Tony-OH

Westburg has had consistent long streaks of struggling followed by streaks of being red hot since he's hit Bowie last year. He's literally been the definition of streaky. But this is Ortiz's thread.

Mckenna is a better defensive outfielder overall and better base runner due to his speed, so that alone gives him a nod as a 4th/5th outfielder type. Haskin to me just doesn't do anything that suggests he's going to be a regular. He could end up a 4th outfielder or a maybe a 2nd Division regular.

I haven't seen anything in his middling stuff that indicates he's somebody that needs to be protected or will be taken. He's a low 90s sinkerballer with a inconsistent slider and change. Unfortunately, he did not get a bump in velocity that some pitchers get after TJ surgery. He's a NP for me from what I've seen in his return unfortunately.

Hernaiz has had a nice year with the bat to get a two-level promotion this year to Bowie, but one thing to remember is he does not have the arm strength to be a SS at the major league level. Yesterday's game was a good example when in the first inning, he was unable to get a speedy runner at first on a routine hopper towards the 2nd bas bag. Then later in the inning, I'll let the Bowie announcer give you the call, "Lined to short, taken on a hop by Hernaiz, deep in the grass, a rainbow toss get there." That is a pretty good assessment of Hernaiz's throwing arm. Norby obviously is the everyday second baseman at Bowie, and one of the few infielders the Orioles have not moved around much (has played only 49 innings in LF and 2 at SS not at 2B) this year, but Hernaiz either needs to be playing 2B or LF.

Let's just get into the Red Sox bullpen and burn some arms.

Waltimore just took away two home runs this inning, one from Urias and one from Mateo.

Just one of those games where everything goes one way. Thankfully no matter how ugly it only counts as one loss.

So who of the position players will get to pitch today?

So, what did I miss? lol

https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/preview?game_pk=663455&game_date=2022-9-10

You have to take the defense into consideration. Westburg's arm strength makes him questionable on the left side of the infield but with shifts getting abolished next year, he should be able to handle 2B. Ortiz is a plus defensive SS and could very well be a gold glove 2B. Ortiz's significant defensive plusses makes him a better overall prospect for me than Westburg, who has also some hit tool questions due to his streakiness. You are right, Ortiz does not have a sustained track record, but watching his PAs, it's not like you see him over matched and his ability to drive the ball to all fields is really impressive. If you go back to May 28th, he's slashed .314/.371/.530/.901 in 381 PAs with 15 home runs, 22 2Bs and a 32 to 51 BB/K rate. I don't really think he's was healthy until late June but even if you take all of June, he's had a pretty good run for a guy who is an elite defender at SS.

Yeh, gotta be Tate then Bautista!

He really is. If you ever want to see the exact opposite of Rutschman, watch Nottingham at Norfolk! lol

Uggh, thought that was strike 3!

For a very short time, statcast was putting those defensive numbers for infielders on their site but took them down. I'm assuming they were not accurate. it would be nice though if they re-added them while also adding in peak throwing speeds for outfielders and infielders. The Ranges screwed us all by hiring Baseball Savant creator Daren Willman away from MLB. Statcast has shown no growth since his departure.

You are making some great points here and Ido believe some people don't really understand how a generation have grown up with the Orioles being more of an embarrassment than something to e proud of. My youngest son is 26 years old and this is the first time since 2014 he's brought up something about the Orioles to me. Is he a fan of them sure, but does he have his heart and soul in games like me, no, he doesn't. He's been inundated with Orioles since he was kid, but they've mostly been bad. Hopefully, with some sustained winning and the new young core coming up (He's excited over Rutschman and Gunnar) that generation will start to pay more attention and want to go to games with their friends. Now I'm not saying some don't do this already, but the only way back to decent attendance on non giveaway nights during school season is to win and win consistently.

One thing to note with Witt is that most of his negative OAA comes from playing 3B and 2B vs SS where he's just -1 OAA. He's actually been worth 2 OAA playing straight up but has been worth a little less when being asked to shade towards 3B or the 2B bag. With such a strong arm, it's strange that his worse area is in the 3B/SS hole. I went to the filmroom and pulled up 9 of his errors at SS (one is him reaching on an error by a SS, sorry). It appears to me that his hands aren't that good. He makes a lot of unforced errors on pretty routine plays. Now it hard to use filmroom to find balls that got by him for singles while in the field which could help with range, but from error perspective, which does affect OAA, his hands has been his main culprit. The question is do hands improve with experience? https://www.mlb.com/video/00u7jzgkdtP9kH55c356/reels/bobby-witt-ss-errors

If the team uses him right, and by right, I mean against a lineup full of righties coming up, he can have some success, but he really doesn't have anything to defend himself against lefties. I wonder if Holt will have him work on a change. If he could develop a change that's even playable against lefties, he could end up something decent out of the pen.

That's an interesting point and one that I really can't significantly argue with, but my gut feeling would say the peak is more around 22-25 defensively and speed wise. We've seen players show better burst speeds in the outfield from one year to the next, even improving as they gain experience dealing with upper decks in the outfield, but it would be an interesting subject to study. Too bad MLB refuses to gives us access to minor league statcast data.

It will be interesting to follow Witt's defensive development. I'm actually curious to know if toolsy prospects have come up and had really bad defensive numbers across the spectrum then suddenly got better with experience. If statcast is suggesting his lateral movement may not be good now, I'm skeptical that a 6-1, 200 pound 22-year old is going to get quicker. He'll be an interesting use case to use when our prospects come up and we get statcast data on them.

Not anymore today. I'm giving breaks. Tired of this BS.

Typically RZNJ is a little too rosey on our guys at times, but I don't have anything to argue with here. I see the same things. Ortiz has become a pretty special prospect but I'm ok if he's flying under the radar a bit nationally. Keith Law was on him pretty early and he has connections to the Elias regime so Ortiz was trending pretty high after he came back from COVID year stronger. He didn't show a ton before he got hurt and I thought it was more "Blood hype" but once he got fully healthy and strong again at Bowie this year, he's been every bit a top prospect and besides foot speed, Ortiz he's above average in every tool.

Ortiz to me is every bit the defender that Mateo is with maybe a tad less arm, though Ortiz's arm is solid major league average for a SS. Ortiz should be a better hitter than Matteo as well as he'll get on base more and has more opposite field power. Obviously Mateo gets the nod in speed as Ortiz will not be a stolen base threat like Mateo. Ortiz is the guy who made the biggest jump for me this year as a prospect outside of Henderson. He's very, balanced at the plate, has shown the ability to hit offspeed and good fastballs, and I buy into the theory that he wasn't totally 100% early in the year because of his recovery from shoulder surgery. Outside of Henderson, Ortiz may be the most complete positional prospect in the upper minors. I really think he has a chance at making the team next year if the team does not go out and get a second baseman. Obviously we don't know who will get moved this offseason with the glut of middle infield players available to the team, but I'm betting teams will be asking for Ortiz. I think he's probably jumped Westburg as a prospect because of his ability to play a plus defensive SS and his better plate discipline than Westburg. But I need to do a full analysis on that before making that official.

I'll need to go back and watch his last couple of starts to see how he's getting his outs, including his WHIFF. I'm hoping to see he's doing it with some changeups but his change in Bowie was quite terrible.

You sound like some of the people on our Facebook page. Why do you think disagreeing with a decision that has been made means they think the FO don't know what they are doing? It's called discussion. There is nothing wrong with questioning something the FO or manager does without it meaning the person thinks they don't know what they are doing. You've been around here way too long to start being one of those guys that say, "The FO know more than you so shut up".