CaptainRedbeard

The Orioles have a wRC+ as a team of 128, which is better than the wRC+ for any single Orioles hitter last year - Adley was 127 and Gunnar 123 (although Hicks was 129 in his ~200 ABs). That’s the second best in baseball, behind only Atlanta at 128, and a good bit ahead of the Dodgers at 122, who are both riding unsustainably high BABIPs (.340 and .328; by comparison, league average is .290 and the Orioles are .294). Despite walking at a very low rate as a team, the Orioles are doing it by being by far the best power hitting team in baseball. Their .199 ISO is far ahead of the Braves second at .184, and the league average is .143. I think power numbers usually go up as weather gets warmer too, so that should only increase. The top team wRC+ last year were the Braves at 125, and then 4 teams between 112 and 118. So the Orioles will almost certainly cool off to some degree. But I also think we could see the walk rate tick up as the scouting reports adjust - Gunnar, Westburg and Cowser in particular have been hitting for huge power at low walk rates (for Cowser, until 3 walks last night), so I could see there being a trade off of walks for less power if pitchers are more careful pitching in-zone to them going forward.

RPs get used a bit more frequently early in the season with more frequent off days, SPs still building up and when the RPs are still fresh. There were 61 RPs with more appearances than Kimbrel’s 10 coming into today, and 109 RPs with 10 or more appearances coming into today. The thing that kills me is using the closer with a 4 run lead. Hyde did that with Bautista a few times last year, I hope we don’t see that with Kimbrel.

Exactly. If you go down a list of the leaderboards of velo leaders and note all their injuries, there’s a lot of them. But if you instead just take a list of all 30+ year old pitchers and sort it however you like, I don’t expect it’s going to look all that different.

He allowed only one batted ball over 95 MPH, commanding his cutter particularly well in this one. I think the cutter is the most critical pitch for Povich to take the next step. He’s never had issues getting punch outs, he needs to be able to pitch in the zone without relying too much on his fastball. It’s also a key weapon against RHP - if you don’t have a true plus breaking ball or fastball that can overcome the platoon splits (which I don’t think Povich does), you can only make it as a LHP SP through the strength of your cutter and changeup, which are more reverse/neutral splits. His changeup is probably not good enough to carry him on its own, so it’s the cutter that brings the whole pitch mix together.

It’s probably fairly inevitable that Grayson will need TJ at some point in his career. Velo increases the risk. However, it’s very common for all pitchers, regardless of velo. The biggest thing Grayson has going for him is that he’s made it to age 24 without a shoulder or elbow injury (at least that I can recall), which already separates him from many others in the high velo club. The best predictor of future injuries is past injuries, and while he did have that lat issue that knocked him out for a fair bit his record is pretty clean in that respect. Also, it’s more the conventional baseball wisdom than something I’m aware of being supported in stats, but Grayson has a prototypical pitcher’s frame and in theory that could help his durability. It doesn’t seem like he generates his velo from a max effort delivery.

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.