This isn't just me saying something Jeff Blair-ish. I'm not saying something like "Well, AA went out and spent all this money and all these prospects, and we haven't seen the results we wanted because they lost a bunch of games at the start of the year and now I'm sad and we should abandon until next year" or whatever.
No, this is actually a literal statement. All the guys AA went and got to be on his team have yet to play a single game together with the guys that he deemed good enough to stay on the team and carry it to victory. Obviously Johnson and Dickey and Morrow are never going to be in the same lineup, but beyond that.
I'm talking mostly of the guys with some star power. Jose Reyes, Jose Bautista, Edwin Encarnacion, Josh Johnson, RA Dickey, Brandon Morrow, Brett Lawrie, Mark Buehrle and Melky Cabrera are the big pieces, while everyone else is a complement to them (though Adam Lind has stepped it up pretty hard).
Of the pitchers, only Buehrle has been healthy all year. Dickey hasn't missed time, per se, but has struggled with neck and back pain, while Morrow and Johnson have both been on the DL. Lawrie started the year on the DL, and wasn't back until well after Reyes hit the shelf. Even with Reyes back, Lawrie is back on the DL, and Melky has joined him. Beyond that, Bautista and Edwin have both, along with Adam Lind, missed time with day-to-day issues.
I don't really know what my point is here. I guess I just wanted to point out that we're halfway through the season, and we still haven't seen a single game with the whole crew that was assembled. Maybe I should research and compare other teams' success levels with the amount of injuries they sustain, but I'd be surprised if there weren't all kinds of data out there already that would suggest that the more games your best players play, the more wins you'd get, but whatever.
I guess sometimes not everything that comes to my brain needs to be said.
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