What a difference a ten game stretch can make. I can't imagine anyone is much more interested in reading about this than I am writing about it, but for the sake of sticking to some kind of consistency, here's the tldr version of the spiel I did before this stretch:
So, tldr; :
A follow-up 7-3 stretch seems like the absolute best case scenario, and is possible as long as we can forge through this Giants series, and, I think especially Game 1, since it could set a tone for the rest of the homestand. If we win the Giants series, then I think we're in ok shape to at least do a 4-6 tread water without losing serious ground (split the DBacks, lose to the Dodgers). If we lose the Giants series, then 3-1 in the DBacks series will be crucial for keeping that 4-6 stretch as a worst case scenario.
Even though there will be caveats, I think these next 10 games will tell us a lot. Homestand needs to go 4-3 at least, and hopefully 5-2, which sets us up for a pretty solid shot at 6-4, which is the record that I'll be very happy with if we can manage it over this stretch. That would put us at 16-10 overall, which would be a really nice figure for the first sorta month of the year.
We were in very good shape, with a chance to hopefully do a little bit more damage in anticipation of getting some of our regulars back for good. Instead, we got our asses handed to us and are in a free fall right now with no real end in sight. Polanco has returned and looks alright at the plate, but his defense seems like he will give back any value he manages to give. Marte has been hurt, although it appears he will return Tuesday or soon after. Dickerson has suffered a setback, Reynolds has been called up but tweaked his quad. Basically anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.
And that's not even mentioning the biggest gutshot of them all, which was Burdi going down.
On the positive end of things, we have more and more evidence that Bell has taken his game to another level. Reynolds looks like he can be an everyday contributor at the MLB level right now, as does Tucker. Kela and RichRod seem to be mostly fixed, in what amounts to kind of a cruel joke: before this week, we were cruising, and all we really had to worry about was whether these kinds would give up a HR in a low scoring game that we're winning.
On the negative side of things, there's a laundry list right now, and I won't spend too much time going through it, in part because I think all the injuries have made it difficult to do too much in evaluating the team, and in part because individuals don't make the team. But the 3B spot has gone downhill, Frazier has begun to underperform (although his defense has become consistent), and neither Archer nor Taillon seem to get the whiffs they need (although in Archer's case, it appears as though it was due to injury).
Things aren't good, and we've given back any good feeling from the start and then some. Right now, we just need a win of any kind to stop the bleeding, and then hopefully we can work towards a better 10-game stretch. It is maybe worth mentioning that the Brewers have been just about as bad as we have lately, and that the true key is not to allow this 2-8 stretch to turn into a 4-16 stretch, because that's going to be impossible to really come back from.
So looking ahead, we really need to at least save some face and keep our record right around .500, find our footing, and see what this team might be capable of if/when people get healthy and we're firing on all cylinders. There's not an even way to break things up, but I think we can treat the next 11 games as a pretty massive stretch. We finish this road trip vs. Texas (2), then back home for Oakland (3), Texas again (2), and finally the start of a very tough road trip with St. Louis (4).
There's no way around it: we need some offense to show up at a decent clip. Texas especially doesn't have very good starting pitching, and it just feels like we need some quick wins to just have a moment to breathe. I don't think it's being overdramatic to say that this stretch will be crucial if we don't want to end up in a 8 game or worse hole that will take us three months to dig out of.
Already too many words within this disaster, spinning around points we all basically know. I think best case scenario, we can use this off day to catch a breath, and then effectively win both series vs the Rangers and Athletics (split one of the Rangers ones, and win the other two). That would be a 5-2 run, to climb back over .500 in preparation for a massive road series in St. Louis. If we can split that series, then a 7-4 stretch would go a long way towards completely restoring some hope. A bad scenario that isn't just lose every game would probably be the opposite of that, losing all series, and winding up 4-7 or 3-8 if the Cardinals sweep us, which at that point would secure a semi-permanent place in the NL Central basement.
One game at a time, but if you have any hope left, it has to be that we find a win in Texas, and then some things just start going well for us, and we go into that Cards series hot. I would be happy to see us just tread water a bit and win the As series at home, and then get the split with the Cards. That would be 6-5, meaning we'd still be under .500 and probably about 4-5 games behind in the division. Texas isn't great, and so I think we need to find more than that, maybe even the full-on turn on a dime, 6-1 stretch heading into St. Louis.
So, tldr;
Our records so far: 3-3, 7-3, 2-8, for a middling 12-14 and no chance at .500 heading out of April.
We need wins, for starters a single, solitary win, and then hopefully in quick succession a series win and a win in one half of the split four game series with Texas. I'm not trying to make these writeups to do predictions, and I'd be happy with 6-5 if only because it would be another sample on the register that we're the solid, peripheral WC race team that we are, even if I don't really think any set of games will give us much to draw conclusions from, given all the injuries and weirdness. In fact, best case scenario is that we're clawing out whatever wins we can, and when we are looking at this long road trip, we're looking at a team that is basically finally at full capacity, and wondering what we can do.
I don't think our talent level is such that we can make up a huge deficit, but we'll be good enough to work back into the mix when people get healthy, if we don't work ourselves into too big of a hole. That means staying around 4-5 games out in the division, and so as unsatisfying as a 6-5 hold ground would be, that would certainly do the trick. I'm hoping for something a little more maddening and Jekyll and Hyde-ish, with 8-3: take these games vs the Rangers, win a series vs a good team in Oakland, and show up in some big games vs the Cards and at least find a way to split the series. That would set us up for the return of some optimism, just in time to give it all back in road series vs Arizona and San Diego immediately following the Cards series.
