DrungoHazewood

This kind of thing should never happen: Carlos Ruiz transactions December 4, 1998: Signed by the Philadelphia Phillies as an amateur free agent. October 31, 2013: Granted Free Agency.

Teams like the O's and Rays would face some hard choices. You might trade stars at 25 or 26 because you can't or won't pay Arb 6 rates, which would probably be indistinguishable from free agent rates, just on one-year deals.

I've become convinced that the whole concept of tying service time to free agency needs to go away. Everyone becomes a free agent at 27 or 28 or whatever. Then you can promote players based on merit, instead of playing silly games. The NHL does something like that. But I won't count on MLB or the MLBPA being that creative.

Yea, something like that. All of this is contingent on what the next CBA looks like. I'm skeptical they'll do anything too radical, but it might be much more friendly for non-superstar older players, as well as younger players. We've reached the point where everyone agrees that signing 30-year-olds to 8/200 deals is ludicrous, except for the 33-year-olds in the middle of those deals hitting .232 with 11 homers.

He was the BA #75 prospect. Which seems strange for a 25-year-old first baseman with a 30% strikeout rate in the minors who just made his MLB debut. All I know is I'm keeping an eye on whether or not he'll homer once a game for the rest of his career.

One of the Orioles' problems was that they were never at the top of the board. Their only source of young talent was #6 draft picks. Kevin Millar not only ate up money that could have gone to overhauling the scouting and analytics, he also provided those key 72nd, 73rd wins that kept them from a #1 or #2 pick.

We just have to come to terms with the idea that anyone who won't agree to a fairly team-friendly extension in their first few years is going to be traded around season five. That's fine if we a) are winning and b) we know about it ahead of time.

It's happening (or very similar) pretty much right now.

Do the Dodgers really do that? Or do high revenue teams just not care as much about offloading guys a year or two out from free agency?

O's drafting, player development, and international presence was poor from roughly 1980-2019.

Go look at some old games on YouTube. I have the '70 World Series game one on in the background. Frank, Brooks, Elrod, Davey Johnson... they didn't even step out when they hit foul balls. Brooks and Davey looked like their spikes didn't even come out of the same holes the entire at bat. Stepping out just wasn't a thing. I say if you step out of the box it's a strike. Edit: as I type this Palmer is stepping out several times, but very briefly as Gary Nolan is shaking off Bench. But he was always ahead of his time. Blair, Buford, never stepped out at all. Just stood in their spike holes, even when Nolan went to the rosin bag. Boog stepped out momentarily a handful of times. Frank's 2nd at bat he keeps a foot in the box while Bench goes out to talk to Nolan. Today the batter would have gone back to the clubhouse for brunch.

Mmmm... drunken noodles.

If only Mickey Mantle had access to Mama Cruz' apple pie and pork chops he'd have hit 50 homers at the age of 50.

The high OBP, low ISO player is basically extinct. Greg Garcia is the only active player (min 1000 PA) with an ISO under .100 and an OBP over .350.

Everyone is clean now! The record home run and strikeout rates are all analytics and juiced balls.

I guess we'll see. 11 days ago he was OPSing .644.

Mountcastle is less a shortstop than Carlos Delgado was a catcher.

Sort of. He was drafted as a SS, and played 135 games there in the minors. But maybe that was because every time he played third he terrified the young and innocent. Even in A ball he had three years fielding under .900 at third. And he's never played an inning at short in the majors. It's hard to be blind and play short. At least at third you can stick your glove out when you hear the crack of the bat and try to smother it.

I just take the ESPN approach on that: If it happened before September 7, 1979, did it really happen? Probably not, so we can ignore it. (Coincidentally, I attended my first Orioles game eight days after ESPN went live.)

I don't know, because I'm not sure how many of this year's performances are real. It can't all be real, you just don't have a group of players all suddenly out-do their career marks by 150 points of OPS. Well, not legally... We also don't have many particulars about what might have changed. Does Mullins say he's hitting better because of something the organization changed in his approach, or is he just hitting better for a few weeks? I'm very skeptical of magic changes. Especially large ones. The Orioles' OPS+ went from 90 in 2019 to 110 so far in 2020 despite subtracting more talent than they added. If all of that is real and it's due to a change in approach or technique then Elias' staff is worth their weight in gold. Or plutonium.

I saw Brooks make a diving catch at third in the 1984 (or was it '85?) Cracker Jack Oldtimers game at RFK. That's my only first-hand knowledge of his skills.

And I do, all the time. But the slope of history isn't so steep that this generation is clearly and obviously superior to the last. It's more subtle than that. If that was true Nelson Cruz would need some pretty magical potions to just stay in the league at 40. Usain Bolt beat the 1999 100m record by 0.2 seconds, which is huge, but nobody has touched that in the decade since. From 1968-88 it only moved 0.1 seconds. Baseball is different with a mix of skills, but nevertheless progress is usually incremental and only noticeable over decades.

Give him a bit for the level of competition, but take away something because Charlie Lau is teaching him to take a big stride and spray line drives instead of maximizing launch angle.

I would very much like to have an Oriole who settles in hitting .380. Sure, batting average is overrated, but it's almost impossible to not be great hitting .380.

I was only old enough to be aware of baseball the last three years he was in Baltimore, so I have no real memories of him. Just stories and numbers.