DrungoHazewood

Mancini and Sisco are the only players on the team projected by Fangraphs to have a .325 OBP. Mountcastle is going to need about 800 PAs to have a decent shot at 100 RBI.

It's the Orioles Hall of Fame, if there are rules nobody has ever read them. They could put him in next year and nobody would say anything.

So not to downplay Devereaux' two big moments or his place on the Why Not? team, but he's solidly in the gray area for Orioles Hall of Fame induction. He had two very good years, one year that was average, and three pretty poor seasons with the Orioles. You could argue that Merv Rettenmund was a more deserving choice, and he's not that much different that Bob Nieman or Jackie Brandt or Don Baylor. Baylor would almost certainly be higher on the pecking order if they hadn't kept sending him back to AAA to hit .330 year after year.

Devereaux clinched Oriole Hall of Fame-dom with this one swing. I was working at Roy Rogers the summer before my freshman year in college, so I didn't see it live, but on the way home the radio guys were still in disbelief hours later.

Not just starting pitchers, but reclamation projects: Joe Coleman Bob Boyd Jim Gentile (acquired at 26 for Willy Miranda and $50k) Robin Roberts (released by Yanks after they'd acquired him for nothing from Phils after going 1-10, 5.85. Won 42 games for O's) Moe Drabowsky (6-18, 5.15 two years prior to coming to Baltimore) Mickey Tettleton was signed after he'd been released by Oakland after hitting .194 Kevin Hickey Randy Milligan picked up at age 27 for Pete Blohm Sam Horn had a 122 OPS+ for the O's after the Sox released him Mike Flanagan (1991 edition) 2.38 ERA in 98 innings after released by Jays Rick Sutcliffe was injured most of '90-91 before winning 26 games in Baltimore at ages 36-37 Fernando started 31 games for the '93 Orioles after having been out of the majors for almost two years Jamie Moyer spent his entire age 29 season in AAA before the O's picked him up Scott Kamieniecki allowed 30 runs in 22 innings at age 32 for the Yanks before going 10-6, 4.01 for the O's Jose Mercedes 14-7, 4.02 after having been out of the majors for almost two years David Newhan was a 30-year-old AAA-opt-out before becoming Ty Cobb for six weeks Todd Williams was very good for a couple seasons after being basically a 33-year-old rookie Nate McLouth

Yea, I haven't fully bought into it, either. Discovering large impacts requires lots of data and evidence. Although it does have a pretty high correlation to the framing data from recent pitch tracking, and that suggests many catchers have a large impact.

Remember this is preliminary, and the results are not fully in context (park effects, varying levels of catchers they're comparing to, etc). So I'd guess that more mature results will be less extreme. Mike Scioscia may not be the best defensive player of all time.

Basically looking at pitchers' results across different catchers and comparing run values of the differences in K/BB. There were two methods but this describes the more accurate of them:

I wonder if teams are already projecting a date when robot umps start calling balls and strikes, and are planning to ignore framing and similar value? The Molinas active during that transition would see their value drop by 2-3 wins a year overnight. And the Ryan Doumits of the world could see their value go up by at least as much. It will be a great reckoning.

I've seen some preliminary data suggesting that Andy Etchebarren was an excellent framing catcher. Although that same study says Dempsey was poor, and Elrod didn't play enough to make the list. Perhaps much of the perceived mediocre-ness of some catchers is because of the inability to capture value in previous metrics. Of course because it couldn't be quantified there were probably any number of catchers whose reputations won't match future calculations of their value. Like maybe Dempsey.

Rutschman was the consensus #1 pick. It wasn't a reach or a value pick. Most scouts, GMs, publications had him #1. I don't think you can ever fault a GM for taking the consensus #1.

There's certainly an argument to be made for that. At least while framing is still a thing. According to Fangraphs' accounting the four most valuable defensive players in 2019 were catchers, and in 2020 Christian Vazquez (top catcher) was more valuable in 356 innings than Francisco Lindor (top SS) was in 508.

My kid pitched a bit at that age, but he takes after me so he was one of the smallest kids on the team and as an adult my fastball topped out around 70. He's a lefty, so that's an advantage. And I think no matter the sport the parents love rooting for the little guy. But now he's a very good soccer player; I think among the modern iterations of the two sports soccer can be more accommodating to a really fast/quick kid who is 4' 6" and 80 pounds in the 8th grade. His launch angle was pound the ball into the ground and beat the throw to first.

We have friends who have a middle school aged girl who plays fast-pitch softball. We watched a whole game where she didn't swing the bat or field a ball, but played the whole game. It was a little painful. But not quite T-ball painful. Also watched my older son play a Little League game at about the age of nine where the was one clean hit by both teams combined and the game ended 15-12 or something like that.

Yes, but could they hide them well enough so that someone else doesn't benefit from this development?

I'm not entirely sure how it's structured, but, yes, all the bigger clubs have youth academies going down to six or seven year olds. Clearly not professional contracts but some kind of agreements. Arsenal had Harry Kane, but at the age of seven released him because they said he wasn't very athletic and a little chubby. Now at 27 he's been with Tottenham for about 20 years.

If you graph out league-wide strikeouts per PA over time you'll eventually get to the point where everyone strikes out every at bat. Rutschman is just ahead of his time.

Sure they do. That's one of the highlights of T-ball. 3' 2" kids spending 25 minutes getting geared up with full catcher's equipment eight sizes too big, so that they can slowly waddle out behind the plate to watch all the other kids knock the ball off the tee by repeatedly hitting the tee with the bat. My kids only played the varieties of youth baseball that are excruciating to watch. They stopped before it really started to look like grown up baseball.

Let's hope the new CBA doesn't include an international draft that renders this largely ineffective.

Have you ever met a 13-year-old? My middle school aged boys will often sit in front of our 65" 4K TV with it on a program they chose, while watching something else the 5" screens on their phones. It's the 2021 version of picture-in-picture (remember when that was a thing?).

It's truly an exciting time to be alive. In related news, I now get four phone calls a day from ATT/Directv begging me to come back after dropping them in December. A handful of times I stayed on the line long enough to tell them I'd gladly come back if they halved their prices and added a bunch of content I can only get online, but they've declined so far. So I do not have a MASN cable subscription...

MLB has to be concerned about the math. Let's say for the sake of argument that MASN has 5 million subscribers, or did five years ago. I don't know what the real number is. And let's say they each pay $5 a month for MASN, or $60 a year. That's $25M a month, or $300M a year. But let's say 20% of those subscribers are actively watching MASN, and would pay to see the Orioles/Nats on a streaming service. So if they lose half of their cable/satellite subscribers (2.5M in this hypothetical), they get 500k of them back on streaming. To make the revenues even out they have to charge the streamers $25 a month, or $300 a year. If the streaming rate is 10% instead of 20% the cost has to be $50 a month/$600 a year to make the math work. If it's 5% it's $100 a month, $1200 a year. And that doesn't consider that almost no one (aside from people who're too lazy to cancel) would subscribe to MASN from October-February. What's MLB.tv's single-team plan cost? $110 a year? If that's where they set the MASN cost they won't even remotely approach their current revenues if they lose many cable/satellite subscribers. Whatever the numbers are, I find it difficult to believe that any team is going to increase real revenues by switching from compulsory RSN fees to streaming. Most will lose money. But it will be smaller losses than if they take the path of not having a streaming option at all, because cord cutting will continue.

I'll load up the time machine with antibiotics and antiretrovirals and the like.

How many times does Rutschman get to face top MLB pitchers in AA? How often does he get to catch MLB pitchers at Bowie or Norfolk? How much longer will his transition period be in the majors if he's rarely faced an Aroldis Chapman or a Zack Britton or a Clayton Kershaw until he's 24 or 25?

Yes, the minors will still serve a purpose. But prior to free agency there was no expectation that every prospect should spend a year (or at least significant time) at every level. Brooks was in the majors at 18. Al Kaline and Mel Ott and many others were up as teenagers. Boog was up at 19.