Tony-OH

It's pretty clear that Rutschman's throwing is not a positive for him. Pretty amazing how good pop times have gotten when a 1.97 is 33 percentile. Accuracy, as @Frobby pointed out has never been his strength. His throwing has slowly gotten worse.

Eh, to each is own, but the title got you to click on it and see the conversation. To me, that's not a bad title. I'm all about the page views! Seriously though, I don't see an issue with his title and the conversation is certainly valid.

He just had a great game last night to bump his numbers, but he's having contact issues and still struggles to hit off speed and fastballs in the upper portion of the zone at times. He still has time to move up, but he seems to have these extreme good games and then kinda go in a funk for a bit. Let's see how he handles the rest of this series to see if it was just a great game of he's about to go on a heater.

I do think part of the problem of Orioles trained hitters when they arrive in the majors are the "wandering" strike zones of major league umpires. The Orioles minor league hitters are awarded positive scores for an at bat even when they are called out on strikes that are not really strikes. They are trained to not swing at pitches that they can't do damage on so they typically don't attack many pitches off the zone or near the edges unless they were fooled by the pitch. When they get to the majors, they have that same approach. Adley, Gunnar, Cowser, and Holliday all struggled at times by getting behind in counts and having to hit 1-2 or 0-2 too often, many times due to close pitches that were out of the zone getting called strikes. Westburg seemed to make the adjustments the best by cutting down his swing and going for contact over power initially. His power numbers were not good last year, but now he's made the adjustments and can now let it rip.

Why, the developing situation is that Mountcastle is starting to struggle against righties again. If you guys read something into it before clicking, that's on you, not @wildcard.

I do think it's worth tracking to see if Mountcastle continues to struggle against righties. O'Hearn has been killing it and could play 1B, though he is a bit a downgrade defensively from Mountcastle, which has to be taken into consideration. I'd like to see Kjerstad get more at bats to see how he does with regular at bats, but the Orioles are going to have to be willing to take Mountcastle, O'Hearn, Santander, Mullins and Cowser out on occasion to make it happen. But if Mountcastle starts to really struggle again against righties, then it makes sense to concsider benching him more often against righties and sliding Kjerstad into that DH role.

This is a good point. Umpiring is under the microscope and having that little box on the TV screen that is not 100% accurate doesn't helps either. Plus, you have pitches regularly coming in at 95 MPH and higher and breaking pitches and changeups that move upwards of 60 inches at times. That's a tough gig. Then you miss a call that is one inch off the plate, and the fans are screaming that you need to lose your job. I've seen multiple times this year and strike being called that looks low on the TV box, but when I went into statcast that uses the actual strike zone for the player, it was a strike. I agree though with the folks that say the bottom tier of umpires should be placed on probation" and if they miss too many, that they either need to go back to AAA or they need to be "released," just like when a player can no longer perform at that level.

I like the AAA system where hitters and the catcher get a certain amount of challenges a game. It keeps the human element in the game a bit but can allow for calls that obviously erroneous to not change the game.

Holy crap, I can't believe you said to "kill the union". Whether they kill the union or not, they need to absolutely move umpires up and down between AAA and the majors based on performance. I don't know why they think and late 50s, early 60s umpire will still see as well as a 35-year old ump.

I believe Dan Ford just had his front foot back like that , but extremely closed. I remember batting like that once in Little League because of that and hit one on the longest home runs I ever hit at that age. Then, I made a couple of outs and ditched it to more of a regular stance. haha.... Anyways, as for Jackson Holliday stance, legs kicks work for some and not for others. The key is to get it down in time and being able to pick up spin and movement early enough. To me, Holliday just got behind in too many counts because of some great pitches on the edges of the strikezone. I'm not a swing expert, but I've seen the kid hit well against all types of pitches including velocity so i think he's going to be just fine. He's gotten on base a lot more down in AAA where the automated strike zone helps him with his great eye, but hasn't hot for much average or power since going back down (.242./432./364./795 with a 11-9 BB to K in 44 PAs. The Ks are still a bit high in AAA. He just needs more seasoning.

John Wockenfuss had one of the strangest stances. He used to have both feet facing away from the pitcher.

I've kind of heard the same thing. It's not just a lack of power that regresses in Aberdeen, but the K-BB ratio have typically been among the worse for the players who eventually made the big leagues (Gunnar, Adley, Cowser, Westburg) and had success.

I'm a fan of Koby's and I think he's done a great job down there under some difficult circumstances. I'm hopeful the new training facility down there will help get more talent to sign with the Orioles. Saying that, I agree that we need to start seeing more guys out of that program able to compete well once they hit the states. I know some got upset at more just [providing facts about the players who are failing when they get to A-ball but it's just the truth. Outside of Basallo and now Bencosme to a lesser extent, none of the international guys have had any real success once they hit Delmarva. So it's one of two things at this point. Kobe and his team are missing a lot (I haven't researched to see how others teams Latin American players are doing) or they are not being prepared well to compete at full season ball levels. It's really weird how they can show pretty good plate discipline and some pop in the FCL, then look like they have no business facing Caroline League pitchers. And before the excuse is, "They're young," they're not that much younger than the other teams that are beating them up. There was a lot of money spent on Maikol Hernandez, Braylin Tavera and Luis Almeyda and while the book is not finished on Tavera and Almeyda by any means, they are going to have to show something here soon. Good young players with major league promise typically can compete with older players. Basallo has done it. The special ones do. It's a little weird that Liranzo hasn't played the first two games either. Either he's banged up or they just don't think he's ready to compete against FCL pitching because he should be a priority play. Now it's not time to give up on any of these guys (minus Hernandez is just a miss) I mentioned and Thomas Sosa has hit a little bit and is competing though his K's are pretty high. It's just time for some of these guys to step up.

@Warehouse made some nice points and that's a pretty good synopsis. The only thing I would caution with this year's numbers is that he might be getting into the "bored" mode of being in AAA. It's hard doing that grind for as long as he has and see players comes and pass him by onto the majors while he was putting up good offensive numbers. I like Norby in the outfield better than second base, but he does get a little lazy out there and will will not field a ground ball cleanly out there either sometimes. He's working on hitting cut off men and just the nuances of playing effectively out there. He's getting better in my opinion. It's ashamed he doesn't have the reflexes and hands to play 3B effectively because being a OF/2B/3B would give him more value and make him a potential replacement for Urias. Right now, I don't see what he role would be with the Orioles unless Hays and McKenna go down. Then maybe they would consider him to come up. Other than that, it's clear they don't want him playing 2B in the big leagues in anything more than a game or two situation. His best bet is to go to a team like Oakland and find major league at bats. If the Orioles can ultimately pry one of those Oakland arms away, Norby and Stowers are guys that definitely should be hopeful they're in the trade.

Yes, it was very well done.