Tony-OH

And there you have it. they are looking at the skewed stats that he put last year instead of looking at the stuff on Savant and then looking at the stats once he settled into an every five game starter for the most part. Another thing to consider is the uniqueness of Lowther's speed and movement of his pitches. https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/affinity-pitchers-bySHV#players=pitchers&player=675912-L&s=0.6 This chart shows he pretty unique with only two pitchers (Andrew Heaney and Dillon Peters) having a .7 or above similarity score. I'm still trying understand the importance of these similarity scores still so I'm not sure you can draw any conclusions based on them yet, but it is interesting to see how different he is to most pitchers. It's going to be about limiting his mistakes in the middle of the plate for Lowther. If he can do that, I think he's going to end up a pretty good starting pitcher, and certainly worth way more than 35+.

I could be wrong, but unless a high school kid is the clear and obvious choice as 1:1, I'm betting he goes with one of the high floor college guys because he has more data on them including 2-3 years of college stats. Saying that, the two high school hitters he's given a million plus to (Henderson and Mayo) are both top prospects in the system.

Remember, most of these top deals are made when the players are 14. Imagine trying to decide to give a 14 year old with a good arm a huge bonus. This is why they need a draft of 16-year olds for the International market.

Not only that, if you look at his movement of his pitches and the success he had once he had settled into a 5-day starter routine, along with his success in the minor league prior to 2021, it boggles my mind anyone would not think he's at least a 35+ player. But I can bet the evaluator looked at the stats and went, "yuck", without understanding the entire situation last year.

It's all good wildcard. I don't have any issues with anyone who disagrees with my rankings or thoughts on guys, but I do get peeved when it looks like someone is putting more credence into some national list after they've been here for a long time. While someone can disagree all they like or have a differing opinion, I can guarantee no one has put as much time into watching video and talking with knowledgeable people about the Orioles prospects. I've been doing this now for about 23+ years and have learned a lot and have adjusted how I evaluate as I've gotten more experience. Having so much video to watch on MiLBTv has been a great help to fill in blanks I once had and allowed me to make my own evaluation over word from others. While I can respect the national pubs for trying to do all systems, I'm not sure they have the depth of knowledge to be too accurate, which is why you see highly drafted or once previously highly rank players stay high in their rankings year after year.

Honestly, at this point, they both suck. Who sucks more is really based on how your read into the stuff being released.

Luckily that post was the only place I spelled it wrong! I fixed it though.

As I've said before, the majority of Americans are easily manipulated through PR people, press releases, media and politician speak. If that's not clear by now to some people, then it probably means they are those people easily manipulated. Obviously both sides are trying to work their minions in the press to push their talking points. Fans already have a connection to players vs owners, so it's an uphill challenge for the owners to get good PR. The Fangraphs poll is a perfect example. The only thing that surprises me is how aggressive the pro player people are as if they don't see the greediness and comments coming from their $40 million a year spokesman. But then I remind myself how easily people can be manipulated into literally seeing things with their own eyes or hearing things with their own ears yet they can be told be the media that it's different. The most accurate statement here about this whole situation as I see it is there are no good guys in this situation. Basically as fans we have to wait to see how Billionaires and Millionaires carve up the Billions of dollars of revenue while they figure out how to drain the fan of the last dollar in their pockets.

While I'm still trying to figure out the right way to do the Hangout Hall of Fame, I've decided to dedicate the Orioles Talk Forum as the Michael "weams" Williams Memorial Orioles chat and the Game Thread Forum as the Scott "ScOtt" Niedentohl Memorial Game chat. If you'd like to see how it looks, go here: https://forum.orioleshangout.com/forums/

Hear hear.. On point.

Exactly. There's blame on both sides to go around. Again, neither side gives two hoots about the fans.

I think you have to face facts, Scherzer is not trying to get the younger guys paid more, he's trying to get $50 million a year or more for himself. He's said nothing that makes me think he cares about anything other than himself and other veterans. I get it, it's easy to not like the owners, heck, I don't like them either, but I'm calling out what I see from reading their comment and proposals and the players are not on your side. But, you are welcome to be on the players side. I'll be honest, I'm very negative towards the players' stance, but I'm not on anyone's side but the fans of mid to small markets.

The average major league salary is over one million a year. Your numbers are not even close and reek of talking points by the MLBPA by adding in players who spent partial season in the big leagues, especially a year after COVID where most teams used many more players from the minors, particularly pitchers. The players have no interest in creating a more completive sport where all 30 teams have a chance with good management, but a system where it will force owners to pay mediocre players more money. I could care less who gets more money between Billionaires and Millionaires, but I do care about having small market teams have a system where they can compete year in and year out. The MLPBA is run by idiotic, money hungry men with no sense of care for the fans. The Owners are led by a world class douchebag who should be running a Bojangles in rural Alabama. There are no good guys in this situation, but the players have come out as the bad guys with their obvious distain for small and mid market teams and their fans. So spare me the poor players routine because that doesn't fly when their main spokesman is a guy making over $40 million a year to make 34 starts a year. If Scherzer was a good guy, and he's really just an out of touch ultra rich elitist with distain for the common fan, he could take ten million of his contract every year and make all those "poor" up and down guys make the major league minimum of over $600K a year. As I've said many times, I'm disgusted with this entire situation but the players have complete and totally turned my off by the total and utter distain for the fan in these negaotiations.

Yet you said, "he will be 26 on April 30 and has not done well at AAA yet. That makes it hard for him to make prospect lists IMO. ". Now if you meant, it makes it hard for national people to not put them on the list, that's different, but that's not what you said.

What are you talking about? You know way more about him to have that uneducated opinion.

One thing to clarify here, the whole purpose of a floor is to make teams pay more for players instead of going cheap while tanking. it has nothing to do with competitiveness or awful teams to the MLBPA. They've made it very clear that they are about making more money and could care less about competitiveness across the league. They are worried about creating an environment where players make more money no matter what.

Probably more like 2023 if no agreement is reached with the unions to reinstate this testing. Players right now would be too worried something being agreed to for 2022 so they're less likely to risk using anything.

The only things that's important about any of this is that is there used to be a guy named Chicken Wolf in the major leagues. Now that's a guy you can root for!

I find this year (if it happens) to be the year where we should be surrounding our young players with players to help them win now. I'd be happy with a 2022 Orioles team with 72 wins because it would be a transition year. I think that's what Elias was beginning to do when this lockout occurred. This year should not be a team where Elias is bringing up non major leaguers to fill out his roster while watching the team head to another 100 loss season. f it is, I'd be very disappointed and start questioning his methods on building a competitive major league team.

I also heard that Baumler was not their main pitching overslot in the 5th. I don't know who it was, but if had to hazard a guess, it was Dylan MacLean who went in the 4th round to TX for $1.2 million.

Again, it' not all luck. The Orioles clearly knew what Mayo's number was and what teams were on him and the money they had left or were going to need to sign the guys they already drafted. That's good scouting work. Now, I do believe they got lucky in the sense that most teams weren't able to see most of these high school players and that may have let Mayo drop. I can guarantee you if the teams were able to redraft Mayo would be a 1st rounder. Now, I'm not saying Elias and his guys are perfect afterall, they gave Haskins $1.9 million and I'll be the first to say I don't think he's worth that at all now that I've seen him professionally.

ecause they made a calculated decision that he would still be available in the 4th. They obviously had a good feel for teams that may be on him and what money that had left. It's clear to me that Elias and his team have a really good feel for what the players' numbers are because they've signed every guy they've drafted. So at the end of the day, if you think the teams that are on him don't have his money, then why not let him slip until the 4th in a 5 round draft. The 2020 draft was really weird because of COVID and 5 rounds. I think we're going to see more Mayo types then we see in other years. After Mayo was selected by the Orioles, only Texas with High school pitcher Dylan MacLean in the 4th round went for more than 1 million ($1.2) so teams were tapped out by the 4th.

I'm not sure what your point is here honestly. Mayo was never a 5th round talent even before missing his senior year due to COVID. Hence it took $1.75 million to forego his commitment to Florida. He ended up with early 2nd round money and I'm betting if he had his senior year, he would have ended up a 1st rounder in a full draft. So again, while there is some luck that he lost his senior year which led to some concerns from some teams, it's good scouting the Orioles knew what it would take to sign him and that no one else had the money left to sign him after a certain point so they could wait.

Honestly, Mayo may be one of those COVID related good news stories for the Orioles. Mayo was hurt by basically missing his senior year but for a few games. With questions about his defense at 3B and his desire for at least second round money, most teams were thinking he was too big a risk. Who knows where he would have gone in the draft if he had a huge senior year? With the talent I've seen, it's clear first round talent so the question was, did the Orioles make out because of his missed senior year? Most likely yes. So yes, there's a little luck in the situation that allowed Mayo to be available in the 5th round, but it was Elias' use of player pool money that allowed him to be targeted and signed. That's good work by a scouting staff that could not physically see or talk to a player after early March. So there's some luck, but also this would be a huge scouting win if Mayo can fulfill his potential.