us who have seen him play, even on MiLB TV, his swing looks quick but uber-geared to low balls. He seems to get beat on waste-level and above fastballs, especially on the outside as he seems to be mostly a pull hitter.  This seems to be a very big weakness at this point as he is feeding off of pitchers who may not have great command yet and so are making mistakes to DeLauter's strength.  Time will tell.  Also, looking at the splits, Joe Lampe looks like he is getting eaten up by age-appropriate pitchers and feasting off younger pitchers.  I am surprised that people don't look at those splits more, especially in the low minors.
• Joey Cantillo needs more work, to be sure, but he looked pretty good on Saturday.  I hope him being removed from the game yesterday was because he was going to be brought up to pitch in the Pittsburgh series rather than that he had an injury issue.  We have had enough pitching injuries already this season. 
• Free James Karinchak, Oscar Gonzalez AND Brayan Rocchio.   Trade Amed Rosario for what you can get right now.  Unfortunately I have a sinking feeling that it will be these guys and NOT Rosario who are traded at the deadline.  Considering how we suck at such trades....
• Anyone else having trouble with Myles Straws's defense this year?  Defense is one of those things that should not degrade but Straw is not getting good jumps going to his left on balls.  It's almost like he is shying away to avoid a collision.  Don't know but when your Gold Glove centerfielder is having negative defensive metrics scores it is disturbing as that shoudl NEVER happen.
• Daniel Schneeman, can't wait for you to make your ML debut.  Would be nice to package you and Micah Pries to Oakland or KC to get someone useful back.  Then you would get the opportunity to play like Alex Call is getting in Washington.  Of course, our FO sucks at making those kinds of trades so, probably would rather keep you.