DrungoHazewood

I think there will always be games, but MLB seems to be reconsidering the choices they made 100 years ago when they decided to directly employ hundreds of minor leaguers per franchise so that they can figure out which 10 or 15 are major leaguers. The world would continue to go around the sun and the vast majority of players will be picked out if each MLB team had a couple of affiliates and everyone else played in independent leagues or college or whatever. MLB operated very happily for over 50 years with essentially no affiliated minor leagues at all.

Preston Palmeiro and Chris Davis have about the same odds of having a meaningful MLB career from this date forward. One of the lessons of 2020 is that 80% of minor leaguers are just there so that Yusniel Diaz has a way to play games. It's pretty irrelevant who the 19 anonymous bodies wearing BaySox uniforms are.

Reynolds was on the D'backs when he set the current all time record. Going into 1990 the O's all time record for Ks was 125 by Boog in '66. Boog is now in 25th place. All but Tettleton ('90) have happened since 2011. Davis holds the O's career mark, too. He's 245 ahead of Cal in about 8000 fewer PAs. To break into the top 25 on the O's leaderboard you only need about 3-4 league-average seasons by 2020 standards. Trey Mancini is 31st, only 13 behind Frank.

I'm not sure it's impacting the future of the organization if he took some reps from guys like Carlos Perez, Anderson Feliz, Ryan Ripken, Jesmuel Valentin, Preston Palmeiro, etc. Both the Tides and Baysox always have some random late 20s, early 30s org guy filling out the roster, putting up a .778 OPS in a corner. Davis would be the same thing, just OPSing .650. Not that he would accept the assignment...

I don't know if there's anything you can prove about staying healthy or injured unless you have a chronic problem that keeps coming back. Paul Molitor's career is a good example. Games he missed from his 2nd season on: 20, 51, 55, 2, 10, 149, 20, 57, 44, 8, 7, 59, 4, 4, 2, 0, 14, 1, 27, 36. He was injured all the time in his 20s, then was as durable as just about anyone from 34-39.

So you're saying this is going to be a '59 McCovey situation?

I think there's some pretty plausible paths to someone else coming in. Like two injuries. Or Hays gets hurt and Mullins hits .150 for a month. Or Mancini isn't back, Mountcastle is playing first, they traded Nunez, and you have an outfield of Diaz, Stewart, Hays, Mullins... who is next up? They're not calling up Kjerstad next year, McKenna has a .680 OPS at Bowie. Someone like Mason Williams already has to pass through waivers to be sent down, he could be claimed. When's the last year the Orioles didn't have some random guy get a few hundred plate appearances? Valaika, Dwight Smith, Jace Peterson, Craig Gentry, Danny Valencia, Seth Smith, Hyun Soo Kim, Travis Snider, Jimmy Paredes, David Lough, Nick Hundley Steve Clevinger, Chris Dickerson, Alexi Casilla... Things always happen.

You can also throw in Ryan Howard, whose best year in a $125M deal was 0.5 rWAR, with the other four years being below -1 wins. At least Davis was worth three wins in year one.

It's America. We have a Constitutional right to drive up to Starbucks in a monster truck and order up a 128 ounce coffee whenever we want.

A-League? Like Jamie Maclaren?

He is still cheap, so he has that going for him. And someone has to DH. But he's a 1+ win player if you just stuck him in the lineup for 600 PAs. Remember when the O's traded Steve Clevinger for Mark Trumbo? Because he's cheap you might get a little more for Nunez, but not a lot.

Well that interferes with the goal of having a $14M non-Davis payroll in '21.

We're coming into this problem during a period where Stewart and Mullins are having maybe the best few weeks of their careers. It's entirely plausible that one or both of them don't hit enough to be major league starters. Mancini may not ever fully recover, or may take well into next year. Hays has never put together an extended stretch where he was both healthy and good, at least not since A ball. Santander has looked good over the past year, but still has defense and plate discipline concerns. Mountcastle will not hit .364 for his career, I'll be beyond thrilled if he regularly hits over .300. Once this all washes out it will probably look a lot less like a roster crunch. There's a 90% chance that someone not currently in the organization will get 300 PAs as an outfielder for the 2022 Orioles. There's probably a 30-50% chance that happens in 2021.

I wouldn't just drop Nunez, but I think Santander could be a three win player, maybe more if he hits 40 homers one year. While Nunez' defensive shortcomings kind of limit him to two wins or so. The difference between an average RF and a DH is something like 100 points of OPS. I'd try to trade Nunez, but he's not going to bring back a ton.

Is he? They have pretty much the same career MLB OPS/OPS+. Nunez is a few months older, and Santander had his development possibly/probably screwed up by being yanked out of A Ball as a Rule 5er. Since Santander was called up last year he's hit better than Nunez. I think I'd bet on Santander being a better hitter going forward. And even as an average RFer he's going to be more valuable than Nunez as a pretty poor fielding 1B and DH.

Diaz is about to turn 24 and would have spent the entire year in AAA if not for COVID. He should be given every chance to make the opening day roster in '21.

Maybe not today, but perhaps one day. When the world decides there's just one way to do something that often opens opportunities to prove them wrong.

They also have the advantage of all (or nearly) being active players. Dozens or hundreds of players have done this prior to '19 and I'm sure there's some really random players in there. Remember the Jeff Manto streak in '95, when he had five homers in three games for the Orioles? Had 31 in his MLB career.

Because it was not in consecutive games. I couldn't figure out how to run a query unless it was a consecutive streak. So if someone hit three homers today, none tomorrow, three next day, and two in each of the next two... wouldn't show up.

Certainly even the worst excesses of today are not on the level of the pre-free agency era when you could sign at 17 and have no choice in your employer (besides quitting baseball) until you retire.

No, but he had 15 years between signing and free agency. At least he was an amateur free agent. If he'd been drafted it would have been 15 years before he had any choice at all in where he played.

It has to be way less than that. There have been something like 20,000 major leaguers. I'd guess a few hundred have ever done this, as it's more common lately, and there are duplicates.

So since way back in 2019 there have been 14 instances of a player hitting more homers than games for four or more games. Twice last year players hit six homers in four games. Luke Voit and Aaron Judgt had six homers in five games this year. Nelson Cruz totally legally hit seven in five last year at the age of 73. Rk Name Strk Start End Games AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI SO BB 1 Paul Goldschmidt 2019-07-22 2019-07-27 6 24 9 9 0 0 6 13 5 2 2 Bobby Dalbec 2020-09-05 2020-09-10 5 18 6 7 0 0 5 7 8 2 3 Luke Voit 2020-08-17 2020-08-26 5 17 7 8 0 0 6 9 2 3 4 Aaron Judge 2020-07-29 2020-08-02 5 19 9 7 0 0 6 13 7 2 5 Max Muncy 2019-08-15 2019-08-21 5 16 7 5 0 0 5 8 4 7 6 Nelson Cruz 2019-07-22 2019-07-26 5 21 9 10 0 0 7 11 4 2 7 Yuli Gurriel 2019-07-02 2019-07-07 5 21 8 9 1 0 6 13 2 2 8 Jose Altuve 2019-04-08 2019-04-13 5 21 7 9 0 0 6 10 5 1 9 Jeff McNeil 2020-09-06 2020-09-09 4 13 4 7 0 0 4 8 2 4 10 DJ Stewart 2020-09-05 2020-09-09 4 14 8 8 0 0 5 7 4 2 11 Randal Grichuk 2020-08-16 2020-08-19 4 18 6 8 1 0 5 13 3 0 12 Brandon Lowe 2020-08-12 2020-08-15 4 19 8 10 2 0 4 9 4 1 13 Dominic Smith 2020-08-12 2020-08-15 4 17 6 8 3 0 4 8 3 2 14 Bo Bichette 2020-08-09 2020-08-14 4 18 7 9 0 0 4 8 2 2 15 Anthony Rendon 2020-08-10 2020-08-14 4 13 6 6 0 0 4 5 1 5 16 Fernando Tatis Jr. 2020-08-05 2020-08-09 4 16 6 8 0 0 5 7 3 1 17 Eugenio Suarez 2019-08-25 2019-08-28 4 18 6 8 1 0 4 5 4 0 18 Tom Murphy 2019-08-13 2019-08-20 4 16 6 8 1 0 6 10 3 2 19 Aristides Aquino 2019-08-06 2019-08-10 4 16 7 9 1 0 6 9 5 1 20 Ronald Acuna Jr. 2019-08-06 2019-08-09 4 19 8 9 0 0 5 9 6 1 21 Pete Alonso 2019-08-05 2019-08-09 4 14 4 5 0 0 4 6 3 1 22 Jose Ramirez 2019-07-25 2019-07-28 4 19 5 8 2 0 4 8 1 2 23 Cameron Maybin 2019-06-15 2019-06-18 4 16 6 9 0 0 4 4 2 0 24 Nelson Cruz 2019-06-05 2019-06-09 4 17 4 7 0 0 4 6 6 2 25 Roberto Perez 2019-06-04 2019-06-08 4 12 4 5 1 0 4 7 1 2 26 Robinson Chirinos 2019-06-01 2019-06-06 4 15 7 5 0 0 4 6 4 5 27 Renato Nunez 2019-05-22 2019-05-25 4 13 7 7 0 0 4 8 2 1 28 Freddie Freeman 2019-05-16 2019-05-19 4 18 6 8 1 0 4 6 2 1 29 Marcell Ozuna 2019-04-14 2019-04-17 4 16 6 6 0 0 5 9 3 2 30 Mitch Moreland 2019-04-05 2019-04-11 4 18 4 5 1 0 4 7 5 0 31 Daniel Vogelbach 2019-04-02 2019-04-08 4 13 6 8 2 0 5 9 2 4 32 Mike Trout 2019-04-04 2019-04-07 4 11 5 6 0 0 5 9 2 6 33 Christian Yelich 2019-03-28 2019-03-31 4 12 6 6 1 0 4 8 1 6

It must be... different... to be in a position where you're expected to win no matter the circumstances and you know with almost complete certainty that you're going to be fired (or essentially fired when your contract runs out) at some point.

That was the stock answer to every player prior to 1975. You're playing baseball for $16,000 a year, stop complaining you ingrate. We only cut your pay $1000 a year for your batting average going down eight points. You could go home and work at Daddy's bait shop if you don't like it.