DrungoHazewood

Between AA and AAA he's allowed five runs a game. AAAA means he's done well in AAA but can't hack it in the majors. He did well in AAA in 2017, but that's basically the only time as a pro he's looked like a prospect. And even then his K rate was low.

21 wins is a game better than last year's pace, and 57 wins over a full 162. The midpoint of my projected distribution is 17 wins.

Kretlow went 0-4, 8.22 the year he was opening day starter. And his career record was 27-47 with an 82 ERA+. Milone is 50-47 with a 90. Kretlow for the win.

Last year Wilkerson had a 76 OPS+. That's pretty close to the median or average performance for a utility player. I guess you could argue that teams shouldn't have utility players, but that's nonsense. Willie Bloomquist was more-or-less Stevie Wilkerson for 14 years.

Who is the current Oriole most likely to be called Rabbit? Mullins?

I heard Bordick rambling on for a while about bunting and hitting-and-running constantly because of the short schedule, but I assumed he was just ad-libbing nonsense to fill time. If he was repeating something from Elias he must have misunderstood, unless Elias knows that they're going to secretly be using 1914 baseballs, bats and players.

They could purposely and obviously ignore the Jays' game going on in the background. And Easter Egg a Cito Sucks into each broadcast.

Will he be back for the playoffs? (That's so cliched I feel it deserves some kind of hashtag or [bbcode brackets])

What a strange thing to be really mad about.

DJ Stewart has a .790 minor league OPS. Anthony Santander has a .784. Stewart had minor league seasons with OPSes of .633, .719, and .716. Santander is a year younger, and had his development interrupted by being a Rule 5 pick. If I had to bet on one of the two becoming a productive MLB player it would be Santander.

Someone needs to put bags of flour or confetti or something attached to the cardboard people, so when they're hit by a foul ball it explodes.

At 21 Santander was one of the better players his age in the Carolina League. He was about the same age and hit about as well as Ian Happ. Then the O's took him in the Rule 5, stuck him on the DL, put him on a brief rehab stint, then the next year he only played 72 games. The jury is still out. He has some attributes that point towards him perhaps developing late and becoming productive. The Orioles are a perfect team to give him 500 or 1000 at bats to see what comes of it.

I think someone could design a nice ballpark that doesn't look like a warehouse, that fits into a city grid, and has a cantilevered design that puts fans closer without obstructing beams. I'm not at all a fan of parks way out the suburbs surrounded by huge parking lots and entertainment complexes designed to maximize revenues. I'm guessing we won't see all that many new parks in the near future with almost everyone in a nice place that's been built in the last 30 years, or Fenway/Wrigley which aren't going anywhere. Although I guess the Rangers/Braves model is to tear down parks built for $750M in taxpayer money 20 years ago and replace with $1B+ parks paid for by taxpayers.

You can watch Belarusian Premier League soccer (just ask @scOtt for the link, be prepared for some really inappropriate ads from Russia), but not Baltimore Orioles exhibitions.

The soccer implementation on TV is fine. It feels more like a normal game, and you're not normally panning the lack of crowd, reminding you it's fake. But in stadium? That might be a little strange. If I were in charge of it I'd probably get fired. I'd have to insert heckling. Bird noises. Pterodactyl noises. Train crashes. Ralph and Alice fighting. Every Yankee or Sox at bat greeted by a deafening chorus of boos. Every Rays at bat greeted by dead silence. Random, jarring, loud shouts of "balk" while the opposing pitcher was at the set position. "Move it along *$@%($%" every time someone steps out to fix their batting glove.

I think MLB sees the 90% of the minor leaguers they pay as money sinks, and if they could figure out a way to have one or two affiliated teams without taking a massive PR hit they'd do it. They're very jealous of the NFL and NBA who fell into using college as free minor leagues and huge development risk reduction. So... not next year. But maybe in five or 10.

Flaherty had an .800 OPS in September of 2014 when Manny was out. But that was because he hit .370 on balls in play in like 80 PAs. If you're going to assign cause-and-effect to that I may disagree.

I think there is much uncertainty in Santander's projections going forward. He had a .565 OPS in his first two shortened seasons in Baltimore, then a .773 last year. One story is that he was yanked out of the minors as a Rule 5er, and that sidetracked his development. Plausible, but doesn't necessarily mean he's sure to be an .800+ OPS guy. We need more data to go on, and unfortunately we won't get a whole lot this year.

I think if Mountcastle gets ahead in the count 2-0 in his first MLB at bat, they stop the game right there and sell Stewart to the Chunichi Dragons.

Hey, we could be Louisville. Got contracted in 1899, fans probably figured they'd get a Major League team back in a few years. 121 seasons later and nothing. Stevie Wilkerson is way more fun than an endless abyss.

Whoever it is might approach the obscure record of Gary Matthews Jr/Jay Gibbons in 2002. Matthews had a 112 OPS+, Gibbons a 111, so depending on where you draw the AB qualifier line one of them has the lowest team-leading OPS+ in modern Oriole history. Almost no one on the roster has cleared league average in anything like a full season, except Davis. Here's hoping someone like Santander has a short-schedule boosted 125 or 140.

I don't know how much it has to do with lack of speed so much as recklessness or aggressiveness. He had years where he was 17-for-36 and 5-for-19 stealing, and he probably challenged outfielders a lot. And some years he lost. I also think the data is incomplete. It wouldn't surprise me if some players from the pre-1920 era crush the more modern players in negative baserunning. There are game accounts I've seen from the 1910s that read like a 8-year-old Little League game with runners just taking off at any given moment and rundowns happening every other inning.

By the way, the career mark for worst baserunning runs of all time is David Ortiz at -39.

He was out of baseball by '94 with the exception of an unknown number of games in Mexico in '96 at 34. He would have been more productive than Davis, but he probably wasn't a long-term solution.

You know I had to look this up, not doubting you, but it piqued my curiosity: Rk Player Rbaser Year Age Tm Lg G PA AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB IBB SO HBP SH SF GDP SB CS BA OBP SLG OPS Pos 1 Pat Duncan -8.2 1922 28 CIN NL 151 670 607 94 199 44 12 8 94 40 31 1 22 12 28 .328 .370 .479 .850 *7 2 Tony Lazzeri -8.0 1932 28 NYY AL 142 603 510 79 153 28 16 15 113 82 64 2 7 11 11 .300 .399 .506 .905 *4/5H 3 Dave Parker -7.9 1985 34 CIN NL 160 694 635 88 198 42 4 34 125 52 24 80 3 0 4 26 5 13 .312 .365 .551 .916 *9/H 4 Randy Milligan -7.5 1991 29 BAL AL 141 571 483 57 127 17 2 16 70 84 4 108 2 0 2 23 0 5 .263 .373 .406 .779 *3D/7H 5 Charlie Hollocher -7.5 1922 26 CHC NL 152 692 592 90 201 37 8 3 69 58 5 5 37 19 29 .340 .403 .444 .847 *6 6 Harold Reynolds -7.3 1988 27 SEA AL 158 663 598 61 169 26 11 4 41 51 1 51 2 10 2 9 35 29 .283 .340 .383 .723 *4 7 Manny Trillo -7.3 1982 31 PHI NL 149 595 549 52 149 24 1 0 39 33 3 53 3 9 1 14 8 10 .271 .316 .319 .634 *4/H 8 Greg Gagne -7.2 1994 32 KCR AL 107 409 375 39 97 23 3 7 51 27 0 79 4 2 1 8 10 17 .259 .314 .392 .706 *6/H 9 Roy Johnson -7.2 1935 32 BOS AL 145 636 553 70 174 33 9 3 66 74 34 3 5 11 12 .315 .398 .423 .822 *7/H 10 Josh Bell -7.0 2017 24 PIT NL 159 620 549 75 140 26 6 26 90 66 4 117 1 0 4 15 2 4 .255 .334 .466 .800 *3H/D 11 Red Kress -7.0 1931 26 SLB AL 150 656 605 87 188 46 8 16 114 46 48 1 3 3 16 .311 .360 .493 .853 *5963/H 12 Aubrey Huff -6.9 2009 32 TOT AL 150 597 536 59 129 30 1 15 85 51 7 87 5 0 5 15 0 6 .241 .310 .384 .694 *3DH 13 Pete Rose -6.8 1982 41 PHI NL 162 720 634 80 172 25 4 3 54 66 9 32 7 8 3 12 8 8 .271 .345 .338 .683 *3 14 Dave Parker -6.8 1977 26 PIT NL 159 706 637 107 215 44 8 21 88 58 13 107 7 0 4 7 17 19 .338 .397 .531 .927 *9/H4 15 Andrew McCutchen -6.7 2018 31 TOT ML 155 682 569 83 145 30 3 20 65 95 1 145 11 0 7 12 14 9 .255 .368 .424 .792 *97/HD 16 Joey Votto -6.6 2017 33 CIN NL 162 707 559 106 179 34 1 36 100 134 20 83 8 0 6 16 5 1 .320 .454 .578 1.032 *3 17 Prince Fielder -6.6 2010 26 MIL NL 161 714 578 94 151 25 0 32 83 114 17 138 21 0 1 12 1 0 .261 .401 .471 .871 *3/D 18 Willie Horton -6.6 1965 22 DET AL 143 572 512 69 140 20 2 29 104 48 9 101 6 2 4 12 5 9 .273 .340 .490 .831 *79/H5 19 J.T. Snow -6.5 2000 32 SFG NL 155 627 536 82 152 33 2 19 96 66 6 129 11 0 14 20 1 3 .284 .365 .459 .824 *3/H 20 Gary Sheffield -6.4 1996 27 FLA NL 161 677 519 118 163 33 1 42 120 142 19 66 10 0 6 16 16 9 .314 .465 .624 1.090 *9/H As of today he's 4th worst all time. Duncan had 11 steals and 28 caught that year. Milligan must have just been thrown out on the bases an absurd number of times. Dave Parker makes the list twice. Nice to see Aubrey Huff up there, right next to the 41-year-old Pete Rose, probably still thinking he's 22.