Hallas

I believe this is one of the side effects of shrinking in-play foul territory (which has been a design decision done by most teams building stadiums in order to get seats closer to the action.) If we had more stadiums like The Coliseum in Oakland then it would be a lot less prevalent. Or even somewhere in between. Not every stadium has to be that expansive in foul territory, but you could at least make it so a player has to walk more than 5 steps to get from the foul line to the fence.

"Corpsified and gross..." Gotta Love a wild Firefly reference.

It was reported that he received "much of the salary he was owed." Reading between the lines, that would imply between 60-80%. I would probably guess on the low end there because I suspect the O's had a decent casea, but they paid out because they didn't want to be potentially on the hook for 100% of his remaining contract while he was drunk and angry.

it's okay, no one's perfect.

Now that you mention it, I wonder if there are stipulations if he, say, gets a PED suspension or retires with money on the table.

Aside from Schoop playing badly enough to get non-tendered, this investment was also totally screwed by major league teams suddenly deciding to stop spending money on FAs. The past 3 years the FA value of a win has largely stayed stagnant after a period of like 10 years where it went up by around 5-10% every year. He probably would have made around $10m in arb if he went there, so it's not like that's a huge loss, but he's likely not going to to get any sort of big deal that will cover the price of the investment. I suppose he could sign a 3/30 deal next year if he plays well, and after that it's going to be a series of 1 year deals for close to the veteran minimum until he's ready to retire. If he plays really well next year he might be able to get a 4/45 deal, which is probably the best case scenario. Either way he's barely going to cover the upfront fee, and will likely not net the investors a good rate of return if he even covers the upfront cost.

I think in general we've had a decent record with position players in our system after about 2003-ish. Markakis, Wieters, and Machado, not sure if we count Jones but we could. We've had a few role players too during that time. I think that the prospect-downgrade makes a lot more sense if you're limiting it to pitchers, considering we've developed maybe 1 quality pitcher from the ground-up since Mussina/McDonald, which was almost 30 years ago now.

So the org that produced one of baseball's brightest superstars in recent memory (Manny) gets penalized? Does that mean that Vlad Jr would be a 65 if he were traded to the O's? (I know that's not realistic, just putting it out there as a hypothetical.) I'm in no way implying that the O's are doing great, but you are right that it is extremely foolish.

You've talked before about how Fangraphs' criteria is a little weird for prospects right? Also how their 50 is more like everyone else's 55?

Well, prospects like Vlad Jr. only come around once every 5-10 years. We probably had one of the last ones, in Machado, which is likely one of the data points Fangraphs uses when coming up with dollar projections for ~70+ rated prospects. For what it's worth, Machado's production was worth 234 million on the FA market.

I know you have done a pretty thorough reading of the documents, but I can't really remember where/when you posted about it. Do you remember what exactly was the Orioles position and what was the Nats position? I vaguely remember that the O's wanted the rights fees to be around 40 or 45 million, and the Nats wanted some absurd number, but I can't remember what exactly that was, or can I remember what the RSDC arrived at.

Could the Nationals do this by declining to sign a TV rights deal with MASN? Or is there language in there that forces them to use MASN as their TV provider?

I wasn't implying that the O's lost the trade. I agree that both sides can win.

I personally think the bar is lower than that. Getting to the playoffs is enough of a reward, both psychologically and financially (the revenue sharing for playoff appearances more than offsets the value lost when trading prospects away.) Manny not only helped them get there, he also helped them win this series. Just as I feel that we won the Andrew Miller trade, I feel the Dodgers won this trade. That doesn't mean the Orioles lost, of course. That remains to be seen.

Regardless of what happens to the prospects we got back from the Dodgers, it's pretty obvious that the Dodgers won this trade. They wouldn't be in the playoffs but for Manny, and he singlehandedly turned two games around this series, despite the fact that he's in a huge slump.

Sure, but I would only peg him for about 1/2 a win, so it's only going to affect the value by a couple million unless you think he's going to go back to putting up a 2.80 ERA for a whole season. Just on straight dollars-to-WAR, he's going to save ~7 million. When you consider that the O's probably don't care about 0.5 wins from O'Day next year when we're going to suck anyway....

I agree that all things being equal, I'd rather have the prospects. But I don't own the team and I don't write the paychecks, so the money saved is less relevant to me... also, I'm trying to evaluate the trade fairly and objectively. I also think that any nihilistic reaction to shedding O'Day's salary (the O's won't spend the savings on anything useful anyway) could also apply to players we trade for (the O's can't develop players so they'll screw up the prospects coming back.) Yeah. I follow a rough guideline of 10m/20m/40m/60m for hitters between 45 and 60. and 10m/15m/25m/35m for pitchers in the same range. Fangraphs has a more precise breakdown based on their painstaking research - see here. You don't usually get to trade for prospects with grades better than 60, so the numbers past that aren't that relevant when evaluating trades.

I’m at C, but I’m probably a generous grader. (Curve to b- average.) I’m willing to give fair credit for the O’Day salary dump. I’m just not excited about the other prospects. I also think we assigned too much value to the slot money, because I think the trade worked out to something like $35-$40 million future value in exchange for Gausman’s projected surplus of $45 million. Also, the primary reason I’m at C is because I am assuming we will do something useful with the slot money. If that goes down the toilet then it’s a D or F.

I’d give him a month or two next year. I’d also try and pull a Chris Tillman and send him to the DL with a “strained oblique.”

I thought it was trending up but it was more of a "better than terrible" trending up, rather than actual above-average. His UZR/150 is +6.2 at SS with the Dodgers. edit to add: When he wasn't playing for a terrible team in 2016, he was slightly above average at SS while covering for Hardy.

SSS but Manny is showing he's still an elite 3B... but perhaps just as importantly, he's apparently improved his defense at SS too. He's now at -8.8 UZR/150 after leaving the O's at -11.9. And he's got a bunch of good defensive plays on the Dodgers highlight feed. Makes me wonder if he was sandbagging a little bit on defense with the O's, since we are terrible and he doesn't want to get hurt for a terrible team in a contract year.

Of course not, my point is that quality of contact does matter, and BABIP isn't the best indicator of this in small samples. That said, even if his BABIP was something a little more sustainable, his stats would still be better than they were in Baltimore, as his FIP is quite a bit better. You could argue about his HR/FB rate as well. I believe this is attributable to park effects, as SunTrust park, and every park he's pitched in has had a large suppressive effect on HRs (OPACY is 1.19, the 3 parks he's played in are between .71 and .81.) So I would concede that his true skill level hasn't changed *that* much. That said, it's not entirely luck, unless you consider it to be good fortune that his biggest weakness is probably giving up too many HRs, and he's pitched 4 straight games in extreme HR-suppressing stadiums.

There is a definite relationship between BABIP and launch angle, though. pop-ups suppress BABIP by a lot, and groundballs suppress them by a little bit (though they mostly suppress SLG.)

I don't really like to compare college draftees with high school draftees. He was just getting drafted when Jones made his MLB debut, and I'm not going to fault Mullins for going to college. And Mullins is up plenty early enough for him to have a long, distinguished career, talent/health/God willing.

Still waiting for Gausman to pull a Zach Britton and go 5/8 with a HR and an OPS of 1.75.