The main reason that ’23 was such a disaster is that Mozeliak didn’t do last off season waht he plans on doing this year….. acquire starting pitching. We started the season with a rotation of Mikolas-Flaherty-Montgomery-Woodford-Matz. So many of us on TCN didn’t see that as a rotation that would win the NLC. And it was fairly obvious.
Mikolas was the only guy that lasted all season. Montgomery would have if he hadn’t been traded. Flaherty was very inconsistent and a far cry from being the #1 guy we thought, in the past, that he would be. Wood ford…. no reason to reiterate on his season. Matz was a large ? and although he had a great July and early Aug. his ’23 was plagued by injuries, something that was his reputation.
When Woodford was replaced by Wainwright things got a whole lot worse. Outside of his final start Waino was mostly a disaster game in and game out.. There’s no question about that.
Mozeliak also hired a AAAA manager who doesn’t appear to be up to doing what it takes to win close games or to motivate his charges. A horrendous choice.
The plan B of having to replace injured starters didn’t work out at all. Mozeliak was perhaps overly confident that Memphis could provide starters that were ready to enter the rotation and pitch effectively. Wrong again.
We all know that DeWitt is a tightwad and that is a major factor but now he’ll have to part with some large coinage to right this ship or the team will fad into a less than mediocre bottom feeder.
All of this is something that could have been done last off-season and the calamitous version of 2023 might not of transpired. There’s a lot of lesser issues that added to the mess but Mozeliak’s sitting on his duff stands out far above any of them.