This is how Rays fans must have felt a few years ago with all the silly blunders and lack of discipline this team shows. That is why I try and remain positive. Our franchise and fans haven’t ever really dealt with a true “rebuilding” year for as long as I can recall. Sure we may have had what we called “rebuilding” but we never had the talent up or coming up that we do now.

The team is not well coached and on most nights lacks the enthusiasm you would like to see, yes. But I’ve also seen plenty of games this year that they fought back after even the most diehard fan mailed it in. I will take a resilient team trying to find it’s identity over a team that rolls over anyday. Everyone complains about RISP and blunders. I don’t think we should worry quite so much sometimes when you look at the lineup and see Huff protecting Markakis or Andino protecting Wieters. I’d love to see the splits on someone like says Reimold when Zaun/Cesar/Mora bats behind him.

Personally, I still blame the last 12 years on that little punk. The Os and yankees were both on the upswing and that series loss crushed the spirit of the franchise. After that, we’ve had to deal with personnal blunders left and right from mismanagement of our minor league system to contract blunders. Until we find our identity, the mistakes of years past will haunt us. For us as fans (and I don’t really feel that this applies to most of us here), there is reason for excitement and I honestly feel our loyalty will pay off in the long run—- patience is a virtue.

(yes we’ve had patience for years, what’s one or two more with competent front office personnel going to hurt us(by competent I’m NOT looking at you angelos))

Has anyone been following Erbe down in Bowie? I noticed after seeing the open thread yesterday that his stats have been beyond what anybody expected, yet I haven’t heard any chatter about him. Is there reason to doubt these recent numbers?

i didn’t read tomgugliotta’s post about brian roberts, but i can’t imagine it was any more negative or less insightful than the “Let’s get rid of Dave Trembley” fan post that’s been sitting over there for the last 4 days. why hasn’t anyone taken that down?

i’ve been coming to this site for a year and a half and i’ve really enjoyed the experience. i applaud the moderators for coming to the table with a set of guidelines to keep some sort of order in the room. and i cringe at some of the barely literate people who have joined the site recently and post idiotic rants.

however, i hope that the moderators are being careful with the way they enforce these rules. it’s a blog, not a tea party. negativity, especially in the midst of 12 straight losing seasons, is going to exist. roberts being lazy is a hot topic right now and not everyone reads through 800 game thread comments to find the discussion about it, so why shouldn’t he bring it up again? also, while i really hope we get to read quality prose for the most part, we should probably accept the fact that not everyone writing is an english major.

i also believe that it’s ok for tomgugliotta to question this decision in public. this is a public online community and i think it’s fair for what he wrote to be judged in front of the group if he asks for it. if the mods exercised good judgement in taking down what he wrote, they should be ok with discussing it in the open. again, i didn’t read the post, so i don’t know how bad it was, but i’m speaking generally here.