DrungoHazewood

You can make a case that he's the greatest pitcher ever. Everyone else you usually see on the shortlist either played a century ago in (much) more primitive competitive environments, or has a cloud of PED use hanging over them.

I was being conservative, and you'd have to add in acceleration time. They don't go to max sprint immediately (although I'm sure that wouldn't help Davis' case).

Iglesias has played 22 games. 22 games into the 2015 season he was hitting ..377/.427/.536. In June of '16 he OPS'd .893. On June 30th 2013 he was hitting .330/.376/.409. His career OPS is .695. Sometimes he'll have a month or so with a high BABIP. Mostly not. I don't see Elias extending a shortstop into his mid-30s. Maybe one year if there's no shortstop on the farm ready to go in '22.

Good thing that's not the plan.

In his career Kevin Gregg had a .701 OPS against him in high leverage situations, a .712 in low. In 2011 with the Orioles he had a .751 in high leverage, .739 in low. Essentially the same, both in 122 PAs. In 2012 he had a .717 in high leverage, a .848 in low, but something like 90% of his appearances were in low leverage situations.

In 2019 he was playing his fourth season in AAA, as a 26 year old, on a 60-80 team that had a .852 team OPS. In the '19 PCL there were twenty-nine players with 100 or more PAs who OPS'd 1.000. Valaika was 48th in the league in OPS as a guy repeating the level a third time. Albuquerque is like playing in Colorado, just against teams where Joe Gunkel is the other team's ace. He's never been given a chance as a regular because his teams who evaluated him every day for years didn't see him as a regular.

He was always willing to keep up appearances with an average-ish payroll. Occasionally more. And he sometimes got attached to his guys. But he'd never do what it took to have a good farm system. For a small-to-mid-market team not having a farm system and getting overly attached to your guys is a death sentence.

Everyone likes a utility infielder making good on some limited playing time on a bad team. But Valaika is 27 and has a very established track record of being a guy who'll OPS under .700. Saying he's making a bid to become a regular starter almost has to be tongue-in-cheek.

He's got a pair of eights, and he's gone all in with $1.22, an old button, and a batting cage token. Making his play!

Jumbo Davis led the American Association with 19 triples for the O's in 1887. He was a third baseman listed at 5' 11", 195, which was big for the era. But the weights from back then are often just guesses from old photographs. The '87 O's were the best of the AA Oriole teams under Bald Billie Barnie. Matt Kilory went 46-19, his last great year before feeling the effects of throwing 1100 innings in his age 20-21 seasons. Calvin Davis played 44 games for the IL Champion '21 Orioles. Lee Davis was an early Baltimore radio announcer on WCBM. Riley Davis pitched for the Negro League Black Sox during WWI and lived to over 100. Another Butch Davis (unknown if related to the 80s version) played for the Elite Giants in the 40s. Roosevelt Davis and Schoolboy Davis were Elite Giants, too.

Yes. So stating unequivocally that any money saved this year is gone forever and will not be reinvested in the franchise is just speculation.

In 1998 the Orioles had the highest payroll in baseball. In 2016 the Orioles' payroll was over $150M on revenues of about $250M, one of the higher ratios (if not the highest) in the league I know you don't like the approach, but your opinion that all savings go into the Angelos yacht fund and will never get spent is just an opinion.

It's a misnomer. Probably meant either closer by committee, or the idea that no reliever has a set role. There are a few problems with the latter. Primarily related to not being able to see the future. You may well end up in a fair number of situations where you bring the best reliever into a fairly high leverage situation in the 6th, but are left with your 5th-best guy to cover an even higher leverage situation in the 9th. And there are more high leverage situations in the 9th than the 6th.

Not being a very good pitcher? I'd like to see a list of good relievers who had much worse performances in high leverage situations. I'll give you Mike Timlin. Now you show me a bunch more.

I don't understand why you need strawman arguments to make your point. Villar was expected to be a 2 win player or so in 2020 in a normal year. He was expected to get $8-10M in arbitration. So he had some surplus value, but it was pretty apparent that other teams were not willing to part with much to take on his expected salary and production. So they traded him for a low level prospect with salary relief. That's my position. I don't know anyone who's saying he's a worthless expletive. We're saying that he's a pretty decent player being compensated at nearly free agent rates, and there were apparently better things Elias thought he could do with the money. I don't know why this has to be a 20-page table-pounder. You think he was worth a bit more, and the O's should have taken on his salary. Okay. That's not a crazy take, it's just not the O's GM's take. I'm kind of guessing Elias isn't completely nuts or incompetent, either. He did what he could given the circumstances.

Exaggeration? A marginal major leaguer might OPS .700. A pitcher who's barely trying can OPS .350. The benefit of bunting isn't that you have a bunch of guys whose only skill is to bunt. It's a tool to exploit defensive holes. When the opposition says to you "go ahead and bunt, we're not even covering that side of the field" you reply by getting a hit 70-80% of the time. Which forces their hand, makes them align less optimally. Then the players you employ have the skill set to swing away into this less optimal defense. And if you have players with bat control skills instead of just having max bat speed, you can't shift on them at all. If you have guys who only strike out 40 times a year instead of 140 you might negate a lot of the advantages of a modern team set up to defend behind a pitcher who gets 40% strikeouts. If a team has a Mancini or a Trumbo in the field because defense isn't that important when everyone strikes out... well, take advantage of that. Hit a lot of balls in the direction of Mark Trumbo.

I think it's more along the lines of using bat control guys with limited bat speed, fast, high OBP, good defense. Bunting might be a small part of this. If you identify players who swing a big bat really slow, hitting the ball the other way, unshiftable... you can get those guys four for a dollar. While teams are trading Jonathan Villar for Griffin Conine because Conine has great launch angle even if he almost never actually hits the baseball. A team might get some big advantages from collecting dozens of athletic bat control guys who work the count and (relatively) rarely strike out for almost free.

Which is harder, Chris Davis making solid contact swinging away, or Chris Davis bunting successfully? I'm not confident in whatever the answer is.

Unfortunately he's a throwback to the worst of the 80s, when teams would lead off a guy with a .290 OBP because speed rocks. Luis Aparicio led off approximately 12 million times, stole a lot of bases, and never scored 100 runs in a season because he had a .311 OBP. Mullins has a .287.

It's funny, but there is probably some truth there. When the entire world has decided there's just one way to do things it opens up opportunities for other strategies. The world has decided that launch angles and homers are the only way to score runs. Scouts are essentially 100% in agreement that you can't be a major leaguer without plus-plus bat speed. I'd love to see a team stock an entire minor league level with guys like Tony Gwynn* who had 80 contact and 35 bat speed. * Obviously there isn't a Tony Gwynn behind every tree, but players out of that mold.

I'd still have him bunt every at bat that there's no one on the third base side of the infield. Force them to pull the rover back to third base. When your OPS+ is -2 what could it hurt?

Mullins sprint speed: 28-29 ft/sec. Davis: 24. A Mullins bang-bang play at first would be Davis out by 10 feet.

Sure, but play to your strengths. Even if they're not very strong.

If Elias' biggest sin was overtly stating what most everyone had kind of suspected ("we might non-tender Villar") then that's pretty inconsequential in the greater scheme. The difference between Griffin Conine and Easton Lucas is that Conine has a 10-20% chance of being a decent major leaguer, while Lucas is less. But there's limitless demand for lefties who can pitch a partial inning...

I don't know that it's a negative, but I also don't think you can count on him getting a bunt hit every other game going forward. Teams will quickly pick up on this and adjust their defense accordingly. But even that can open up opportunities, as the defense isn't optimally aligned for when he swings away. I think that any time the defense lets you bunt you should take full advantage. If you can hit .700 on bunts you'll take that all day every day.