Tony-OH

The SD Padres are in 4th place with a record of 68-88 They are paying Manny Machado $30 million a year to slash .251/.331/.452/.782. Their attendance is 9th out 15 teams in the NL but went up 2,842 fans this year. The average ticket price in SD is $60. So before concessions, Machado brought in $168,120 extra in gate revenue the first year. Let's say each fan purchased $30 worth of concessions. That's another $85,260 so added together the Machado effect gained the Padres $253,380 in tickets and concession. Machado has earned $46,802 per PA this year so far. So Machado earned the net amount from gate and concession improvements in his first 5.41 Plate appearances. So after his fifth plate appearance of the season, Machado wasn't worth his contract.

Adam Jones had an Orioles hall of fame career with the O's. I'm pretty sure we should all be happy if Hays can repeat Jones' career here.

I think he's a much better hitter when he's healthy, settled, and feeling good. He's having pretty good PAs right now at the big league level. He's crushing fastballs so I imagine he'll start to see an adjustment by pitchers to throw more offspeed pitches in the future. That will be where we'll know whether he can make that adjustment at the big league level because that's what his struggles were on in the minors. Remember, this guy was a consensus top 100 prospect at one time and has a lot of talent. Most of his struggles were when he was trying to come back from time off due to freak injuries.

He's always had that and one of the reasons why scouts initially thought he profiled better at the corners. Now that we have his data under statcast, we see he can handle CF just fine, despite his slow reaction times. Defensive Statcast #s: Reaction: -1.3 feet Burst: 0.4 feet Route: 0.6 feet Feet vs average: -0.3 (putting him slightly below average but close enought to average) Expected catch%: 86 Actual catch %: 88 (+2) Outs above average: 1 These numbers tell me that he's right around average defensively for a center fielder and there's no reason not to believe he can't get better as he gets used to major league stadiums and hitters.

Yeah, I think he's going to exhaust that eligibility in the last 5 games unless Elias shuts him down and sends him out to the AFL in order to keep him in the running next year.

Its a good move. Let's hope there is no lingering issues next spring. I'm sure he will be monitored over the fall/winter because it would be a real bummer if he has the same issue next spring.

That's certainly an understandable and defendable take on the situation. If I remember that inning correctly, he was almost out of the inning around 20 pitches but they kept fouling him off and his pitch count was getting up there before Hyde was able to get someone warming up. Then Harvey got out without allowing a run. I agree that it wasn't optimal, but I also think they need to have the kid's gloves taken off with him this year a bit. The Orioles need to see if he can pitch on back to back days and be extended to 30-40 pitches on occasion. Looking at his velocity in this next two appearances, it did not looked like it affected him, but I can't say that for sure. I'm probably more inclined to believe that the innings work load is starting to catch up to him a bit after such little use over the last few years. Harvey has been a great success story with his move to the pen and I think the team has found their closer of the future.

Obviously we are all hyper sensitive to any kind of soreness with Harvey. I do think this thing is bothering him still an the team wants to be ultra careful with him. At 75.2 IP, he is at twice the amount of innings that he threw in 2018 so he may be near the limit that they wanted to get him this year as well. Honestly, I wouldn't be upset if they just came out and said they were going to shut him down this year. I have him penciled in as the closer next year and only an injury would get in the way of him having success in that role.

One, it's against board rules to call people including players and coaches idiots, so consider this your warning. Secondly, you do know that Harvey was a starter at the beginning of the year and had 10 games with 40 or more pitches. After converting to a reliever, he had two minor league innings where he threw 33 pitches in an inning and one in an inning and a third. Harvey is almost 25-years old. While I don't think anyone, including Hyde preferred that he stayed out there that long in one inning, I don't think Hyde was reckless or an idiot for doing so. If he's incapable of throwing a 30 pitch inning when things aren't going great, what is he then? I think your dislike for Hyde is clouding your judgement here. While you are certainly entitled to your opinion of not liking Hyde, you are not entitled to call him an idiot while doing so here on the Hangout.

He has certainly hit for more power since coming back from AAA. Not sure if he tweaked something of if he's just running into more pitches, but the power increase has been the biggest difference in hitting of late. If the power is for real, and I'm not sure that it is until I hear he's changed some kind of approach, then he has a chance to stick around for awhile at 3B. He's still a below average 3B overall and will need a consistent jump in production to be considered a nugget towards a winning team in the future.

Really a fascinating set of article though I found the Deadspin article hard to digest a bit as the writer's style was too wordy for my liking. When I interviewed Elias a month or so ago (I never put the piece out for several reasons but will soon) one of the things I asked him about was adding another rookie team "like a Bluefield" due to the influx of international players they are signing. my thought was there wouldn't be enough places to play to evaluate and players might slipped through the crack. Elias was pretty adamant about not needing to add another team and now I know why. Without saying it word for word, I believe he agreed with the thought process that evaluations can also be done outside of games. That doesn't mean that Elias doesn't believe game play is not important, afterall he has slow promoted a few players this year, but rather that he probably feels that they can evaluate the cream of the crop and make sure they are the ones getting the game action. I love the minor league system, but I can understand why some people think it may be time for a change in the system. Buehler is absolutely correct that most teams on average only have 3 to 4 players with true major league ability at each level. What if there was a compromise? What if each affiliate was allowed four minor league affiliates (Short season rookie league for players drafted that year or brought over from Dominican, Lower/Rookie -1st-2nd year players - Intermediate (2nd-3rd year player) - Advanced (3rd year and up) with 30-man active rosters and an academy? After a 4th year in the minors, a player must be signed to a major league minimum contract but would be allowed to go back to the minors for two more seasons. After six seasons, any players not on a major league 26-man roster (I would increase this to 27) would be declared a free agent. A player still could be signed to the major league minimum and placed in the affiliated advanced league if the player and team chooses after 6 years. I also would decrease the Rule 4 draft to 30 rounds and allow for a true independent AAA League that would allow for players who don't make major league rosters after six years of pro experience to go play for in independent AAA team. These independent AAA teams then would be compensated if one of their players are signed by a major league team. As true free agents, players would be able to play for all 30 major league teams and not be stuck in AAA for a year when they may better than player in the majors in another organization. As for foreign players, I'm a big proponent of blowing up the current system and just including them in the draft when they become 17-years old. However, I could also see each team keeping a Dominican Summer League affiliate as well to give them five overall.

This is fair. I know Mullins had a bust year, but he's still got the defense and speed aspects and is still fairly young overall. He was rushed a bit to the majors so it's no overly surprising he had a setback. I still think he ends up a decent platoon-type 4th outfielder. Mullins is a hard worker that may have had things snowball on him this year. He's now faced the adversity and if he can have a good year next year in AAA, I could see him back with the big league in 2020 and beyond. I know some may disagree, but if I could only keep one player I'd still take Mullins over McKenna.

While I think Hays can become an effective defensive CFer when it's said and done, particularly because of his footspeed, he's never been a guy who gets a lot of great jumps or takes great routes. He's just able to overcome them because of his sprint speed.

His defense overall has not been very good, and probably is Smith-esque if given a whole season. He'll need to improve or up his offensive game as a DH. I'm on the fence with Stewart. While I still see some upside in his bat, I'm just not sure it's enough to overcome his defensive inadequacies.

So would I. As I said, i haven't done the analysis who needs to be protected who's not on yet but there is definitely a ton of guy you could remove without concern.

GCL (18) .265/.366/.324/.689 in 41 PAs ABE (19) .241/.320/.309/.629 in 252 PAs DEL (20) .256/.331/.380/.712 in 530 PAs FRE (21) .377/.467/.556/1.023 in 300 PAs BOW (21-22) .234/.327/.357/.684 in 817 PAs Seems to me that outside of 300 PAs in Frederick and a good AFL season that year, he's been very, very pedestrian. While he has tools to be a good defensive outfielder, he also has had several repeated bone headed plays that ended up getting him benched this year. While I see the tools, his struggles picking up spin has limited his game power and consistency at the plate. Is McKenna a guy you keep running out there and give PAs and see what you got, sure. Is he a sure fire everyday big leaguer, I'm not so sure. Not to nitpick, but I think Rickard actually has a better arm, but they are similar.

I didn't mention Mountcastle because Mountcastle will not make the team out of spring training because of the service time thing. As soon as they can get extra year he'll be playing a comobination or LF/1B/DH for the orioles the rest of the year. I'd be very surprise if Davis is on the team next year. It's obvious to everyone that he can't play anymore and next year there will be no room for him with Santander/Hays/Mountcasle/Stewart/Mancini/Nunez all needing regular playing time. Elias also mentioned that his situation will be looked into this offseason which is the hope i have that he was told he can eat the contract after this year. Maybe, maybe not on Iglesias, depends on the money. While I don't think the Orioles are going to be contenders next year, I do think next year is a transition year where we start to see actual prospects on the team and he'll want to have as good a defense as he can have up the middle.

It'll probably be shorter!

I'm not a big Cowan guy so I agree that his shot must become way more consistent and he needs to limit the turnovers. I agree that Wiggens is the best of the rest when it comes to upside, but I think you are downgrading Ayala and Lindo a bit. Lindo was very, very young but he started to earn more time as he season went on. If he comes back and gains some weight, he could be a real force and allow Turgeon not to ride Stix into the ground like he did with Cowan. This team i still missing that legitimate playmaking PG, but I loved Ayala's poise as a freshman, even though he's probably better suited as a 2. Scott could be a real wildcard here. He's a 4-star recruit and could earn playing time early on.

Apparently they weren't worth much at the trading deadline so I don't see that changing this offseason. I think they will be both on the team next year and hopefully can be moved from some good talent next year.

Yeah, we may have to do a "vulnerable" list for the guys are whole vulnerable to being taken off. I imagine that list will be long.

I think there is little doubt that Stix will be the start of the team, but this team has a lot of talent around him. Aaron Wiggins and Eric Ayala were outstanding as Freshman last year and I think they will only get better. One of the drawbacks of Cowan returning is less time for Ayala on the court, but I think Turgeon will play Wiggens up at 3 more to get them all on the court. Let's not forget about the Mitchell Twins providing depth in the front court and of course Donta Scott is a 4-star recruit who should be able to play immediately. Add in Darrell Morsell (who can be a lock down defender at times), gunner Serrel Smith and don't sleep on Ricky Lindo who has all the athleticism to become a Stix like player as his body matures, and there is a ton of depth on this team.

Good work, but I don't see McKenna getting taken and if does, I don't see him sticking. Saying that, I haven't looked at the 40-man close enough to see if I would protect him or not, but since I see him as more of a 4th outfielder at best, I wouldn't be too concerned about losing him. Saying that, I'm definitely protecting him over the replacement level pitchers that currently litter the 40-man roster. That might be a good exercise after the prospect list work. I see a lot of turnover on the 40-man roster this offseason.

Weird, it's like I've been saying this for years but I guess my opinion doesn't matter any more to you. Have a nice day...

Yep, this is where coaching will come into things. Locksley has to make sure his team doesn't start to believe the hype and overlook Temple while focusing on Penn State. First road game also will make things interesting. CBSSports has Temple rated #51 with Syracuse dropping to #45 and Maryland only at #25. This should not be a push over game, but if the Maryland we saw during the first two games show up they should win.