HitsRus;1238818 wrote:some of the pitching....the back end of the bullpen has been lock down. Smith/Pestano/ Perez are certainly one of the top, if not the best combo out of the pen. That's why the team's record is better than the run differential would indicate. Without the back end of the pen, this team would have a garbage team's record.
I don't know how you assemble a lineup of .220/.230 hitters and expect to score runs. You simply cannot expect to sustain rallies with guys who don't average even a hit per game. Even worse...no power....at all. Even worse than that...not a balanced lineup. Even worse than that. They've known about it for a year and failed to address it.
Really I don't get what the front office expected would happen. I'm sure that they thought the young players would get better....in that regard Santana has to be a disappointment. Kipnis has to be doing better than expected...and Brantley has to be a pleasant surprise.
You can literally almost point to the decision to re-sign Grady as the point in which things took a turn for the worse this year.
It was our major off-season offensive signing essentially, and we got nothing from it. Instead of that money going to someone who could help, it went to Grady so he could rehab all year.
If they could I am sure they would tell us publicly that Hafner's contract has paralyzed the organization financially essentially since it was signed, but you have no business owning a major league team if adding more than one guy who makes more than $10 million a year is too much to handle financially.
I am not sure how they get out of this with the public in this town as a fire sale next year (which is going to happen with Choo/Ubaldo expiring) is not going to be attractive to a town tired of the penny pinching. The farm system is barren, and even though we have some salary coming off the books the money doesn't really go that far with all the needs we have.
We were promised a window of contention, and it seems like it was slammed shut this off-season before it even opened.