DrungoHazewood

When you're that high does it even matter?

Exactly. If anyone tells me that they knew Trumbo and Davis would tank and Cruz would go Hank Aaron on us I'm calling BS. The safe thing is to just not sign any of them, and the takeaway from all that is if you want a first baseman/DH who can hit 30 homers there's plenty to go around. The O's acquired Trumbo for backup catcher Steve Clevinger, they got Davis and Tommy Hunter for a year and couple months of Koji, and they got Cruz for a bargain bin free agent deal. Here's a good rule for GMs: never take a mid-career guy you signed for $5M and give him a $50M (or $150M!) deal.

My Dad's reflex when they change pitchers is to say "Can't stand prosperity! Must be looking for the pitcher who's having an off night!" Unless the last guy was getting shelled, and then it's complaining about a slow hook. He believes (or at least says) that everyone involved with high-level sports in any capacity is dumber than a fencepost.

And if you look at his top comps on bb-ref from his early 30s they're guys like Henry Rodriguez (last good year at 32), Gus Zernial (34), Kevin Mitchell (played 135 games after the age of 32), Jeromy Burnitz (2 WAR after 32), David Justice (last 2-win season at 34). Cruz is an outlier among outliers. If you make a habit of signing players like him to that contract you'll get fired pretty quickly.

I think the biggest change in the past five years was Peter Angelos pulling back from running the club. The sons seem to allow the GM freedoms that the father never did. Thrift was well past his expiration date, but I think Beattie, Flanagan, MacPhail, and Duquette would have behaved quite differently under different ownership.

That was an awesome move. Nobody in their right mind would sign a 34-year-old DH to a four-year guaranteed contract. Do you really want another Ryan Howard, Chris Davis, Pablo Sandoval situation? That's what happens the vast majority of the time.

MacPhail gets some credit, but he was unwilling to do any number of things that Duquette did that pushed them over the top. I think Duquette's strength was finding those Weaver-like underutilized assets, and getting Buck to properly deploy them. They got the last good 500 at bats out of Nate McLouth, they got Steve Pearce and 100 solid ABs out of Jim Thome, and built an amazing bullpen out of random guys like Jim Johnson and Luis Ayala and O'Day and Strop and Patton and Britton. MacPhail was very passive, not very creative. His hands were tied like all the other GMs, and his reaction was to fall back on the draft and hope it worked out. That's an over-simplification, but he was very conservative. Right down to the sweater!

He wasn't Branch Rickey, but Oriole playoff appearances per GM since 1999: Elias: 0 Duquette: 3 McPhail: 0 Beattie-Flanagan: 0 Thrift: 0 Wren: 0 I guess you could give them all F's, except Duquette a C and Elias an incomplete. But I have a hard time being as down on Duquette (and Showalter) as others here are. Under them the O's played the only meaningful games of the past 22 years.

Yes. One hit, one homer, six at bats, four sac hits. Qualified by the skin of his teeth.

Even if you put the qualifier at 10 PAs Stewart has the highest OPS in a full season with a BA under .200. Of course that's full seasons, so many others had runs like this in partial seasons. Just much harder to search for. Rk Player OPS PA BA Year Age Tm Lg G AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB IBB SO HBP SH SF GDP SB CS OBP SLG Pos 1 DJ Stewart 1.051 40 .185 2020 26 BAL AL 13 27 7 5 0 0 4 6 10 0 14 1 2 0 0 0 0 .421 .630 /*79H 2 David Ross .985 13 .200 2002 25 LAD NL 8 10 2 2 1 0 1 2 2 0 4 1 0 0 0 0 0 .385 .600 /*2H 3 Ozzie Virgil .945 15 .182 1989 32 TOR AL 9 11 2 2 1 0 1 2 4 0 3 0 0 0 0 0 0 .400 .545 /*D*H2 4 Dick Kokos .929 14 .200 1954 26 BAL AL 11 10 1 2 0 0 1 1 4 0 3 0 0 0 1 0 0 .429 .500 *H/7 5 Rob Deer .917 32 .167 1984 23 SFG NL 13 24 5 4 0 0 3 3 7 0 10 1 0 0 0 1 1 .375 .542 /*7H 6 C.J. Cron .894 52 .190 2020 30 DET AL 13 42 9 8 3 0 4 8 9 0 16 1 0 0 2 0 0 .346 .548 *3 7 Ralph Miller .892 16 .182 1899 26 BLN NL 6 11 4 2 1 1 0 2 4 4 1 0 0 .438 .455 /*1 8 Whitey Lockman .885 13 .200 1960 33 CIN NL 21 10 6 2 0 0 1 1 2 0 3 1 0 0 1 0 0 .385 .500 *H/3 9 Dixie Howell .871 29 .185 1957 37 CHW AL 42 27 4 5 1 1 3 3 2 0 6 0 0 0 1 0 0 .241 .630 *1/H 10 Dick Nen .864 11 .125 1963 23 LAD NL 7 8 2 1 0 0 1 1 3 1 3 0 0 0 1 0 0 .364 .500 /*H*3 11 Troy Tulowitzki .853 13 .182 2019 34 NYY AL 5 11 1 2 1 0 1 1 2 0 4 0 0 0 1 0 0 .308 .545 /*6H 12 Greg Vaughn .840 46 .189 2003 37 COL NL 22 37 8 7 3 0 3 5 8 0 13 0 0 1 0 0 0 .326 .514 *H/7D9 13 Rob Deer .839 64 .180 1996 35 SDP NL 25 50 9 9 3 0 4 9 14 0 30 0 0 0 1 0 0 .359 .480 *9H/7 14 Kevin Roberson .837 45 .184 1995 27 CHC NL 32 38 5 7 1 0 4 6 6 0 14 1 0 0 1 0 1 .311 .526 *H7/9 15 Richie Zisk .835 19 .200 1971 22 PIT NL 7 15 2 3 1 0 1 2 4 0 7 0 0 0 0 0 0 .368 .467 /79H 16 Corey Brown .833 15 .167 2013 27 WSN NL 14 12 2 2 1 0 1 1 3 0 4 0 0 0 1 1 0 .333 .500 /H798 17 Tommy Milone .833 10 .167 2011 24 WSN NL 5 6 1 1 0 0 1 3 0 0 1 0 4 0 0 0 0 .167 .667 /*1 18 Billy Bryan .828 17 .167 1967 28 NYY AL 16 12 1 2 0 0 1 2 5 0 3 0 0 0 0 0 0 .412 .417 *H/2 19 John Weekly .825 33 .192 1962 25 HOU NL 13 26 3 5 1 0 2 2 7 0 4 0 0 0 0 0 0 .364 .462 /*H79 20 Roy Ellam .821 29 .190 1909 23 CIN NL 10 21 4 4 0 1 1 4 7 5 0 1 1 .393 .429 /*6H 21 George Canale .818 44 .176 1991 25 MIL AL 21 34 6 6 2 0 3 10 8 0 6 0 0 2 5 0 0 .318 .500 *3/H 22 Deacon Jones .816 19 .188 1963 29 CHW AL 17 16 4 3 0 1 1 2 2 1 2 1 0 0 1 0 0 .316 .500 *H/3 23 Billy Ashley .813 133 .200 1996 25 LAD NL 71 110 18 22 2 1 9 25 21 1 44 1 0 1 3 0 0 .331 .482 *H*7 24 Fred Klobedanz .812 14 .182 1899 28 BSN NL 5 11 3 2 0 0 1 3 3 3 0 0 0 .357 .455 /*1 25 Mark McGwire .808 364 .187 2001 37 STL NL 97 299 48 56 4 0 29 64 56 3 118 3 0 6 7 0 0 .316 .492 *3/H

This is going waaaaay back, but I remember that there was some reason related to options or six-year eligibility or something that forced the O's to call up Cabrera. It's not obvious from his playing record, he only spent 3.5 years in the minors, but I know there was something like that going on. Maybe he signed much earlier but was in a complex or something? I don't remember... That was the era where they called up Screech after a full month of seasoning Frederick and put him in the Orioles' starting lineup. @Can_of_corn must be swooning just thinking about it. My guess is that when Syd Thrift left he put some notes on Beattie's desk that included "don't forget about the Bonus Baby rule! It'll bite you!"

Ahh, I thought we were still talking about Castro. But this is a good example. They both have ERAs in the mid-4.00s, but clearly Bundy is a better pitcher because of the assumed (based on historicals) one-run gap between starters and relievers.

You're assuming that because it helps your case that a full-on rebuild isn't necessary and they should have resigned Villar and have $100M payroll right now. You also don't know what they've done with the money saved. Did they spend it on other parts of the organization? Or did they gold-plate all of the Angelos Boys' kitchen applicances? Clearly you think it's the latter, but we just don't know. Maybe we can get Dan Duquette to write a sleazy tell-all book, but then we might get justification that it's not all underhandedness and greed and we can't consider that.

Starters have a higher ERA than relievers. Let me rephrase, the same pitcher will have a higher ERA as a starter than a reliever. So a starter with a 4.50 should be expected to be a reliever with an ERA under 4.00.

So how much do you think operating expenses are? I'm well aware of the estimates that revenues last year were somewhere around $250M, but how much does it cost to run the organization? Even on non-game days there are dozens if not hundreds of people doing stuff at the park, and there are non-payroll costs. Forbes estimates that they turned a profit of $57M last year, but 3-4 years ago were losing money. I don't know how much faith I have in either of those numbers, but you can't expect the owners to subsidize the team. With COVID the numbers are all different, and revenues much lower.

There's a line of 4.50 ERA relievers that stretches around the block. Relievers that strike out nine men a game are the new AAA first basemen. Turn over a log and you'll find six.

We don't know anything for sure. But we do know with some certainty that a few million spent on the Orioles' payroll this year does almost nothing to help the next good Orioles team and it might do some long term good spent elsewhere.

I wish they'd open the books so we know. We do have a good inkling that in a non-COVID year their revenues are less than 40% of the Yankees'. Behind by $400M. So if the Angelos boys told me that I have $125M or $150M to do whatever with, from staff to players to drafting to building academies in Uruguay, I know I'd slash payroll down to nothing until I was good and ready to spend on this year's wins. There are a heck of a lot of things I could do with $10M or $20M that make more long term impact than two or three extra wins in 2020 or 2021.

I'm just going to have to remember all of your trade opinions are based on a world where money is not a thing.

I thought of that, but then decided it was too crazy. So I'll stick with Pavlovian lights. Eventually pitchers will involuntarily throw a pitch when they see the yellow at an intersection in their car. Have the red "too much time" light be accompanied by a buzzer. Pitchers will awake in a sweat with the buzzer and the light in their nightmares. And don't even tell anybody, but the 20 seconds goes down a fraction a second a year until somebody notices. Make the clock run just a little fast.

No, no one ever came back from anything like this. He has hit .209 with a .726 OPS since the start of 2014, and that includes a year where he hit 47 homers and was worth five wins. Over the past seven seasons he had 175% of his total value (4.9 of 2.8 wins) in 2015. Davis has played in parts of 13 seasons. In his top-3 peak he was worth just over 15 wins. That's impressive, there are HOFers with lower peaks. The other 10 years he's been about four wins below replacement.

Yes. A typical team has seven or eight relievers and someone like Castro is the 4th guy out of the pen. Do you really want to go to arb with your 6th inning guy? Also, remember that average among the pool of all relievers includes any number of guys who aren't going to have careers. Castro has thrown 278 innings since he came up in 2015. If you look at everyone who's thrown 200+ innings as mostly a reliever in that timeframe, Castro is 108th of 129 pitchers in ERA+. Since '15 he has basically the same results in the same number of innings as TJ McFarland or Matt Albers.

They need to brainstorm some ideas on how to better enforce the pitch clock and batter stepping out. Like have a green light somewhere next to the pitch clock, and have several at various points around the stadium, and have a graphic on the TV and the MLB app that shows the pitch clock and the light. Get people used to 17 seconds of green light, then at 18 it goes yellow, then at 20 it's red and the batter gets a ball. Automatically. If you can't figure out the signs, do better next time and you won't get a ball called. If the batter steps out the ump doesn't move a finger. You just don't get a timeout. If you want to get "invisible dirt" out of your eye, or adjust your batting gloves like Nomar, step out. But you're risking taking a called strike. The pitcher is going to throw a pitch before 20 seconds. If you didn't catch the third base coach's sign, then pay more attention. I'd probably be okay with a rule that says you get an automatic called strike if you step out of the batters box and your bat isn't broken. The oldtimers who don't like this should spend more time watching footage of games from 50 or 75 years ago when all was right with the world and you could be driving home from a 7:00 MLB game at 9:15. Then shake your fists at the youngins who can't finish nine innings in three hours and 10 minutes.

That's around average. Over the past five years reliever ERAs have gone from 3.93 to 4.46. So every team uses like 15 relievers a year, the mid point is Castro.

I've said this many times, but leaving baseball alone is a great way to make sure it's completely different in a few years. If you like some particular style of baseball, say the way it was played when you were young, then leaving it alone is an excellent way to ensure that you'll never, ever see a game of baseball anything like that as long as you live. 99% of the rules were the same as today when games were two hours, a homer was hit once every three or four games, there were two strikeouts a game, 90%+ of starts were completed, batters hit .400, teams used seven pitchers the whole year, and sometimes players hit 27 triples in a season.