Tony-OH

Both are pretty dated, but Frederick has seemed to have made some upgrades while Bowie, despite being a AA team looks like it's straight from 1999.

Gotta know your weight class. Listed at 6-2, 200, he was much heavier later in his career. Trust me, if this man came charging at me like he did to Martinez, I'd have to think long and hard about how manly I wanted to look in that beat down I would take! BTW, he definitely is in my Hall of Fame for menacing facial hair! In case you thought he was really 200 pounds!

Sounds like Aberdeen would need to move up to a full-season team. Since Bowie doesn't seem to be interested in upgrading that old out o date Prince George's county Stadium, it could make some sense to move them to AA and contract Bowie.

Never saw that. I will say, if George Scott came running after me like that I'd be hauling ass like Martinez did as well.

Umm, a specifically mentioned his trading of prospects for established players. I was not talking about every move he ever made.

I'm assuming you are joking because if you are concerned over trading two guys who never made it to the majors for a guy who might help the major league team, then I don't know what to say.

The only one that was awful was the Davies trade. But that was partially an assessment problem by the team's scouts and player development personnel. I was higher on Davies than anyone in the system. Everybody I spoke with had concerns with him being able to stick as a starter because of his size. Regardless, trading any potential prospect away for Geraldo Parra on a .500 team was ridiculous. I still think this move was Duquette's Hail Mary play to get influence back that he lost after his flirtation with Toronto. I think he thought if he could get the Orioles back to the playoffs he could get his influence back, but that trade was awful from the very beginning and was the first time I had a huge problem with any move that Duquette made.

While this was true, it also showed the Orioles attempt to try and find a position that would maximize his value. I don't think it was necessarily a bad thing to try him at 3B first, even though I didn't think his arm had any chance of succeeding there either. The most absurd thing I heard was that the Orioles had to keep Mountcastle at SS because Duquette insisted upon it because it "maximized his value to other teams." This is absurd because no scout that saw Mountcastle though he could ever play SS effectively in the majors so just because the Orioles played him there did not mean other teams viewed him as such. The player development folks wanted to move him from SS after his Delmarva year and some after instructs after he was drafted. The Orioles were never very good at getting guys experience at potential positions they would play at the major league level. One of things I liked what I saw this year was them moving guys around a bit when they didn't have a guaranteed set position.

Mountcastle will start the year playing LF in Norfolk where he will most likely play a couple of weeks there. This will be because of service time and they can't just taxi him and start him exactly when they would get the extra year because they would give the union cause for a grievance. I don't know the exact date, but at some point you will see Mountcastle in an Orioles uniform in April and unless he pulls a Mullins over 4-6 weeks, he's going to be up here for good in 2020. I think they are going to give him every opportunity to show he can play LF effectively where he showed to be serviceable last year in AAA and where he has the most value. By May the Orioles everyday outfield will be: LF: Mountcastle CF: Hays RF: Santader 4th OF/DH will be Stewart with Wilkerson or Mason Williams taking the 5th outfielder/back up CF job. One thing of note, Santander can back up Hays in CF with Mancini, Stewart or Mountcastle moving to right.

Cool video. Thanks for sharing!

What I wrote on July 25th about him after watching him live.. Rodriguez is a funky delivery fastball-slider guy who can throw strikes with both pitches. His fastball sits a pretty solid 92-94 though he touched 95. there's a little life in the end but he does a good job or using around the edges of the zone. His slider gets more downward action though there is some break as well. He likes to use it low in the zone and gets a lot of swings over the pitch from New York Penn League batters. His slider is typically in the 82-84 range though he flashed an 87 MPH wipe out slider that was a plus pitch once. His change is firm and straight and he doesn't have any feel for the pitch. He's a pretty good athlete for his size and is unafraid to shake off his catcher and call his catcher out to talk if he wants to talk over something despite his limited English. Is he a guy for me? I'll say he's interesting enough to keep a watch on but he definitely has a reliever profile for me. If he can sit 95-96 as a reliever and that slider can bump to the 85-87 range, he suddenly gets a potential late inning reliever. He'll be in consideration for the top 30 no doubt. Right now I think he's in the 20-30 range but can rise or fall still over the last month.

I don't even know if Andy has a role anymore in the decision so this entire conversation could be for naught.

I honestly thought this was all common knowledge and I'm pretty sure I've written about his. Wasn't this in my MacPhail piece before he left? I can't remember honestly. I know what I was told but don't remember all of the details at this point. I remember hearing MacPhail did not want Buck because he knew Buck was all about gaining control. Once Buck came in and had success, in my opinion, MacPhail saw that he was going to lose influence since Buck had become an Angelos favorite. MacPhail then left the organization.

Why in the world at this point, knowing the things I've written and been told, that you would think I'm just speculating or giving an "opinion on this?"

"Soto is a left-handed hitter with advanced feel for hitting and projection for power," said Nationals director of Latin American operations, Johnny DiPuglia. "He profiles as a corner outfielder with a solid arm and good instincts." Nationals signed Soto for $1.5 million as a 16-year old. This is the kind of impact players we have to find in Latin America if we are to compete consistently one day. We have to hope Perez will hit some gold like DiPuglia did with Soto. Soto is the real deal. He's a generational talent that was signed for 2nd round money.

That's what I heard.

That's how I read that title and that's a good thing. There needs to be one guy in charge of the pitching coaches and coordinators at the major and minor league levels. Everyone needs to be rowing the same way and not poking holes in the boat!

I just want the Rays playing somewhere in a nice stadium. Now I have to root against them because I can't stand even watching games on TV when they play in the Trop. They've done the best job of any team in competing with a low payroll. I'm impressed with their abilities and if Elias and company prove to as cunning the Orioles will have a great chance to be competitive year in and year out. So far I like what I'm seeing and hearing from Elias on how he's completely rebuilding how this franchise will acquire, develop and assess talent. The next step, which is probably 2-3 years away, will be to see how he plans to keep a competitive team on the field that can compete year in and year out.

Andy didn't want to hire Buck in the first place. I doubt he'll be calling him in Philadelphia.

Huh? Grayson Rodriguez, DL Hall, Michael Baumann, Zac Lowther, Dean Kremer, Alex Wells, Hunter Harvey and Keegan Akin would like to have a conversation with you. When they're done, Gray Fenter, Leonardo Rodriguez, Drew Rom, Cody Sedlock, Steve Klimek and Adam Stauffer would like to chat.

Who sent this out? Was it the Orioles? To who, season ticket holders?

Funny, the National League is the only baseball league that does this. So i guess the AL, Japanese League, KBO, Mexican League, College, High School and every other major league out there is not playing real baseball? Or did the game transform for the better?

Not unless the NL adopted the DH. Not a fan of watching an automatic out every 9 batters while the 8th batter gets pitched around with two outs. Other than that, I like the idea of changing divisions yearly based on records. I also feel like they need to go back to a balanced schedule for fairness due to the wild cards.

Exactly, which is why I love them. There is no more, "He gets a good jump or he doesn't take good routes. With this data, you have the exact data to tell you whether that's true or not.

Those numbers don't care what position you play. As far as I know, they assess how quickly and efficiently the player moves from stop until he catches the ball.