DrungoHazewood

In McKenna's professional career he's successfully fielded 1539 balls hit in his direction. I don't know that two missed plays are more important than that. And if you believe that those two plays out of thousands are significant evidence that he's not a clutch fielder and can't be relied upon, I think we're done here because we've veered away from evidence and towards witchcraft.

You seem to be operating under the assumption that McKenna is unable to field even routine fly balls to the outfield, and Pillar never misses anything. I'm guessing this error was just an AI deepfake and would never happen if Pillar was an Oriole.

Two plays in two years. I'm guessing that fans of the eight (!) teams he's been on in the last five years can come up with some games where Pillar didn't come through for them. If not, then why didn't he stick with any team for longer than one partial season since the start of 2019? As for Hicks, it's pretty clear that the O's got the very best 65 games he's given anyone since 2019. Since the start of 2021 he's had about a .600 OPS when not in an O's uniform. And I don't know that I'd count on the pixie dust to magically come back if the O's inexplicably signed him.

Good, competitive MLB teams don't usually go through all the trouble to change out roster spots and 40-man spots for a theoretical 2% advantage from the 26th guy on the roster. I pretty much guarantee Elias isn't jumping at the chance to get Pillar over McKenna because he feels a little more like a winner.

I'm skeptical when the "for" case comes down to indefinable intangibles and gut feel about one or two defensive plays. The reality is both Pillar and McKenna are defensive replacements, 5th outfielders, guys who aren't assets with the bat. Pillar's primary advantage appears to be that he can tell the other outfielders stories about back when he had Willie Mays' range. As for Hicks... he was a nice story last year. But he's 34 and has about a .650 OPS and a below-average glove over his past 1000 MLB PAs. In an organization loaded with prospects and up-and-coming hitters I really, really don't see the point.

Before the great purge in the 1990s* the umps more-or-less did whatever they wanted. They'd interview an ump and he'd say things like "the strike zone is what I say the strike zone is." There would be talk of reforming things and the umps and their union basically just said no. We're the umpires, goldang it, and we control what goes on. Wrong call? Missed something? Bullcrap, we're the best umps in the world, how dare you question us? And until HDTV and cameras everywhere, and tracking systems in the last ~20 years it was often hard to tell just how good or bad they were. There was that famous Eric Gregg game in the 1997 NLCS where he just decided the strike zone was going to be three feet wide and Livan Hernandez (career K rate of 5.9, never struck out more than 11 in any other game in his long career) struck out 15. It just happened, no consequences, nothing. But now, with Statcast everywhere, even in the minors, and HD broadcasts of every game, it's a whole new world. Umpires have been graded on balls/strikes for many years. They just accept that the whole world knows more-or-less objectively if they were right or wrong in near real time. They can't hide. Truly terrible, belligerent, rogue umps don't exist like they did when I was a kid. That's why Angel and one or two others stand out. But they'd have been mid-pack or better in the 1990s. There can still be improvements, but umpiring is better than it's ever been. * Remember there was some kind of work stoppage and the umps resigned en masse, and the owners called their bluff and accepted the resignations. When the umps came crawling back the owners only brought back the ones they liked.)

Did anyone think to look at the Statcast data before wondering out loud if the O's should pick up a guy like Pillar? The last 3-4 years even his range, which is really his calling card, is roughly average, maybe a tick above. The last time his OAA was off the charts was 2016. You know, when Brian Matusz and Ubaldo were still on the Os. You have to squint pretty hard to see the advantages Pillar brings over McKenna.

Bumbry had wild swings in BABIP throughout his career. .375 in '73, then .274 in '74. .372 in '77 then .258 in '78. One of those guys who was really good if he hit about .300, but not so much if he hit .237. Would be fun to see modern Statcast data for historical seasons to try to figure out what was going on there. Injuries? Bad luck? Just slumping?

My original goal was to see if anyone had more value than Gunner in his first 208 games as an Oriole at the start of his career. But the span finder in Stathead doesn't do WAR. Rettenmund hit better, but was worth 6.1 rWAR in his first 232 games. Blefary was an okay LFer, so no. Sheets was a essentially a DH. Rutschman may have done it. His pace has been 7.7 rWAR per 208. Cal was sort of close, but hurt by that start. Through 182 games he was sitting on 4.2. Eddie was held back by being a DH a lot in his first year or two. So I'm pretty confident that the two most valuable Orioles through their first ~1.5 seasons are Henderson and Rutschman.

You got Rutschman, he's 5th at .799. Here, since nobody else took me up on it, this is the top 13 just becase Cal is 13th: Rk Player Team Span Started Span Ended OPS PA AB R H 1B 2B 3B HR RBI SB CS BB SO BA OBP SLG OPS 1 Merv Rettenmund BAL 1968-04-14 1971-04-28 .864 735 628 96 185 122 32 6 25 96 21 10 86 116 .295 .380 .484 .864 2 Gunnar Henderson BAL 2022-08-31 2024-04-24 .836 864 773 132 203 111 39 13 40 120 16 4 79 219 .263 .334 .502 .836 3 Curt Blefary BAL 1965-04-14 1966-06-29 .831 818 687 111 177 108 29 6 34 105 5 3 114 102 .258 .365 .466 .831 4 Larry Sheets BAL 1984-09-18 1986-09-02 .812 680 628 82 174 114 24 1 35 108 2 1 44 101 .277 .326 .486 .812 5 Adley Rutschman BAL 2022-05-21 2023-07-25 .799 896 763 118 199 120 52 1 26 84 4 1 124 152 .261 .365 .434 .799 6 Ryan Mountcastle BAL 2020-08-21 2022-05-22 .797 851 780 101 210 135 31 1 43 129 6 4 57 222 .269 .320 .477 .797 7 Trey Mancini BAL 2016-09-20 2018-06-05 .796 845 775 97 215 141 36 4 34 100 1 0 57 197 .277 .330 .466 .796 8 Nick Markakis BAL 2006-04-05 2007-06-22 .789 864 783 112 223 150 45 3 25 104 9 1 67 122 .285 .343 .446 .789 9 Cedric Mullins BAL 2018-08-10 2021-08-03 .787 864 773 106 212 137 41 9 25 64 30 12 67 169 .274 .339 .448 .787 10 Jay Gibbons BAL 2001-04-06 2003-04-03 .783 798 729 99 178 94 40 1 43 106 1 4 59 106 .244 .305 .479 .783 11 Al Bumbry BAL 1972-09-05 1975-05-31 .780 806 735 117 220 160 35 16 9 64 34 14 57 118 .299 .353 .427 .780 12 Eddie Murray BAL 1977-04-07 1978-06-02 .779 878 806 101 222 148 38 3 33 113 0 3 62 130 .275 .326 .453 .779 13 Cal Ripken Jr. BAL 1981-08-12 (2) 1983-05-17 (2) .778 853 779 116 206 126 41 6 33 115 3 3 62 126 .264 .318 .460 .778

If there's no rule, then why aren't the Orioles' mitts 78"?

Here's a trivia question nobody is going to get unless you have Stathead: Gunnar Henderson is 2nd in modern Orioles history ('54-present) in OPS in a player's first 208 career games. Can you name the other five in the top six? If you need a hint or two, two are active, and none are in the Hall of Fame. Side note: there have only been 62 players who started their career with the Orioles and played at least the next 208 games with the team.

Yep. It'll take him about 1650ish games to get there. Not that I expect Gunnar to continue to post 6.9 WAR per 162, but for now he's almost 2 wins per full season ahead of Harper. Harper is still an interesting case, where he has two actual MVP awards, but only one year where he was a no-doubt MVP. And a lot of seasons with injury or under-performance. Six seasons of less than three wins. More valuable in '15 than in '16-18 combined. 2021 he was certainly good, but arguably not as good as Gunnar's '23. Or 5-6 other NL players from '21.

The median #1 overall pick is worth about 15-17 wins. Phil Nevin. Jeff King. Pat Burrell. Something like that. 80th percentile #1 is something like 40 wins. Gunnar is 208 games into his career and is 23 years old, and already more valuable than roughly 40% of all #1 overalls. Since the 1994 draft (post-ARod) Joe Mauer is the only #1 overall to have reached 50 rWAR. At his career pace Gunnar will need 1190 games to get to 50 rWAR, or about 7.3 seasons. So, yea, he would be doing fine if he'd been taken #1.

I think speaking in generalities that's definitely true. I'm sure Corn would argue that we have no proof that the Orioles aren't still the 2006 Orioles so Rutschman's case might be different.

That's a pretty presumptuous thing to say. Especially for a 26-year-old guy 23 games into his third season who had a partial rookie year where he finished 12th in the MVP voting, and 9th in his 2nd season. And since the start of 2022 he is the most valuable catcher in baseball by both fWAR and rWAR. The average HOF catcher ends up around 50 WAR, and Rutschman is currently averaging over 5.0 per 140 games played. 10 years of that doesn't seem at all out of the question. Among catchers born since 1990 he seems to have as good a chance as anyone. He and JT Realmuto, but Realmuto is already 33 and probably need at least 3-4 more good seasons to have a shot. Perhaps Will Smith, but he's three years older and his best year would be Rutschman's 2nd or 3rd and Rutschman has only played a little over two years.

Actually, all I know is Rickey Henderson slid head-first, and Rickey stole 1406 bases in the majors and 251 more in the minors and played 30 years and as Rickey will tell you Rickey was right.

The question I'd pose is do we want more base stealing or less? I think I'd like to see more, so I'd generally be against most rules that cut back on that. Even with the recent rules changes and the mitts that have bumped up steals by roughly 50%, we're only back to the level steals were in the 90s. And not even close to deadball era baserunning. I don't see what the oven mitts are hurting. If anything, I'd be more in favor of limiting fielding glove sizes to help offenses a bit.

I'm rambling now, but the 1928 A's may have been one of the coolest teams ever to hang around. Not only did they have a bunch of these old IL Orioles, and an unbelievable stock of young talent. But Mack had brought in some old guys, I guess to provide leadership and mentoring and the like. So on this one team they had the younger HOFs: Mickey Cochrane, Al Simmons, Jimmie Foxx, Lefty Grove. They had the Orioles in Boley, Bishop, Grove, Earnshaw. But on top of all that, they had 41-year-old Ty Cobb, 40-year-old Tris Speaker, 41-year-old Eddie Collins, 44-year-old Jack Quinn, and 35-year-old Bullet Joe Bush. Of course Cobb, Speaker, and Collins are inner-circle HOFers, among the best to ever play their position. Quinn was a grandfathered spitballer, probably worthy of a book or three, who won 96 games in his 40s and pitched his last MLB game at the age of 50. And Bush had a 17-year career where he won 196 games. The '28 A's won 98 games and only finished 2.5 games behind a Yanks team that was the freakin' '27 Yanks the year before. For '29 Mack say goodbye to Cobb, Speaker, made Collins a coach, plugged in the kids, and ran away with the league for three straight years. Until the Depression hit, Connie didn't have any other sources of income or wealth, and for the 2nd time had to sell off his stars to make payroll.

Oh, yea. Grove went 12-2, 25-10, 18-8, 27-10, and 26-6 for the Orioles. Then after a little rookie hiccup with the A's kept pitching exactly as well as he had with the O's. Grove officially won 300 MLB games, but the reality is he won 408 high-level baseball games, plus three in Class D ball. The '29-31 Yanks had Ruth and Gehrig in their primes, two of arguably the 10 best players ever. Plus HOFers Bill Dickey, Tony Lazzeri, Leo Durocher, Earle Combs, Waite Hoyt, and Herb Pennock. And in 1929 they finished 18(!) games behind the A's. 16 back in '30, and 13.5 in '31. Mack also bought Max Bishop from the O's where he'd been a regular for six years. And while he wasn't quite a HOFer he was a great table-setter, walking 100+ times eight straight years. Joe Boley was the O's shortstop for the entirety of the 7-year IL Championship run, then Mack purchased him and he was the A's shortstop on three pennant winners. Oh, and starter George Earnshaw. He won 20+ games for the O's twice, and three times for the A's. I'm sure it killed Jack Dunn to sell those guys, but he made a lot of cash. And he could see the writing on the wall. The other IL owners were tired of getting their butts handed to them by the Orioles, so they started selling out, becoming full-time affiliates. Dunn could hold that off only so long. I hope the NPB keeps their independence. The worst thing, in my opinion, would be MLB working out more formal agreements to cement foreign leagues into inferior or affiliated status. I'd much rather see NPB, KBO, CBP grow into more competitive organizations that tempt players from around the world to sign there instead of with MLB. A little competition would do the Majors good.

I'll accept that! Now that we've gotten that out of the way, that's kind of a carte blanche to keep on about Jigger Statz and the '22 Cubs. I knew I'd heard Statz' name, and it's because he spent about 18 years playing for the Los Angeles Angels in the old Pacific Coast League when it was pretty close to being a 3rd major before the actual majors expanded to the west coast. He played off and on for them from the age of 22 to 28, then every year from age 31-44. He had 3356 hits in the PCL, hit .315, almost 600 doubles. Many, many players in that era had long careers in the PCL or the American Association or International League. A lot of them every bit as good as guys who had 15-year MLB careers. This was the same timeframe where the Orioles were winning seven straight IL titles with teams that certainly could have finished mid-pack in the AL/NL. Other '22 Cubs included Hack Miller, who looked like Hack Wilson or a fire hydrant (take your pick), and played many years for Oakland in the PCL. Zeb Terry played four years for the Angels. Ray Grimes had almost 4000 minor league PAs. Hooks Cotter played 10+ years in the high minors. Joe Klugman spent a decade in the Southern Association. That would have been a great era to follow, with 16 MLB teams, but countless other really competitive teams just a notch below. And this was mostly before affiliations took hold, so these teams were all trying their darnedest to win. They weren't just 3-month stopovers for the Cards and Dodgers' best prospects. If you were in Baltimore in 1922 and you ask 100 kids who their team was, it was overwhelmingly going to be the Orioles. Not the Senators or Yanks or whatever, but the home town team.

Oh, I don't know. I thought when accusing someone of wild malpractice over possibly, maybe, slightly speeding up highlights that kind of opened the door to a little goofy exaggeration.

Hollocher hit almost exclusively 2nd in the order. The Cubs' 3rd hitters (and it was the Cubs, not the Indians as I previously stated) were mostly Marty Krug, Zeb Terry, and John Kelleher. Krug was awful for a 1922 3rd-place hitter, with an 83 OPS+ in his only season as a MLB regular, but he only struck out 43 times in 524 PAs. Terry was worse, OPS+ing 74, but with just 16 Ks in 571 PAs. And Kelleher was the worst of the bunch, OPS+ing 60, while striking out 14 times in 222 PAs. Cubs manager Reindeer Bill Killefer stuck hard and fast to the old rule of thumb that the catcher should bat 8th, even if it's Bob O'Farrell and he hit .324 with an .880 OPS. Ray Grimes had a 1.014 OPS and batted cleanup. But Hack Miller and his .899 OPS batted mostly 6th. Statz wasn't a terrible leadoff hitter, was one of only a couple players who had a SB% higher than 50%, but was 6th among their regulars in OBP. That's as bad a bunch of #3 hitters as I've seen in a while, yet the Cubs finished 80-74-2. Just goes to show you batting order doesn't really matter. Anyway, back to the main point... yes, I'm sure some of Hollocher's CS were busted hit-and-runs. But nobody that regularly batted behind him struck out in even 7% of PAs so they shoulda been putting the ball in play the vast majority of the time.

Hangover from the teens, where it wasn't a matter of if you were going to bunt, steal, or hit-and-run, but when. The 1915 Baltimore Terrapins had 36 homers, slugged .325 as a team, and had 178 sac hits. They were shut out 16 times and had another 28 games where they scored a single run, and were 0-44 in those games. One-run strategies? Hell yes!

I'm sure that I've read that both Boileryard Clarke and Bill Hoffer were present for the festivities surrounding the Orioles' return to the majors in April of 1954. Clarke and Hoffer were the last living members of the Champion 1894-95-96 Orioles, both passing away in July of 1959. It's probably pretty unlikely that Schallock met Clarke or Hoffer, neither were from Baltimore and probably just returned in '54. But it's possible an old Oriole born in 1868, shortly after the end of the Civil War, watched Schallock play.