Frobby

Yes, but I don’t have it on DVR.

Gunnar Henderson triples (3) on a ground ball to right fielder Jo Adell. | 04/22/2024 | MLB.com Do me a favor and time this, starting with contact until Gunnar hits 3B. I've done it three times and came up with 10.73, 10.79 and 10.81 seconds. Tell me what you get. So far as I'm aware, the fastest triples of the Statcast era were 10.75 seconds, by Bryan Buxton and Corbin Carroll. No one in the MLB is close to Buxton's speed on triples - Bring Me The News D-backs rookie Corbin Carroll paces fastest home-to-3rd time since 2020 (arizonasports.com)

Agreed.

Well I guess we should just stop watching, since the season is already ruined.

We are getting the top 3 of Oakland’s rotation. We haven’t seen Stripling or Blackburn since 2022. Somehow, Sears has started 4 games against us the last two years, and we hit him pretty hard last year. Their offense is quite anemic at 2.84 runs per game. Odds are their pitchers will really need to shut us down to beat us. But their bullpen is certainly capable of shutting down an opponent, with a collective 3.15 ERA.

I have not noticed that Roch is particularly attentive to McKenna.

To date, in 5 starts: 26.1 IP, 10 H, 3 R, 3 ER, 10 BB, 40 K’s, 1.03 ERA, 0.76 WHIP, 13.7 K/9, 4.0 K/BB. That’s a truly outstanding month of April. Another month remotely similar to that and people will be clamoring to bring him to the majors. Like I said, really the only thing he hasn’t done yet is get through 6 IP semi-regularly, but then again, this is the first time this year they let Povich exceed 86 pitches. So, decent chance he can hit 6 IP a few times in May now that they’ll let him go 90+.

You hoped for more than 16-8? I will gladly take that every time, even with a supposedly soft schedule (which in hindsight doesn’t look that soft).

No, he was clearly saying it might be in Baltimore. But they hadn’t made up their minds.

I’d see this glass as 3/4 full. 4.2 IP of 1-run, 3-hit, 7-K ball is good. You’d like him to get deeper on 94 pitches than 4.2 innings. But, I’m glad they let him come out for the 5th and get to 94 pitches for the first time this year. And, despite being at his highest pitch count of the year, he got the two outs in the 5th without incident. And remembering my past critique that Povich was highly inconsistent from outing to outing last year, this makes 5 straight good outings for Povich. You can find things to improve upon, but that’s real improvement over last year. I do hope to see him get to the point where he can throw 6+ innings semi-regularly.

This actually reminds me a bit of Tampa’s hot start last year. That was even crazier, with the entire team at .879 OPS at the end of April. I remember looking at their players’ stats and virtually everyone was outperforming their historical and prior year numbers by a wide margin. The difference with the O’s is that several of our younger guys don’t have much of a track record to go on.

And when looking at that 3.46 ERA, keep in mind what Tony said in the OP about the questionable defense and official scoring in his first start. He hasn’t allowed a run since then.

Not a ton of relievers in the Hall of Fame. KRod at 437 saves has gotten 10.8% and 7.8% of the votes in his first two tries; Lee Smith at 478 saves got into the HOF only through selection by the Today’s Game Era Committee. I’d say the odds are against Kimbrel being elected by the writers unless he ends up somewhere north of 500 saves, and even then he’d be no sure thing. Pretty good shot that Kimbrel passes KRod this year and finishes the season 4th or 5th on the all time saves list, depending what Kenley Jensen (one ahead of him) does the rest of the year.

This is probably as close to clicking on all cylinders as most teams get. In any given 24-game period, some guys will be up and others down. We have 9 players with an OPS+ of 116 or higher. The four guys you mentioned will have hotter periods, and someone else will be cold then. That’s baseball. But the ratio of hot players to cold ones is really good right now.

I was looking at the O’s stat page and noticing how high all the OPS+ numbers are. For example, Cedric Mullins has a .736 OPS but that’s good for a 116 OPS+ right now. So, I looked around. Right now, the MLB average OPS is .698. That’s down from .734 last year, and (for those thinking of a “cold weather” explanation) from .726 last April. The O’s, on the other hand, have a .780 OPS, compared to .742 last year. That’s 3rd in MLB and good for an MLB-leading 130 OPS+, compared to 107 last year. I’m not sure if the hot hitting will continue, but the team has had one heck of a start offensively, in a year where the league has been pretty cold.