DrungoHazewood

Mancini was 6th in rWAR among AL vote-getters in the 2017 ROY. But that's only because WAR hates Baltimore, too.

I'm guessing that's the worst team record for anyone with a 10+ win season. Cal had an 11-win season on a 67-win Orioles team.

The 1973 Phillies hold the 22nd-worst winning percentage in Phillies history. There are looong stretches in Phillies history where they'd routinely finish 40 games out. And for much of that time the A's weren't much better across town. In 1942 the A's and Phils combined for 208 losses in 154 game schedules.

I would think it stabilizes much more quickly since it's basically measuring how fast does he get where he needs to be. Question for Tom Tango.

Mullins is also on track to become one of the half-dozen best non-pitchers ever on a terrible team. I looked at every team that's finished with a .325 or lower winning percentage since 1893. Only four non-pitchers have ever put up a 5-win season (rWAR) on one of those 50 teams, none in my lifetime: Rusty Staub, 1969 Expos, 6.2 Harlond Clift, 1937 Browns, 7.1 Wally Berger, 1935 Braves, 5.8 Amos Strunk, 1916 A's, 5.6 Mullins isn't going to catch Clift, who is largely forgotten but was arguably the first modern, power-hitting third baseman. But he might approach Strunk or Berger with a good September. For pitchers, the best might be Randy Johnson in 2004. On a 51-111 D'backs team he threw 260 innings to a 2.60 (176 ERA+) with 290 strikeouts and 8.4 rWAR. Ted Breitenstein also had 8.8 rWAR for the 1895 Browns, but I'd take the Unit.

Is that still true with Statcast data? He's +7 OAA.

I hope I'm not so narcissistic as to think everything that isn't targeted at me is trash.

Aren't most of the readers of the column, on Fangraphs, not Orioles fans who would know all this stuff from memory? Aren't most fans pretty focused on their own team and don't really give a hoot about that other team that's 36-85 or whatever? What can you tell me about the current state of the... say... Pirates rebuilding efforts? Or the Rockies? I don't have the slightest idea, and might be interested in an article like this about them.

It's the internet. If you're not off by 500% then you're not exaggerating enough to get anyone to pay attention.

So why don't they propose a sliding scale? Wherein you can have any payroll you want as long as you win. But if you have a $90M payroll but only win 75 games, you get a $10M fine. If you have a $60M payroll and win 65 you get a, I don't know, $60M fine. Hard to tell the Rays and A's that they need to spend more cash when they're already playing in October. Guys, c'mon... we need you to be way more inefficient.

Ah, okay. I said quibble with my numbers and you took me up on the offer.

I'm just glad there isn't HD video of every minute of every day I'm at work. I'm assuming that nearly 100% of OH posters have done the equivalent of staring off into space* when they're supposed to be intently listening to their boss or finishing that TPS report. * Read: posting on OH

I think it's highly unlikely that insurance is paying for any of this. I don't think we have any evidence that the Orioles even paid the very substantial amount it would have taken to insure the contract.

In other words, there was circumstantial evidence with many possible explanations but you choose to pick "checked out" because you like that one the best.

I don't know what mechanism they'd use, but in 2019 MLB teams were just over 40% of revenues going to payroll, while most other major sports leagues were at 50% or even higher. So the money should be there.

Back of the napkin... there are seven teams over $180M in payroll. They total about $147M over. There are 12 teams under $100M, by a total of about $297M. Quibble with my numbers if you want, source was first thing Google came up with. So in theory this would raise MLB payrolls by about $150M. But would it also be a drag on the high payrolls and those teams would be likely to cut costs, making the $150M less than that? Probably. They would have to phase this in, it would be nearly impossible for a team like the Orioles to increase payroll by $48M in one offseason without doing monumentally stupid things like signing free agents to 2-3 times their prior market value. Also, extremely unlikely this is going to happen because the MLBPA seems to be sticking to their long-held positions that they'd rather blow up the entire sport and risk the entire MLB system before they'd accept a cap.

People say that Americans won't root for anything but the top level, competing for the one Championship. But then tens of thousands show up to see the University of Cincinnati play UTEP in the Continential Tire Bowl. I think they'll watch anything that's presented and marketed the right way.

I don't think that's the only possible way. I don't even like that idea. If you had parallel competitions those would likely be all about depth and playing the long game. Teams would put different emphasis on different competitions. And some teams would benefit from being eliminated early in some competitions and having extra rest and always having their best players available for what's remaining. In any case, my biggest goal is figuring out a way to keep almost all the teams in some kind of competitive, interesting play throughout the year. It's just not any good for a sport when there's a single goal for 30 teams and half the league is just messing around, going through the motions for 3-4 months. The Pirates, Orioles, Nats, Cubs, Rangers, Royals, D'backs... they've all pretty explicitly told their fans to go find something else to do from about July-on, there's nothing for you to see here. That's a terrible business strategy. One that's only semi-viable in a league where you get $100M in media revenues and high draft picks just because you exist.

One of my pie-in-the-sky ideas is having four regional leagues of eight teams each with little or no interleague play. Each of those leagues plays a perfectly balanced schedule, and rarely has to travel more than one time zone away. And if you want to get real crazy have a regular season of 120-130 games and take one week a month for a super-tournament including all the teams in all four leagues. Or a WBC-like tournament with Japan, Korea, Mexico, etc, but for club teams instead of national teams.

I've suggested this many times, but the standard response is "We didn't do it 1920 or 1950, so it's completely irrelevant to baseball. Stop talking about soccer. We like 29 teams going home disappointed every year, it's a feature not a bug. Nobody likes watching losers in loser tournaments. Stop messing with baseball it's glorious the way it is, except for all the things I complain about that are different from when I was 12 years old."

All I ask is that you consider that there may be different and perhaps better frameworks for a professional baseball league that might even result in fewer teams throwing in the towel for years on end. The current setup wasn't designed whole, it was put in place piecemeal by committee and through negotiations by people who didn't always understand the long-term implications of what they were doing. We could do worse than taking a look at other sports and leagues and what strategies they use to provide better competitive balance and maintain fan interest.

Most teams aren't set up such that all 26 players on the roster are the same age.

The Red Sox threw the season because they knew that nobody really cared about a strange 60-game season anyway and it got them a set of high draft picks and saved them cash.

So you're good with teams not trying to win for 3, 4, 5 years? I understand why they do it, why the Orioles do it. They don't really have a choice. But I wish the system were set up so that everyone can try to win every year.

I don't know why all Major League teams only hire stupid people to run their organizations. You'd think with $billions on the line they'd take this more seriously.