DrungoHazewood

Iglesias is listed at 195 and is a .275 career hitter. A incomplete list of players who've failed to hit their listed weight as Orioles (min 20 games played at a position other than pitcher): Rk Player HR Wt BA From To Age G PA AB R H 2B 3B RBI 1 Dave Nicholson 14 215 .178 1960 1962 20-22 151 335 286 42 51 5 2 26 2 Marv Throneberry 5 190 .190 1961 1962 27-28 65 121 105 10 20 3 0 11 3 Taylor Teagarden 4 210 .162 2012 2013 28-29 45 126 117 7 19 5 0 14 4 Lew Ford 3 200 .183 2012 2012 35-35 25 79 71 7 13 3 0 4 5 Karim Garcia 3 210 .171 2000 2004 24-28 31 89 82 9 14 0 0 11 6 Ryan Minor 3 225 .185 1998 2000 24-26 87 235 222 20 41 9 0 14 7 Calvin Pickering 3 283 .164 1998 1999 21-22 32 75 61 8 10 1 0 8 8 Jim Pyburn 3 190 .190 1955 1957 22-24 158 333 294 36 56 5 5 20 9 Guillermo Quiroz 2 215 .187 2008 2008 26-26 56 149 134 12 25 5 0 14 10 Ron Kittle 2 200 .164 1990 1990 32-32 22 64 61 4 10 2 0 3 11 Colby Rasmus 1 195 .133 2018 2018 31-31 18 49 45 5 6 1 0 1 12 Drew Stubbs 0 205 .136 2016 2016 31-31 20 27 22 1 3 0 0 1 13 Justin Turner 0 202 .111 2009 2010 24-25 17 31 27 2 3 0 0 3 14 Mike Anderson 0 200 .094 1978 1978 27-27 53 36 32 2 3 0 1 3

He's far from done getting paid by baseball, unless he chooses to quit. He's just shy of being a productive major leaguer so he could probably go to Japan and OPS .850 for years at a couple $millon per.

I suppose. Baseball rarely goes and tackles a problem head-on. The issue is pace of play and lack of action. So they focus on time of game instead. 7 inning doubleheaders, the runner on second in extras, possibly expanding the strike zone. I guess they can't get consensus on how to cure the actual problems, so they try to make the patient comfortable by treating some symptoms. It does appear they've deadened the ball a bit, HRs are off. But they need to deaden it more, make bats bigger and heavier, and parks bigger. And continue to pare down the number of pitchers you can have on the roster. And move the mound back to 63' or 64'.

I wouldn't be surprised if MLB told the umps that this is the year where nothing really matters, let's see what happens when we expand the zone. K rate is almost identical to last year at about 8.8. But the batting average so far is the lowest (.230) in 149 years of organized pro baseball history. Seven points behind 1968, when Yaz won the batting title at .301.

It's a lot easier to figure them out if you look at our entire body of knowledge of how the individuals perform instead of mostly ignoring anything that happened before two weeks ago. We have thousands of games worth of information on the players on the 2020 Orioles.

This is a team that won 54 games last year and then subtracted two of their better players. The only way this is a .500 team is if you just round off everything between .300 and .700 to .500. Even then it's not a sure thing.

I haven't watch a lot of the games, but the ones I've seen it was so obvious I thought maybe they'd stopped using the tracking systems. Many pitches 6" out of the zone being called strikes.

Not that I think they should cut bait on Stewart, but he's 26 and Mountcastle is 23. I assume that if you left Mountcastle in AAA another three years he might be able to improve his OPS by 70 points. Jace Peterson out-hit Mountcastle. Stewart is very much looking like a player who is a C outfielder who OPSes .725. Maybe if it was 1980 and you could give him 275 PAs only against righties, use him to pinch hit a fair amount, and sub him out for defense in the 7th inning of every game we're ahead (see: Terry Crowley). But that doesn't work with 12-man pitching staffs.

Whelp, after being swept in three straight series by arguably the worst team in baseball it's down to 4.5%, second lowest in the majors!

Davis guaranteed five runs. He was pitching to the score.

My real preference is to do away with the draft and allocate amateur signing bonus money by a combination of multi-year record and market size. For example, the Orioles would get $15M to sign amateur players, the Braves would get $9M, the Cubs $3M, the Sox $1M, and the Yanks $175.22.

I think that they should do that anyway. The 1989 and 2012 Orioles had wildly unexpected seasons that by all accounts should have been partway through a longer rebuilding process. They leveraged some things like bullpen and defense to a much better record than anyone thought would happen, and their reward was a 20-something draft pick in each round. And the Red Sox will sometimes alternate World Series with 70-win seasons, and every time their $190M payroll wildly underachieves they get a top 10 pick. I think every year draft picks should be based on a weighted multi-year average. Something like 3x last year plus 2x the year before plus one times two years ago, divided by six. (If not a straight market-size based draft regardless of record.)

Doesn't that also mean that each loss is like getting swept?

If I was watching the game with a staunch traditionalist I'd just tell them that he lined the ball off the top of the CF wall, he fell down rounding first, the CFer dropped it, then threw it to the wrong guy, there was a three minute rundown he escaped from... man, you picked a wrong moment to go to the head.

I think there's a fairly high attrition rate for each age or year of pitcher. If you started at age 10 and assumed that 5% of the pitchers get hurt in some way that essentially precludes them from being major leaguer, by 28 you end up with 40% of your original pool left. I think 5% is way too low. If it's 10% you only have 15% of your starting pool left. At 15% injury rate you're left with 5% of the pool. I've read that something like 45% of pitchers have some kind of noticeable injury in any given year. Obviously not all serious enough to disrupt a career. I think that if you could cut pitcher injuries to 50% of their current rate you'd have an essentially endless supply of good pitchers for 30 MLB teams. They'd have to change the rules to keep the strikeout rate below 15 per nine.

On July 6, 1913 the Cards played the Cubs in the second game of a doubleheader. For some reason the game was forfeited to the Cards in between the top and bottom of the 4th inning. Slim Sallee pitched all three innings for the Cards and, strangely, was given credit for a complete game. By modern rules no stats count in a forfeit, but perhaps they did in 1913? Because it looks like his 3-inning complete game win is part of his official stats for '13. There were two other cases in the early 1900s of pitchers getting complete games of less than four innings. There have been about 50 cases of (apparently) rain-shortened games where pitchers got credit for complete games of less than five innings, since it only takes 4 1/2 to have an official game. Edit: from the SABR forfeit log: No mention of why the stats counted...

I do. I think injuries are the primary reason that the conversion rate of draftees to the majors is so low. The percentage of 28-year-old pitchers who haven't been impacted in some way by injuries is vanishingly small. Even if you're a 15th round pick you can probably touch 92 and have some kind of secondary pitch, which means you could be someone's 6th inning guy if you can stay healthy. But they don't, so we don't quite have an endless supply of relief pitchers.

"What has happened so far" also includes everything we know about the team, the players, and their opponents for the last 5, 10, 15 years. The last week's game results are a tiny fraction of our body of knowledge.

I don't mind that at all. But we have had a nice conversation about the new strategies that have/will arise from this new situation.

Tangent... sometime in the 1880s the NL tried a scheme where players at different positions wore different brightly colored/striped/etc uniforms. It didn't last long before they realized that the guy standing near second base was probably the second baseman no matter what shirt he was wearing.

I'm thinking if things continue to break his way he could become the new Nate Snell.

Isn't that the whole point? Otherwise they'd just list the standings.

Your formula is [(results of last eight games) + 0% of everything else we know about baseball]. I'd probably use something a little different.

I would have thought so, too, but I can't say I thought through it too deeply before now. Somewhere in the back of my head I have that 14% of the time there's a runner on first and less than two out a DP is turned. I don't know if that's still a valid number, it may be from 20 years ago. But you also have a walk in about 9% of PAs, plus a HBP in another 1%, and a wild pitch about 1% of the time. So while putting the runner on first sets up a double play, it also puts you in a situation where you've loaded the bases on a walk or an infield hit or a HBP. Also, you have to consider the impact of the sac bunt. A lot of teams will want to sacrifice the guy to third if you don't walk the batter, giving you an out. Maybe the better situation is to let them do that. The batter might fail, might pop up the bunt, or put down one right at the pitcher who throws the guy out at third. Worst case he bunts the runner to third, then you walk the next guy and you set up the double play to get out of the inning altogether. Win expectancy of runner on third, one out, tie game, bottom of 10th is 80% for the home team. That's better than 2nd and no out.

I think you will see some, but how often does a poor hitter have a .850 OPS in June? This season is not too much shorter than the 2nd half of a typical season (the All Star break is usually about 90 games in). If you look at second half leaders most of them are just the best players. A few outliers, but mostly. Rk I Player Split Year G OPS GS PA AB 1 Christian Yelich 2nd Half 2018 65 1.219 64 294 256 2 Mike Napoli 2nd Half 2011 61 1.171 58 249 214 3 Joey Votto 2nd Half 2016 72 1.158 71 314 262 4 Joey Votto 2nd Half 2015 73 1.152 73 325 235 5 Nelson Cruz 2nd Half 2019 58 1.147 56 254 221 6 Alex Bregman 2nd Half 2019 68 1.134 68 296 237 7 Edwin Encarnacion 2nd Half 2015 61 1.132 61 268 223 8 J.D. Martinez 2nd Half 2017 66 1.123 65 274 245 9 Buster Posey 2nd Half 2012 71 1.102 69 298 257 10 David Ortiz 2nd Half 2015 66 1.102 65 274 234 11 Miguel Cabrera 2nd Half 2011 69 1.100 68 300 257 12 Jose Bautista 2nd Half 2010 73 1.099 73 317 265 13 Josh Hamilton 2nd Half 2010 48 1.098 47 203 177 14 Giancarlo Stanton 2nd Half 2017 73 1.095 71 323 272 15 Carlos Gonzalez 2nd Half 2010 68 1.091 65 289 262 16 Ketel Marte 2nd Half 2019 57 1.081 55 244 215 17 Eugenio Suarez 2nd Half 2019 72 1.081 69 297 253 18 Chris Davis 2nd Half 2015 74 1.078 74 318 266 19 Jorge Soler 2nd Half 2019 71 1.076 71 305 251 20 Miguel Cabrera 2nd Half 2012 75 1.074 75 317 279 21 Freddie Freeman 2nd Half 2016 70 1.067 70 312 257 22 Justin Turner 2nd Half 2018 55 1.066 52 237 202 23 Charlie Blackmon 2nd Half 2017 70 1.064 70 319 277 24 Troy Tulowitzki 2nd Half 2011 57 1.060 54 238 205 25 Miguel Cabrera 2nd Half 2016 70 1.057 70 298 260 26 Mike Trout 2nd Half 2019 47 1.054 46 209 168 27 Gary Sanchez 2nd Half 2016 52 1.052 52 225 197 28 Yordan lvarez 2nd Half 2019 68 1.044 64 287 240 29 Bryce Harper 2nd Half 2015 72 1.043 72 311 244 30 Joey Votto 2nd Half 2010 66 1.042 63 278 238 31 Ryan Braun 2nd Half 2011 67 1.034 65 278 257 32 Christian Yelich 2nd Half 2019 48 1.034 47 215 185 33 Albert Pujols 2nd Half 2010 72 1.033 70 315 266 34 Jayson Werth 2nd Half 2013 65 1.032 64 273 230 35 Nolan Arenado 2nd Half 2017 70 1.032 68 292 254 36 Ronald Acuna Jr. 2nd Half 2018 68 1.028 66 303 264 37 Mike Trout 2nd Half 2013 65 1.023 65 290 219 38 Anthony Rendon 2nd Half 2019 71 1.023 71 322 265 39 J.D. Martinez 2nd Half 2018 58 1.021 58 252 215 40 Troy Tulowitzki 2nd Half 2010 60 1.020 60 264 235 41 Marcus Semien 2nd Half 2019 70 1.018 70 323 280 42 Paul Konerko 2nd Half 2010 69 1.017 68 293 257 43 Shin-Soo Choo 2nd Half 2015 69 1.016 67 305 248 44 Rhys Hoskins 2nd Half 2017 50 1.014 50 212 170 45 Tommy Pham 2nd Half 2018 50 1.013 49 217 181 46 Josh Donaldson 2nd Half 2015 69 1.011 69 317 265 47 Prince Fielder 2nd Half 2012 76 1.006 76 319 260 48 Keston Hiura 2nd Half 2019 57 1.006 53 238 213 49 Yuli Gurriel 2nd Half 2019 62 1.005 61 259 236 50 Charlie Blackmon 2nd Half 2016 68 1.003 64 305 278