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Tuesday Bantering: Embracing Team Tank

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MLB: Boston Red Sox at Toronto Blue Jays
John E. Sokolowski-Imagn Images

It seems that the team has embraced tanking. We thought they might climb back to .500 in August. We are 6-23 in September. It looks like the team has quit, which is surprising since several guys should be playing for a spot in the lineup next year.

Last night’s loss clinched last place in the AL East. It is the first time they have been last since 2013. The good news is the team bounced back to above .500 the next year and made the playoffs the year after.

The team is hitting .245/.311/.360 (the worst slugging month of the season). They have just 13 home runs in September. May was their worst month for home runs, at 23, until now. In August, they hit 38 home runs.

If the team has given up, I don’t know what that means for the coaching staff. It doesn’t reflect well on the coaching if they aren’t playing hard right to the finish line.

We are deep in next year’s territory, but I hate writing about next year during the season because we have six months to write about September.

Anyway, the team did make a roster move this morning:

  • Orelvis Martinez has been activated from the suspended list and optioned to the Spring Training Complex.
  • Daulton Varsho has been moved to the 60-day IL to make room on the 40-man. Varsho had surgery on his rotator cuff yesterday. Once they see how the surgery went, the team will come up with a plan for how he’ll rehab and whether he’ll be ready to start spring training.

Rob Longley, in the Sun, has a story about George Springer.

“It’s been a weird up-and-down year for him, and (Springer) would be the first to tell you that,” Jays manager John Schneider said Monday prior to his team’s meek 4-1 loss to the Red Sox in a truly indifferent effort before a crowd of 22,254, the smallest of the season at the Rogers Centre. “It’s a big opportunity for him to attack the off-season and say: ‘What can I do to get me back to the player that I can be?’

I must have missed the “up” parts of the season.

I don’t know what Springer can do. It doesn’t look (at least to me) that he is out of shape. I mean, he can work hard this winter and come back in ‘the best shape of his life’, but whether that can make him a better player than this year is a question.

I’m happy not to be the only one who gets driven crazy by Buck:

Pitchers throw hard, use more spin, and leave games before they tire, but batting averages are down because batters have too much information. I don’t understand why we have to have the old men yelling at clouds opinions on everything. There must be someone who could play the analyst role who doesn’t hate today’s game.

I get it. The ‘golden age’ for everything is when you are 14. Buck wants to tell us that the players he played with were better, stronger, and smarter than the guys playing now. But that doesn’t mean we have to hear about it every night. Maybe we could alternate someone who likes today’s game into the booth.

But, like Jerry Seinfeld said, ‘Those jobs tend to go to ex-ball players.’

This is great:

I’d be ok with the team signing him again, but I think they have more essential moves to make than getting a co-catcher.

Whatever the team does with the bullpen, I’d like to see Eric Pardinho at some point next season:

It could always be worse. They could be moving the team to whatever Canada’s equivalent to Sacramento might be.