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DanS

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  • Favorite Current Oriole
    Austin Hays
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    Brooks

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  1. Perhaps we've become spoiled by our recent top draft picks. We no longer get a top 5 pick, and I like Bradfield as a number 17 pick. I watched a number of his games at Vandy, and he truly has elite speed and defense. He is very lean and lacks power, but he can potentially become a special player who gets on base, leads the league in steals and covers a lot of ground in center field. Sixteen players were chosen before him, so we should expect some holes in his game, but I like the ceiling.
  2. @Tony-OH makes a great point about Means. Injuries to pitchers often cause a subtle change to mechanics, which cause other injuries. It's hard to know whether Means will be able to stay on the field and be effective. I don't see a good reason to stack up position players in the minors. Pitchers are more fragile. Pitching depth is much more important than position player depth. Separately, we should go all in for 2024. It's been 40 years since we won a World Series. When you have a shot, you need to take it.
  3. The Orioles remind me of guys at weddings when I was young. The bride threw the bouquet and the groom threw the garter, and if you caught the garter, you supposedly got married next. If you caught it, women would ask when you were getting married while your girlfriend gave you the look. Most guys would wait for some poor sucker to catch the garter, and then you would do the fake lunge and pretend that you were trying to catch it. The Os have mastered this technique. After all of the key signings, you will hear how interested they were, but they just couldn't quite close the deal.
  4. Buck and I like our guys, but Captain Obvious says the org is out of balance. Using the current prospect power ranking from @Tony-OH, the top 9 guys are position players, mostly in AA or above. We need to get pitchers. For me, the key to the puzzle is Coby Mayo. He's a great prospect, but Gunnar blocks him at third. The team needs to decide where Mayo plays, and fill out the roster accordingly. If he moves to 1b, you don't need all of your 1b guys. If you want his arm in the outfield, you have another extra outfielder. A pure max value guy could argue to trade him as a 3b, but you would need a huge return to make that deal. I would like to see him get more reps at 1b, but the team should make a decision ASAP. Would you move Gunnar to SS and play Mayo at 3b? I suppose that puts Holliday at 2b, which leaves Ortiz and Westburg available. If Mayo goes to 1b, pick one of Ortiz and Westburg. After you lay out the roster starting with your best guys, you see who are the extra guys. It looks to me like we can trade more than one guy from the top 10 and still have plenty of position players. You don't need Willems and Basallo, especially if Mayo goes to 1b. Pick one of Cowser and Kjerstad. It hurts to see I guy you traded become a star, but if you get comparable value at a position of need, you live with that. You won't likely get a top pitcher dealing only the lower prospects.
  5. There is no crying in baseball, but there is a lot of luck. It's a lot like life. I often tell my wife it's a game of inches. A fly ball snatched from over the top of the wall is a few inches short of a home run. A pitch on or near the corner can create a 1 and 2 count or a 2 and 1 count. The count affects the next pitch and possibly the game. When Chuck and Brooks called the game and a ball was crushed and caught on the fly, Chuck would say that those things even out over the course of the year. Brooks would say "I still don't believe that, Chuck". As several posters said in this thread, many little plays can change a game. Despite all the new advanced stats, baseball can be hard to quantify. But back to the original post from @Tony-OH, I would have said "I'll have some of what you're smoking". This team seems to defy logic. Enjoy the ride while it lasts. Forty years ago, nobody would have believed that we would go this long without returning to the World Series.
  6. I was surprised how small he looked sitting next to his father on draft night, but his father is a big dude. When I saw him in Aberdeen last weekend, it looked like he is considerably stronger now. I guess he has a little more time to work out than the other players, since he doesn't lose time shaving every morning.
  7. I'm curious what grade @Tony-OH has on Ardoin's arm. A runner on Friday night had a ridiculously good jump on the pitcher, and Ardoin still nearly got the ball to second on time.
  8. I was at the game. Pham was dominating the whole night. I don't recall even any loud outs. He didn't light up the radar gun. I only saw fastballs around 90 to 91, although I only checked occasionally. I'm certainly no scout, but to my untrained eye, I also didn't see great movement on the off speed stuff. The hitters couldn't make contact, but I couldn't see why he was so tough to hit. When Virbitksy came in later, you could hear him popping the mitt louder than Pham, but both Virbitsky and Heid got rocked by the opposing team. Maybe Pham is just a deceptive guy who mixed his pitches well and hits his spots. I'm also curious if @Tony-OH thinks his stuff will play at higher levels.
  9. T.T. Bowens rockets to the top of the list with a 2.167 OPS. I'm kidding, but I do have a serious question for @Tony-OH. If an org guy keeps putting up big numbers at higher levels, how do you determine if he has become a prospect? What do you look for to figure out if he is a late bloomer like Luke Scott, or just a guy who can hammer minor league competition like Lou Montanez?
  10. What do you think of Patrick Dorrian?
  11. Take a deep breath. Relax. This is a baseball forum. We've been down this road before. Tony has a tough job keeping the forum on track in the current world where we live. Let's all put this in perspective. When you or a loved one has a serious health issue, you have a crisis. When you lose your job, you have a crisis. When you don't like something on a message board, you still have the important things that make life good. Let's all just have fun and talk about baseball. Enjoy your preferred beverage and count your blessings.
  12. My favorite quotes (as best as I can remember) about Belanger: "He didn't even wear a cup. His hands were that good". From Brooks - "When there was a high popup, we all just stood around and waited for Belanger to get it". From guys in front of me at Memorial Stadium with runners on and Belanger up next. The first guy says "Belanger's due". His buddy says "Belanger's always due". I recall Ozzy being flashier than Belanger, but I saw Belanger many, many times, and I just saw highlights and occasional games with Ozzie. Belanger seemed to make all of the plays. You had to see him often to truly appreciate him. Hot smashes and bad hops that ate up other infielders were routine plays for the the blade. He made tough plays look easy. You got used to seeing him make the tough plays seemingly without max effort, so maybe that's why he isn't remembered as flashy. With Belanger and Brooks, Chuck Thompson and Bill O'Donnell would remark about how it was hardly worth it to try to hit a ball to their side of the infield. Few balls ever got through. It was truly a special time to watch defense in Baltimore, and you also had Paul Blair making plays in the outfield.
  13. We need to give Núñez more reps at first. Maybe he is re-not-an infielder, but it helps the team if he can become an average defender.
  14. Here's my Chuck Thompson straddle the fence on this topic: Prospect evaluation is difficult. It is more difficult with players who have played zero games of pro ball, and even tougher this year due to the small sample size. I wouldn't put too much weight on these rankings, but objectively, this says that the evaluators believe that we picked the 8th best prospect with the 2nd pick. I was encouraged by the Vandy coach Corbin talking up Kjerstad on MLB network before we chose him. He is clearly one of the top coaches in college baseball, and he saw him several times in conference play.
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