I hate to be a downer, but the young guys need to learn how to handle struggling before they will get consistent success. This is the price they needed to pay when they didn't play more of the young guys last September, and earlier. I understand the reasoning, this isn't revisionist history, it was just clear last year that they were sacrificing development for their chance at making the playoffs. However at some point they have to accept that developing these guys and contending are highly unlikely to occur at the same time. Rebuilding isn't supposed to be pain-free, this was the contract we entered into when they decided the best path to contention was to mostly rely on rebuilding the system. Bite the bullet, purge the vets by any means necessary and make sure all the young guys are starting every day either at the MLB or AAA if they need a remedial adjustment. This team is still functioning in an old-school mentality if they actually think these vets are the key to winning a few extra games this year anyway, if they paid any kind of attention last year, they'd see that the vets got in the way and youngsters and their superior physical abilities were the better players anyway. The worst thing that could happen for this club is a quasi-run where they may look like they could sniff .500, causing the team to double down on the vets despite no empirical evidence, just archaic conventional wisdom that experience matters. I do NOT want to do this again next year, rip the band-aid off now and get it over with.