Aristotelian

As much as I value defense, Ohtani is that good as a hitter that you have to think about it. Right now they are neck and neck in fWAR (I believe Ohtani was ahead before Gunnar's big game yesterday). bbref has Ohtani slightly ahead. I would take Gunnar but it's close in my mind. By the way, going into the Angels series Gunnar had like .500 something OPS vs LHP. Now he is at .324/1.017. He just keeps getting better.

He would have been a good 1:1 but he is an absolute game changer at 42. If I had to pick between the two... That's really tough. Fortunately we don't have to. Elias accomplished the impossible by getting them both in the same draft. Along with Stowers, Ortiz, and Hernaiz. That has to be one of the best draft classes of all time.

"Who do I want this year between Ohtani and Gunnar Henderson, I'd take Gunnar Henderson"

He was up in the second series, hit .455/1.026 against us.

He was up in the second series, hit .455/1.026 against us.

I hadn't seen the Gelof injury. From what I recall he was a beast against us last year. We won the series 7-1 but one of those wins was a walkoff and another was in extras. Don't sleep on the A's.

Houston is an interesting team with some talent but off to a terrible start. Despite their poor start Fangraphs has them at 44% to make the playoffs, but they could get the fork stuck in them soon.

Yeah, I was looking at our OPS numbers last night. Updated for today, we have two guys over 1.000, four guys over .900, and eight guys .736 (116 OPS+) or higher. So almost our entire lineup is above average or better with four guys producing at an elite level. Cowser 1.139/232 Gunnar 1.022/199 Westburg .941/176 O'Hearn .938/175 Mountcastle .866/157 Rutschman .786/135 Santander .741/118 Mullins .736/116 We also have Mateo off the bench at .746/120 and McCann .667/96, slightly below average but not too shabby for a backup C. Whenever I get the road announcers, they are always talking up our offense. Even when we are down, whenever we get a couple runners they say "here comes that Orioles offense again, they are relentless and they are never out of a game."

I don't think the point was to trash Holliday but to question the reliability of the metric. I share the question about Holliday's OAA. He hasn't been bad but I can't think of a single plus play and OAA thinks he is the best defender on the team.

I think the odds of a SB and a hit are higher than an XBH or two hits. LAA has 6% XBH rate, two hits is like 7%, so maybe 13% chance to win there? A SB gets you to like 27%. If you have >50% chance to make it it's a good play. Definitely not stupid. Plus he made it. Admittedly it is a terrible anticlimactic way to lose but I blame the umps.

This could go on a separate thread but seems relevant here. Three of the guys in this homegrown lineup are currently in the top 10 for fWAR: 6. Gunnar 1.5 7. Cowser 1.4 9. Westburg 1.3 I have to think Gunnar will be moving up with his 3 for 3/HR SB and defense today.

Why is that stupid? SB gets him in scoring position. It's not like trying to steal third and we've seen Kimbrel be really bad at holding runners.

Trade Hays for peanuts and let O'Hearn walk.

I was shocked he accepted. Definitely whiffed on that one. He ended up making the $15.8M from us, plus 2x$10M with the Nats. I wonder what he would have gotten for a 3 year deal in free agency. I see some old projections for him getting $42M to $64M so appears he (or Boras) cost himself some money. I guess he will be OK as a mere 35-millionaire.

14 game on base streak. (Thanks @justD for bringing it up in the game thread although she thought it was a hit streak).