DrungoHazewood

In 1910 it was "only a fool uses his best stuff except when he really needs it, because you have to go nine every 3-4 days. Or more." Today it's "use your best stuff all the time, or you're going to get the crap knocked out of you. But we'll yank you after five innings, and you only pitch once every five or six days." Overall I'm not sure there's a lot of difference in how long a pitcher lasts. Or... on smaller time scales Palmer vs Mussina. Four-man rotation and some high-pitch games and high-inning seasons, vs. never topping 250 innings in a five-man and more pitch counts. Palmer threw a few more career innings, but Mussina had three more seasons of 150+ innings. Mussina was never really injured, Palmer missed part or all of four years. And they had almost identical career W/L records.

I'm sure you've heard of Al Spalding, or at least his company. He quit playing at 26 to start selling stuff to play base ball, and I'm sure he made waaaaay more money going that route.

Whatevers. Al Spalding once threw 617 innings in a 71-game schedule. Kids these days... Yes, I realize that Spalding was throwing underhanded at about 60 mph, and had 19 walks and 31 strikeouts. It was a completely different world.

I rooted hard for Majewski because he was exactly 10 years younger than me. Got hurt in 2005 and was never the same.

I once saw Beau Hale win some kind of pig wrestling or hog calling... or something... contest before a BaySox game.

That Bertman quote is like vintage Sparky Anderson, who once said Tory Lovullo was as good as Mickey Mantle. Calling a college kid better than peak Roger Clemens is ballsy. And completely wrong. Matt Riley was pretty hyped, too. Called up as a teenager, spoke of himself in the third person, drove that monster truck with the 24 Karat license plate.

Capacity was something like 78,000. You could have walked up on game day and bought 75,000 tickets. I wonder if you bought an upper deck seat, if the ushers would have accosted you for going and sitting in a lower box? If you were social distancing and spreading out evenly across the park, you'd have 27 or 28 seats to yourself.

This thread triggered something deep, deep within the recesses of my brain: Gregg Olson went 0-for-1 as a batter for the Orioles, despite the fact he only played for the O's prior to interleague. He was the only Oriole pitcher to get an at bat between 1973 and 1996. Several others had pinch ran, or appeared in the box score as hitters after some kind of DH switch, but no one else ever actually batted. It was this game against the Royals in '93. Chris Hoiles had started at DH, with Jeff Tackett behind the plate. Brady pinch hit for Tackett in the 6th, necessitating Hoiles catch, meaning they lost the DH for the remainder of the game. I guess they ran out of position players, so in the 8th Olson had to bat against Billy Brewer and struck out. Looks like there were 81 AL pitchers who got at least one PA from '73-96. That's more than I would have thought. Ken Brett, George's brother, is the only AL pitcher I know of who batted for himself all game in a DH league. The White Sox voluntarily didn't use the DH in two of his starts in '76. Both times he went 0-for-3, the second of which he batted 8th.

They were 90th or 95th percentile hitters in high school. Major League hitters are 99.999th percentile.

Back-of-the-napkin math... that's about a 15% return on investment per year. So they did pretty well, beat the stock market if they'd just invested the $2M every year.

For some reason I read about that in the last six months or so. The Bradford fire along with the Hillsborough disaster (among others outside England) led to sweeping changes in stadium building standards. In 1985 you could go to a match and stand in an open terrace or on wooden bleachers. By the 1990s it was all fire-resistant construction and no more terraces ("all-seaters"). Some places like Germany and even the new Audi Park for DC United have standing terraces, but each row is separated by railings so that you don't have surges of the crowd that lead to crushing and trampling. Somehow we've avoided huge messes like that in the US, for the most part. Maybe dumb luck. I know I've felt like I was on the verge of death as a visiting fan at WVU football games...

That was definitely a problem. They'd burn all the time, sometimes in the middle of the game. I think it was 1894 where several parks burnt down in a short amount of time, and rumors went around about a baseball arsonist. But collapses were not unheard-of, either. Sometimes they literally threw up some bleachers in the weeks before the season; this wasn't Janet Marie Smith and HOK drawing up plans four years ahead of time. In January it was the vacant lot at 22nd and Elm, and in April they're playing major league games there.

I say they should also play in Sun Devil Stadium, configured either like the LA Coliseum or the Polo Grounds. At least one sub-250' line, and CF goes on forever. Because why not? It's already a crazy season.

There's 10 spring training stadiums, plus whatever they call the D'back's stadium now. All basically in Phoenix. 16 might be a stretch. They could do like they used to in the 1800s: you build a new one out of wood in three weeks and hope it doesn't collapse on opening day. Less risk with no spectators.

We talked about this in another thread recently. He was hurt in '72, but in '71 he hit 18 homers with Memorial Stadium being a bit of a pitcher's park. Fulton County had a HR park effect on par with Colorado. So from '71 to ''73 he went from 10 road homers to 17. Which isn't that crazy, I guess.

Goslin was a 1920s and 30s version of, I don't know... Andre Dawson or Dwight Evans or Dave Winfield. Somewhere in there. Had a huge home/road HR split (92/156) because Griffith Stadium was just impossible to hit homers in. It's was like 402 to left and over 350 to RF with a huge concrete wall. Averill's career was like Kirby Puckett, in the 30s. Center fielder, relatively short career, marginal HOFer on career value. Although he played three full, peak years in the PCL back when they were independent that he should probably get some extra credit for. Which mostly accounts for him not making his MLB debut until 27. From age 27+ Averill was worth more than Mantle, Gwynn, Kaline, Stargell, McCovey, about on par with Biggio, Thome, Manny Ramirez.

Kaline is a lot closer to Clemente or Yaz than Aparicio. And Aparicio only played five years in Baltimore.

It's no slight to say he wasn't quite as good as a list of inner-circle HOFers. He had 10 5+ win seasons. Five wins is "in the MVP conversation". 10 seasons like that is 23rd of all time, ahead of Griffey, Brett, DiMaggio, Foxx, and for a couple years Trout. And about 19,600 other major leaguers.

Yes. Two of my favorite games were sitting in the yellow Memorial Stadium mezzanine seats: my first game at the height of the '79 pennant race, and a few days before high school graduation when the O's beat Nolan Ryan.

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Max Bishop. He was the regular second baseman on the IL Orioles from 1918-1923, after which he immediately became the Philadelphia A's second baseman. In a 12-year MLB career he was worth 37 wins. The IL Orioles were an indepenent team that kept its stars for years. Bishop was pretty clearly a MLB-quality player in his time in Baltimore. Even if he was just a two- or three-win player in MLB terms, he would have been worth maybe 15 wins as an Oriole. Which would put him neck-and-neck with Schoop for the 4th-highest career value in city history.

When you dip down this far into a niche some of the differentiation is going to come from definitions. Dauer and Alomar were within a few wins of one another in career value as an Oriole, but could hardly have been much more different. Dauer never had a 3-win season, while Alomar's worst as an Oriole was over three wins in a short season. Jonathan Schoop should be on this list. His 3rd-best (of 4.5) seasons in Baltimore was as good as Dauer's best season. Dauer gets a lot of bonus points for having great teammates. But I think Dauer was clearly better than Adair, who really only had three years as an average or average-plus player for the O's. Villar could have joined this list, but only played 147 games at second while in Baltimore. Robert Andino had more than that. Top career value by bb-ref WAR (min 100 games at 2B): Rk Player WAR/pos From To Age G PA AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB 1 Bobby Grich 36.0 1970 1976 21-27 786 3344 2790 432 730 137 27 70 307 457 2 Brian Roberts 28.8 2001 2013 23-35 1327 5905 5214 810 1452 351 35 92 521 581 3 Davey Johnson 20.1 1965 1972 22-29 995 3929 3489 382 904 186 16 66 391 365 4 Jonathan Schoop 14.6 2013 2018 21-26 635 2506 2360 306 615 126 2 106 312 91 5 Rich Dauer 14.4 1976 1985 23-32 1140 4218 3829 448 984 193 3 43 372 297 6 Roberto Alomar 12.5 1996 1998 28-30 412 1825 1588 282 496 102 7 50 210 189 7 Jerry Hairston 7.1 1998 2004 22-28 530 2086 1825 241 477 98 12 26 160 162 8 Jerry Adair 6.6 1958 1966 21-29 736 2751 2568 257 663 118 15 43 234 140 9 Tim Hulett 6.0 1989 1994 29-34 343 1047 950 119 248 45 4 19 111 83 10 Billy Ripken 5.5 1987 1996 22-31 724 2461 2222 236 541 100 5 15 180 146 Best individual seasons (min 80 games 2B): Rk Player WAR/pos Year Age Tm Lg G PA AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB 1 Bobby Grich 8.3 1973 24 BAL AL 162 700 581 82 146 29 7 12 50 107 2 Brian Roberts 7.3 2005 27 BAL AL 143 640 561 92 176 45 7 18 73 67 3 Bobby Grich 7.3 1975 26 BAL AL 150 655 524 81 136 26 4 13 57 107 4 Bobby Grich 7.3 1974 25 BAL AL 160 707 582 92 153 29 6 19 82 90 5 Jonathan Schoop 6.3 2017 25 BAL AL 160 675 622 92 182 35 0 32 105 35 6 Bobby Grich 6.1 1976 27 BAL AL 144 615 518 93 138 31 4 13 54 86 7 Roberto Alomar 5.3 1996 28 BAL AL 153 699 588 132 193 43 4 22 94 90 8 Brian Roberts 5.2 2008 30 BAL AL 155 704 611 107 181 51 8 9 57 82 9 Davey Johnson 4.4 1971 28 BAL AL 142 574 510 67 144 26 1 18 72 51 10 Brian Roberts 4.2 2007 29 BAL AL 156 716 621 103 180 42 5 12 57 89 Oldtimer edition (NL-AA Orioles): Rk Player WAR/pos Year Age Tm Lg G PA AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB 1 Gene DeMontreville 5.0 1898 25 BLN NL 151 641 567 93 186 19 2 0 86 52 2 Heinie Reitz 3.4 1897 30 BLN NL 128 544 477 76 138 15 6 2 84 50 3 Heinie Reitz 2.7 1894 27 BLN NL 108 502 446 86 135 22 31 2 105 42 4 Heinie Reitz 2.1 1893 26 BLN NL 130 562 490 90 140 17 13 1 76 65 5 Bill Greenwood 1.7 1887 30 BAL AA 118 550 495 114 130 16 6 0 65 54 6 Heinie Reitz 1.3 1896 29 BLN NL 120 527 464 76 133 15 6 4 106 49 7 Jack Farrell 1.3 1888 30 BAL AA 103 426 398 72 81 19 5 4 36 26 8 Kid Gleason 1.0 1895 28 BLN NL 112 465 421 90 130 14 12 0 74 33 9 Sam Wise 0.9 1891 33 BAL AA 103 459 388 70 96 14 5 1 48 62 10 Tim Manning 0.9 1884 30 BAL AA 91 374 341 49 70 14 5 2 0 26 Also... Jimmy Williams was the second baseman for the 1901-02 AL O's. Over six wins in two years, with 21 triples each season. Williams was someone who might be a HOFer if he was born 20 years later. He had three seasons in the top 10 in slugging early in his career, then the real depths of the deadball era came. I think he'd have been a 20-homer guy in the 1920s, but from '03-on he had a 103 OPS+ but just a .656 overall OPS.

Didn't Brent Musberger try to transform himself from straight-laced announcer to catch phrase guy at about the age of 65 or 70? That went poorly.

I just came up with the greatest idea ever: Have Tom Davis roam around the empty stadium, giving the out-of-town scores and pretending to steal the non-existent people's food like it's a bizarro version of HTS in 1989.

If it's the Yanks or Sox I think the only correct options are to have them use minor league players or forfeit. Anyone else they just postpone the games.

I get that this seems really strange, because it is. But the reasoning is that getting paid something is better than not getting paid at all. Some revenues from TV are better than no revenues at all. The complications are many, including what happens when a team has multiple players who get the virus and need to be quarantined? That seems pretty likely. We hear all kinds of stories of pro athletes being bankrupt within a short amount of time after being out of the league. You know that there are MLB players who essentially live paycheck to paycheck, counting on their salary to pay for their $2M house and the house they bought for their mom and house they bought for their best buddy, and the $2500 a month for their Aston Martin, and the attendant for their pet tiger. That's the kind of guy who wants to play in front of no fans in Arizona.