Danchat

I'd like to see a full job search instead of just letting Zoll have the job without any competition. What has he done to deserve being handed Favley's head of baseball ops job?

Hitting .807 OPS in 250 AA PAs doesn't seem promote me ASAP, he's hitting well for his age but I don't see the need to rush him.

It's a base $8M deal, but geez, that's a ton of incentives for a guy who didn't exactly put up any notable counting stats last year. I hope he is ready to play in a week, I don't want to hear any excuses about him not having time to be ready.

I was surprised to see Raya's numbers at AAA are pretty good, the walks are finally down, the only issue is HRs allowed. So yeah, it is disappointing to see a guy who will probably be DFA'd by the end of the year get these reps instead of him.

I don't know who has been bad for years, but they needed to get more flexible with LH/RH OFs after they inexplicably horded more of them at the deadline. And then didn't move any in the following year.

Not a good start from Zebby today, but this offense can't continue to fold against every lefty they face. Why isn't Gabby Gonzalez playing?

Geez, did you make that with an AI from 2022?

People criticized Rocco for changing the lineup too much, guess we have the opposite now. Is it leading to better hitting like some claimed it would?

There weren't any centers worth taking at #18, but yeah, their two picks at the end of the third round was a great time to take a shot. Instead they went with Tiernan who I liked and you could call BPA, but then they extended O'Neill so Tiernan might be a starter in 2029. And then Jakobe Thomas, who like Felton the year earlier I thought was a multi-round reach, a one year starter in college with a scary high missed tackle rate. This was a weaker draft class than previous years, but they didn't need to take projects with those picks who won't play for years. Centers Sam Hecht and Connor Lew would have been great selections there IMO. Yup, I think a lot of blame should go on Ryan Grigson, Kwesi's assistant GM who was essentially the top 'football' mind in the front office since Kwesi didn't have a background in that. Grigson was the Colts GM who somehow bungled the team in the midst of having Andrew Luck in his prime. The Wilfs also extended him a year ago, but Teasley made the smart move of changing his job title, prompting him to quit and probably saving the Wilfs a good amount of money. My guess for the reasoning why is because the front office had already completed the scouting for the college season and scouts are almost always fired/promoted right after the draft. Which is strange given you let them do a great and then fire them. When new GMs are getting hired at the start of the calendar year, it's still usually the previous regime's scouts making the draft boards for the upcoming draft in the spring.

The conversation starts with do they tender Ober and/or Kremer... and of course whether they trade anybody. If nobody gets traded, do they pay up for those two when Zebby is better than them, Prieplipp and Abel have immense upside, etc? They need depth, but we also don't want to be in a situation where Ober/Kremer's maintaining a > 5.00 ERA and the young starters are ready to go at AAA but they won't cut the vet off because they've already sunk money into them. It's an intriguing situation with plenty of options.

I agree with that, Metellus is better when he gets to play LB/SCB rather than SS, which he is primed to be stuck at this year. Curiously, Jay Ward only played with the 2s during preseason and seems to be playing slot corner a lot, while Theo exclusively played with the 1st team at FS. So it looks like FS-Jackson SS-Metellus SCB-Ward. Jamal Adams looked like he was going to pick up some LB/SCB snaps ahead of Ward before he went down. But the Vikings unofficial depth chart has Ward clearly ahead of Jackson...

Yeah, it feels like they could use a vet on the DL but they don't appear to be considering that. Banks is out of shape and won't play much, whereas the buzz on Orange has been positive, but he's always going to be a rotational guy. Ingram-Dawkins should be a passing-downs only DL but he might have to play a lot, and he didn't flash much last year in 250 snaps. A 37 year old Hitman isn't going to bump this defense positively in my opinion. He hasn't been in his prime for 2+ seasons and having to ramp up mid-season is probably going to lead to some bad early games for him... when he could have just showed up to training camp like the rest of the players. Gerhardt got cut from our practice squad, he was center #4/5 in camp. I have no idea why they bothered to draft him when he wasn't a top 500 player on some boards, wasn't that good in college and whadda know, his NFL career might already over. They probably just turned that pick over to an area scout who took his favorite 'deep sleeper'... but yeah, they should have went center earlier in the draft. Maybe over drafting the highest FB taken over a decade. The 7th round would be the right time for a FB instead of Round 5 and then blowing the 7th on a non-NFL caliber prospect.

I'm critical of scorers that call obvious errors hits, but that ball zoomed by the SS's glove and didn't touch it... so I agree, not an error. Doesn't change the fact that Royce had a stinky game at the plate other than that AB.

To think, before challenges were a thing this inning would have been over with that BS strikeout and it'd only be a 2 run game. Now it's led to 3 more runs.

Woof!

Oof.

* Tie-er

Good AB despite a questionable swing in there. Now that aforementioned warning track power can tie the game.

Only 1 run deficit, if they think they're a playoff team then tying the game up at the very least shouldn't be a big deal.

Bruh! Royce you can't swing at that!

Jackson is the only guy left on the bench... and he's busy with cribbage duty.

Culpepper challenged the wrong one...

It was hit super hard, but yeah, you'd want your SS to field that.

Really nice AB from Lee there.

They could get creative, bench Royce and play Bell at 1B more, Keaschall to DH and then Rodriguez can play RF.