DrungoHazewood

I'll admit to not paying that close attention, but I thought Diaz was a prototypical RFer with a plus arm. Guess not.

If they still want to hold fast to the illusion that the draft is about competitive balance Boston, New York, and the Dodgers should be permanently in the 25-30 range. But it was never really about competitive balance.

Aberdeen apparently has a very nice facility. Frederick, as you mention, doesn't. I think that's one of the primary reasons they apparently favor Aberdeen. I agree that ceding Frederick to the Nats is not a good thing to do. I don't know what the Nats' plans are. They just built a new park for one of their affiliates in Fredericksburg, and they have to cut a team somewhere, too. Frederick may end up in an independent league, probably the Atlantic League.

Is it actionable? Can you do something about it? Can you take advantage of it? If not, it's not very relevant.

And that list is heavily slanted towards the last 30 years, and some Yankees who were in the World Series 80% of the time from 1947-1963. A typical inner-circle HOFer had less than 100 postseason PAs. Ted Williams went 5-for-25. Honus Wagner played in two postseason series, Ty Cobb three, Hornsby two. Rod Carew went 11-for-50. Schmidt had a .690 OPS in about 150 PAs. Eddie Mathews 10-for-50. Of course Santo, Banks, Billy Williams were a combined 0-for-0 until Williams went 0-for-7 at the very tail end of his career. That's why the default position on including postseason stats in analysis is to just not do it, because it's all about as meaningful as last April.

So far this year the postseason ERA is 4.20, vice 4.44 in the regular season. I think in general that's true, you have better pitchers pitching more of the innings in the postseason.

Major League Baseball is 100% behind the taxpayers in small-to-medium sized communities spending $10s of millions on new facilities for their prospects to play in. And just like in the majors they're perfectly fine telling places like Hagerstown that their tradition of having a professional baseball team for many decades is all good and well, but build us a free stadium or we're going somewhere else. Frederick is probably on the list because Aberdeen has a nicer, newer place and they needed a place to go with the NY-Penn League going away.

Right before COVID my 12-year-old son was playing as a fill-in on a 13/14-year-old indoor soccer team. Before the game I was messing with him and told him to do a moonwalk if he scored a goal. He was easily the smallest kid on the field, but also probably the best player. He scored a goal. He moonwalked and did a little Michael Jackson spin to celebrate. The parents on the sidelines ate it up. I was a little embarrassed, but at the same time it was pretty cool. It's a game. It should be fun.

Do players play better or develop faster if they're playing home games in better facilities? Or are they more motivated to be promoted if they know the next step will feature better conditions? Or, like most intangibles, there is no measurable impact at all and we just have this general feeling that new facilities are better than old ones?

So if that's true, does it mean that the overall level of performance in the Majors this year was off significantly because of the lack of fans? And I guess that it affects hitting, pitching, and fielding equally since there didn't appear to be any difference in outcomes when comparing 2019 and 2020.

No. A defining feature of the postseason is that random chance is almost as important as ability. Or, sure, he failed. But it has little or nothing to do with his ability as a baseball player.

If you don't hit well in 122 PA in the postseason it's because you're a bad person. A choker. A loser. If you hit .342 in October after hitting .234 in the regular season it's because you have been blessed by the gods. Signed, All 20th century sports writing

Many or most offensive metrics take more than a full season (say, 600 PA) to stabilize. 122 is nothing. Remember how Charlie Blackmon was going to hit .400 this year, he was hitting .405 after 120 PAs? He hit .303.

Oh, then sure.

I think this entire series is based on ceiling without any real thought given to likelihood of reaching that ceiling. So an average team at an average position will be something like a B or B+. But even on that scale giving the Orioles a C+ here is pretty generous since no one in the organization is terribly likely to be playing middle infield for the Orioles in the majors in three years.

I'm sure I've pointed this out six or eight times, but Alberto and Valaika are the same age and Alberto has an 81 OPS+, Valaika a 72. The only way you can peg Valaika as definitively a better hitter is if you ignore everything before 2020, when Valaika had an unacceptable .656 OPS in Colorado.

Crisis? No. Noticeable impact to the Orioles budget in a few years, especially when compounded across multiple players? Sure.

Top 25 pitchers of the live ball era (1920-present) in rWAR, and the age I eyeballed them as being established as a top starter: 1. Clemens, 23 2. Grove, 26 3. Seaver, 22 4. Maddux, 22 5. R. Johnson, 29ish 6. Niekro, 28 7. Blyleven, 22 8. Perry, 25, maybe 27 9. Spahn, 26 (WWII delays) 10. Pedro, 25 11. Carlton, 24 12. Ryan, 25 13. Roberts, 23 14. Mussina, 22 15. Jenkins, 24 16. Gibson, 25 or 26 17. Schilling, 25 but wasn't great again until 29 18. Glavine, 25 19. Verlander, 23 20. Hubbell, 25 21. Sutton, 26 or 27 22. K. Brown, probably 27 23. Reuschel, 23 or 24 24. Palmer 23 or 24, after his injury. The year he was beating the Dodgers at 20 his ERA+ was 98. 25. Greinke, 25 Obviously there are different levels of "top starter" for each guy. Sutton never got to Seaver's highest level, for example. But it looks like a slim majority of obvious HOF-type starters were established in the majors as high-level performers before they turned 25, and almost all by 27. But then there's always Dazzy Vance who had a MLB career mark of 0-4 on his 30th birthday, and was the best pitcher in the NL from about age 31-41.

Whatever you call them won't there be four levels of full season ball, Aberdeen, Delmarva, Bowie, and Norfolk? I always thought High A and Low A was needlessly odd, so they could always go back to the old A, B, C, D. Or AAA, AA, A and B.

Jim Palmer spent 1964, at 18, split between Aberdeen, SD in A Ball and the Orioles' Instructional League winter team. He threw 182 innings, walking 190 and striking out 155. Threw 32 wild pitches and hit another five batters for good measure. He was in Baltimore for the entire 1965 season, and starting in the World Series in '66.

It continues to amaze me that you feign confusing contractual rules with appropriate pace of development and promotion. You and I both know full well that if there were no service time rules and no tie to player compensation that the average time spent in the minors would immediately drop by at least a couple years.

I want to see a modern major league team play by 1884 rules with a pitcher's box on flat ground, with the front edge 50' from the plate. I know common opinion is that the mound is a big benefit, but I think the strikeout rate would be about 17 per nine. And while that would be fun for a bit, it's becoming more and more obvious (at least to me) that MLB needs to move the mound back about 3' or so.

Hyun-Soo Kim hit (is hitting? I think the KBO is still going on) .349/.408/.560 with 109 RBI in 121 games for the LG Twins. Striking out in less than 10% of plate appearances, which is physically impossible in the '20 Majors. Tyler Wilson is 10-8, 4.44, 106 Ks and 39 walks in 142 innings. 24 starts. Not an Oriole, but former Cubs uber-prospect Addison Russell is OPSing .669 for the Kiwoom Heroes. Odrisamer Despaigne, arguably best name in Oriole history, is 15-7, 4.07 for the KT Wiz. Mike Wright is 11-6, 4.07 in 141 innings with NC Dinos. Dan Straily, who allowed 442 homers in 15 innings for the O's last year is 12-4, 2.53 with eight homers allowed in 170.2 innings for the Lotte Giants.

By that measure no team in the majors would rate below a C or a C+, and at least 25 teams would be at a B or higher.

When I was a teenager my family used to vacation in West Virginia in our pop-up camper, and Pipestem State Park isn't terribly far from Bluefield. I got my parents to drive down to a game one time, but just as we pulled into the parking lot it was called due to rain. Isn't Bowen Field the place with the basketball hoop on the center field fence, and the batter wins something if he hits it through?