Ya know, I miss Manny. Playing the Padres reminds me of how excited I was with his debut back in the day. He single-handedly solidified an already very good infield into a real force. So different than what we're seeing over the course of this year.
I wondered when we signed Alonso if we might have been better off targeting a top line 3B instead. Everything I ever read or heard since Adley came up was about a potential transition to 1B from C as he got older, especially with Basallo in the wings then. Of course Mounty was already there at 1B, but I guess it was assumed he'd be out after his contract much like Santander when he became a FA opening the potential spot for Adley. They were also focusing on grooming Mayo to 1B after his poor audition at 3B last year. So that would have meant Adley and Mayo at 1B and likely taking turns at DH.
I was surprised with the Alonso deal. I think the bat aspect was on target - and they seem to have been right as he is the only bat we have on the team that is in the top 5 of any of the batting leader categories: RBI= 44. I just kind of wish they had tried to identify a 3B candidate that would have done the same on the left side where we seem to need it most. Mayo has done surprisingly well, however.
Going into 25 I was hoping we'd get Bregman and plug him in at 2B, move Gunnar to 3B and Holliday to SS. Who knows how that would have turned out, but Bregman wound up having a good year with with the BoSox that year.
Anyway, off track there, but in the past 20 games we're 12-8! That's .600 baseball. And if we hadn't given at least 3 away, that would have been 15-5, .750 ball. Instead, with the games we dropped and how we dropped them, I don't think there's a ton of security in the idea that we keep this up. Had we won those games, we'd be the talk of the league, and the potential comeback toward a division fight would feel a lot different than this sort of tenuous waiting for the other shoe to drop. Clearly, I still don't know what to make of this team, but they're showing some signs.