DrungoHazewood

It's always interesting to see how altitude effects individual pitchers. Givens relies a lot on arm angle and deceptiveness, less on sheer break on his pitches. That might be good for him.

- I'm sure some pitchers let the 9th inning get into their heads a little. Rarely a lot. - Most of the "he's not a closer" effect is a guy who just happened to give up a few runs during his first handful of opportunities and the label sticks forever even though they'd be fine (or at least no different than in other roles). Essentially every reliever gives up most of their runs in just a few outings, they just need to be lucky enough so that those few outings aren't in two of their first five save opportunities, lest they get a scarlet NC tattooed on their foreheads.

As a kid did you ever play slow-pitch with someone who'd only been playing travel baseball for a long time? They're so jacked up to hit 84 mph stuff that they're viciously swinging way out in front of every 35 mph lob. It's pretty funny. That could be people facing Milone for a little while.

Maybe we've entered a world where nobody remembers anything past 10 days ago, kind of mass medium-to-long-term amnesia. Hmm... I remember stuff five or 10 years ago, so that can't be it.

In college a bunch of us took the black plastic top of a dumpster and headed out to the Blacksburg Municipal Golf Course to go sledding. There are some really steep holes, so the fairways made for awesome sledding. You can fit four people across one of those dumpster lids. Went down the hill, hit the green, the other three people bailed, I stayed on. Flew off the back side of the green, which was ringed by trees. I hit the tree about 3' up, heard a thunderclap, and next thing I knew I was 20 feet on the other side of the tree laying in the snow, wind knocked out of me. Rib cracked. Being 20 I just dedicated to tough it out, never went to the doc. Hurt to breathe for a month. You can still feel where the rib is cracked almost 30 years later.

Milone's average FB is 86 mph. There are five teams whose average change-up velocity is at least 86. It's amazing he's effective at all.

Milone's average season from 2016-19 was 64 innings of a 5.67. Getting anything is wonderful.

Maybe he meant top 50 in a particular organization.

What do you mean by "really high"? The Padres' 9th-best prospect? I don't really have to repeat the resume... but what the heck. .700 OPS. Meh defense. .644 OPS 2nd half of last year. .642 minor league OPS. Waived by the Nats. Real MLB GMs don't give up a big package on the basis of someone's last 81 at bats.

I think the primary thing that will ensure Rutschman isn't rushed is Mike Elias.

He's 31 with a 5.67 MLB ERA and a 4.27 AAA ERA. He's been in six organizations in four years. He's just a guy.

Nothing. At all. Nor is there anything wrong with pie and ice cream. Peak life is pie/ice cream/coffee sitting on the couch after Thanksgiving dinner.

I guess it's not, it's just (pro)(re)gressed. They started boiling the frog about 1880, and he's not quite cooked yet, but we're to the point where a starter goes four innings. When my kids are 40 they'll list the nine scheduled pitchers for today's game in the preview.

Pros: It's a competitive balance leveler. Who needs five or six good starters when they're basically there to get you to the 4th or 5th inning without being down four runs? Cons: What kind of baseball do you want? Would anyone actually choose a style of baseball where you use seven or eight anonymous pitchers a game, and the best starters don't even throw 200 innings? Also, exacerbates the three true outcomes style (or I suppose improves it if you're really into Ks and homers).

No one in the AL is scoring more than 5.35 runs/game, so the projection is basically that the Orioles have the best offense in the league. Fangraphs' rest of the season projections have the O's scoring 4.49 runs/game, which is 13th in the AL, a few hundredths of a run per game ahead of the Tigers.

Did the O's get a trophy for going 12-12 last July?

Those are perfect examples of trading for short-term gains that ended up somehow being actually worse than the players they had on hand prior to the trade. This made me go look up Nick Delmonico, who was traded for Rodriguez. Fortunately that's been no loss. He's sub-replacement in almost 600 MLB PAs, but apparently still with the White Sox.

Manush isn't an awful selection, at least by the standards of the Vet's Committee and their take on NLers from the 1920s and 30s. By JAWS and eyeballing it he's as qualified as Jim Rice But also about on par with Ryan Braun and Charlie Keller. Had some black ink, a few top-five MVP votes. So clearly above the Hafey/Baines line, just below average for a HOFer. You'd have to induct about 100 more players to make him really reasonable.

Do you think that's a fair representation of the talent of the Orioles' offense going forward? Sorry, don't answer that, it's probably as likely as not that you think they're better than that.

Yes, through the equivalent of one month of games where about half the lineup is hitting 200 points over established career marks. Any projection going forward wouldn't be particularly close to fifth best.

Sometimes it's hard to know if you're serious, or you're just putting us on. The idea that the O's offense as currently constructed is the 3rd best in the league is fanciful nonsense.

I'll go a bit further and say it's essentially a 100% lock that their combined OPS this year is going to be 100 points shy of where it is now. Santander is the only one who is remotely likely to keep that up. And a very good chance that next year it's going to be 200 points less.

I'd rather they just not offer long term free agent deals to relievers. I'm pretty sure there are three relievers with 8 K/9 under that log in the woodpile out back.

For a year. Had a .750 OPS and two homers for Norfolk, got busted for pot and waived. Had been acquired as part of the deal ridding the team of Ramon Hernandez' contract. So he'd been in the Reds system longer. Then was a Met. Three nondescript years there, then... something.