Frobby

That’s not even in doubt. That was a very shallow fly ball (227 feet). McKenna took forever to get rid of it and didn’t make a strong or accurate throw. He’s capable of throwing much better than that, and Hays consistently does. I dare say that if Hays is in RF there, the 3B coach probably doesn’t send the runner.

He’s hit .701 since April 12. I don’t rule out him heating up. I do think his EV drop (from 89 to 84) is quite alarming and supports your 50 lb. bat description.

He was dominant for his first 10-11 appearances, so I don’t buy “he just doesn’t have it anymore.” He doesn’t have it right now, that’s for sure. The O’s will try to nurse him back to it. They invested too much not to try.

The point Elias made about the quality of advance scouting and game-planning made a lot of sense to me. There’s not much incentive to invest in that at the AAA level.

I routinely leave for O’s games 42 miles from my house with less time to spare than I did for this one. Honestly I think the route the map app sent me on was doomed to get worse during the time I was traveling. And another thing is just the cost of the tickets and parking compared to equivalent seats and parking at Camden Yards. Probably would have cost no more than $65-75 compared to the $112 I paid for that crappy experience.

Thanks for the sympathy. I always keep my phone on low vibrate, so calling it wouldn’t have done any good. I also hadn’t backed it up to the cloud, so I’ve lost a lot of data, including some voice mails I’d saved from my dad, who died two years ago. It just blows.

I convinced my wife that we should go to the O’s - Nats game last night. Boy, do I wish I hadn’t! I went and bought upper deck seats halfway between home and 3B, five rows back. All-in cost, $87 on VividSeats, would have been more if I’d bought direct from the Nats. And, I bought an advance parking spot at a lot several blocks from stadium, cost $25.50. I live about 16 miles from Nats Park. Game time 6:45, my map app says it will take an hour and 6 minutes. We leave at 4:45, and I figure we’ll spend 30-45 minutes looking around the stadium and finding some veggie food for my wife. Instead, we spend an hour and 53 minutes in the car. It’s bumper to bumper for most of the trip, the map app keeps pushing our ETA further and further back, and when we finally get to the address where the parking lot is supposed to be, there’s no obvious parking lot entrance, and I have to circle the block in very slow traffic, take a lucky guess that the lot entrance is off an alley between two buildings. Eventually we find it and park, and the parking attendant tells us that the lot closes 30 minutes after the game. (The website had said 60 minutes.) We walk to the main entrance, it’s now game time, and it’s a mob scene. There’s a woman with a bullhorn telling people it will be faster to walk to one of the other entrances, so we do, which takes several minutes. We get there and there’s a single-file line of a couple hundred people waiting to get in. We wait that out, which takes 10-12 minutes, and by the time we’re inside the stadium it’s 7:02 and the first inning is over. But my wife needs her veggie food, so we find the one stand that has some, and as we stand there, I see an Oriole trying to score, but there’s a pillar blocking my view of home plate and I have to guess from the roar of the crowd that the runner was thown out. My wife’s food in hand, we look for a stairway or escalator to the upper level, and finally find the longest series of ramps you have ever seen in your life. It takes eight turns of the ramp, each one several hundred feet long, to reach the top. By the time we are finally at our seats, the Nats already have scored in the second inning and the Orioles are up in the third inning and already to the last batter in the order. Meanwhile, I haven’t eaten but I want to actually watch the game for a while, so I wait until the bottom of the 6th and get in line at Ben’s Chili Bowl, figuring that will take no more than half an inning, but no, it takes a full inning and I miss the O’s scoring their third run in the process. Well, I don’t need to tell you what unfolded in the 9th through 12th innings and how excruciating it was, but let’s just say I was already in an extreme state of agitation before any of that happened and my mood got darker and darker and barely brightened when we actually won. As we leave our seats, I pick up an empty water bottle and beer can of mine and dump them in a nearby recycling bin. My wife says she needs to use the ladies’ room and while I’m waiting, I reach into my pocket for my cell phone and…it’s not there. I want to run back to our seats to look, but my wife is still in the ladies’ room, so I have to wait for what seems like an eternity. She finally emerges, I dash back to our seats, but the phone is nowhere to be found. As I come onto the concourse, I spy the recycling bin and realize I may have dumped my phone in there while dumping my empties. I fish around for a minute, don’t find it, but short of dumping out the whole bin, I’m not going to be sure it’s not in there. But I look at my watch and realize I don’t have time to do that because the effing garage closes 30 minutes after game time and 15-20 minutes have gone by already. So, I check with customer service to see if a phone has been turned in (no, of course), and dejectedly leave. I have never, ever been in such a bad mood leaving an Orioles victory. So, that’s my tale of woe. Even before the 9th to 12th innings and the cell phone fiasco, I’d told myself this was one of the worst experiences I’d ever had at a baseball game and that I’d never again be caught dead driving from my house to Nats Park. The rest was just icing on the frigging cake, and now my phone is probably at the bottom of some dumpster. At least we won the game. If not, I’d probably be in the bottom of some dumpster too.

Fell behind some hitters but you really can't complain. He was pretty overpowering

Well, you also need to consider that Adley has always hit better when he DH’s than when he catches. Some of that may be because he tends to DH against LHP, but not all of it.

How ‘bout when Cowser made that throw that was halfway up the first base line? And actually, Cowser’s been quite terrible the last two weeks, .114/.262/.171. That’s basically the line that got him sent back to Norfolk last year. I will be glad to have Hays back and give the O’s more flexibility to match up. Assuming his bat returns to normal, which I believe it will.

What an ass. I actually found the substance of his posts to be useful and detailed. But he just couldn’t stop being obnoxious to other posters.

I’m not necessarily against this, just because Kjerstad needs more opportunity to show what he can do. Not sure it’s an upgrade but I wouldn’t mind finding out.

Note the pitch that got O’Hearn and Hyde thrown out of the game. Not the worst call of the day, but one of them.

I do not think Holliday has the extra year yet. I may be misremembering, but I think if a team options a player to the minors and recalls that player within 20 days, the intervening service time is reinstated. The purpose is to prevent teams from keeping a player below service time limits by giving them a short trip to the minors. Holliday was optioned on April 26, so he needs to stay in the minors until at least May 16 for his service time not to be reinstated. After that, he will not be able to earn a full year of service unless he finishes in the top two for Rookie of the Year.

Well, you definitely got my attention!