This year is a success if you take into account how we felt around mid-June. From the start of the year I don’t know if I feel it’s that much of a success.
Our leadoff hitter and center fielder spent more than half the year in Toledo because he had such an awful start. Torkelson was so bad that we HAD to send him down and had to play utility guys at 1B for over two months. Baez somehow got even worse. Keith’s first couple months were brutal. Third base was just as big of a mess as we thought it’d be heading into the year. Carpenter missed two plus months. Maeda went from savvy depth signing to unplayable. We continuously gave Joey Wentz chances despite constant failures. Mize and Manning haven’t progressed at all. All of this on a team that we thought should solidly contend for the division.
Instead, we are only close to sniffing the wild card because Skubal and Flaherty became two of the best starters in baseball, Wenceel Perez and Matt Vierling were unexpectedly valuable, and we’ve somehow managed to turn three months of Skubal/Montero plus Bullpen starts into a good working strategy. If it weren’t for Tyler Holton, Will Vest, Jason Foley and a mishmash of pitchers that no one on here had ever expected to see the big leagues, we’d be in Oakland A’s territory record-wise. Brieske, Faedo, Miller and Chafin certainly weren’t particularly impressive.
Credit where it’s due though- Meadows completely turned it around in Toledo and has carried it back to the MLB, Jake Rogers has been elite calling games with a variety of pitchers, Keith kept working and turned it around in a big way, Carp has been a monster when healthy, Vierling/Ibanez/Perez all stepped up big this year, Malloy looks like he will be valuable, and a ton of low level prospects have pitched great with their opportunities.
I’m not a Hinch fan, but he and Fetter have navigated the pitching staff health issues quite well. If these guys can go into next year playing with the energy and execution level that they have since the trade deadline- then next year should be a lot of fun. But if all the borderline guys regress and start slow again…….then it’ll be hard for me to say anything more than that these last two months were just a ball club of young players who were playing loose because they had no pressure on them.