[Biggp07]

I got my mid-season review from John Sherman today as we start our home series against Miami, then a 4-game series against Cleveland to end the month. It would be great to get retribution against Cleveland here at home to end our June on a good note, but that's YTBD. In the meantime, my reaction to John’s performance of my review so far.



Todd "BigP",
I have reviewed the goals I have set for you. My comments are below.

Team Record:
I'm disappointed in the team's performance this year. Worse, our fans are as well. Let's work on getting the team motivated to go out and win.

We have lacked offensive production pretty much all season. What I’ve done with the team this year has been my best effort as manager. I can think of a couple of games where I will take responsibility for our loss, but otherwise, I’m disappointed in the effort I’m getting from a few of the players. They will need to turn things around here soon with the trade deadline coming up, and after that, I’ll be ready to purge a few roster spots. Our Pythagorean says we’re right where we should be with games, but it’s the RDiff that’s killing us at -53. We’re currently 10 ½ games back from the division leader, the Minnesota Twins, with a 4-game series coming later this week against our divisional rivals Cleveland where we can gain some ground with solid offensive production. I hope we can do that.

Upgrade a position:
I don't see any improvement from where we were last year at Left Field. Please be on the lookout for an upgrade if you want to keep me happy.

Javier Vaz’s offensive production was damn fine up til he got injured, and we’ve had to treat him with TLC for the next few days, but I think he can be the LF improvement John’s looking for. We also have MJ Melendez, who has played the position well. He happens to be in a bit of a slump, though. So, I’m not too worried about this one right now since it’s not a high priority for John, but I’ll continue to give players an opportunity there and see who wants it.

Find a top prospect:
I'm not convinced Javier Vaz has a future with our club. He's certainly not a bad prospect, but I think you can do a better job at finding a top prospect.

As I said for the previous goal, Vaz is the best we've got right now, and I think he’s developing into a fine utility player with great lead-off potential. I’m not going to move off of him just yet.

Build your farm:
I have to say, I'm not too thrilled about our current prospect pool. I know I have given you some time to complete this task, but it looks like you need to put in a little bit more effort to improve our pool.



The personnel I replaced and hired in the preseason were my initial effort towards this, but I’m not done with that yet. My biggest concern this off-season will be the 2025/26 expiring contracts of our Double and Triple A club’s aging managers and coaches. I’ll have 5 coaches reaching 60+ years old, with Omaha's Mike Jirschele very near retirement at 65 now. I may want to offer him an early retirement, along with a couple of other guys, and look on the personnel wire for some younger coaching staff in our full-season minor league clubs.



Our Rookie ball clubs seem to be doing well now, so I don’t think I have much to worry about there. There could be a couple of coaches who get promoted to the higher minor clubs, too. That will be for consideration come this off-season.

Improve your fan interest:
Plan A to increase fan interest has had minimal impact. I hope you have a Plan B.

I wish I had a Plan B, John. At least I haven’t gotten rid of Salvy or Vinnie, which would have put us in the dumpster fire even deeper. These KC fans are fickle.

During our time working together, I have been ecstatic with your progress towards the goals I have set for you. That being said, when I look at the team's history on and off the field, my overall impression doesn't rank quite as high.

The final evaluation towards these goals will come at the end of the season. Good luck in the second half!

John Sherman

Ok John, message received. I’ll try to do better.



There are A LOT of areas we need to improve to meet a close to .500 season goal. How we get there is still TBD, but the bottom line is our offensive production needs to drastically improve our OBP and slugging percentage and turn some of those hits into runs. I think that improves with another power hitter in our lineup and getting Salvy out of his slump. Let's see where we are as we go into July and the All-Star break. That's my near-term target for more major decisions as needed.

There’s still work to be done, so that’s enough moping on my sub-par performance. I’m looking forward to the next review I have with John, come October. That should be fun.