DrungoHazewood

His underlying metrics don't really support that he's a mid-3.00s ERA pitcher. Last year his xERA was 5.37. The 10 wins mean almost nothing besides he was the type/quality of pitcher that the O's brought in somewhere between the 5th and the 8th inning of games they were tied or losing. And then the O's immediately scored some runs. Not that I'm anti-Baumann, but most teams have 3, 5, 6 or more guys like this, and with the roster crunch someone had to go.

Career ERA 4.45. Career FIP 4.46.

He doesn't even make the Larry All Stars. Walker, Larry Wayne Jones, Doby, Dierker, Histle, Jackson, Gura, Parrish, Laughing Larry Doyle, Larry Benard McDonald (who knew?), Anderson, Bowa, Biittner, Jansen, Gardner, French, Sheets, Corcoran, Milbourne, McWilliams, Christenson, McLean...

I'm burning this place to the ground if the O's don't go 33-(-4) in June.

An average-ish AAA hitter doesn't project to be an average-ish MLB player unless he's very young. Norby will soon turn 24. The projection systems at Fangraphs all say he's a high .600s OPS hitter in the majors. So without additional growth as a hitter, to be a MLB starter he's going to have to provide additional value, either with his glove or his positional flexibility.

Perhaps people could reflect on the fact that just three years ago the O's were a very comfortable 5-23 in May.

I guess I get that. But I don't understand the people who treat social media and messageboards like I mumble or yell at the TV. A sharp grounder goes through somebody's legs and I'll say "what the @$(%!". They'll take the time to type out 3-4 sentences about how the fielder is of questionable parentage and the GM is clearly smoking crack, and the mananger who put him there must have brain damage.

.834 team OPS and they're 20-22. That tells me that a run there is worth about as much as an Italian Lira. The whole IL is scoring 5.2 runs/game, or more than you see in a typical Rockies game. 1936 was the last time the Majors scored 5.2 runs/game. They're scoring more than MLB did in 2000, when 19 different players had a 1.000 OPS. When I think of Buffalo I think of a grey, damp, chilly place where it's kind of questionable to play baseball at all. The Buffalo Bisons are scoring 6.3 runs/game, and allowing 5.3. It's like pre-humidor Coors. So when you see Mike Kingery hitting .350, remember he's still Mike Kingery. I used to say a Norfolk player would see only 50 points or so shaved off his OPS upon promotion, as Harbor Park was a terrible place to hit and OPACY pretty good. But now I'd probably start by knocking off 200 points and watching how that goes.

I always go back to 2014, when the team was in first place every day from July 4th through the end of the season. And there were people who were angry that they weren't deadline sellers because clearly it was all a mirage. Some people have a set point somewhere around five notches below happy.

The main issue I have with Maton is that he's not very good. His .666 MLB OPS tracks with his .747 minor league OPS. And he's played a grand total of 37 games in the outfield (28 starts) in his pro career. 14 games in Norfolk add almost nothing to our knowledge of his ability.

The only reason people are contemplating trading for an outfielder on a team with like seven or nine good MLB outfielders is that fans are 56 times less patient than GMs. Or at least good GMs, which we have. How many weeks ago was Cowser being touted as a possible MVP candidate? Now he's ready to be DFA'd! Things never change. Somebody is always caught up in the last two weeks and can't see the season is six months long.

Cobb didn't hit many homers compared to today. But up until Babe Ruth (who debuted when Cobb was 27) the all-time home run leader was Roger Connor with 138. Cobb retired with 117. The day Cobb retired he was tied for 16th on the all time home run list. He was also 1st in singles and 2nd in doubles and triples.

They don't let stuff on the internet unless it's been thoroughly vetted.

That's an interesting point of view, that baseball needs more offense. The all-time MLB average runs/game is about 4.7, but that includes a bunch of very early seasons with 6, 8, 10+ runs/game. Since 1900 (and also since WWII) the average is about 4.4 runs/game. So far this year the Majors are averaging 4.34, and as the weather warms up it will almost certainly nudge up towards 4.5 or 4.6. Since 2016 every season has been at or above the post-1900 averages for runs scored per game. Even at the height of the PED era runs were only over 5.00 three times, and never more than the 5.14 of 2000. I think that increasing walks to 2024 IL levels would put the majors right around the 2000 runs scored level, if not a bit more.

I think that much of what is perceived as player confidence is actually confidence (or lack thereof) from fans, managers, coaches, announcers, etc. The players have been playing baseball since they were in elementary school, they've all had slumps, all had to adjust to higher levels on multiple occasions, and they've all had runs where the hits all fall in. They'll just keep going out there trying, and adjusting, hoping the successes continue. It's the other people around them who come up with narratives that the player themself has no confidence, or is on some kind of superhuman hot streak where nothing can go wrong. And that's what gets someone benched or demoted or put in the lineup in situations that may not make logical sense.

I don't think anyone can definitively answer that question. But at Stowers' age Mullins was having a breakthrough season in the majors, while Stowers is still in AAA with a MLB OPS in 130 PAs under .600. I certainly wouldn't bet on Stowers being better against lefties in the next few years, and even if he is I don't know that it matters since he can't really play CF and he's unlikely to be a really effective hitter against lefties. My guess is they'll both have OPSes in the 700 range against LHP, +/- 100 odd points in smaller samples.

No one has reverse splits. Or so few do that it's helpful to just act like no one does, because by the time they've piled up enough PAs to figure out if someone really is the exception (instead of random variation) that proves the rule they're 35 and nobody cares anymore. Looking at a month or two of L/R splits from a single batter is about as meaningful as using a Ouija Board.

.740. Maybe a bit higher if he's mostly playing against lefties. Unless he's still nursing some nagging injuries, then less.

Yea, that's my assumption. But this is probably also why there's talk of tweaking the real book strike zone (or how the robo-umps call it) because the real strike zone means there's going to be WAAAAY more walks than at any point in major league history. My guess is that the IL strike zone ported to MLB would result in runs jumping up to around 5 per game. And probably a non-linear effect where some pitchers who currently have borderline command quickly exit the league. Imagine Felix Bautista never getting what's now a close call on a ball/strike.

I'm a little curious here, but not nearly curious enough to run a few hours of a study. But it would be nice to see matched-pair comparisons of arb awards between relievers with, say, 70 innings, 2.50 ERA, 2 saves, and 70 innings 2.50 ERA, 27 saves. Although you'd expect some differences because my going-in assumption is that the leverage index of the closer will be higher. Then we'd have a much better idea of if this effect exists, and how significant it is. Also, if your hypothesis is true it's plausible that if your main goal is to reduce salaries, the best strategy might be to have your ~7th-best pitcher rack up most of the saves since his worse performance might offset the salary impact of having the most saves. That might be more cost-effective than having 11 guys get some saves, but inevitably your best pitcher still gets most of them since you want him there in the highest-leverage situations.

Do starters make less money now that we're in a world where you can win the Cy Young with a 14-9 W/L record? Or have the arbitration calculations just adjusted to the new normal?

One of the problems is the broad scope of the definition. A save might be getting three outs after starting the 9th with the bases empty and a three-run lead. Which has average odds of success of something like 98%. 98% of those kind of saves are converted. If you blow that you've really done something badly. But a save may also be coming into a bases loaded situation with nobody out in the 9th with a one-run lead. You could go strikeout-flyout-strikeout on seven pitches and still get a blown save. The pitcher probably had about a 10% shot at Houdini'ing that situation. But it's still the same Boolean save or blown save. It goes back to the poor choice to make wins, losses, and saves individual stats when they're really team metrics. That inevitably leads to nonsensical attributions.

If we're getting a time machine to go stop the save rule from being invented there's a pretty long list of things to fix.

But then we could discuss the merits of earned vs unearned runs. You could pick out cases where a pitcher gives up three sharp singles to load the bases with two outs, then some runs score on an iffy hit/error decision that's ruled an error, then the pitcher gives up 2-3 more hard hits and more runs, but because the error was with two outs it's all unearned. Or, the infielders mess up who's going to catch a popup with two outs, it falls untouched for a hit scoring two runs, which are both earned. The world would be a better place if Chadwick had decided in 1870 that runs were just runs, wins and losses were solely a team stat, and 100 years later saves followed that precedence.

I don't really know. I'd have to do some research to see if walk rates track with the league rates. Maybe he gets called up and sees his free passes go down by 44%? All I really know is there are a lot of walks in the minors today.