I Thought Watching Baseball Was Supposed To Be Relaxing!
In 2020 the Browns were playing away against Pittsburgh in the wild card round. As I am sure you all remember, the Browns scored first, and then again. We're a few minutes into the game and we're up 14-0 and I remember saying to myself 'This is not enough, we need a bigger lead'. Well, as fate had it, the Browns found away to run that lead to 28-0 before the Steelers scored. The final score of the game, 48-37, showed it was two games: The opening quarter plus was 28-0 Browns. The remainder of the game was 37-10 Pittsburgh, a score that was within what some 'experts' were saying the entire game would look like.
So, forgive me if I angst over losing Tuesday to St. Louis after having a 4-1 lead on a terrible error by Brito AND losing on Friday after holding a 4-0 lead entering the 8th inning on a complete collapse by the bullpen in the 8th. We are 13-10 and that is at the top of what I could have, with a straight face, predicted our record would be when I looked at the schedule before the season. So I should be happy, right? Well, I remember that Steelers game, I remember the Tigers in 2025 and I remember 2024 when we built a big lead which allowed the team to relax down the stretch and hold that lead.
Bad loses early are just the same in the standings as one run loses where the team played well and I also remember the saying that teams are guaranteed to win 60 and lose 60, with the other 42 determining the success of their season.
Still, I HATE early season bad losses as you can't get those games back. 13-10 is good but 15-8 at this point would be outstanding.
Roster Crunch Stuff
Juan Brito needs to go. David Fry needs to be sent to Columbus. Matt Festa and Connor Brogdon need to be off the roster. Travis Bazzana and/or Milan Tolentino need to be called up TODAY. Walters, Espino and Aleman need to be called up to bolster the bullpen and the AAAA guys Festa and Brogdon need to be sent to Columbus. Cooper Ingle needs to be called up and Bo Naylor sent down for a reset
All those things sound nice at this moment, right?
Unfortunately, things are not that simple. Here are some reasons why:
- Our 40 man roster is full
- We have no one (thankfully) to put on the 60-day IL to create a roster spot.
- The only obvious guys to DFA are Colin Holderman and Codi Heuer, but the former would be owed his entire salary. Both are bullpen depth.
- The rest of the 40-man is full of prospects and guys in the majors. There is no fluff
So, while sending Brito down and bringing up Tolentino or Bazzana sounds good, we would have to DFA someone to do it as neither Tolentino or Bazzana are on the 40-man and would have to be added to be called up. Ditto for Ingle if he was called up and Naylor was sent down. Plus adding Ingle would give us FOUR ML level catchers on our 40-man which is probably not a good use of 40-man roster spaces.
While sending down Festa and/or Brogdon sounds good, neither has an option left meaning we would have to DFA them to take them off the major league roster, likely lessening our bullpen depth available to call up from Columbus in case of an emergency.
Plus Brito and Fry are RH bats and our minors are, by design I think, filled with mostly LHH. So sending these guys out would make our active roster even MORE LH.
So switching the roster around sounds good, especially to me as a prospect geek. But essentially almost all of our off-season plans would be trashed with the season less than one month into this season. And right after we lost prospects to bring in these AAAA pitchers we are now jettisoning (still ticked off we lost JRod and Nikhazy for Holderman and Brogdon).
So, while people think these are good roster moves, probably it is not a good look if you blow up a roster built on some stupid, off-season free agent decisions. It also is not a good look to send down more young guys after we promised to give those guys enough runway to prove themselves, something we have already went back on (Kayfus demotion).
No comments:
Post a Comment