Tony-OH

I was thinking the same thing.

Cash loves taking out his cruising starting pitcher because some computer thinks he should.

Not even close. Devereaux was fast but not like, faster guy in the league fast like Mateo. Probably closest guy was Alan Wiggens.

Holy crap, Chirinos shaved off his beard and I didn't even know it was him.

Never seen a guy faster in an Orioles uniform.

Anyone wanna guess who has the second highest avg EV on the Orioles behind Mountcastle?

U-R-I-A-S!!!!

Tracker updated. I'm not going to switch Fabian until MLB tracker does.

Too bad tonight he's looking like the 2021 version so far.

Can Odor go away now?

Hopefully this is because he's travelling and they want him to breath and take in everything before throwing him into the lineup. I will not be happy if he's sitting the bench while Odor plays after tonight.

No, I'd give more to Stowers. McKenna is 4th outfielder at best. Stowers has the potential to be an every day guy and he's a better defender than Santander. He gets most of the reps for me.

Well, I guess it depends on how much you value defense over offense. While McKenna is a good defender, statcast has him covering about 0.4 ft/sec better than the average outfielder which would put him tied for 40th in MLB if he qualified. That's good, but not really game changing great. Now, Santander, and more surprisingly Hays have been rated at -1.4 ft/sec over the average outfielder and both are among the worse in MLB among qualifiers. (This is one of the reasons I snicker every time Ben McDonald says we have the best outfield defense in baseball). Hays of course makes up for defense with his offense, but you could make a case that Santander's defense in RF has fallen off that McKenna's defense could make up for his poor bat in the long run and actually be more valuable than Santander. In rWAR, Santander is at 0.9 and McKenna is a 0.8 in much less playing time so you actually have an argument that McKenna could be receiving more PAs at Santander's expense. Thing is, right now, they are probably trying to move Santander so they would like for him to get hot and hopefully a team that is willing to live with his defense in RF or DH him will bite. Saying that, if I'm giving Santander's PAs away, I'm giving them to Stowers.

Yikes. Ok, that's an opinion I do not share, but who's PAs do you take away from?

Are you going on record that McKenna will be a better major leaguer than Stowers? Let's talk about the age thing. First, we all know that Stowers missed a year do to COVID plus he's a college guy vs a high school guy like McKenna so you can't go apples to apples here. As for you comment that "outside of AA" Mckenna has been better, that's like saying, "Besides the shooting, how was the play Miss Lincoln?" McKenna had 817 PAs in AA and put up a .234/.327/.357/.684 OPS at 21 and 22 years old. Stowers put up a .283/.377/.561/.938 in 276 PAs at 23-years old a year after taking a year off because of COVID. McKenna has just 176 PAs in AAA where he's done well, but he's had 301 PAs at the major league level now where he's slashed .209/.299/.297/.595. Stowers has now put up a .258/.356/.507/.863 line in 417 AAA PAs. As a hitter, they are not even in same universe when it comes to EV and hard hit % and I'll say that without even knowing Stowers' numbers in AAA. Now, McKenna no doubt gets the nod for speed and defense between the two, but Stowers can play CF if he needed to and won't kill a team. While Stowers is going to come with a high K total, he gets to his game power way more than McKenna does and he can hit good velocity, something McKenna can't. While Stowers is probably going to struggle when he first come up, once he makes the adjustments, he's going to be a solid every day outfielder or a great power hitting 4th outfielder at worse.

Great minds and all that.

McKenna has become a solid 4th outfielder and Brandon Hyde and crew have done a good job picking good matchups for him to improve his likelihood of success. He's got elite speed and he plays very good defense with the ability to play all three outfield spots. His play the other night coming in from RF and making that nice running catch to save runs shows his value. Santander comes nowhere near making that catch. Offensively, he is what he is and that is a limited offensive player. His wOBA (.290) is not awful (.311 is MLB avg) but he's outperforming his xwOBA (.232) suggesting he's been lucky so far to put up the meager numbers that has. His avg EV (83.5) is the lowest on the team even below Chirinos. His walk rate has fallen to 5.8% because pitchers know they can challenge him and he won't hurt them much. In the end, he's similar to Mateo in that his value is in his defense and speed but Mateo is a better hitter and plays a more premium position at SS. With Stowers, Cowser and Vavra (Vavra could very well be his replacement) ready in the near future, he's going to have a hard time keeping a roster spot in a year or two. #scoutingreport

Raley needs to get hit in a situation where it won't hurt the team!

After this game thread, I will be upgrading the board. Similar look and feel but some cool upgrades.

Almost every player that makes up Delmarva, FCL O's and the DSL team have been acquired by the Elias regime. Their combined record of 63-129 is abysmal. Winning in the minor leagues does not always show the talent of a team, but to say they have played overmatched player at these levels is a understatement. Delmarva has played and pitched several players this year that have no business even being in professional baseball and definitely not in A-ball. Grant, it, Elias barely drafts high school players so that is part of it, but the other is that his Latin American investments have not done well overall. Basallo is the one of the three Million bonus babies who has done well offensively. Maikol Hernandez is completely lost at the plate in the FCL at 18-years old which is not a good sig at all. Tavera remains in a deep slump since starting out the year ok. The emergence of Bencosme and Estrada are nice, but overall the Latin American players have been underwhelming and have contributed to these awful records.

It's certainly become the Hall of Very Good.

This is a good point. Mountcastle's approach is not the approach taught by the Elias regime. I've always thought he would be a guy who has value who could be moved because honestly, you can convert just about anyone to play first base and Rutschman can play there when he's not catching sometimes. Mountcastle has traditionally not hit in April and July. Not sure why, but his track record at the major league level shows his lengthy cold streaks. Lengthy cold streaks from your power hitter is not a good thing and may make him pretty available if Elias can get the right return for him.

It's nice to see him on a hot streak. Need to see it for an extended period of time to move back up too far but I have him back on the top 30 on the power rankings.

I think that's a pretty good assessment. I know they use the "Developmental list" to try and reinvent players. Not saying they are doing that with Mayo, but the back spasms could have been an opportunity to give him some weeks of work in their camp. We'll see how all of this works out. Rutshcman is a the first offensive prospect "developed" by them that is having success at the major league level and he was kind of a no brainer. Henderson, Stowers, and Westburg, Cowser and Mayo looks very promising, but until they have success at the major league level we don't know how successful their development process is overall.

I will not lie, as good as I can appreciate some of the Elias' developmental changes that are seeing results, I have very limited faith in their training staff to keep their players healthy. I get it, injuries happen, but it's almost a shock if a player in the Orioles system does not spend some time of the IL this year. 2. Rodriguez 6. Mayo 7. Stowers 8. Kjerstad 9. Prieto 11. Norby 12. Vavra 13. Baumler 15. Denoyer 16. Rhodes 17. Tavera 18. Rom Have all missed varying time this season, and these are just the ones in the Top-20 prospects. When you add in very lengthy rehab times with this current staff, these players are missing valuable development time. Even if you prescribe to theory that all teams have these kinds of injuries, at the very least you can say the Orioles are not any better despite their reluctance to push pitch or innings limits.