Tony-OH

I like that he was able to get into that up and in fastball. The velocity didn't look amazing from the eye test, but still impressive that he was able to get the barrel to that pitch location.

Oh, they asked him if HE was suspended, not Kevin. That puts his comments in a different light for me. I thought he was covering for Angelos over Brown when he said it was scheduling, not a suspension.

This is where I'm at with this O's gear thing. Who cares? If it helps sell a few more polos, good for them. Now stopping someone from doing a radio broadcast because they didn't have their gear, ridiculous, but I don't see any problem with asking their on air talent to wear the gear.

Agreed on all. Steve knows his stuff and showed to be competent when he did some games in the spring a few years ago. But yeah, kind of that Buck Martinez kind of voice.

Cowser hits a ball 20 feet short of the fence in LF. Newman, "Cowser just short after giving it a ride" This is the "analysis" you get when your boss thinks what Brown did was negative and worth suspending over.

95 middle-middle fastball to Cowser on 0-0.. Swing and miss. FML

Orioles down 8-2. Newman, "The Orioles still have three outs to play with!" This is the "analysis" you get when your boss thinks what Brown did was negative and worth suspending over.

Makes sense then.

I'm a little late to this game. Do we have any insight why in a big series, in Camden Yards, we are getting a Melanie and Dave Johnson booth?

Damn, now that is quite the debut for Webb! He's better than the last Webb we had!

Agreed Roy. That's what veterans do. They don't bring their best stuff, but they figure out how to have a quality start.

Flaherty toughed this one out.

Yep, it's been bad. Like worse than Zach Watson second year in Bowie bad. I guess they needed him to fail so he will work on some things. hopefully he'll bounce back but his complete struggles are a bit of a concern.

I agree that it most likely will end with them parting ways and that will be ashamed for the fans for losing a good young play by play broadcaster. Saying that, a big pay raise and a multi-year contract could calm the situation. But o course if that happened, it would show Angelos had to eat crow and he's not going to do that.

I don't doubt it happened really, ( just wouldn't personally be using an X account called that as proof.

Really. You are using a Twitter account called that to "confirm" rumors. Joke Accounts like that is why Twitter/X is a wasteland of lies and crude.

I agree. Same with MPHs on throws. I'm not sure why they choose to limit certain data unless it's because the data is skewed sometimes with errors and they don't want people to see the errors in real time.

Whoops, I made the classic mistake of not reading through the thread all the way before posting. I said the same thing basically on using catch percentage vice xBA. As for the catch, Mateo turned the wrong way, had to take his eyes totally off the ball by turning the other way, slowed down a bit, then jumped when he didn't have to and the ball deflected off the bottom of his glove. There is little doubt to me the competent major league center fielder catches that ball 99% of the time. Saying all that, that was an absolutely awful 1-2 pitch by Bautista. Can't throw a center cut fastball to a hitter like Alvarez and considering he was the tie run, and runners were at 1st and 2nd, I'm not thrilled with that pitch call by McCann. I think you got to throw a couple of splits, even if that pitch was not very good last night. Heck, maybe even a slider down and under the hands to try and get a chase. If you you throw a fastball in that situation it has to be at the top or out of the zone up. Back to Mateo in CF though. I'm not thrilled with him being there vs McKenna especially late in games. I understand trying to make him more versatile, and I even understand trying to keep that speed and positional versatility on the roster for the playoffs, but McKenna is a league average center fielder and in games against good teams like Houston, your pitchers deserve the best defense in key positions and right now, McKenna is the best defensive CF on the roster with Mullins on the IL.

I've been guilty myself at times at using XBA as an indicator of difficulty of a play, but you are correct, it's not a perfect indicator at all. Really, you have to wait until the catch probability is available in the outfielder's defense "stats" within savant to know fully. Mateo does not have any outfield stats available yet so that effort last not is not available.

Plus, as Roy said, there was also a bloop and a missed catch in there.

That was the make up call for not calling the check swing.

And of course MASN doesn't show the replay of O'hearns check swing. He swang.

Bullpen has been pretty damn good this year but tonight is one of those nights where they choked. It happens.

What, for Frazier?

That's a play most outfielders make. He made two detours in that route then just plain dropped it.