Offishial news, 7/20/23: Playoff odds plummet; Manfred's re-election; Mack's first jack

[Ely Sussman]

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[Ely Sussman]

I should have also noted the Shintaro Fujinami trade between the Athletics and Orioles. Another domino falls on the trade market. The minor league pitcher going the other way, Easton Lucas, was a 2019 Marlins draft pick originally sent to the O's in the Jonathan Villar trade.

[Guest kommenter]

Management needs to take some action at this time.

Such as:

1. Team meeting is definitely needed. Not sure what they can say to prevent making outs with runners in scoring position or giving up runs with two outs or grounding into double plays but players need to understand this cannot continue.

2. Task the analytics staff with identifying some solutions and have Skip implement them. Anayze all the at bats with issues listed in 1 and identify fixes. If they can't help, fire the analytics team because we don't need them.

3. Coaches. Bring in an outside coach to replace 3rd base coach while he is healing. Will likely be rest of season. Maybe new blood will spur some ideas. Have an all day coaches meeting on an off day to identify whats wrong and how to fix it.

4. Send down one bullpen pitcher and one position player and bring up stars from the minors (Edwards/Eder?). The team needs to understand losing will mean players lose their MLB jobs. There has to be consequences.

5. Caroline should show Bruce what revenue from a full season of the 20k plus home game attendance would look like to convince him that funding a winning team is a good financial investment. We boosted attendance to 20k after a half of a good season so is 30k reasonable after multiple years of winning? Do the math, 20k more fans average for 81 games at $50 per head, including parking, F&B and merch, is $81 million. Plus higher fan interest means more sponsorship and TV revenue say $20 million. Bruce could pocket $20 and put $80 mil more into payroll. That would be a game changer.

 

The current plan of doing the same thing day after day after day and expecting a different result is clearly not working.

[Guest OneRegend]

Ah, yes. The Jonathan Villar trade. That... was a forgettable trade. We got nothing out of it, and the O's got a return out of it.

 

We really need to have retrospectives on our past trades 2018 and onwards because we've had stinkers that we didn't realize were stinkers.