Thoughts For A Monday - The Most Important Series of The Year and We Are Starting Joey Cantillo

What is freaking wrong with this FO and the coaching staff?  

In the last 24 hours we have:

• Pushed Alex Cobb's start back because he had a blister.
• Moved up Gavin Williams' start one day leading to a disastrous Saturday start
• Moved Tanner Bibee's start up a day so that he pitched in a game against the Dodgers that had a MUCH lower probability of getting us a win than if he had made his orginally scheduled start against the White Sox on Monday
• Cut Scott Barlow and, instead of giving a young reliever from AAA a chance, brought back Anthony Gose
• Losing 2-0 today, burned an appearance by Cade Smith trying to keep the game close in the 7th and then put in Gose in the 8th who gave up 2 runs.  If you KNEW you were going to put Gose in the 8th you knew that your chances of winning the game were going to be very low, so why not put Morgan in the 7th and save the possibility of pitching Smith 2 or 3 times against the White Sox in games we could win.

This has totally been mismanaged.  They knew Lively was likely to get pushed back BEFORE Saturday and they KNEW that Cobb was questionable even for Tuesday.  

Let me make this clear.  At this time of year

• Losing one game against Chicago in this series is unacceptable
• Losing two games is a disaster
• Losing 3 games should get someone fired

They are sitting on their hands with the offense as guys like Brennan and Freeman continue to hurt this team and Schneeman continues to see playing time and Thomas continues to bat high in the order even though he provides no protection for Naylor.  They refuse to try relief pitchers like Aleman and Walters even though they could clearly use the extra power arms in the bullpen.

As I said in my previous blog post, we are approaching a stretch where we could send guys down to AAA and bring other guys up without burning minor league options. 

Antonetti is wrong when he says they are going to go with the guys who got them here.  They didn't do that with Barlow.  They didn't do that with Allen and McKenzie.  

What they ARE doing is going with guys who were millstones around this team's neck for a team that won IN SPITE of those millstones.  They have internal options for hitters and relief pitchers.  I can't honestly say they have air-tight options for starting pitchers in the minors but they might want to give guys like Nikhazy and Webb a shot instead of Cantillo who has already failed multiple times this year.

But this is all about service time manipulation and hoping that they can wave their hands and magically the fan base will be happy if we limp into the playoffs on a big losing streak as the last wildcard team when we could have had a first round bye and even the #1 overall seed in the AL playoffs.

It's right there in your hands and you keep trying to make it tough on yourselves by repeatedly doing stupid things in the name of service time manipulation and playing just well enough to make the playoffs because, once the playoffs start, anything can happen, right?