As for our Birds it is difficult to keep harping on the same things each day but it is theraputic for those of us who follow the team fervently. A few thoughts I have:
I don’t think this has been a wasted year. Despite the recent slide we are still over .500 which is better than I thought we would be. I think Bloom has been taking copious notes and now has a really good idea what he is dealing with and what he needs to do. I think he has more to work with than we realize sometimes. We have a decent young core but there needs to be more filtering. We tend to have several decent players that all play the same position or all bat LH’d. The roster needs to be thinned out and balanced more.
Either Nolan Arenado or Nolan Gorman need to go. Having both on the roster doesn’t make sense. Now if it were up to me I would probably trade Gorman. Why? Well he doesn’t have a NTC so we wouldn’t have to burn months and months for no result. Plus I think Arenado still brings value to the club. He is stellar defensively and can still get the occasional big hit. He just isn’t the old All Star Nolan anymore but he only has two more years left after this one.
Jordan Walker should be sent to Memphis and just left there until he can produce a minimum of two consececutive months of .800 OPS. We rushed him to the big leagues, set unreasonable expectations, and tried to force the issue because of his pedigree status. We should let him stay in Memphis for awhile and not bring him back up the first time he has a two hit game. I know we are supposed to be giving out runway but production should still matter too.
As for the pitching we should probably just do a clearout of Helsley, Maton, Matz, and Fedde the next 10 days, bring McGreevy up and just play out the final two months. Our rotation couldn’t be worse than it is.
Finally, I would say to Bloom to think long and hard about giving NTC’s in the future. They have completely stymied this reset or rebuild. Arenado, Gray, and Contreras aren’t going anywhere unless they change their mind or their contract runs out, whichever comes first. At least with Mikolas we only have two more months remaining.