DrungoHazewood

It was easier to do when there were fewer teams. We should start counting triple crowns in just AL teams east of the Mississippi and north of Tennessee. I mean, when Ty Cobb was doing it he only had to beat the dudes on seven other teams.

Knowing Twitter I'm surprised it's not 90-10 under. Isn't purpose of Twitter to convince us that the world has already ended and we're all too stupid to notice?

A good poll would be who's going to have more value for the rest of 2024: Cowser or Holliday?

Ohh, look, he led an arbitrary subset of the the 30 MLB teams in some old-timey stats!

But he's not on pace to go 6-for-104. He's expected to post something like a .800 OPS, so he's on pace to do (whatever he's done so far) and another 70-odd PAs of something much better than that.

Hey, I'm as into Taylor Swift as any 52-year-old white guy who doesn't know a single Taylor Swift song.

It also has the unfortunate downside of not projecting the Orioles to win 108 games, like your Times Nine model.

Who are these people who supposedly say WAR never changes? And why are you listening to them?

Cal started his career 14-for-104 (.135) and didn't get sent down. Of course he didn't have to deal with social media and 24/7 talk radio goons yelling incessantly about how a brief rough patch means we should question the foundations of western civilization.

The difference between a +0 average 2B and a +5 SS is 10 runs, or one win.

Of course Cowser's rest-of-the-season ZIPs forecast is for 1.7 WAR, for a total of 2.9. I could be convinced that's under-selling him. But it's almost certainly more realistic than 10.

Replacement level is typically set at a .294 winning percentage, or 47-48 wins. And I certainly wouldn't just mulitiply 6.2 x 9 to get the full season projection.

He'd be in the running for unanimous MVP. Mike Trout in 2012 is the only rookie to ever have gotten to 10 rWAR, and he didn't win the MVP only becuase a bunch of writers got all weak-kneed about Cabrera's triple crown. 2nd in all time rookie WAR is Dick Allen's 8.8 in '64, followed by Judge's 8.0 in '17. Fred Lynn won the MVP and ROY in '75 with a 7.4-win season.

A reasonable opening day projection for the Orioles was probably 92ish wins, or about 44 WAR. Starting 12-6 you could reasonably assume that their EOY projection is something like 93 or 94 wins. Baseball reference says the team WAR is currently 6.2. So that would work out to something in the neighborhood of 40 for the rest of the schedule.

Friendly reminder that even the quickest numbers to show significance like strikeout and FB rates take 60-100 at bats to become more signal than noise. And things like SLG and OBP take the better part of half a season before you can start trusting them. Batting average is well over the number of PAs anyone has ever gotten in a season. Drungo's First Rule (or at least some rule of mine): Never trust anything before Memorial Day. And don't get too comfortable until well after July 4th.