Don

It actually happened the Monday of finals week if I remember right. I already had a flight booked to SoCal for that Friday, so I luckily got to leave after like four days. The house I lived in there was one of the first to get power back, as it was super close to/apparently part of the electricity network of the main business district in town. I think it came back on that Thursday night... so only like 72 hours without power for me personally. I came back from SoCal a week later and the houses on the other side of the street (along with about half the town) still didn't have power.

Honestly after living several years of my life in the Midwest nothing is worse than a f$&* all ice storm. They are freaking insane in terms of destruction. Ice storms definitely vary in degrees of destruction, but a bad one basically overloads every single exposed surface. Trees, power lines, comm lines, roofs, etc... I’ve been through several, but the worst was in ‘07. People lost power for over two weeks in my area in the middle of winter, you could hear tree limbs snapping literally every few seconds, cars were smashed by falling trees, houses were destroyed. It was freaking nuts. That storm happened in early December and it didn’t get fully cleaned up until the following March.

Ryu is the one I wish we would have gotten. I know there was some injury history there, but the dude just knows how to pitch. His skill set seemed reliable just because he doesn't rely on a 96+ fastball to make everything else effective. Dude just locates and misses the big part of the bat.

Jo Adell looked like a big leaguer there. Dude was working every righty low and away with that two seamer and cutter. Adell went up there looking to drive a ball to right and did it.

Dazed and Confused? I mean there is a party at the moon tower.

That’s fair for sure. I’m just hoping that he has enough drive to get better that this whole experience leads to improvement in all aspects of his game.

I think it's weird but cool that Dana Delany just comes over to your place to watch movies.

Honestly, with this feeling like a lost cause of a season already I'm ok with Adell getting worked over in his first shot at regular playing time. Obviously it sucks for him and the team, and in an ideal world he'd be going through a lot of this development in AAA. But I'm all for him playing in real games and hopefully working through these challenges without it eroding his confidence too much. Hopefully the vets are telling him it's a hard adjustment for everyone and to just keep his head up and put in the work.

At this point it really is just like a baseball test lab to me. If we're gonna be terrible we might as well give our young guys every opportunity to succeed or fail and see who should be a part of this team long-term. That's it. Oh, and Trout.

This is what happens when your approach to pitching for 5+ years is “Screw it, we’ll figure something out.”

Yep. Firm agree.

I get your point, but Cole alone wouldn’t have solved this shitshow. I mean maybe we’d have like three more wins at this point.

No doubt. This feels like a team just going through the motions of pretending to be a professional team.

Honestly, if I’m Maddon I’m in full on chair throwing/threatening guys’ careers mode.

Agreed. This feels like the ultimate DGAF team. I mean our pitching is like for real bad, but there’s zero fight in this team.

I’m not typically one for hyperbole, but this is freaking embarrassing.

Young aspiring photographer experiences the development of a slum and a gang war in 60s-80s Rio de Janeiro.

That's a fair point, and I'd have to assume there was some sort of yelling coming from the dugout after that second one behind his head. If there wasn't, that suggests a bit of a problem for sure. As for Maddon not saying something... I mean maybe he actually thought it wasn't on purpose? Still though, you've gotta say something like it's unacceptable for a guy to be up around his head, that has no place in the game, etc...

The organization has kinda screwed up and/or been unlucky in pretty much every avenue a team can use to build a staff. We haven't developed a top level SP (think major league 1/2) starter in quite a while, which either means we've been incredibly unlucky with drafting/international pickups, or we're just crap at developing pitchers, or a combination of the two. We've also been bad/unlucky with signing/trading for big name guys, which is either because the big names just don't want to play here or our front office couldn't swing the moves. So now we're left with trying to find the proverbial "clean peanut" every year, which is really the hardest way to build a staff. It just takes some ridiculously good scouting and coaching, plus good injury luck. A couple teams have managed to do well with that in the past (it seems like the Cardinals have been consistently successful with that sort of thing for like 25 years now), but it's by far and away more difficult than doing it through the draft/development or sign/trade method. Basically we've been relying on the third best option for building a staff for several years now, and we're crap at that approach too.

That would definitely make them think twice about throwing at one of our guys again.

So what would having to "answer" look like in that situation? Charging the mound? I literally can't think of anything else.

Yeah. We should've brushed someone back in the tenth to send a message.

For the longest time I could put down anything with zero problems. Like an iron stomach situation. Then like a year and a half ago I got what I believe to be Norovirus (basically puked and sprayed stuff out the other end for like 10 hours, followed by another like 8 hours of horrific stomach cramps). Ever since then certain foods (including but not limited to really spicy things) cause an intense pain in my stomach that lasts for like 20 seconds then goes away. It’s freaking weird.

Several dark turns.

This thread took a dark turn.