Deluxe said:
Obviously it's still way too early to be making conclusive determinations but I think we've seen some good/bad signs so far that are fair to comment on.
To me, the key to this year (as a fan anyway) is patience. We've got alot of young/inexperienced pitchers to integrate into our staff and time is of the essence because we're inevitably going to need some of them to perform THIS year if we're going to make a deep run. And Dusty/Click need time to assess personnel. They to have to delicately balance 'managing to win every game' with 'putting inexperienced guys in high leverage situations and see if they sink or swim'. We'll almost certainly lose a few regular season games because of that.
It was nice to have the Mariners opening weekend so we could begin making some of those determinations without too much scoreboard risk. And as lame as the 16 team playoff is, it could be helpful in that we can afford a little more trial/error without fear of missing the playoffs altogether.
Some initial personnel takes:
Hope I'm wrong but I think James is miscast as a starter. At this point, I think his proper utilization is as a "microwave"/middle inning guy out of the bullpen. He's too inconsistent for starter or high leverage bullpen work. I kinda hope we look into selling on him via trade before it's too late. I also think Devo/Biagini are who we thought they were. Serviceable middle inning guys who don't need to be near the mound with a late inning lead.
On the flip side, it was nice to see Javier, Paredes, Sneed and Taylor get off to good starts. Abreu looked a little shaky but didn't allow any runs. If we make a championship run this year, we'll need some big contributions from at least 1-2 of those guys. Looking forward to getting Urquidy back in the mix and hopefully Whitley will earn a few innings later this year.
I could be wrong about this but offensively it seems like we're looking to go the other way a bit more this year... especially against the shift. I was always fine with the Hinch/moneyball strategy in the regular season to try and hit bombs but some Dusty small ball might play better in the playoffs. Who knows.
Even though they didn't get off to the hottest starts, glad Springer, Bregman and Altuve got on the board with dingers. Didn't want a bunch of public hoopla counting the days until they hit their first HRs without "cheating".
And while things look a bit shaky right now, I still think we're gonna be strong AF come playoff time if we can get our key pieces back from injury... specifically JV, Pressly, Peacock and Smith (not to mention Urquidy and Alvarez... who I don't think are actually "hurt"). Just gotta tread water and develop guys in the meantime.
Hope we light up LA this week.
goals should be 1. get to playoffs 2. be as healthy as possible for the playoffs. 3. develop young pitchers, figure out who is good, who isn't, who should be in bullpen, etc.
so if friday was the only regular season start jv makes, but he's good to go for a full playoff run that's fine with me. even if we limp in as the 8th seed
https://ts.la/eric59704
