DrungoHazewood

You don't win pennants with mollycoddlers.

You don't count. When most people see Gregg Olson snapping off an unhittable 12-6 curve to end the game they're not thinking "yea, his arb-3 value is going to be way higher than his overstated contributions as a 9th-inning reliever so we need to trade him right now." They think it's fun to win baseball games with good pitchers.

Yea, if Elias was smart he'd only have players on the roster who never make errors. Where do you find those?

You never, ever, ever, ever do that. As a manager you're signaling to the players that they have ZERO rope to work with. That they flub one ground ball, they miss one cutoff man, and the hammer comes down. If that's the atmosphere in the clubhouse you're praying you're the guy in the deadline deal going to a team with a manager who's not insane.

That's an exaggeration. I would have projected him to something like 2.5 wins this year in a normal season, and about $10M in arb. So technically ~$10M in surplus value, but clearly it was a challenge to get anyone to pay that kind of return in prospects last year. So Elias settled on a salary dump so they could use the cash elsewhere.

It's smart, and it makes for a much less appealing form of entertainment. Baseball is much better off when you have great players doing awesome things most of the time. Now we have lineups of nine three true outcome players all trying to hit homers off of one of 13 anonymous pitchers who'll probably all pitch tonight for 11 pitches each. Baseball is becoming more efficient and less entertaining by the day. It's like the powers-that-be saw the Seinfeld bit about rooting for laundry and took it 100% literally.

Did you read what he said? It's absolute nonsense. He literally said that a minor salary dump that happens all the time every year is worse than, say, the Glenn Davis trade of three entire good/great careers for nothing.

Internet hyperbole at its best. The Villar deal was a fairly inconsequential salary dump, but section18 is calling it one of the worst trades ever. There were probably 12 worse trades yesterday. In other news, the fender bender I saw in the Wal Mart parking lot is one of the worst stories of human tragedy in all of recorded history.

What? Elias traded a random player making about $10M for a minor leaguer who essentially plays for free. They saved $10M and they didn't impact the future competitiveness of the Baltimore Orioles at all, unless you really wanted that 22nd win this year. And even that's arguable in hindsight since he's been playing terribly in Miami.

Exactly. Bullpens are moving towards eight or nine anonymous, $550k pitchers who all strike out 11 men per nine. With another dozen in AAA on ready standby. Order them alphabetically and starting in the 5th inning Hyde sounds an airhorn and the first one up comes in. Repeat six times, game over.

That statement would be just as, or more, valid if you didn't have the first two sentences.

Trumbo should have DH'd. But then you'd need a RFer. I guess you could come up with a hypothetical where Joey Rickard's decent glove makes up for the 130 points of OPS he was giving up to Alvarez. You weren't going to sign a player who could both field and hit for $6M, not unless you got really lucky, and the payroll was already as high as it would ever go.

Alvarez was a DH with a 117 OPS+ in 2016. He wan average DH being paid to deliver less than a win. A case of buying a free agent and getting exactly what you paid for.

You know, for some reason I read your post as Dan Ford, but either way it's kind of funny. How about Doug DeCinces' grandkid?

More importantly, can we trade him to get Doug DeCinces' son?

Wait, there's a new Conine, too? I swear that major leaguers sons become prospects at a rate 10,000 times that of the general population.

Mark Reynolds and Chris Davis both had partial seasons at third where they fielded under .900. Which until I saw it happen I didn't think was possible without one of those 1800s gloves and some serious debris on the field.

Every list of "worst ever in MLB" is really "worst ever among players who were allowed to play for a long time despite their shortcomings." Ty Wigginton was a way worse shortstop than Jeter, but that's why he barely played there. Adam Dunn probably was a -100 shortstop (per year), but nobody wanted to find out. Alvarez isn't on the list because he had less than 5000 innings at third. Jeter had 23,000 at short.

Believe it or not, no! Jack Harshman started opening day '59 and went 0-6 before being traded to the Red Sox on June 15th.

With a lot of days off you could go with a two-man rotation and starting pitchers would be the MVPs every year, even if they're only throwing six innings a start. At some point in the past I did a thought experiment considering what would be different if in 1880 baseball had taken the same path and football and had always just played once a week. I thought it was a thread here, but no idea if I could find it. I don't remember much in the way of responses, I think most people just decided it was another loopy Drungo idea.

I think that's how it should work, and that it shouldn't matter if you bring in your best pitcher in the 6th or the 8th or the 9th. I'm not sure that's reality. It's clear that in some situations, maybe most, more regular and disciplined work schedules benefit pitchers. Prior to say, 1960, it was not uncommon to have your starter sometimes start on two days rest, sometimes three, sometimes six. Your best starter would sometimes pitch relief. In the 1930s Carl Hubbell was the best starting pitcher in the NL, he also led the league with eight saves in a year where he started 35 times. Today it is mostly accepted as a universal truth that starters pitch better on regular rest in regular roles with (mostly) defined pitch counts. So I think we should consider and be open to the idea that relievers pitch better when they have assigned roles like closer or 7th inning guy or whatever. Do I know this is always true? No. But I don't know that it's not true, either. Is this a significant effect, that's more important than the impact of using your closer in the 7th when the bases are loaded and Giancarlo Stanton is up? I don't know, but it might be.

From July 31st through August 8th he threw four consecutive scoreless innings.

He has over 2200 professional plate appearances and a .323 OBP. So far in the majors he has a .287. His .365 OBP in your hand-picked sample would be .303 if he went 0-for-his-next-8. He'll be 26 in a month. He has a massive L/R split. I'm sure you know that a .365 going forward is highly unlikely. But we''ll continue to monitor.

Mullins could be an asset to a well-rounded team. He can play a little defense, hit righties a bit, he can run, pinch run. Could have had a longer career in the 1980s, like an Alex Cole, Milt Thompson, Mitch Webster kind of player, back before bullpens devoured the roster. Unlikely he's ever a starter for a good team.

I also remember that Mullins has a career MLB OPS of .596, and a AAA OPS of .670. Hard to depend on someone as an everyday starter when they can't hit. When healthy Hayes is clearly a better player.