DrungoHazewood

You really think that Elias and Angelos and Co wouldn't even think about that? Four or five years later they'd collectively slap their foreheads and say "doggone it, if only we'd thought of locking Adley up like the Braves did with Acuna! Maybe them guys on the interwebs really are smarter than us!"

We'll see.

If he had an .800+ OPS at every stop below that at ages 3, 4, 5 years younger than other prospects at that level? Sure.

I haven't looked anything up, but it's hard to imaging a better set of candidates than Howard and Berra. In 1958 Howard received MVP votes, finishing 17th, when his primary position was Yogi's backup. It's plausible that Howard would be in the Hall of Fame if he'd gotten a starting gig before he turned 30.

They should lock him in a room with Nick "The fences are too far away, it's not fair" Castellanos and they can commiserate about how awful the world is to them.

You have no doubt that the Orioles would have looked at a 19-year-old in AAA OPSing .940 and said "we'll keep him in AAA for two more full seasons"? I think they would have done the same thing the Braves did, send him to AAA for a month of his age 20 season, then call him up. Maybe a bit longer if he OPS'd the same .556 he did for Gwinnett. The Orioles have never had a 19-year-old dominate AAA, at least not in a long time. There's a plan, but the plan changes when you have a generational talent.

For all we know he's been using Bullfrog since he was in high school. One thing I haven't seen discussed it that it's likely that a significant number of pitchers have been using this stuff for years and if they quit cold turkey they could see performances drop off the side of the planet.

There's basically no correlation between annual HBP rates and walk rates, which I would expect if the recent increase in HBP was control-related. It's actually slightly negative meaning over time HBP are a little higher when walks go down. Walks have stayed between 2.5 and 4 per nine pretty much forever, but HBP have varied from 0.16/game to 0.46/game in the last 40 years. HBP have nearly tripled since the 80s while walks have stayed between 2.8 and 3.5. HBP are predominantly being driven by batters standing on top of the plate and wearing protective gear so that they can reach and drive pitches on the outer half. Maybe aided a little by replay that shows if the ball grazed a sleeve, as well as umps almost never refusing first for the batter not attempting to avoid the pitch. I'd be okay with some rules changes here, like moving the batters box a few inches away from the plate, and requiring batters to wear any protective gear as they run around the bases. Armor up all you want, but you have to keep it on until you get back to the dugout. Or... you have to wear it the whole game, in the field, too.

There's a 100000000% chance this has spread to the minors. Five years ago. It would be unbelievable if high schoolers weren't doing it.

Even today it's hard to see a .365/.460/.625 line in AA at 22 and not think it's awesome. It is. Especially in 2021 when hitting .365 seems like something Ty Cobb used to do eons ago. But it's a good lesson in not projecting an epic career based on a single minor league season. Especially in a catcher who might spend half his career recovering from a never-ending series of large and small injuries. Rutschman should be better, but we'll see...

More spin means more movement. That's down to physics.

It seems clear that coaches are at least saying "hey, you might get some better results with something on your hands." And if that's coming out publicly you can be sure that some teams/coaches are pretty explicitly saying stuff like "you're not long for this league without some Spider Tack."

You're jinxing it! Just remember Roy Smalley* once had a .959 in the first half and a .589 the second. *Some of the weirdest splits ever? In '79 Smalley had a .959 first half, .589 second. .985 at home, .606 on the road. 1.043 batting 2nd, .620 batting third.

Pitchers scuffing and using slippery stuff for spitball-like pitches has always been (apparently) a fairly small percentage of pitchers. I don't think anyone believes that ever ratcheted up to epidemic levels. I don't think bat corking ever reached saturation levels or anything close. Possibly because it doesn't work... I don't think it's inevitable that some level of small-scale cheating will eventually go to chaotic insane levels. A bit of sunscreen isn't much different from rosin. A bit of pine tar isn't too different from sunscreen. But then you look up in 2021 and the ball sticks to the outfield wall for 20 minutes.

It's easy to judge the sport in retrospect. Obviously they should have cracked down on the 'roids in '88 and the sticky stuff in 2013. Except that in the early years it's not well know, it's not universally done, the effectiveness isn't clear, everyone is trying to hide it and deny it's widespread. It's unrealistic to think the powers-that-be will have a massive crackdown in the early stages of something like this when nobody is sure of the scope or the impact. Again, like Frobby said, are they really supposed to assume that people going a few mph over the speed limit will inevitably lead to some kind of Mad Max Autobahn?

There's always been a huge double standard in baseball driven by the sport's nostalgia cult. By definition anything Willie, Mickey, The Duke, Ted, Aaron did was okay, and anything these kids like Canseco and Clemens did was a travesty.

I don't know that it's obvious or inevitable that pitchers would go from rosin to sunscreen to Spider Tack to industrial epoxy and that each step continues to increase spin rates. It's not like everyone had reams of data on how added grip of various types changes spin rates. For all we know there's a line where it's so sticky/tacky that it makes it impossible to throw effective pitches, and in 2016 or 2018 I don't know that anyone outside of the pitching community had any idea where that line was. Continuing Frobby's analogy, if everyone is going 59 in a 55 in 2016 do you have a massive crackdown by the highway cops because it doesn't take a genius to know by 2021 everyone will be going 110?

If he needs to move to first base at 30 the odds of him being worth a long-term contract into his 30s goes down dramatically. For a first baseman to be worth $20M+ a year he needs to OPS .900+, realistically closer to 1.000. The bar is probably higher for a converted catcher who probably won't be winning any gold gloves. If you're projecting he won't be a catcher in his 30s, then the O's should let him go after his initial six years of control unless he hits like Piazza. Even if he stays behind the plate, there are only four catchers worth 20+ wins after age 32. Bench was the greatest catcher ever and was worth 15 wins in his 30s, and his last three years he was a mediocre 1B/3B.

Fangraphs has Doumit at -63 framing runs in 2008. In about 100 games caught. That's like taking a league-average pitcher with a 4.00 ERA in 150 innings and replacing him with a pitcher with a 7.80.

Looks like about 25 runs or 2-3 wins between the Orioles and Rangers. But it looks like about a win separating most teams if you discount 2-3 outliers.

It is true that Rutschman is old for a top prospect to be in AA. But most top prospects didn't have a season where there were no minor league games.

The expectation for a #1 overall is about a 1.200 in 100 PAs in the minors then he's called up and has Chipper Jones' career. The reality is usually Pat Burrell or Jeff King. Or Shawn Abner or Steve Chilcott.

What kind of dominant hitting do you expect out of the #1 overall pick? Here's some examples of MLB performances: Shawn Abner, .591 OPS (.740 AAA, .739 AA) Dave Roberts .644 (.772 AAA) Danny Goodwin, .674 (.918 AAA, .962 AA) Tim Beckham, .714 (.688 AAA, .728 AA) Jeff Burroughs, .795 (.893 AAA) Rick Monday, .804 (.870 minors, .874 AA) Phi Nevin, .814 (.759 AAA, .958 AA) Ron Blomberg, .832 (.865 AAA, .875 AA) Pat Burrell, .834 (.833 AAA, 1.049 AA) Bob Horner, .839 (skipped minors) Adrian Gonzalez, .843 (.832 AAA, .767 AA) Tim Foli, .593 (.688 AAA, 5-for-20, .568 AA) Shawon Dunston, .712 (.656 AAA, .777 AA) BJ Surhoff .745 (.743 AAA, 3-for-12 in AA) There are, of course, also 4-5 HOFers on the list, but also a number of others I didn't list who barely played or played poorly in the majors. Harold Baines had a .734 in AA and a .856 in AAA. Joe Mauer .853 in AA, 29 AB in AAA. Some of the high school guys are harder to comp since they were in the minors when Rutschman was in college... Josh Hamilton has a career minor league OPS of .819. I've said this many times, but the #1 overall pick is expected to be a HOFer, but the median value of a #1 overall is about 15 WAR, or roughly the career of Matt Wieters or Ben McDonald. You expect dominance, but usually get a good MLBer. There have been many more #1s who gave their teams no value at all than there have been deserving HOFers.

As of this morning the Orioles' three farm teams below Norfolk are winning games at a .737 clip. That's a pace of 119 wins out of 162. The last MLB team to win 73.7% of their games was the 1906 Cubs. Feel free to discuss how minor league winning percentages are meaningless, how the O's should have promoted X, Y, Z prospects earlier, or whatever. This is a team that has had a poor farm system since I was about 10 years old in 1981, so I think this is a nice thing.

There were three catchers taken in the second round of the 2013 draft. Victor Caratini, Andrew Knapp, Chance Sisco. Caratini had a .799 minor league OPS, a .692 MLB OPS, and had played 285 MLB games. Knapp had a .769 minor league OPS, a .656 MLB OPS, and has played 280 MLB games. Chance Sisco had the highest minor league OPS despite playing a lot of games in Harbor Park (.816), had a .658 MLB OPS, and has played the fewest MLB games (191). Sisco got the opportunities he got because that's what prospects like him get from MLB organizations. Not because the Orioles are dumb or suck or whatever.