Frobby

The easiest way to keep a closer from getting overworked is to not use him every time there’s a three run save situation. But I think the CBA must require it now.

I feel like last year there was a really challenging period in the late spring/early summer that we essentially aced. Hopefully the O’s will pass those tests this year too.

It's kind of unusual to throw 105 pitches in 5 innings while only allowing 5 hits and one walk, and throwing 68% strikes. There must have been a ton of foul balls.

By the way, Mayo is in a pretty bad slump right now, 1 for his last 25 and 0 for his last 12.

It may have been the first time it was mentioned in this thread, so I can understand how you missed it.

April 17 (three days before Hays hurt his leg): "Austin Hays doesn’t want to say the first two weeks of the regular season were like spring training to him. "He knows those games mattered. But he entered the season cold at the plate after dealing with a stomach virus that saw him lose 10 pounds. He was absent from spring training for four days, then spent the next few days trying to rehydrate and feed himself. It took him nearly a week to return to just hitting again and, after getting hit in the shoulder during his first spring training game back, a full two weeks just to start to feel like himself again. "Hays got sick again in Pittsburgh during the first weekend of April. He’s just now back to the weight and strength he had before the illnesses, he said, and finally feeling healthy enough to contribute." Orioles’ Austin Hays, after losing 10 pounds due to sickness, finally feels back on track - The Baltimore Banner It's also been mentioned in Roch's blog several times.

I did want to mention that I did a little PBP during college for my campus radio station. I did couple of basketball games, a couple of football games, and one baseball game. It's way tougher than it seems from the audience standpoint.

He had some serious bouts of illness this spring, lost ten pounds as a result, etc. So long as he’s now regained his strength, I think he’ll be fine. Of course, he’s streaky even when healthy, so we’ll see what version we get when he returns.

I don't have any problem with Melanie's voice, though Manfra certainly did have a good radio voice. I'm not too sure about the disctinction you're making between delivery and describing the baseball action. I will say that if I was locked in a room and had to choose between radio PBP by Fred or Melanie, I'd probably go with Fred. But in both cases, I far preferred it when they were doing color rather than PBP.

That's what I ate, and it was delicious. Any consequences didn't manifest until today, happy to say. That was probably the highlight of my night. Also, it only took me maybe 30 minutes to get home, so I could stew for an hour and calm myself down. Actually ended up watching the re-broadcast of innings 3-6 and turned it off after Gunnar's homer.

I will say this: several (not all) of Melanie's foibles were also problems for Fred Manfra, who is in the Orioles Hall of Fame and spent 25 years in the O's radio booth. He had a terrible time describing any play that was at all unusual while it was occurring, and he was awful at distinguishing which fly balls would be homers/extra base hits and which were routine fly balls. I can't count how many times I would curse him for raising his voice as though an Orioles homer had been launched and then say it was caught shy of the warning track, or act as though an opponent's ball was just an average fly ball and then say in a semi-sheepish tone that it had cleared the fence. And, he had a way of sounding a bit too happy when things were going poorly. So, Melanie isn't alone.

Everybody missed that. Ben too. He read the body language of the outfielder and while the ball was in flight said something like, "wow, I really thought that was going out." And then it did. From my upper deck seats it was hard to follow the flight of the ball and I had the exact reaction Ben did. As an aside, the Nats' broadcast booth is very high up and very far back. I was sitting in the 5th row of the upper deck and the press box was way behind and higher than where I was sitting.

As I've said numerous times, she's tolerable on TV PBP, where a timely and accurate description of the action is not essential. I wouldn't say she's good at it, but it's passable. It's the radio PBP where she's basically unacceptable.

So far, only 3 2nd rounders and 3 3rd rounders from that draft have made the majors, and only three of those have positive WAR. But, it's still early and I'm sure that several others will make the majors eventually. I don't follow other team's prospects closely enough to guess who from that group has a good shot at the majors. I'd certainly say that Rhodes is a long shot, but I guess it wouldn't shock me if he developed enough to get a cup of coffee some day. He does have some pop and pretty good plate discipline. Sorry for the digression. Back to Povich, among pitchers with at least 5 starts, Povich leads the IL in ERA, is 3rd in WHIP, and is 3rd in K/9. He's also 5th in innings pitched.

She actually contacted me and told me someone else had been using her account. Generally, I feel like there's been a recent uptick in people getting personal with other posters and being unnecessarily snarky about others' opinions. I'm glad you drew a line here. He obviously watched Povich's games closely (according to his posts, he's not related but is kind of a Nebraska Cornhusker insider who follows their prospects very closely and has sources in the program). Occasionally he'd post some useful details about why the box score didn't fully reflect Povich's outing. But the "Billy Boxscore" stuff was irritating, and he should have stopped when you told him to. Instead he just doubled down on being a jerk.