DrungoHazewood

When the Nats start talking about Rusty Staub and Andre Dawson I want to punch somebody and then eat some poutine.

Paraphrasing from a book on cricket I've been reading: "You don't change cricket to make it more fun and engaging. That's not cricket. Cricket is what it was 150 years ago. It's not supposed to be more fun. It's part of the culture. It's good for you, like medicine and religion." Yep, no reason to change baseball to make it more exciting and engaging. That's not the point. The point is even if nobody is watching it's good for you, like eating your boiled asparagus.

Assuming they mean without it being a perfect game?

Really annoying that the media is saying 10th franchise no hitter and counting St. Louis Browns.

First solo no hitter by an Oriole in my nearly 50 years and it has to be a weird afternoon game where I have to take the kids to soccer. Missed the whole thing, but awesome job by Means.

Hey, I had man-crushes at least that big on J.R. House and Jon Knott!

Talk about a hot hand. Four days ago he was hitting .087, now up to .185. If his average goes up 100 points every few days he'll be hitting over 5.000 by the end of the year. Even Ty Cobb never hit 5.000.

I think we can be 99% sure he's not a .333 hitter going forward. But he doesn't have to be to be valuable. His rest-of-season projections are still in the .250/.305/.400 neighborhood, which may be a little pessimistic since they don't include him ditching switch hitting (I presume). But I suppose it's not entirely unreasonable to think he could be somewhat better than a .705 OPS hitter.

Even better, he's two for his last three. If we stop for a second and do the math, at 3.7 AB/game, hitting .667, carry the one... he'll end up with 323 hits over the rest of the season. Not only would that be an all-time record, but a great value at his salary. I don't see what we have to lose. Even if he only hits .500 the rest of the way that'll be pretty good.

He's pitched 33 innings. He's in the midst of his 21st-best run of five games in his career. He's had many years to continue to pitch like this, and almost never has. Remember the five game span in 2016 when he didn't allow any runs in four of the five starts?

In a worse position for being a rebuilding team with okay guys at free agent rates, or close? Villar has been terrible since he left, and Bundy is basically the same pitcher he's always been. Gausman has been all over the place since he was an Oriole.

By the way, I'm fine with the runner on second rule. But I'd also be good with just calling it a draw after 10 or 11.

All they have to do to get back to nine inning games in a doubleheader is find some way to have a game last two hours. It's pretty common now to have a nine-inning game approach four hours, occasionally over four hours. So 18 innings in a day with a break in between means at least nine hours at the park. Who likes that? Who wants that? If I was going to go to a doubleheader at Camden Yards I'd have to leave at about 10:00 or 10:30 for a 1:00 first pitch, and it's likely I wouldn't get home until midnight. I thought this was supposed to be fun. This is the kind of thing you tell grandkids about, that day you spent 14 hours at Camden Yards and lived to tell about it.

We'll just have to disagree on this. He hit well in 49 games three years ago, but that was easily his best minor league performance. He never appeared on any major top 100 prospect lists. He was solid, but not great. I'm very glad he's playing well.

I'm happy he's playing well, but I wouldn't exaggerate. In 2018, in 49 games, he was the 7th or 8th-best hitter his age or younger in the EL. That was the year Vlad Jr was in the same league OPSing 1.120 at 19.

Of course Mullins had a history of hitting left-handed pretty well, was continuing to hit left-handed well, while Davis had no such thing to switch to. With Davis it would be more like trying random things that have no logical reason you'd think they'd work. "How about standing straight up with your hands around your waist like Mickey Tettleton? Uhh.. sure coach. It's really weird and uncomfortable and I can't get the bat into a good hitting position, but why not?" You can't fix age-related loss of ability to hit.

That's better, but would still like to know how he "knows" this fact to be true.

Also, Elon Musk buys the team and injects 10 billion dollars. Although given Musk's track record what'll happen is that he'll promise to not only win the '22 Series, but also a new Series he invented against the Japanese champions. That won't happen, it'll look like the team is on the verge of bankruptcy and ruin, but in 2024 the team will be awesome in ways both unexpected and weird. Ryan Mountcastle will hit .512 but with no homers and no walks.

I think it's plausible that ace could mean just a very good pitcher in general, not the ace of the staff. Since in the 1860s a pitching staff was one main guy, and your right fielder or someone like that who'd pitch when the main guy had typhoid. On the card playing reference it would be nice to know his source for that, otherwise he's just a guy saying its true. If it was John Thorn maybe, but I don't know this guy from Adam.

Thanks, I haven't read that yet. Does he actually have references to back that up, or just states it as fact?

The bar just goes up so high with a defensively limited player. When you throw in that he's going to have to hit .300 to have a good OBP we're looking at a guy who'll likely be a 2-4 win player if things break his way. Jones, as a pretty good CFer with an .800 OPS never had a five-win season. But, a 2, 3 win guy at pre-arb or even arb 1 or 2 rates is valuable. Just not the kind of guy you sign into his 30s at free agent rates.

May not be the worst idea ever. It's not as bad as trying to convert Chance Sisco to pitcher. Or to see if DJ Stewart really can play short. But it's a pretty terrible idea to take one of your better hitting prospects and demote him from a 65-win team on the basis of a three-week slump. I'm sure Markakis learned from his experience. Cal was hitting under .200 well into May of '82 on a contender. Steve Finley OPS'd .616 his rookie year, and was only sent down to rehab his separated shoulder. I'd give him until at least Memorial Day.

Just wanted to mention that I've been advocating he give up switch hitting for like three years. Of course he's not going to hit lefties like Ty Cobb, it's just a hot streak. But it's a good thing he's doing well, and ditched an obvious weakness.

List of starting pitchers who made an All Star roster despite career WAR totals below replacement include: Jeff Locke, Hal Gregg, and Jim Coates. Other notable pitchers who could fall under this definition of aces include Russ Ortiz, Wade Miley, Alfredo Simon, Edwin Jackson, Yovani Gallardo, Art Houtteman, and Jair Jurrjens.

Brainard was not only the primary starter for the famous 1869 Red Stockings, but also a starter on the 1873-74 Baltimore Canaries of the National Association. That was the first league side to represent Baltimore. His 1874 pitching line is physically unrealizable today - 240 innings, 405 hits, 329 runs, 99 earned, 27 walks, eight strikeouts, and 19 wild pitches. Was 5-22. Also... strange accounting here 30 games pitched, 27 starts, 4 games finished, and 25 complete games. The only way that math works out is if he left a game, moved to the field, then went back and finished the game. In 99.999% of the cases games pitched <= starts plus games finished.