Adversity and Other Wednesday Thoughts

 Adversity

I was fighting mad after last night's game.   

(a) blocking the plate call - just BS.  My mind goes back to last week when Scoop almost broke Luis Robertts' hand by kneeling in front of and totally blocking second base.  Firstbasemen do this all the time with guys dving back into first base. Where Hedges was was not blocking the plate.  Baez had a path.  Maybe not the path he thought he would have or wanted but a path.  BS call.

(b) Kwan's stolen base, uh, caught stealing - Clear replay evidence showing that he was safe.  More than enough to overturn the call unless there was an angle none of us saw.  Don't think so.

(c) Straw's third strike.  First, Straw is just pathetic.  A veteran like Straw should be able to get that runner home.    That being said, Straw was out.  Foul tip, catcher caught the ball.   But the plate umpire was emphatic,  Foul ball, ball hit the ground.   OK, so the call was wrong and the umpires meant to get the call right.  In any other situation I would have been OK with it.  Except that it occurred after (a) and (b).

(d) Ball one on Kwan - OK, looking at the replay the third base umpire screwed up.  He called time so that he could yell at and, I think, toss Straw.   But he screwed up.  Have some thickness to your skin, buddy.  And, if you are going to call time to make it all about you, then do it during a dead ball, not when the ball is in play.   Did it change the AB?  Who knows but it was just icing on the cake of a screwed up game by the umpires and the replay crew.

Summary: The umpires and the replay crew stole momentum and, very arguably, the game from the Guardians.  That being said, this is NOT the definition of adversity.  Adversity is having your whole starting rotation decimated by injury or having your star player being out a lot of the season.  Or just a bunch of injuries at the worst time (like the Guardians last year).   This is one game.  It doesn't really matter in the final standings and if it does it means that there were 20 other games the Guardians screwed up, any one of which could have offset yesterday's game.   As a coach once told me, if you don't let the game get close you take it out of the referee's hands.

Now let's put this behind us.  We have to get ready for tonight's game and the huge series we have with the White Sox this weekend.  We do not want Monday's first game of the Detroit series being our high water mark for the year.   I think last year this happened and we ended up at 80-82 and none of us wants to see that again.

Minors

Where is Daniel Espino.  First we heard knee, then we heard knee and shoulder, now we hear knee.  Why is it and where is he on getting back this season.

Gavin Williams - Wow, what a stud so far.   Still, seeing what Logan T. Allen is going through at AAA, there are more hurdles for Williams to get over.

Jose Tena vs Angel Martinez - Tena's on the roster.  If we take him off we definitely lose him on waivers and the team that claims him can send him to the minors for the next two years as he has two options left..  Martinez is not on the roster.  If we fail to put him on the roster and he is drafted in the Rule 5 then he has to stick in the majors next season or be offered back to the Guardians.    No brainer for me.  If you have to choose between Tena and Martinez on your roster this winter you choose Tena. Let's hope we don't have to choose and that we can trade one of them for a good player who is ML ready.

Xzavion Curry - His start Monday shows he is a 2-pitch guy right now.  Even with that he can and likely SHOULD help this team going forward in the bullpen.  

Hunter Gaddis - Do we all realize that he gave up a grand slam in his first minor league start back after being in Cleveland?  Without that we might have been talking about him in the same breath as Williams at this point.  I still see him as a viable option for the bullpen and maybe the rotation in the future.

Logan T. Allen - Any of you worried about him in his struggles at AAA?  I am, only in that his stuff is not overpowering and there is always the chance that a guy just gets to a level where his stuff is no longer effective (see Eli Morgan below)

Arizona Complex League - Anyone else frustrated that the ACL team appears to have become the DSL #3 team?   Ahh, in the good old days when draftees actually got to play in their first years.  Fox did it last year.   I think only Ventimiglia, the ultimate of ultimate lottery ticket draft picks from last year, is on the roster and his ERA is over 10 and he is walking more than a guy an inning.    Just totally boring and given that stats in this league don't really give any good indication of future sucess, really frustrating as far as getting a picture of future development.   It seems like when we all do our top prospects lists we don't even consider the ACL guys any more as they are treated like the DSL guys, so far away it's impossible to rate them.

More Changs and Logan Allen the elders?

Owen Miller looks just a little better than replacewment level.  Except for the first month or so of this season he looks totally AAAA to me.  Miller has a role now as Naylor's caddy.  However, he is not helping this team now and if we had another guy on the roster who could play 1B effectively, I sense Miller would be at AAA and Arias would be up as the backup infielder right now.

Eli Morgan - Look, this guy has exceeded expectations ever since he was drafted, with no greater evidence of that than his first two months of this season.  That being said, however, his warts that showed up clearly last year as a starting pitcher are now coming back to haunt him as a reliever.  Here is a typical guy who gets sent to the minors to either figure out how to be successful or drift off to become a AAAA player.  

Just like Chang, Logan Allen the elder, Oscar Mercado and others, Miller and Morgan need to help this team right now or be replaced, thus becoming the definition of replacement level talents.   They have both shown too much of a pattern of ineffective play that has extended over at least two seasons.  

Myles Straw - WTF???????

I don't get it.  Guys are not suddenly this bad.  Not very often.  So what is up with him.  He looks like he has given up at the plate, on the bases and even, to some extent, in the OF.  As far as the latter, Straw has, recently, given way to Kwan on a number of occasions when there were 50-50 balls in left-center.   As far as hitting, he looks like he has no physical strength in his swing like he has some kind of hand or arm injury that saps strength and quickness from his swing.  Just looks inept.  Still a Gold Glove caliber CFer but, man, he is worse than Hedges and Maile at the plate, making him the worst hitter in our lineup right now...and not by just a little.