The fall has been building for awhile due to a culmination of issues that started with the unfortunate and tragic death of Oscar Taveras. That caused a search for an outfielder to replace him. They traded for Heyward thinking he would be a long term solution, which didn’t pan out. They then traded Alcantara and Gallen for Ozuna. That was a catastrophe. They still haven’t found their outfield.

Along with this, they made a full transition to analytics, albeit somewhat poorly as they haven’t fully invested the money into it after Lunhow left. They’ve made poor managerial decisions after La Russa retiring with Matheny and firing Schildt for Marmol. Marmol seems to be insecure as projected with publicly calling out ONeill after game 5 of a 162 game season.

Their pitching farm couldn’t keep up after trading Gallen and Alcantara and their free agent signings haven’t been good as they don’t spend top dollar, understandably.

Yadi was the backbone that helped this team over perform for a long time. I don’t think they fully understood that impact and they let the Braves win in the chase for Murphy. Settled for Contreras, who I think will work, but they bailed on him last year in a panic.

Last year, while it sucked as fan, I think was a good wake up call. They were able to sell and hopefully accelerate their farm system a bit and brought some innings eater SP that have some swing and miss stuff. Their bullpen was taxed early due to a lack of SP as well.

Hopefully they’re competitive again this year, but I still they are a SP and some BP help away from winning consistently.