I'm sorry that people taking issue with the low quality of the team offends you so much.
Yeah, well, my post was my own irritation at 2022 speaking as well.
FWIW, I'm with you on the team sucking in 2022 part. I just prefer a bit more of an inquisitive approach to the
why of that suck. I mean, if there's a problem, it should by all means be addressed.
That said, I don't think we can blithely discount injuries, the lockout, injuries, twice-through to protect starter's arms, injuries, new baseball sapping offense, injuries, etc. Oh, and injuries. Some of those were stupidity but some of those weren't forseeable; I mean, but for three moving baseballs, we'd have a totally different team:
-Sale's finger.
-Story's fractured wrist.
-Strahm's mashed hand.
Throw in a real hitting coach or two for some rookies and you've got a contender. Especially if you get career norm/average recent performance out of Brasier, Barnes and Robles. Or less injury time for Wacha, Houck, Eovaldi, Crawford, etc.
Our problem looks like the bullpen, but it's not really. It's the fact that the pitching staff overall was drained by injuries to starters and to other relief pitchers. We used 12 starting pitchers this year, two of which were supposed to be in the bullpen (Whitlock and Crawford) and one of which was supposed to transition there or be traded (Hill).
To consider that a bit more, 162/5 gets us 32. Granted, there are going to be some double-header starters and the like, and you can skip the #5 slot now and then, but go with that rough 32 starts per slot.
We've got (so far) 14 starts from Winckowski, 12 from Crawford, 9 from Bello, 4 from Seabold, 3 from Davis.
None of those guys were supposed to be anything but emergency starter backups. Injuries =s 42 starts. That's your entire number 5 slot starts for a year and part of your #4. Whitlock and Houck have another 13 starts between them - but 9 of those were an emergency Whitlock transition. . .where he wasn't that great. So call that 51 "pressed into service" starts. That's 31% of the season's starts, and that'll grow higher by the end.
Conversely, we've played 149 games. How many players have
started 100 or more games? Just 4. Verdugo, Boegarts, Martinez, Devers. If the next highest active player started the remaining 12 games? Enrique Hernandez would have clawed up to 91 starts out of 162 games - that's 56%. Story, currently shut down, stands at 92 starts.
I don't think it's a matter of the team
willfully failing, it's more of a perfect storm of suck. That yes, they absolutely could have taken some steps to avoid or mitigate.
****
Consider a team where, but for a week or so, we have a healthy Sale, Eovaldi, Wacha, Pivetta, Hill/Paxton rotation. (Your backup is Crawford or Houck). The bullpen is headed by (good) Barnes, Schreiber, Houck, Whitlock, Strahm, Taylor, and (good) Brasier.
Meanwhile you get a consistent plus core-offense consisting of: these 4 Devers, Xander, (first half) JD, Story. Augmented by a table-setting Hernandez, Verdugo, Arroyo, Vazquez, Refsnyder. Your weak spots are JBJ and a coin-toss Dalbec, with a healthy Casas ready by mid-season.
That's a good team.
Not the one we got, but a good team.