Alright, so I haven't been very active here but there have been a handful of things I've wanted to say that I haven't been able to get around to. This may seem a little late, but I found the whole idea of the FO throwing cold water on TH very bizarre. Not directly, obviously, but the vibe coming from the leaks and people around the organization was to almost combat fan expectation or enthusiasm not by saying "hey, he's a rookie, we're glad we have him, he's got a lot of learning and maturing, etc., etc., but we're working with it" but rather by basically saying "hey, you guys are unrealistic because this guy sucks." More than strange, the irony seems to be lost that it's a self-indictment. He sucks? Oh, okay. He's on our roster as a result of the experts experting last draft. The natural retort is probably, "but our hands were tied because we were in the 9th spot and the 8 other guys got drafted before us." The reason we were in the 9th spot, again, is a result of the experts experting last year. If the argument is "hey, we couldn't get a good enough look at him to know _____," well, guess what. Yep, that's right. No matter how you slice this and no matter how far you keep kicking the can on this argument, it still flows back to self-indictment. I'm not saying anything bad about TH (that's certainly not my opinion), I just think it's funny that instead leaking out about how he's our guy and we expect it to be slow but we're working with him and whatever, it's just leaked out "he ****ing sucks" as if every turn of this process doesn't end with responsibility on the shoulders of the FO.
That said, I'm under no illusion of perfection and I try to reign in complaining [too much] about decisions in hindsight. If the decision is patently obviously poor in foresight (Collins, THT, etc.) then I will criticize that rather than things that had decent reasoning but just didn't work out. I believe most people will believe in and push the idea that, yes, even professionals make mistakes, but I just wish this wasn't just an idea that only gets thrown out and acknowledged post hoc. It's easy to say "hey, they make mistakes, too" well after the fact. It's the challenge that before and during the poor decision making that nobody can appeal to the idea that the decisions could be wrong but more of an appeal to letting the experts expert. Let's just apply it equally to both sides and acknowledge some level of agnosticism about the process. If the FO believes TH sucks, it means last summer they had no clue what they were doing. If it's a function of draft position, it shows that before and during the season, the FO had no clue what they were doing. Right now I kinda feel like we have no clue what we're doing but that will only be acknowledged well after the fact of "well duh this didn't work out and it's not hard to see why" but most people who consider themselves reasonable would eschew acknowledging this in real time.
tl;dr I like Hendricks and he needs to play and it's one of the many dumb things about the Collins trade.
Flame away.