Perhaps the Guardians could copy this formula and finally win a WS.
What really solidified the Royals’ WS run in 2015 was trading a bunch of young prospects for Ben Zobrist and Johnny Cueto. It worked, but it also hastened their slide back into mediocrity.
It says everything you need to know about the Blue Jays that they were batting Daniel Vogelbach cleanup when he played, and then yesterday they released him. I wonder if there is any internal self reflection on this? Like, did Ross Atkins think to hold a meeting and say “Guys, there is clearly something wrong here if the hitter we thought was good enough to bat cleanup is now someone so useless we just fired him”?
The team’s utter refusal to hold anyone accountable for anything, beyond releasing a fringe major leaguer, is genuinely remarkable. The fact Vogelbach - who should never have been on the team at all - lasted as long as he did is evidence of this sickness. They just refused to accept that it was a bad plan until it got so ridiculous that they were being mocked for it.
The next logical move would be releasing George Springer, who has had a fine career but right now might be the worst regular player in the major leagues. Well, he’s not as bad as Andrew Benintendi I guess, but it’s close. But Springer is owed tens of millions of dollars and releasing him would be a HUGE admission of failure, which is a form of accepting accountability, so they can’t do that.
ETA: Actually the next logical move would be firing Don Mattingly and Guillermo Martinez.
That sounded strange at first because I thought that Mattingly was just the bench coach. Why would you want to fire him? Now I see he is also the ‘offensive coordinator.’ WTH? Sounds like a peculiar arrangement going on up there.
Damned if I knbow what “offensive coordinator” means in baseball. Is he calling for a slant? Running the ball at the left tackle?
What it seems to mean is that he supervises Toronto’s hitting coaches, and there are now THREE of those in addition to Mattingly. What is quite clear is it’s not working. Toronto has the fifth worst offense in MLB. Mattingly constantly preaches not trying to hit for power, and boy, it shows.
What concerns me even more is that young hitters get worse under this regime, and have gotten MUCH worse with Mattingly. Look at what’s happened to their young stars:
Vladimir Guerrero Jr. was the best hitter in the AL in 2021. In 2022 he was still pretty good, hitting 32 homers, and he was only 23. He dropped last year, and this year can’t hit for power at all.
Bo Bichette, was a consistent 125 OPS+ or so hitter. Wasn’t getting BETTER, but oh well… but declined badly in the latter half of 2023, and this year cannot hit at all.
Cavan Biggio was a very effective hitter when he came up. His collapse started in 2021, but he was hurt that year. He hasn’t recovered.
Alejandro Kirk was a 23-year-old Silver Slugger in 2022. Upon Mattingly’s arrival his power started dropping, and now at 25 he is no longer a major league caliber hitter.
The notable exception is Danny Jansen, who has remained a pretty decent power hitter (when he’s not injured) and who has, it must be noted, just flat out said he ignored the hitting coaches.
Someone has to be held accountable for this. A normal company would, if there was a massive, massive failure of a major operational part of the company, demand someone be held accountable for that failure.
Anyone look at the NL wild card standings lately. Your current third wild card team is the St Louis Cardinals at 34-35. Every other NL team except two are within two games of them.
The NL is definitely a bit weird (or maybe just parity) right now. There are four good teams (Phillies, Braves, Brewers, Dodgers), two truly bad teams (Marlins, Rockies), and nine teams that are around .500, or a bit lower.
The Brewers lead the NL Central by 6.5 games, but they’re only 8 games ahead of the last-place team (Pirates), as the rest of the division has been clumped up for the past month.
Last season, the Blue Jays had several voices involved in the offense. The primary voices were Dave Hudgens, who was responsible for the broader strategy, and Guillermo Martinez, who was responsible for the fundamentals and working on swings. In 2024, there will be one message coming from one voice, and that message will be a straight shot.
The Mariners had one as well but they fired him because their offense stinks.
Brant Brown wasn’t any good at offense when he played for the Cubs. I don’t know why they expected anything different in Seattle as an offensive instructor.
Toronto’s has been worse than Seattle more or less all year, but they change next to nothing.
At the time that Brown was fired, Seattle was ranked 30th in a couple of offensive categories.
At the moment they are ranked worse than the Jays in hits, batting average, OPS, on base percentage… Just about everything but scoring. Of course, scoring is how you win, so that’s one reason why the Mariners have a hefty lead in their division. But their offense is deficient in so many ways.
Seattle plays in one of MLB’s most pitcher-friendly parks. They are a better hitting team than Toronto. Most significantly, they hit far more homers.
Yeah, they are in the top third of HRs in the MLB. That’s saving them for sure. It looks like they’re currently ranked 7th.
Mookie Betts out 2-3 months with a broken hand. Dodgers are 8 games up on the Padres in the division.
Steven Kwan (Guardians) is so f’n good, you guys. He’s only gone hitless in 7 games this year. He’s had 21/70 multi-hit games. Yesterday he went 4/5. He’s batting .398.
He missed a month due to a hamstring injury (because he’s also a beast in left field) so we’re all on the edge of our seats waiting for him to be qualified for the batting title. He’s short about 15 at-bats.
Even though we just dropped 2 to Toronto, I’m still very excited and very hopeful for this team!
Well, if there was ever a time for Kiké, Rojas or Taylor to put on their big-boy pants and step up to glory, it’s now. Unfortunately, the three of them have been having a “less than stellar” season so far.
Despite having only played 43 games, Steve Kwan is considered by Baseball Reference to be the most valuable player Cleveland has. And they’re a first place team, not a team of bums. There are TWELVE other teams than have no player that valuable, if you believe BBRef. Team MVPs according to BRef WAR so far:
Arizona: Ketel Marte, 4.0
Atlanta: Reynaldo Lopez and Marcell Ozuna, 2.7
Baltimore: Gunnar Henderson, 5.0
Boston: Jarren Duran, 3.8
Cubs: Shota Imanaga, 2.6
White Sox: Erick Fedde, 3.4
Cincinnati: Hunter Greene, 2.5
Cleveland: Steven Kwan, 2.7
Colorado: Ezequiel Tovar, 2.8
Detroit: Tarik Skubal, 3.6
Houston: Kyle Tucker, 3.6
Kansas City: Bobby Witt Jr., 4.3
Angels: Tyler Anderson, 3.5
Dodgers: Mookie Betts, 3.8 (but now out for months!)
Miami: Ryan Weathers, 1.6
Milwaukee: Brice Turang, 3.0
Minnesota: Carlos Correa, 2.5
Mets: Francisco Lindor, 2.1
Yankees: Aaron Judge, 5.1
Oakland: JJ Bleday, 2.3
Philadelphia: Ranger Suarez, 3.2
Pittsburgh: Mitch Keller 1.9
San Diego: Jurickson Profar, 2.2
San Francisco: Heliot Ramos and Matt Chapman, 2.6
St. Louis: Masin Wynn 2.1
Tampa Bay: Isaac Paredes 1.4
Toronto: Daulton Varsho 2.9
Washington: CJ Abrams 2.1
That list is missing a couple teams; Seattle and Texas, I think.
I messed up one of my stats. He has 21/43 games with multiple hits.
We somehow managed to win many games while he was out, and that was the headline. “Guardians win a lot of games without Kwan! But we still miss Kwan!”
We just lost 2 games while Jose Ramirez was on the Paternity List, tho.
figures doesn’t it ? I mean just when we’ve been consistent then something has to go plotz…