DrungoHazewood

I very much wish I could have been there for this event, but on April 19th the Society for American Baseball Research had a ceremony dedicating a marker to the old AA/NL Orioles' Union Park at the site in Baltimore. It's at East 25th Street near Guilford Avenue. Unfortunately that day I was traveling to Denver for a life celebration for a co-worker who passed. Union Park had a short life, barely more than a decade from construction to demolition. But it was the home of the World Champion 1894-95-96 Orioles, and so many Hall of Famers and other stars of the day. Like John McGraw, Willie Keeler, Wilbert Robinson, Dan Brouthers, Joe Kelley, Joe McGinnity. More information in this SABR history piece. There aren't many bits of the park left, even some of the street names have changed. But if you look at the photo on the Wiki page, and the Sanborn fire insurance map you can place the park. And the rowhouse in the photo next to the entrance/ticket booth is still there. Reading that Sun article, I see Burt Solomon was there for the dedication. He's the author of Where They Ain't: The Fabled Life and Ultimely Death of the Original Baltimore Orioles, the Team that Gave Birth to Modern Baseball. I'm sure he'd be a very interesting person to chat with.

Yep. Dan Ford was similar, but he wasn't so far back in the box, and his feet were spread out more.

My position has long been that almost every hitter, given enough PAs, will have something around a standard platoon split. Or about 80-100 OPS points worse against same-sided pitching. Yes, some observed splits are much larger than that, but I think that's mostly small sample randomness and the effect of never seeing same-sided pitchers. In an alternate universe where O'Hearn is on the Orioles, shifts are still outlawed, and he plays everyday, he OPSes about .800 against righties and .700 against lefties. And I still contend that, by far, the largest difference between 2018-22 O'Hearn and 2023-24 O'Hearn was the outlawing of shifts. He always hit far worse when facing a shift.

I don't know... Wieters was supposed to be a better version of Johnny Bench, but instead became the switch-hitting Gus Triandos. If we're going by @Sports Guy's shoulda rules I don't know if he gets in.

I think that Gold Gloves for pitchers are: a) a little silly b) for most of the history of the award based on not much more than reading chicken entrails Does anyone who's thought about this for more than eight second really believe that Greg Maddux and Jim Kaat were actually the very best fielding pitchers in the league for 15 or 17 or whatever straight years? That they never had an off year, and all that time legitimately beat out the other 50 or 100 starting pitchers in the league? That's as absurd as someone leading the league in homers for 17 straight years, or in putouts at shortstop, or in OPS for 17 straight years. Nobody, not Ruth, not Aaron, not Mays, not Mantle, not Trout... none of them did anything like that. So, devalue? It's almost a made-up award anyway. Anyone want to guess John Means' career high in fielding chances in a season? 100? 50? Nope, 15. Means was responsible for five putouts and 10 assists in 155 innings in 2019. Or one chance per 10 innings, give or take. Mark Reynolds, even in the midst of his Legally Blind phase, never fielded fewer than twice that number of balls per game. Now... Cano did field 3.1 chances per nine innings last year, and has never made an error. He was involved in 25 successful plays in the field in 2023. But I still think he has essentially no chance at a Gold Glove. But I guess weirder things have happened. What he'd be up against is first nobody really has a good idea which pitchers are great at fielding, but also that someone like Patrick Corbin of the Nats fielded twice as many balls as Cano last year because he's out there so much longer. And I'm not sure anyone is going to buy into the idea of weighting pitcher fielding chances by leverage index for relievers.

You put Ventura in the 1884 Union Association and he wins 57 games just that year. Well, except being a mentally unstable member of a minority group in a less enlightened era, with what was probably a limited grasp of English, I'm thinking he gets shot in a bar the evening after opening day...

On the other hand, @Sports Guy's take isn't uncommon because Nick had a 7.4 win season at the age of 24. Following a really good season at 23, and a solid rookie season at 22 after he skipped AA. If you look hard enough in the archives here you can find a post I made in 2009 or 2010 saying Nick had about a 1-in-3 chance of being a Hall of Famer. 14 wins through three seasons and age 24 is a heck of a foundation to build on. Lots of Hall of Famers were behind that pace. But unfortunately he never had another 3-win season, much less a seven. Age 27 peak is just an average, it's not destiny. But it's pretty rare to have Nick's first three years and then not have much more career value from age 25-36, total. Injuries or whatever reason, he was worth 14 wins from 22-24, and 20 from 25-36. And as much as I wanted him to stay, his years in Atlanta were just treading water, piling up base hits, but a cumulative value above replacement in six years about equal to his 2008 season. Nick was almost certainly not a difference-maker the large majority of his last 8-9 years in the league.

98% of everyone doesn't end up with the career they "shoulda" had. Pete Stanicek shoulda been a 20-year major leaguer. Scott Erickson shoulda won 300 games. Luis Matos and Larry Bigbie shoulda been Kevin McReynolds and Darryl Strawberry (who shoulda been Willie Mays). Basically everyone who was ever on a BA top 100 list should have been a Hall of Famer, but life doesn't work that way. And it's mostly not the fault of the player, or really anyone.

C'mon, this the O's HOF. You get a bunch of old dudes together for lunch and make up the rules based on whatever they want.

Well, my Dad has a 350-lb buddy who takes his four-wheeler a grueling 3/4th of mile across flat terrain and then laboriously climbs up in the tree stand and sits motionless for four hours. I guess, minus 175 lbs, that could be Nick...

Basallo is basically on the Machado track. No, he doesn't have the defensive chops, maybe he doesn't stick at catcher. But nevertheless, he's holding his own in AA at 19. Mayo was 20 in AA and hit about as well as Basallo has so far. I'm with @Sports Guy, I can't really imagine a real scenario where I'm trading him for anything less than an established All Star at a position of dire need. And even then I'd think twice since he has the upside of somewhere in the ballpark of Carlos Delgado or something.

If he and his Dad actually cared about winning at golf he would have been out there at 2am hitting buckets of balls at the age of 3, instead of the 4am and age 4 that actually happened.

But you once paid $11 for a beer at OPACY, and Nick made a lot of cash, so he shoulda been doing some kind of Navy Seal training and hit 8 points higher for the fans.

2012 sticks out in my mind because he got hurt and missed the playoffs. But he was exceptionally healthy and played almost every day for 15 years. He's one of only 23 players who had 11 more seasons of 650 PAs. And tied for 6th all time with 11 seasons of at least 154 games played. That list is Rose, Cal, Raffy, Eddie, Billy Williams, and then some guys tied with Nick, including Pujols, Ichiro, Brooks, Miguel Tejada, Gehrig, and Garvey. I hate those "six Hall of Famers and some guy" lists, but if you set your mind to it you could put Nick on a lot of those.

We all knew Hayden Penn wasn't a major leaguer on draft day, reading that name. Seriously, what kind of baseball name is Hayden Penn? When did Nick sit the bench while Jay Gibbons played? They were only teammates in 2006-07, and Nick played 308 of 324 possible games those two years.