DrungoHazewood

Stewart is about average for a #25 overall pick. But as we've talked about many times, if you're not in the 90th percentile for your draft slot you're a bitter disappointment. Even a lot of really engaged fans think the scouting director should be fired if every third rounder doesn't start in the majors for five years.

So the Cubs should retire Jake Arrieta's number, but not Banks, Williams and Santo? The Red Sox should un-retire Ted Williams' and Carl Yastrzemski's numbers, but retire David Ortiz' about four times over? The Padres and Rangers should have zero retired numbers, correct? Give Tony Gwynn's number to the next guy they call up to make a spot start because he never led them to a title. Oh, and don't take any of this to mean I want Mussina's number retired. I don't take as hard a line as Tony, but half a career in Baltimore followed by going to NYC doesn't pass my completely subjective threshold. I just don't think a WS ring is a non-negotiable line you have to pass.

I completely agree, but 30 for college and 29 for high school is pretty team friendly. At least for stars. If you're an 18-year-old high school draftee you have no say in your employer for 12 years. They also have some work to do to figure out the details. Someone like Machado or Harper coming up at 19, are they going to have seven arb years?

*cough* new ball in 2019. An .834 in the PCL with a 5:1 K:BB ratio is kind of like OPSing .634 in Norfolk a few years ago.

Mateo's minor league performances are underwhelming at first glance. Perhaps we could loan him out and get him a few more years in the PCL to give him that Valaika-like sheen.

Sure, but I wouldn't do that now. No high-priced free agent is coming to Baltimore after a 60-something win season, not for a sensible cost. Sensible meaning some non-zero chance of it not being a trainwreck.

Don't disagree, but the ROI on $100M+ type free agents makes that kind of thing essentially a non-starter for the Orioles. They need to add talent by other means.

Going-in assumption for a guy who previously averaged a K an inning now averaging half that is he's broken.

At least under the current CBA there are paths to contention that don't involve signing large dollar free agents.

I think OAA better accounted for shifting, and I would put more faith in that than the other metrics. But he's going to probably have to be a lot better than average if he's going to carry his bat. Or his bat is going to have to get a lot better, and at 26 I have my doubts.

It is unrealistic to think the Orioles are going to lure top-tier free agent to Baltimore in the near term. Possibly if they get competitive again and open up some revenue streams with better attendance and maybe media. But this is a little like the discussions a decade-plus ago about pulling a Jayson Werth, signing an older player to a well above market contract to prove that the O's are winners and willing to spend. What happened with Werth? They paid him over $100M for two good seasons out of seven. The Orioles can't afford $20M for a zero. Has Chris Davis taught us nothing? If the O's play in the free agent market at all in the next 2-3 years it will probably be Iglesias, McLouth, Millwood type inexpensive, complimentary players.

Assume that if the Orioles think a free agent pitcher is on the verge of stardom, many other teams share this belief. How would the Orioles go about signing such a player to come play for a building team in a hitter's park at a cost that fits a small market budget? I think the answer is that they can't.

Look at the Rays recent history and that will guide you down the path of what kind of free agents the Orioles are likely to sign.

Matt Harvey? You must mean someone else, someone who doesn't have an ERA over 6.00, right?

Don't they need to wait to see who's relegated?

This is supposedly an article evaluating those trades, but despite the fact they were all driven by money and contracts (especially soon-to-expire contracts) the author only mentions contracts in passing in the intro and never brings up money. It's a piece written mostly from the perspective of 1965, one that 50 people on this site could have written in 30 minutes only with more detail and context.

You can get a decent lathe for $600, a used one at an estate sale would probably be half that. Go around any major campus at the end of the semester and you can find old loft beds just abandoned. Pick up the wood, go in with some of your teammates, and save some cash.

I think we should note why every team's name is stupid: Yankees - before the baseball team took the name wasn't 'Yankee' basically someone from New England? Note: New York isn't in New England. Red Sox - yep, they have socks and sometimes they're red. By the way, it's spelled s-o-c-k-s. Rays - Devil Rays sounded like South Atlantic league low-A team that was trying too hard to sell hats, so they dumped the Devil part...? Blue Jays - There are Blue Jays all over the eastern US and Canada. Was chickadees or hummingbirds or seagulls not available? Orioles - I mean, I guess it's fine if you want a bird that is sometimes in Baltimore. Tigers - Team from Detroit, named for a predatory cat from Asia and the Indian subcontinent. Makes sense. Mets - short for "Metropolitans", which are people who live in a city? So, applies equally to Des Moines and Billings? Cubs - they changed names like five times from 1880-1905, so when a newspaper guy came up with Cubs they were finally, like, fine... that's fine... Reds - another in a long line of teams inventively named for the color of their socks. White Sox - see Reds. Cardinals - see White Sox. Phillies - Horses? Sure, horses. Probably a better choice than "our fans are going heckle us no matter what we're called." Pirates - When I think of a rustbelt city in western PA, I think of Johnny Depp or Somali gangs. Brewers - Yes, Milwaukee has beer. Schlitz beer, that's what you want to be remembered for. Twins - Yes, there's two cities close to one another in the same state. Like twins! Braves - This isn't going to end well. Especially after stealing the dumbest chant in the world from Florida State. Nationals - Get it, we're in the National League! Marlins - People in Florida fish for Marlins a lot more often than they go to the bad side of Miami to see baseball in an art deco dome they had to tear down the Orange Bowl to build. Rangers - Otherwise known as cops from 100 years ago. Astros - Go fake grass! Or is it go space program!? Something. D'backs - I guess Diamondback Rattlesnakes just didn't roll off the tongue as well. They do get bonus points for being a sort of recent expansion team that avoided a minor league name like Homicidal Snot Pigs. Padres - Nothing gets a fanbase motivated like Spanish-era colonial monks. Dodgers - Shortened form of Trolleydodgers, as in dodging Brooklyn's trolleys. Are there any trolleys in LA? Did you have to steal Brooklyn's name along with their team? The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, plus parts of surrounding Orange County - no comment. Giants - I don't think the 1880s NY Giants were really that large, and, again, when you move have the courtesy to not steal another city's name. Athletics - Are they really that athletic? What's the quote... we're ballplayers, not athletes. Mariners - Does anyone really think of merchant marines or the Navy or anything like that when you think of Seattle? And what does that have to do with baseball anyway? Royals - Is this another sock thing? Or maybe named after the King of Kansas? Rockies - Hey, it's the Rocky Mountains, which stretch from like Mexico to Canada, but we're taking the name because we're just not that creative.

A little sarcasm, but on Burch's high A team there are nine pitchers with 12+ K/9, and the team is 33-41. Used to be if you had Burch's K rate and K:BB ratio you were on the fast track to the majors, on the cover of Baseball America. Now I don't even know if he's a prospect.

Sounds reasonable for two months of a 1-2 win player making $1.5M. Burch does have 49 strikeouts in 29 innings this year in A ball, which can't be much below average even in 2021.

But in June he had a .938 OPS, if only we'd called him up then! Weird how talent swings back and forth so much in such little time, it's hard to tell if a guy is a star or a bum. On the plus side, he's only a couple weeks removed from a six game hitting streak, so maybe all hope isn't lost just yet. Although that 1-for-his-last-15 might be the end of his career before we can find out.

I mean he was the 19th-best hitter on the 66-74 2019 Reno Aces. And that was 80% of his AAA time.

That's exactly what we said at this point in 2011, except we had a worse farm system then along with a higher payroll and much more dead weight on the roster. I'm sure you can find threads from 10 years ago wondering if it would be 2015 or 2018 when they break .500.

I think most teams will bring up two arms. If rosters expanded by five they'd bring up five arms. The appetite for pitchers has no limit. If they did away with roster limits some teams would carry 50 pitchers and have them each pitch an inning a week.

I think it's less likely to have a linear progression of 70, 80, 90 wins than it is to go 70, 67, 90. Just look at the Orioles history. They've gone from 76 to 91 to 109. Then 54 to 87. Then from 67 to 89. Then 71 to 88. Then 69 to 93. Then 75 to 47.