DrungoHazewood

Remember the end of the 2000 season, when the 74-88 Orioles swept the AL champion Yanks to end the season? That was awesome.

He's hitting .400 this year, so he's white-hot. And last year he OPS'd .771. I think that's more than enough evidence to conclude he's a late bloomer. If he keeps up his .400 streak he'll either be a great asset as they move deep into the playoffs, or they can flip him for a top prospect at the deadline.

There's no reason Severino or Sisco couldn't DH without a third catcher. If something happens to the starting catcher you shift them behind the plate and you lose the DH for a few innings. You're already switching pitchers about every inning late in the game, so just pinch hit when his spot comes up.

Maybe? In 1908 scoring was the lowest ever, and the Cubs won 64% of their games, the Cards 32%, nearly a 50-game spread. In '68 the Tigers won almost 64% of their games, the Senators just over 40%, a 38-game spread, which is pretty typical. In 1930 runs were at a 20th century high and there were 50 games separating the A's and Red Sox. 1894 was the highest scoring year since the founding of the NL, and the O's finished 53 games ahead of Louisville in a 130-ish game schedule, but that was a long time ago in a primitive league. I don't know. It's hard to tease out the effects of other things from the overall compression of win loss records over time. My guess is that '15 was a combination of luck, few teams tanking yet, and the gradual evolution of the game towards greater parity, and it was mostly coincidence that runs were down. Although changing circumstances might have a leveling effect as high-resource teams struggle to shift long-term investments to the new context. In other words, the Yanks bought their Mark Teixeiras for the PED era and he was still there for the dip in offense even if he wasn't an optimal player for the new way of doing things.

In '15 every team in the AL was between 68 and 95 wins. That might be the most balanced season of any Major League ever. If every team was identical you would still see teams with 70 and 90 wins, so that was close to the Platonic ideal. The 2007 National League only had a 22 game spread between the Pirates and D'backs.

Crazy team of the day: the 1922 Yankees. They used eight pitchers all year. One was Clem Llewellyn, who pitched the one inning of his MLB career in June. Another was Lefty O'Doul, who threw eight games, 16 innings. So almost the entire pitching load was handled by the five regular starters who averaged about 260 innings a piece, and George Murray who threw 56.2 innings mostly in relief (but had zero saves). The team leader in saves was Sad Sam Jones, who also started 28 games and threw 260 innings. Their top five pitchers threw 95% of their innings, and top six about 99%.

Berg was the 3rd catcher on the '27 White Sox. They had eight pitchers who appeared in more than one game. The 2020 Orioles used nine pitchers in the first two games of the season.

Historically teams often or usually carried third catchers years and years ago, like prior to WWII, but after rosters expanded to modern sizes around WWI. A century ago it was much less common for catchers to play nearly every day, and 25-man rosters were novel and team didn't always utilize the whole thing effectively. Guys like Moe Berg would be on the roster the whole year and play in parts of 30-40 games. With modern transaction rules and catching equipment I don't think it's usually a wise use of roster space.

The 2014 and 2015 Royals were 4th and 5th in the majors in percentage of time they swung at pitches outsize the zone (O-swing%). They swung at non-strikes almost as often as any team in the majors.

I don't think it's particularly likely that Cobb will continue to give you five innings of a 2.75. Since 2016 his ERA is 4.62 and his FIP is 4.77. His FIP this year is 4.71. His BABIP this year is 108 points below his career mark. Regression towards his career mark isn't just likely with a number like that, it's inevitable. The lowest BABIP of any ERA qualifier since WWII is .203 (Dave McNally, 1968). There's not that much difference between five or six starts of a 5.50 and a 4.70.

Three weeks ago suggesting that this is a .500 team would have gotten you howls of derisive laughter. Three weeks shouldn't convince anyone of anything in baseball.

In a normal season Cobb and Givens combined might be good for three wins above the unwashed masses. In sixty that's more like one, and in a month more like half a win. I don't think trading the two of them will likely have a significant impact on anything.

It's not cherry picking, it's that I was at work and can only spend so much time pulling data instead of doing what I'm supposed to be doing! Feel free to expand on my little study. And I'm already at or near the limits of my math abilities. I'm an engineer, but my last statistics class was almost 30 years ago...

Right. It's real like if you are running the 100m dash against Usain Bolt and he fell down at the starting gun. You're actually ahead of Bolt, you're winning a real race with Usain Bolt. But you also have a pretty strong suspicion as you glance to your sides that something ain't right, and it won't last. Because you know with 100% certainty that the reality is that Usain Bolt is a heck of a lot faster than you are.

That implies that they think the Orioles are about a .380 team, or a 62-win team under normal circumstances.

One more thing, the 1998-2011 Orioles never had a single winning record at the end of the year. Over that entire 13 year period I'm guessing they won about 43% of their games. During that period they started the year 11-6 twice, and 10-7 five consecutive years (from 2004-2008). I might grudgingly concede that this team is as good as the Kevin Millar, Danys Baez era Orioles. But I'm not in love with the concept.

Yes, the first X games of the schedule are always overvalued because it's all we have. We're forced to look at SSS noise and our brains believe it's real because there is nothing else current.

A little real life data to see how it compares to the probabilities: There have been 16 MLB teams who finished with a winning percentage between .320 and .329. Over their first 17 games they ranged from 3-14 to 8-9. Overall they were 88-167, good for a .345 winning percentage. So nobody who finished with a winning percentage in the .320s ever started as well as 10-7. There have been 20 teams that finished between .330 and .339. They ranged from 10-7 to 0-17 (that being the 1988 Orioles). The 1908 NY Highlanders, soon to be Yanks, went 10-7 on their way to 51-103. Two other teams were over .500 in their first 17 games on their way to 100+ losses, I believe those were the '27 Red Sox and '54 A's. All of these .330 teams totaled 110 wins and 230 losses, good for a .324 percentage. So it is unlikely but not unprecedented for a .330-ish team to start with a winning record over their first 17 games.

A true talent estimate of the Orioles in normal circumstances would be something like 50 wins. Certainly no more than 60, since they won 54 last year and subtracted talent. It's not terribly unlikely for a .325 team to go 10-7 at some point in the schedule. Last year they had some periods of 15-ish games at .500, and at least one run of 7-3. I think there's about a 25% chance of a .325 team going 10-7 in any 17 game stretch in a 162-game schedule. I think they're going to need to be around .500 to sneak into the playoffs this year. That means they're going to need to go 20-23 the rest of the way. So we need to know the odds of a .325-ish team going 20-23 or better. You can estimate that with a binomial probability calculation, and the odds of a .325 team winning 20 or more of 43 games is 3.8%. But I'm guessing optimistic Oriole fans think the O's are not a .325 team, but in fact a .400 team or better. To get a 50% chance of 20 or more wins you need to assume that they're now a .455 team, or the equivalent of a 74-win team in a 162-game schedule. To me that seems a little wacky given last year's results and the current roster composition. But I guess we'll see. I agree that 0% odds of winning the Series seems wrong. An average playoff team would have a 6.25% chance (1-in-16). If you assume the Orioles are a .455 team playing .550 teams their odds wouldn't be good but they'd be better than 0%. Using that same binomial distribution, a .400 team wins a 3-of-5 series something like 30% of the time, and a seven-game series just a bit less. So winning three straight would be about (.3)^3, or about 3%. So 50% chance of getting to a playoff where you win it all 3% of the time, so I'd peg the O's optimistic odds at a trophy at about 1.5%.

He's hitting .556 over his last three games. Have you not considered that the coaching has finally taken hold, and that he might be a late bloomer? If he hits .300 over his next six to nine plate appearances he's probably a nugget, and might be a target for an extension.

I remember '82 as well, although I was only 11. My enduring memories of that year are trading my favorite player, Doug DeCinces, for Disco Dan Ford, being incredulous about the Brewers acquiring Don Sutton on August 30th (What? Wasn't the deadline a month ago?), and crying my eyes out during the last game of the season both when they were blown out early and when Earl had his curtain call.

No, he has a .747 OPS and -19 defense. I have absolute faith and trust that Elias is able to appropriately weight Smith's 10-for-36 start as a part of his 500+ PA MLB career and 3154 PA pro career. His 2020 performance is 1% of our body of knowledge about Smith.

In 2007 Jay Gibbons had a .621 OPS over 290 PAs. In his last 917 PAs Davis has a .558. I guess rope used to be priced at $17k a plate appearance, now it's more than $75k.

You mean that a team with 50-win true talent is in the midst of an 9-7 run? How often does a team that you expect to be 5-11 have a 16 game run of 9-7 (or vice versa)? All the time. The '19 Orioles won 54 games, and had two overlapping a 16 game runs in July where they went 8-8. In there was a 10 game period of 7-3. But if you want to believe that Tommy Milone is now Warren Spahn and Hanser Alberto is Luke Appling, more power to you.

I agree with that, and I've often railed against the webbricks and the atomics who claim to be realists and use unrelenting pessimism as evidence of that. I especially don't like the attitude among some that Elias' hiring was a mistake and that the entire plan is likely doomed, and the sooner they get on an entirely different track the better. That started days or weeks after he was hired. But I've learned over time that in any group, especially a messageboard, that there will always be a wide spread in opinion. And that will include a few people who are 100% convinced that it's all going to fail, and it's already in the process of that right now. No matter what the circumstances are.