DrungoHazewood

There's no elephant here. It's almost guaranteed that Mancini's agent will work out something fairly reasonable with the team, and the team won't even think about non-tending him. 40 man is a non-issue, if you need a spot just cut one of the 17 random relief pitchers.

I think you underestimate the number of children today named Ql'zon'da, pronounced "Jasmine". In 2020 Jorja is unremarkable.

It's always nice to have a detailed, nuanced, evidence-based look at a player to enlighten and broaden the discussion.

2020 draft order "highly likely" to be "heavily influenced" by high-revenue teams who played poorly like the Nats and Red Sox. Remember the original justification for the draft was competitive balance. So let's give top five picks to the reigning Champions and a team with $500M in annual revenues and four titles in the last 16 years based on 1/3rd of a season.

Scott has pitched fewer innings this season than the single game record.

I think it's gotta be the McCovey precedent. The kid who's clearly as good or better than everyone else who just didn't get a full season to show it. Plus I love the absurdity of an O's MVP who is still eligible for the Rookie of the Year next year.

There is never a shortage of players who can hit a little bit and can't field. You can always find a 1B/DH with a 110 OPS+. As long as Nunez is cheap and isn't actively taking playing time from someone better he'll stick, but that might not last until even next season.

I didn't said he was likely to remain an Oriole. I just said that it's not uncommon to have a player like Nunez on a good team.

Nunez is a DH with a 110 OPS+, or about that. Kendrys Morales has spent 13 years in the majors as a DH with a 111 OPS+ and has played in four postseasons. Mark Trumbo was basically a DH with a 1000-game career and a 108 OPS+. Played on some good teams. Billy Butler won a World Series as a DH with a 96 OPS+, 116 for his career. From 2013-18 Victor Martinez was a DH with a 112 OPS+, played in a couple postseasons. Evan Gattis, DH with a 111 OPS+, played in four postseasons. Teams may not want their DH to have a 110 OPS+, but in reality that's about average for one.

A system like Zips takes available data, mostly recent MLB performance, and in some cases minor league performance, and adds in aging of some sort. In most cases aging effects aren't dramatic, a player at 27 might be 10% or 15% more productive than they were at 23 or 24. Individual components like homers or stolen bases will contribute to that, but will also not dramatically change year-to-year. In real life we see the impacts of injury, playing time, changes in environment (parks, balls), along with random variation. If you wanted Zips to look more like real life you could add +/- 15% random numbers to each component projection. They'd look more realistic, but probably be less accurate. Another thing that most projection systems do is apply a playing time reduction to account for injury. But it can't be distributed correctly since most injuries are random. So you end up with everyone getting 25 games off from injury, when in reality some players miss zero games and some miss 140, with a median of 25.

The idea that the Orioles had one of the better offenses in the league was always kind of fanciful. About a month ago they had six or seven regulars or semi-regulars out-hitting their career marks by 200 points of OPS. It was a lock that most of those were going to regress hard.

The average major leaguer in 2020 hits .244. There are eight teams hitting under .230, and the Reds are hitting .213. In essence all the Reds are Rob Deer. At .255 the Orioles are the Rod Carew of the AL. I hope Mountcastle out-hits the .260s they're projecting, but that's already 20 points or more above average. My problem with the projections is that everyone seems to have a K:BB ratio of like 140:30. It's hard to score runs when your team OBP is .295.

I kind of like the concept in other languages of formal and informal pronouns. I know a little German and it's sie or du for the English "you". You never call anyone but close acquaintances du. We don't have that, but it's a little like how I see my family names. Nate and Sam for around the house, yelling on the soccer field, for their buddies. Nathaniel and Samuel for passports and school paperwork and when they've done something quite good or bad. For whatever reason 98% of the world has always called me Jon. There are probably more people here who know me as Drungo than regularly call me Jonathan. But Jonathan is on my email at work, obviously on paperwork, passports, bills and the like. Actually, I even sign work emails Jon, but below a line I put full name, title, organization, etc. It's a duality.

Lopez has an ERA and a FIP in 226 MLB innings over 5.00. He's 27. He's safe until the O's acquire a legit Grade C prospect and need to add him to the roster.

I'd rather have the bat, because I like taking positions that are at odds with things that appear to be unquestioned traditions. I'd also like my backup catchers to be glorified pinch hitters like Smoky Burgess. 5' 6", 245, hits the crap out of the ball, but look like they took up catching a week ago Thursday.

I went and looked up his minor league numbers because his MLB splits are pretty pronounced but in not a huge number of ABs. Didn't really show much, he's had reasonably typical L/R splits. I'd expect him to hit lefties 75 or 100 points better going forward. But here's the weird thing. In 2017 he's listed as having an at bat left-handed in the minors for Albuquerque. Against a left-handed pitcher. Maybe it's a typo, maybe it never happened. But I want to know the backstory. Maybe he just decided to hit lefty in a 23-1 game or something.

That would be perfect if he was 5' 3", 110 pounds and was born in 1880.

I named my first son Nathaniel, but we've always called him Nate. Son #2 is Samuel/Sam. I'm Jonathan and am usually called Jon. It's very useful to have a longer version of your name so that parents can call you that when you've screwed up. If it's really serious they have the option of adding the middle name to the full first name. Then there's no question it's about to go down.

Yes, absolutely. Connie Mack was a brilliant manager, with several dynastic teams. His late 20s teams had several seasons where they finished 10+ games in front of the Ruth-Gehrig Yankees. But he was an old-old school owner, in that he had few resources outside of the A's. If they weren't making money there was NO cushion to fall back on, they were in real danger of going bankrupt. So twice he was put in a position where he feared that paying players market rates (which seem comically small compared to today) would put the future of the organization in doubt, so he sold off everyone making much more than a few thousand dollars a year. As I mentioned the first case was during the battle with the Federal League, which paid players much more than the AL/NL to jump. And the second was in the early 30s after the Depression hit. In 1932 the A's were coming off that string of fantastic seasons and drew under 300k fans for the season. A team with multiple HOFers in one of the bigger cities in the country beating the Yanks at their own game, and they were drawing fans like the York Revolution does today.

I just did an exhaustive search spanning tens of seconds and I think Connie Mack used that name simply because Cornelius is a long name that's often shortened to Connie (or was 120 years ago), and many families with Mac or Mc names just informally go by Mack, especially if the last name is really long. I have a feeling that people had less of a possessive quality about their names 100+ years ago. Spelling wasn't standardized in many cases, and people seemed to have little problem Anglicizing names if they immigrated. Not sure if that was because they didn't care, or that they feared getting beat up if they used Müller instead of Miller.

I had an acquaintance in the 90s who was a civil servant working for the Navy like me. Back then when you filled out the paperwork to get your gov't badge there was field for Nickname. Presumably so that if you were named Andrew, like him, you could list Andy as your preferred name. He didn't put down Andy, he put down Freight Train, because he always wanted to be called Freight Train. They put it on his badge. It was awesome. You should just go by Freight Train or T-bone or something.

The 1914 A's went 99-53, won the pennant by 8.5 games and kind of had a dynasty going on. They hadn't won fewer than 90 games in a 154-game schedule since 1908 and had three World Series wins. Then they lost the '14 Series 4-0 to the Miracle Braves, Connie Mack decided he couldn't afford to compete with the Federal League so he sold off his stars and in '15 they finished 43-109. Then in '16 they went 36-117, arguably the worst team since they outlawed syndicate baseball. Also last place doesn't always mean much in the 5-team division era. The 2014 Sox had the 4th-worst record in the AL.

Yep, he was one of the more hyped rookies of all time. At least on par with Ben McDonald's treatment a few years later. That was when the baseball card bubble started getting ridiculous. I had a friend down the street whose Dad bought him dozens of full sets of cards each year in the late 80s, I guess as an investment. I was quite jealous. According to a quick Google search the 1988 Donruss Jeffries card is now worth $0.34 in mint condition.

Not that this is really a problem, but the bigger issue to me is players being ROY despite having played high level baseball for many years in places like Japan. But if you're an originalist maybe this isn't a problem since Jackie Robinson had been a major league caliber player for years before his debut where he won the original award.

Probably not, but Gregg Jeffries got a few votes that year he appeared in 29 games. I suppose technically you could be ROY twice. Or five times if each of your first four seasons involved homering in all 20 at bats you got... In other sports, namely English Premier League Soccer, their version of the ROY is called the Young Player of the Year and I count at least four players who've won it twice. Framing it that way fixes some of the issues with (for example) foreign players who are 30-year-old MLB rookies with six or eight high level seasons under their belt winning the award, but perhaps creates other problems.