Tony-OH

Have you seen this bullpen? Who would you bring in here?

In Hyde's defense, Mountcastle was due up 4th in the 9th.

Great hustle by Franco there....

Mountcastle could really have not started the season any worse.

Actually 3 with Santander's as well.

Sure, no doubt that run was on Mountcastle, but Armstrong gave up two hard hits in that inning and he's not the kind of pitcher teams wan t in the 8th inning of a one run game.

Bad team do bad things to hurt themselves. This is why I was keeping a low profile during the Orioles 3-0 start to the season. It was nice, but the reality is this team is not good. When Armstrong is pitching in the 8th inning of a one run game, your bullpen is not good.

He was definitely safe. Just an awful throw by Mountcastle throwing a weak one hopper to Galvis.

Ah yes, the old 54.00 ERA 8th inning guy...

Sure would be nice to add a run..

Armstrong and Valdez warming.. One of them scares me..

"are those my only two options?" lol

Watching Kremer's misses yesterday he tends to miss mostly gloveside in the dirt too often. He got ripped twice though by the umpire. https://www.mlb.com/video/00u7jzgkdtP9kH55c356/reels/dean-kremer-missing-with-curveballs

It's early and Sceroler only has one outing and Wells two one inning stints, but if one needs to go back to make room it should be Wells every day of the week and twice on Sunday from what the statcast info tells me.

Me too. In fact, I'm pretty sure I said I preferred Wells based of what I saw and the limited amount of statcast data we had on their outings in the spring. That split change is the game changer for Sceroler. If this pitch is for real and he can command it like he did, that makes his other high spin rate stuff play up. The two outings I've seen of Wells this season have really been lackluster. He's basically been a 94 MPH fastball, slider guy with an occasional curve tat he has not commanded well. He flashed one decent change in yesterday's outing, but if the Orioles don't see his stuff eventually playing up a starter, I don't think he has enough to keep him around all year as a bullpen guy that you can't yo-yo back and forth between Norfolk and Baltimore. I wouldn't give up on him already, but I haven't seen enough arm strength or some plus pitch that misses bats in a relief role to get me too excited. In no way shape of form would i have ever had traded Zach Pop for him.

Judging by the statcast numbers I've seen so far, it's Scerloer and it's not close.

This is a good point. And while this may be a little of my "Get off my lawn" old school baseball thinking here, I still would be leery of sending a runner on contact with the infield in on most occasions.

Could be. I'm not saying they are true per se, but I have head this from two separate sources. Who knows really? It's all just really strange.

There is a line of thinking that a working on a slider/cutter can affect the curveball and vice versa. Some guys have no issues throwing them both, but some guys can struggle with one or the other when they try to throw both. Kremer's curveball was his strike out pitch in the minors, but he doesn't get a ton of swing and miss at the major league level on the pitch. Now that very well could have been why they gave him a cutter because they felt the curveball wouldn't work as well in the majors. Last year Kremer used the curveball as a putaway pitch just 17.2% of the time which was behind his fastball and cutter. Kremer's curveball is a slow curve (74-78 mph) vs the low 80s hammers that tend to get swings and misses and it's been effective enough in helping to set up his other pitchers, but I'd like to see him command it a but better in the zone. Saying that, he typical does a good job of keeping the pitch out of the heart of the zone and low which allows it to stay out of the curveball danger zones. Either way, the curveball has been decently effective for him, but the cutter has become his main offspeed weapon. But he needs to command it all better than he did last night and this spring.

When things are "secretive" it never ends up a good thing. As Moose pointed out, if it was still a myocarditis thing, you would think that would be announced, but there seems to be some kind of secretive hush-hush over his absence and that's concerning at this point. It's been over a year since he's played any kind of meaningful baseball and the Orioles organization has never seen him take a live BP since singing. The fact is that he never showed up to spring training (from what I heard it was a bit of a surprise) and then the GM comes out and says he'll be at the alternate camp and he doesn't show up there either. Now maybe Elias is protecting his HIPPA rights and can't say much, but something is not adding up. Now I've heard through the scouting grapevine that there were concerns by some that he had anxiety issues in college. I don't know what that means or what it entails, but I would hope the Orioles area scout was aware of them or that this is overblown. I've heard "anxiety" issues from multiple sources when referring to Kjerstad, but I have no idea if it has anything to do with his lack of arrival this spring. It's all just very strange and would be a big blow to the organization if something here is serious and Kjerstad ends up a bust. Hopefully he'll show up somewhere soon and get on the field.

He certainly was not sharp so perhaps this has something to do with his lack of command. I'm too concerned overall, especially after he took that liner off his leg and that certainly could have started to bother him by the 4th. His command was not very good this spring either, but I'll wait a few more outings before I'm going to make a judgement on whether he needs to go back and work on his command. The good news is the strikeout stuff was there and the cutter has become a real weapon for him though it seems to have cost him the effectiveness of his curveball.

Lopez was pretty good for the first 3 innings or so which is the role I had hoped for him. I still want to see him as a reliever, but I know what we are going to get with him as a starter.