3 positive surprises
1. Jeremy Pena. I knew he would be good but wasn't expecting it to feel like we didn't miss a beat at all.
2. The pitching staff. If you showed me our current record back in like February, I would have thought our offense was at a 2019 level.
3. JV looking as if he never got injured. I think we were all cautiously optimistic but he's been insanely good
4. Yordan having an MVP type season. It's nice to see him hit that "this is peak Yordan" type of season.
Negative Surprises/Hope it gets better
1. Yuli and Bregman. This is looking better now but they need to get back to their old selfs if we want to win the WS. Bregman is looking closer to his 2017-2018 self which is nice.
2. Lance's injury status. I think the assessment we all had after the ALDS was comical. Some of us (myself included) assumed last October that he would be back no problem by late April/early May.
3. Jason Castro and Jose Siri. Both guys just seemed like dead weight/not productive and don't really play into future plans.
I think this team will make the ALCS, and then it just depends on how the ball bounces against the Yankees. If our pitching keeps doing what it's doing in October, I don't see a team I wouldnt pick us to beat in a 7 game series.
Key to winning a Title for me. Pitching staff keeps doing what they are doing, and timely hitting. This team likely isn't going to win a 12-11 or 10-8 type of playoff game like they might have in 2017-2019. But we can follow what the Nationals and Braves did. Win lower scoring games and come up with the big hit when necessary.
1. Jeremy Pena. I knew he would be good but wasn't expecting it to feel like we didn't miss a beat at all.
2. The pitching staff. If you showed me our current record back in like February, I would have thought our offense was at a 2019 level.
3. JV looking as if he never got injured. I think we were all cautiously optimistic but he's been insanely good
4. Yordan having an MVP type season. It's nice to see him hit that "this is peak Yordan" type of season.
Negative Surprises/Hope it gets better
1. Yuli and Bregman. This is looking better now but they need to get back to their old selfs if we want to win the WS. Bregman is looking closer to his 2017-2018 self which is nice.
2. Lance's injury status. I think the assessment we all had after the ALDS was comical. Some of us (myself included) assumed last October that he would be back no problem by late April/early May.
3. Jason Castro and Jose Siri. Both guys just seemed like dead weight/not productive and don't really play into future plans.
I think this team will make the ALCS, and then it just depends on how the ball bounces against the Yankees. If our pitching keeps doing what it's doing in October, I don't see a team I wouldnt pick us to beat in a 7 game series.
Key to winning a Title for me. Pitching staff keeps doing what they are doing, and timely hitting. This team likely isn't going to win a 12-11 or 10-8 type of playoff game like they might have in 2017-2019. But we can follow what the Nationals and Braves did. Win lower scoring games and come up with the big hit when necessary.
