Tony-OH

Nah. This is pretty rare situation and everyone who pitches understands that's a possibility. They tried to come up with hat helmets a few years ago but almost no one wore one because they looked stupid. This was an awful situation, but I don't see this changing any gear they wear.

The Shorebirds hitters are .8 older than average .7 for pitchers, but that is mostly because the Orioles have a college heavy group there because of the missed year the year before. It's not like they have guys two or 3 years older who are not prospects dominating. Henderson is the bets player on the team and he's 20. Actually, most of their org guys are 23 and 24 and not doing very well. Aberdeen is 23.3 vs 23 avg for hitters and 23.1 vs 23.2 avg for pitching. Bowie is 24.2 vs 24.1 for hitters and 24.7 vs 24.8 for pitchers. So both are basically league average and again, the prospects are the ones doing well at each level.

Thankfully it sounds like the young man is doing ok considering the way it looked. I've never seen a pitcher drop like that before.

Wow, just went back and watched and it's awful. He was clearly knocked out and dropped directly straight down and the convulsing before they cut away was just beyond awful to watch. Glad to see they cut away from the young man going through that. While clearly not the same thing, I hope Cumberland is alright as well. He was clearly understandably upset over what happened.

Wow, that's awful. I hope the young man recovers quickly. Sounds like he's in stable condition,

Minor league winning percentages are irrelevant when the teams are loaded up with older players who are not prospects. These winning percentages mean something when they are being led by prospects age appropriate or lower for their levels (taking COVID into consideration). The Orioles are doing this with age appropriate or under prospects. It's impressive.

The short answer is yes. He looks like a completely different guy. He's commanding two pitches (fastball 96-97, t98 and a 79-81 curveball) and can throw the hard change 89-91 decently armside and low. He's all around the plate right now and throws very little uncompetitive pitches. I've honestly never seen a guy change as much as he had since I wrote him off years ago due to command problems. It's actually shocking. He stays within his delivery now consistently and gets a lot of swing and miss on all three pitches. He's a great little story and will get a big jump onto the prospect power rankings.

It's hard not to get too excited over watching Rodriguez. He looks like a legitimate TOR guy and just needs to stay healthy.

Well both of you are too smart not to realize that the financial side of the game is part of the game. From a pure development standpoint, I'd have zero issues with any of those guys getting reps at the major league level after what I've seen so far, but I completely understand why you don't start their clocks right now on a last place team that will be battling for the #1 overall pick again this year. As I've said before, I hope they change this in the next collective bargaining agreement.

I'm not ready to move him ahead of Baumann since we haven't seen a fully stretched out and ready Baumann yet. He very will could end up ahead of him at some point, but I need to see more of both this year to make that call.

With a bad team, that is certainly the reason. I'm just not sure why you and SG struggle to understand the economics portion of the game and the way it is set up. I'd love for the collective bargaining agreement to change so it enables teams to bring up these guys earlier. I still like the idea of making all players free agents before their 27-year old season (as of June 1st) regardless of use and years in the major leagues. I believe development is important, but too often we've seen teams keep major league caliber players in the minors because they were worried about service time issues. I can understand why the Orioles, with a limited budget will keep Rutschman, Hall and even Rodriguez in the minors despite the fact they are better than players on their current 26-man roster. All of them could be getting that experience at the major league level with a bad team, but won't because of the service time issues including arbitration.

Yes, the scouting reports have him as a solid centerfielder defensively.

The Orioles are trying Vavra in CF and I'm betting at some point Servideo moves out there. There's Johnny Rizer at Bowie who has done nothing but hit since being drafted and is getting interesting though I'm not sure he has the pure speed for CF. Haskins has look ok out there in Delmarva, but i haven't seen enough of him to make an educated opinion on his defense yet. For the first time in awhile, we have some interesting guys playing CF and SS in the organization thanks to Elias's drafting and trading. Oh, and some think Jamai Jones could be tried there as well.

1st Base was always going to be his position but it was worth trying to see if he could play left field due to his above average foot speed. It just was very clear it was not going to work in any regular type of playing time. The question is though, what will Mancini bring back in trade and when does he have the most value? Mancini brings more than just talent to the field, so that has to be a consideration as well, but right now they both need to be on the field and neither can play the outfield effectively. Mancini seems to hit ok at DH so for now that probably is the best COA, but I know managers nowadays like the DH as flexibility vs putting one guy there everyday.

It's great to see. I've said all along his struggles were some of the most disappointing aspects of this year because I really felt his bat was going to be special and we need him to be a big part of the future at 1B.

I was trying to find ways to honor my dear friend and longtime managing editor Michael "weams" Williams when I thought what better way to honor him then to create a poster hall of fame after him? Afterall, Michael was a longtime poster before I asked him to join our staff so why not only name the HoF after him, but also make him the first member? To become a member of the Hall of Fame, a poster must have the following qualities: 1. Post informative information and opinions backed by facts and statistics over at least a ten year period of time. 2. Be well mannered and treat everyone with respect 3. Be well thought of and respected by the community It is clear Michael has accomplished all three of these things and with that, I officially announce him as the first honoree to be inducted into the Orioles Hangout Community Michael "weams" Williams Hall of Fame! I will soon add the HoF to the right panel of the message board. Congratulations Michael. You will forever by associated with great posters here at the Hangout!

The plan was always to make and keep him a catcher. They felt if they could make him a passable defensive catcher his bat would play well at the position. Unfortunately, the bat did not really play consistently above AA where his lack of bat speed became an issue. Once he decided to change his approach and try to hit for power, he lost his hit skill. Of course, once the scouting reports got around that you could beat him with good fastballs, he was pretty done either way. It always reminds me of a former Orioles scout who told me back when he was in A-ball that he thought he was Steve Clevenger, not enough power or hit tool to overcome a well below average defensive game. Clevenger slashed .227/.284/.324/.608 in 522 PAs Sisco has slashed .199/.319/.339/.658 in 598 PAs They both were well below average defensive catchers. In the end, looks like that scout was right.

I don't think their broadcasting per se is under his watch, but he certainly should be well aware of the Baltimore Orioles organization baseball product as a whole.

With the amount of money the major league teams and players are rolling in, it's time to improve the lifestyle of the minor league players. It's unfathomable that a major league franchise would care so little about their employees.

Yeah, only the best of the best have those features but it would be amazing if more teams had them. Saying that, i just think a center field camera along with 1st base and 3rd base cameras should be the minimum along with radio announcers. It can't be that expensive to produce a decent quality broadcast since we see many very low level affiliates do an outstanding job. I can deal with the poor or late direction of which camera to go by the director in the minors because afterall, this is the minors. but a lack of center field camera for the batt/pitcher matchup is embarrassing in this day and age.

Nothing like the team promoting a SS prospect to your team to provide some extra motivation. I've watch a decent amount of his PAs and I know he was really struggling with offspeed early in the year. I'll have to check out his hotsteak to see what he was hitting. Grenier is not quite the defensive stud I thought they were getting when he came out of college, but he does play SS effectively enough to be a utility guy if the bat doesn't pan out enough to be a starter.

I've been paying attention to Moore in the boxscores, but haven't watched him pitch yet. His professional stats besides the strikeouts leave a lot to be desired though. As you know, 95 to 97 can sometimes dominate lower level hitters but he'll need to command it better to have success moving up the chain. Still, I'll give him a little closer look.

While buggy "video goes out often when trying to skip around", I find it well worth the money and is much less commercial intrusive than the horrible MLBTV that forces you to watch multiple commercials when watching an archived games every time you try to jump to a different inning. MLBTV is nothing more than a time wasting money grab, but if you use it to just watch live games out of market it's ok. Trying to jump around or watch archived games is awful due to the amount of commercials you have to undergo just to try and see a certain play, hit or pitch.

He is in charge of baseball operations which means all of this falls under his domain. But, saying that, I plan to do a story on this and will give him the opportunity to discuss along with the minor league affiliate GMs.

There are no blackouts and all four affiliates do broadcast home games. However, the Orioles organization affilitaes lag way behind in broadcast experience with only Norfolk having a center field camera to watch the pitcher/batter matchup we are used to seeing in most real broadcasts. The Aberdeen experience is actually the worse I've seen of any team, wit just a camera behind home plate at the press box view. No broadcasters or even crowd ambience. It's actually quite embarrassing when you watch other organizations have broadcasters, center field cameras and a nice multi-camera approach in Low-A ball and our teams besides Norfolk look very unprofessional. Delmarva dose the second best job with multi-cameras and a radio broadcaster, but Bowie and Aberdeen's experience lag way behind and are kind of an embarrassment. With a focus on the minor leagues, I'm disappointed that Mike Elias allows such shoddy broadcasting of his minor league teams and games, but perhaps it's on purpose, who knows? All I know is that I look forward to Bowie and Aberdeen being on the road, because the broadcasts are always better experiences and some of Delmarva's away games are better as well.