DrungoHazewood

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.

I'll be the pedantic one and point out that it's not really a projection to multiply 1/9th of the season by nine and come up with a full season's performance. Because 1/9th of the season is almost certainly not representative of the talent or expected performance of the players in question. To get a true projection you should take a little less than 8/9ths of your preseason projection, add in what they've done since opening day, and then toss in the little bit of additional knowledge we've gotten from the past 18 games. If you thought Jordan Westburg was a 2.5-win player on opening day, it's probably reasonable to think he's a 2.7 win player today.

I think the issue will always be that throwing 89 with an okay slider means Rich Dauer hits .256 with 8 homers, and throwing 100 with a wipeout sweeper means Rich Dauer hits .221 with 4 homers. Pitchers will almost always take .221 with 4 homers because hurt means you're rehabbing, bad means you're selling insurance.

I think no matter what solutions are attempted, it's going to be vexingly hard to fix because most pitchers will continue to throw as hard and with as much break as possible to get more outs. Even if the ball is dead, throwing hard and with max spin will mean your ERA is 2.00 instead of 3.00. Half joking, but blame all this on the decision in 1884 to legalize overhand pitching. I suppose this is anecdotal, but underhand pitchers don't seem to get hurt at nearly the rate of overhand. Today's women's college softball pitchers' numbers look like Walter Johnson or Kid Nichols.

The genie is out of the bottle, you're not putting it back in. Re-legalize sticky stuff and pitchers will concentrate on throwing sweepers that break eight feet. There is no incentive to not go for 100% effective 100% of the time. Listen to pitchers themselves talk - it's I'm going to do everything I possibly can to succeed in the majors, if I break that's just the risk I'm willing to take. Somehow they have to incentivize throwing most pitches at 80% effort. The only thing I can think of is limit teams to eight pitchers on the active roster, and very few minor league transactions a year. Then an average starter has to throw 200+ innings, and that can't happen with today's approaches.

I think a good start would be to ban anyone from pitching until they turn 24. It's coach pitch until you get out of college... Obviously that's not going to happen. But I think some forward-thinking organization might take some halfway decent pitching prospects drafted at 18 or 22 but with clean bills of health and have them just not pitch for three years, maybe mess around as outfielders or whatever, and see what happens when they go back to pitching when their UCLs are mature at 25-26.