We'll be at 9 years now though, a "soft rebuild" puts as us a 11+ years with only a few wildcard games to show for his body of work.
That's about the life expectancy of a top executive and the shit he had a great rep at (ballpark renos) is now done. That was his security blanket imo, that Eddie was spending half a billion on making the Dome viable for another 20-30 years of use and Mark was probably the right guy to be running that project.
What im expecting is Schneider fired very soon, like within weeks and Mattingly interim, because they dont actually think anything is wrong, but replacing Schneider might take some heat off themselves. Atkins trades Yimi, Kikuchi, Turner, Green etc for returns that uninspire because they care more about the talent being MLB ready or close than actually talented. If Atkins is allowed to trade Bo or Vlad good god help us all, it means Shapiro might stick with him, or Mark is making the deal and Shatkins just explains it incoherently afterwards and is fired later
Atkins goes end of the season and Shapiro replaces him with a different minion who uses buzz words like reset, retool. New guy trades at least one of Bo/Vlad ( probably Bo, but also probably both) for uninspiring returns ( think Gavin Lux at absolute best) and talks about the savings of not having to pay these guys massive contracts, then proceeds to throw 15-20M and varying 3-4 SP or 2.5 Win ceiling players. They will hype up the kids hitting well at AAA, but make no mistake, outside of Orelvis, none of them are probably anything.
Im optimistic Vlad might be here long term, just because, he seems to be really turning it around and looking like pandemic Vlad ( save for not getting it in the air yet, or pulling the ball. Thank you Donnie asshole), and also the return for 1-1.5 years of a 1B might be low enough where the team chooses to extend him instead. Bo, i think there will be enough offers where they move him
Rinse, repeat, fuck off.
