CaptainRedbeard

Suárez is giving up a lot of hard contact, but on high fly balls or ground balls. He has a .218 xBA and .314 xSLG, and a 82nd percentile barrel rate. I don’t know if that’s a tightrope he’s walking and it’s just a matter of time before the barrels come, or he’s going to be able to do that consistently to some degree - time will tell. What’s clear is the fastball plays well up in the zone and he’s been good at locating it there, getting a ton of whiffs and easy fly balls. The changeup looks promising too. I’m skeptical of the cutter, but it looks like it plays pretty well as a change of pace for glove side movement given the huge arm side run on the fastball and changeup. I still see a potentially dominant RP when I watch him, and worry that he’s not going to hold up as a SP given how much he runs out of gas later in these appearances. He also wasn’t able to hit the same velo he did in his second start after emptying the tank in his debut. I fear if we keep running him out there as a SP, he’s going to eventually either throw more ~93-94 mph and lose effectiveness, or blow out his arm. I’m worried of jeopardizing a potentially dominant RP in that pursuit. However we have to keep rolling with him while he’s one of the 5 best SP and hope for the best, and he certainly is right now. I just hope he ends up in the pen due to there being 5 better, healthy SP before he has any injuries.

If it weren’t for the service time component I think Holliday would have a very long leash before being sent down. He’s still contributing positively on defense and AAA pitchers just were not challenging him anymore. The priority above all else should be what is best for his long term development, and he needs to struggle against MLB pitching for longer than this to get to a point where you feel it’s doing more harm than good. I do think there can be some merit to the idea that MLB time exposes some weakness, which then can be worked on in a lower-stress environment in AAA, but I don’t think that’s strictly necessary since he’d be working on the same things against MLB pitching. However, the Orioles are now in a tricky situation where if it becomes apparent that Holliday is not going to win ROY, they have a strong incentive to send him down for at least a short stint to get the extra year. How they navigate that without that being totally transparent is tough. They could definitely do it now and nobody would claim service time manipulation given his struggles, but I don’t think they want to yet for purely development purposes. If he’s still struggling with around 100 PAs that’s when I think they make the move.

Maybe, but not if they DH Adley vs LHP, which they’ve continued to do a lot this year. If so, he’s not going to take the LH ABs from Cowser or Mullins because that means putting Kjerstad in the field somewhere and massively downgrading the defense. Otherwise Kjerstad is just replacing Mountcastle or Santander vs LHP, so not really a different consideration for playing time than when facing RHP. So hopefully Kjerstad can pick up some ABs vs LHP from O’Hearn at DH when Adley stays at C or gets a full day off, but I don’t expect that too often.

Yeah, I agree. It makes sense for them to do now while Hays is injured and they can figure it out, especially since Mountcastle is dealing with his knee injury. When Hays comes back though, I don’t know what they’ll do if there’s no other injuries. Somebody has to be the odd one out and I don’t see them DFA’ing Urias or Mateo. Possibly that could be their excuse to send down Holliday for a reset/service time if they think his chance at ROY is shot, but the bench composition works a lot better with the additional infielder. Anyway I hope Kjerstad rakes in the opportunities he gets now and makes it interesting.

A big issue for Kjerstad getting playing time is that I don’t realistically see him getting ABs vs RHP at O’Hearn’s expense, at least in the near term. There’s some chance that O’Hearn is in the midst of a late-career breakout and he doesn’t play against LHP so they are going to have him in there against RHP and see where it goes. O’Hearn last year had terrible K/BB, but did so much damage on contact that he still ended up decent overall. Now he’s hitting the ball even better, while also dramatically improving his chase and K/BB rates. And it’s still small sample obviously but those stabilize quickly, so there’s a good chance there’s some signal in there. And as you said there’s a lot of good indicators for Mountcastle as well. So if he’s really only playing when Santander or Mountcastle get days off, even if they increase the rate that happens that doesn’t leave much for Kjerstad. Plus with Kjerstad’s defense a question mark, who knows how comfortable they are with him or O’Hearn in RF on Santander’s off days. It also makes it very hard to work him in on Mullins’ off days, even though I think they’re ok with Cowser in CF I don’t see them doing 2 of Santander/O’Hearn/Kjerstad in the corners.

I agree. It has to be anticipating Mountcastle being out a little longer, maybe they will IL him too if his knee doesn’t improve quickly. But if Hays is out the minimum 10 days (one of which already passed), maybe Kjerstad gets 3 starts from Mountcastle and 1-2 from rest days for others, available to pinch hit the rest. That wouldn’t be so bad.

If they don’t call up Norby now, that tells us (and any potential trade partners) that they don’t think he can play an adequate LF. They don’t need McKenna’s defense in CF or as a defensive replacement, Norby is a much better player than McKenna as a LF if he can play it defensively at all. Norby deserves a shot, he’s only going to get it via an injury, it should be now.

I’m very confident now that both of these guys are going to hit for power and that, combined with their plus defense, will make them at a minimum solid starters (but still a question how Cowser will hit LHP). However, both still have a LOT of whiff and it’s hard to know where they end up with K and BB rates. I think they’ll run good BABIPs given their ability to do damage on contact but there’s a wide range of outcomes for their AVG and OBP. That’s what will determine where they fall between solid 2-3 WAR types and 4+ WAR star players.

Kjerstad obliterating AAA pitching is almost to be expected at this point, so the thing I’m keeping a close eye on is his BB rate. Up at 11.5% now, while still maintaining only a 20.7% K rate. Very encouraging, since I’m sure pitchers are pitching him more carefully now. It’s good to see him willing to take those walks. He’s now turned the hard contact into power and he has good contact ability for a power guy, so the biggest flaw in his offensive profile is his aggressiveness and tendency to chase. I’m sure the Orioles’ message is that’s what they want to see improved from him at the AAA level.

I think the K rate is 27.9% after the 4-4 game and your page hadn’t updated yet? I wish we could see his whiff, chase, and in-zone/chase contact rates. Those add a lot of context to a ~30% K rate. Not based on anything scientific, but I feel like if Fabian gets to around a 25% K rate at AA this year, he moves up to AAA at some point and has a decent chance of eventually being below 35% in the MLB level. If he does then I think he’s going to be a nice 4th/5th OF type, play vs LHP and pinch run / defensive replacement.

The Orioles have so much cost controlled hitting that they’d likely need to trade a lot of them to ever really need to sign a free agent hitter in the next few years. Which means they should have a lot of payroll flexibility and just need to use that in some fashion to add pitching. Whether that’s by signing pitchers or trading the extra hitters or a combination of both, I think that really just depends on who is available and what prospects are blocked. This past offseason it was clear they needed to trade Ortiz so a trade was the obvious route over FA (even though I wish they did both…). Now they don’t have another prospect of that caliber that is blocked to the same degree so it’s not apparent. With a new owner as well, it impossible to predict how Elias will approach it this offseason, and I think any route is appropriate so long as they continue to increase payroll and actually leverage the advantage of having a tremendous cost-controlled offensive core.

The second question is - what extensions can the Orioles do with guys other than these 4, who are not Boras clients? Don’t want to rehash the “Boras clients don’t extend” debate, but let’s assume whatever they can do with these 4 doesn’t impact the ability to do other extensions. Grayson: With 5 years of control after this one, it would have to be something like 6 years + a couple option years. Possible, but not super high priority. Bradish: Entirely TBD on how he returns from injury, and even then a bit of the same question as Grayson with so much control remaining. Westburg, Cowser and Kjerstad: Lumping them all together because I think it’s similar considerations. At their ages when their years of control expire, I don’t think it really makes sense. All 3 have been phenomenal to start the year but still have significant question marks about their games (really high whiff rates and not great K/BB for Westburg and Cowser, Kjerstad’s defense, chase rate and of course not yet facing MLB yet). Mayo and Basallo: Given their ages they are going to be the best candidates, IMO. However, it’s premature now for obvious reasons, particularly with the major questions about how much defensive value they are going to provide at the MLB level. Unfortunately I have a hard time seeing any extensions happening in the near future, even if Elias and Rubenstein have all the best intentions of wanting to do them.

My concern with extending Burnes is not so much his age, he’s got a lot going for him that should allow him to age well. He’s not overly reliant on velocity and has really great command, elite ability for spin, and could lean into throwing more sinkers/curves/sliders and fewer cutters than he does now. He also been a really durable SP his whole career. He checks a lot of boxes, even if he’s unlikely to ever be the 7 WAR pitcher he was once. Pitchers like Burnes can remain really effective into their mid-30s. The concern is just how much he’ll cost, for how long and the potential for injury for any pitcher. Pretty good chance he finishes in the Cy Young running this year and is going to want something around Gerrit Cole’s deal. I don’t think he signs an extension that doesn’t exceed that anyway, so he’s really going to just be a free agency signing. Burnes blowing out his arm on a $300M deal (or even “just” a $200M deal, which I think is the floor of what he’ll get if he performs as expected this year) could be pretty crippling to the Orioles, and I have a hard time believing the Orioles are going to outbid the big markets clubs for him.

Rankings for fantasy baseball, which of course for pitchers is pretty close to real baseball, but Burnes and Grayson benefit from being higher-K, pitching in OPACY and having the Orioles’ offense.

Rankings for fantasy baseball, which of course for pitchers is pretty close to real baseball, but Burnes and Grayson benefit from being higher-K, pitching in OPACY and having the Orioles’ offense.