DrungoHazewood

I think we all have to get used to the idea that most Orioles are going to be here six years or less. You draft solely on projected value in the six years they're under team control. You probably should be doing something like that anyway, but I could see teams considering tail end value more if they have hundreds of $millions lying about. As I say this, they're probably constructing a new CBA that makes everything I just said OBE.

I actually agree with wildcard here. The Orioles have Rutschman under team control until about age 30, depending on exactly when he's called up. Catchers after the age of 30 are quite a bit more likely to decline than players at other positions. Moving a catcher somewhere else later in his career to save him from the rigors of catching is often discussed, sometimes tried, but rarely works. I'd be wary of a huge deal for Rutschman lasting into his 30s for a player who hasn't had an at bat above low A ball. I'd have to have scouting reports that are glowing like a nuclear reactor.

But you're missing the point that NOW isn't everything. You can't manage a baseball team over a 162 game schedule like NOW is all that matters. On average saving your best pitcher for the ninth is the most effective way to use your relievers. Sometimes it's not, but generally it is. Look at the Orioles closers of the past decade, almost every year the closer has the highest leverage index on the team. It's not Darren O'Day coming in whenever to set up and shut down the opponent. It's Jim Johnson and Zach Britton, used almost exclusively in the 9th. Look at the top pitchers in all time single season LI. The top 50 are all closers with 20+ saves since 1980, and 90% of the list are closers since 1990. The highest leverage index of all time (min 50 games) is Troy Percival in 2000, when 47 of his 54 appearances were in the 9th inning and had an LI of 2.575. When Elroy Face came in as a fireman whenever he was needed, whatever inning that might be in 1959 when he was 18-1, his LI was 1.8. And in his whole career he only cleared 2.00 twice. Using a 9th-inning closer might not be theoretically the most efficient and effective way to use a reliever, but it's produced almost all of the highest leverage indexes of all time in real game situations.

In 2015 I think there were real casinos giving 5000-1 odds on Leicester City winning the English Premier League. And they won.

0.0% implies that they believe the Orioles true odds are no better than 0.04%, or one-in-2500. Given that both 1989 and 2012 have happened in the last 35 years I think they're understating the probabilities here.

I'm not going to argue this point too much, but on average the later you are in a close game the higher the leverage of the situation. Often you'll have a bases-loaded situation in the 6th, and if you burn your best reliever then he won't be available for the very important situation in the 8th or 9th where you're now using your 3rd or 5th-best guy. The modern closer usage pattern wasn't developed entirely because managers are stupid. Generally your 9th-inning closer has the highest average leverage index on the team. And it's much easier to manage workloads and warmups if you're able to better specify when a pitcher pitches in the game.

I think that if the Orioles have pitchers who tremble and collapse at the thought of going out to protect a two run lead in the 9th inning of a June game against the Rangers they should trade them for whatever they can get as soon as possible. Even if they're some kind of mythical creature who is a shutdown reliever in the 8th inning of the same game. And I know you like to come to sweeping conclusions based on Cole Sulser's 45 PAs in high leverage situations in his entire MLB career, but let's not go there. It's unbecoming.

I don't know that giving the 75th-best reliever in baseball the opportunity to get 23 saves is going to prompt an opposing GM to overpay for him. Not in 2021.

Based on our very limited observations and data it looks like the current Mountcastle is roughly an average LFer. I don't know that a couple more years of practice was going to turn him into Brady Anderson, so this probably wasn't a tragic decision.

Nobody who even has the slightest delusion about using their god-given stuff to make the majors wants to try the knuckleball in a game. So the microscopic pool of knuckleball pitchers is a subset of guys with 4.88 ERAs in the Carolina League (sorry, AA Ball Southeast Division) at the age of 25. As many of you know I spend too much of my time thinking about alternate ways the world could have evolved. I sometimes wonder: a) What the world would be like if baseball hadn't all of a sudden decided (circa 1960) that knuckleball pitchers have to throw the knuckleball all the time. Prior to that lots of pitchers would mix in a knuckler like a slider or a change up. The Senators had a team in the 40s where pretty much everyone in the rotation threw a knuckler at least some of the time. b) What would happen if you took a group of reasonably good MLB prospects in 2021 and had them all spend six months learning to throw a knuckler. Nobody is ever going to risk their prospects doing this, but it would be very interesting. At least to me. b2) Maybe you could get some crazed independent Atlantic League GM to try this. If I get unexpectedly rich I'm buying the SoMd Blue Crabs and giving them an all-knuckleball staff.

By knuckleballer standards he's barely mid-career. It's hard to find a decent knuckleballer who didn't pitch into his 40s.

According to DRS the 2012 Orioles, prior to Manny being called up in early August, were -14 at third. So about -20 pro-rated to a full season. In 2011 they were at -24. In 2013, mostly Manny, the team was +25 at third. So a swing of over four wins just on third base defense.

You might want to go over some game film from my time as a shortstop in the Pax River intermural softball league. I fielded at least .700, and few, if any, of the errors were on cleanly fielded balls that the runner beat to first. All scored infield hits. I remember one of my finest moments at short was a quick two or three hopper to my left, fielded it, twisted, then tossed the ball on a ballistic trajectory to first on a run, beat the runner by an eyelash. Both the runner and my throw were in slow motion all the way to the thrilling conclusion.

If any team knows bad third base-ery, it's the team that let Chris Davis and Mark Reynolds field .886, .848, .897, and .850 at the hot corner. All told that's over 1400 innings (about a full season) of butchery at third. For reference, there were players in the 1880s who played on primitive, pock-marked fields with no gloves who fielded .900 at third.

That's awesome. Jannis has immediately become my favorite Oriole. I need to look it up, but I wonder when he converted to knuckeballing? His numbers don't look like a knuckleballer. Not enough walks. Although his recent AAA numbers look like somebody who temporarily lost the feel for the pitch and was basically lobbing up 58 mph change ups. Edit: Apparently he switched in 2012 after being released by the Rays. I missed his brief stint with the Blue Crabs in 2014, probably got some tutoring from fellow knuckleballer Joe Gannon.

I get having a healthy skepticism that the folks in charge don't always have everything right. But this is a case where people are making pronouncements based on nothing more than tiny bit of casual observation and wondering why that doesn't trump the opinions of professional scouts and coaches who've watched and worked with the player for hundreds of hours. If you have the data, bring it. But nobody here has anything of substance suggesting Mountcastle is a passable major league third baseman.

Why is it such a challenging concept that the Orioles staff has had years to look at Mountcastle and decided that he is not a major league third baseman?

Now we can officially write the obituaries for the old leagues. Pacific Coast League 1903-2021. There's been something called the Eastern League for all but a handful of years since 1884. The NY-Penn League first started in 1923. The first Sally League started in 1904. A lot of history closed out with this decision. But really it's COVID accelerating a trend that's been ongoing much longer than I've been alive, turning what were real leagues into glorified extended spring training.

Are there going to be league names besides "Triple A" and "Double A"? The article didn't explicitly say they're going to have names, unless I missed it. I think that's fine. Most of the old leagues began as actual competitive professional leagues, but it's been decades since they were anything but short-term developmental stops for players with meaningless pennant races. To me a generic Triple A designation fits better.

I liked it when the Marlins' AAA affiliate was in Edmonton, and then Calgary. Someone had to have lost a bet, right? Also, happy the O's are locked in with Norfolk. Oh... or maybe they're doing this as part of the grand conspiracy to move the team. The Orioles will move to Norfolk, and Baltimore will become their AAA affiliate. Yes, that's what's happening.

Median Fangraphs projection for 2021 looks like about .220/.310/.400.

Let's see... 27, career .662 OPS with an average under .200. Is a corner outfielder. Strikes out in 36% of PAs while slugging .376. Went to UVA. Nope.

The powers-that-be would need to change conditions to get there. Under the rules as written and other conditions the most effective strategies are wall-to-wall short-stint pitchers and max-bat-speed, optimal-launch angle batters.

If I was up 26 runs I'd let a pitcher play LF, but I suppose that would be disrespecting the game, huh? Also, I'd probably get fired if that 1-in-1000 injury happened to him.

Which is why they need to make it much harder to hit the ball over the fence. I'd much rather see Austin Hayes hit the ball up a 440' gap and try for an inside-the-parker than dump a medium fly ball over the 364' sign a jog around the bases for 15 seconds while the RFer chews on the strings on his unused glove.