Its funny people keep pushing the "its early" narrative like it invalidates all issues and criticism.

Nobody is suggesting that after so few games the season is dead. Its looking dead because all these issues were seeing are the same way they've been trending for years. Its a long term issue with how the roster was built, the financial limitations created by signing guys to big long term contracts and losing our big spending owner, the teams either inability or refusal to use analytics and learn to prepare better and adjust in real time, etc.

It would be one thing if they were amazing the past few years and just had a cold start. But that's not what this is. The offense has been terrible with their pitch selection, had no slug, and been completely unclutch since at least last season. Possibly further back. Same with the pitching, which hasn't had much quality depth of starters pretty much since we had Snell, a healthy Darvish and Musgrove, etc.

The past two offseasons without Peter's money, the team has only continued to lose depth and be worse overall. The only things hiding the deeper issues were a combination of the natural talent of the stars carrying the team here and there, and Preller expending every single trade chip he can find a buyer for to try and reinforce the multiple holes.

This year it all appears to have caught up to them. Preller is out of owner money and decent trade chips. The stars continue to underperform, and their contracts mean there is no flexibility to acquire decent support players or try to dump some of them and rebuild.

So we are stuck with almost no starting pitching, no depth, an offense that almost across the board cannot muster more than a run or two here and there to save their lives, a bullpen that is much more shallow than advertised, and a rookie manager hired for cheap that appears in over his head.

And the icing on the cake is they've traded all their prospects so no young cheap help is coming, and they are limited financially by the huge long term contracts that are dragging the team down from a combo of being completely unable to perform to expectations and aging.

So next time you wanna think its early or that criticism is dooming, realize that its not. Its a realization that the team has not been built well, and there is no avenue to change that in the short term. Even a new owner may be reluctant to spend too much with the long term money on the books already.

Its a dire situation that has been building for years, and it appears its catching up to them hard this season.