Frobby

Austin Hays isn’t playing tonight for Double-A Bowie but he’s back in the lineup Saturday for his fourth injury rehab game. “I think we’re going to make some decisions after that,” Hyde said. Hays has played left and right field and served as designated hitter and gone 5-for-10 with a double and two home runs. “Swinging the bat really well,” Hyde said. “Saw a couple of them, but I talked to some people who have been at the games and he’s running really, really well, so that’s the main thing.” Hyde also said Arizona starting three right-handers didn’t influence the Orioles’ weekend plans for Hays. “We’re just kind of evaluating him after every day,” Hyde said. https://www.masnsports.com/blog/kimbrel-let-s-make-it-simple-i-ve-got-to-be-better-plus-other-notes-before-tonight-s-game

Mine says it won’t start until 5/17.

Did I get lost? Am I in the music forum?

I bought a new phone today. I’m thrilled to report that I was able to recover a lot of my old data, including the voice mails from my dad. All I lost was about 18 months of photos and all of my text messages. I can live with that.

WTF is the “formulated consensus?” Sounds like nonsense.

My view is, the game needs more offense, and if it can be generated by enforcing a true strike zone, I'm for it. I think major league pitchers will adjust and the increase in walks will be significant but not as big as would occur if they just ocntinued throwing balls in the same spots where they were previously getting incorrect calls.

Well, you learn by testing the limits. I’m fine with him doing that at this level.

Maybe, but Delmarva’s defense is second worst in the Carolina League and way below league average.

Keep in mind that the International League uses robo-umps. Major league umps call 12% of true balls as strikes, but only 3% of true strikes as balls (per Ump Scorecard). So, IL pitchers are probably getting a much stingier strike zone than they see anywhere else.

Curious, how many times has he been thrown out on the bases? He’s 12/13 in stolen bases so far, a very good percentage. I know he got thrown out last night trying to stretch a double into a triple. Have there been other instances? He’s scored 15 times in 17 games despite a so-so .338 OBP, so I’d say his baserunning has been an ssset.

My impression is that the O’s really push their players to be aggressive at the lower levels. It’s like, test your limits and you can always back off later. Anyway, I’m pleased that Bradfield is showing a bit of doubles/triples power in the early going.

That’s a ton. An average major leaguer throws 63.9% strikes and 27.8% of those are fouled off. So maybe 18% of pitches are fouled off. McDermott probably had 8-9 more foul balls than you’d normally expect.

Seems like a lot of posters think Hays is done as a productive MLB player, so I’m asking posters to go on record with how he’ll do for the rest of 2024. For purposes of my question, performance year to date won’t be included. For convenience, here are Hays’ pages from BB-Ref and Baseball Savant. He’s 28 years old, and has a career OPS of .740 (.769, .719 and .769 in 2021-23). Last year, he slumped in the second half, posting a .667 OPS after the all star break. This year, he had a .539 OPS in 35 PA in spring training and then a .311 OPS in 50 PA prior to going on the IL. His batted ball data has been awful. So what do you say? Washed up? Small sample size fluke? Illness? What will Hays do when he returns?

I’d like to see Miller pitch a full season before declaring him the best closer in baseball. I get the “right now” part, but performance can vary a lot once arms aren’t so fresh. So, we’ll see.

This is getting pretty far off topic. I’ll just say that every city is different and experiences differ even within a city depending on where you live and work.