DrungoHazewood

"Kevin Hickey, South Side native, former White Sox LOOGY and batting practice pitcher, lived an one-in-a-million life. That storybook closed after Hickey passed away on Wednesday, following weeks spent in a diabetic coma." From this article.

According to bb-ref he was just in the minors during that gap. Wikipedia says he was signed by the Sox in '78 at an open tryout after he'd been playing 16" softball. I have no idea what 16" softball is. Edit: Okay, now I do.

When you talk about the best seasons in Oriole history you get some usual candidates. Frank's triple crown year. Cal's MVP seasons. Some of Palmer's big years. Maybe Brady or Chris Davis' 50-homer seasons. But I'm going to submit one that almost none of you have ever heard of: Jack Bentley, 1921. Bentley was sometimes referred to as the Babe Ruth of the Minors. He played parts of nine years in the majors for the Senators, Giants and Phillies. And had some pretty solid MLB seasons. But the year that made his legend was '21 with the league Champion Orioles. He hit .412. A loud .412. He had a league-leading 47 doubles, 16 triples, and had 24 homers, five more than anyone else in the league. He slugged .665, over 100 points higher than any other batting title qualifier. That's a pretty fair season, right? Well, it was. But he also pitched 18 games and 119 innings. He went 12-1 with a 2.34 ERA. He had a better ERA than teammate Lefty Grove, who went 25-10 and is in the Hall of Fame. In fact, among IL pitchers with 100+ IP he was 3rd in the league in ERA. The guy who led the league in average, doubles, homers, and slugging was also 3rd in ERA. That's an astonishing season. The only thing remotely like that in modern MLB history is the Babe's 1919 season where he led the AL in OPS and homers in a year where he also went 9-5, 2.97 on the mound. He pitched twice as much and had almost twice as many plate appearances as Shohei Ohtani did in '18. All hail the Orioles' two-way beast, Jack Bentley.

I loved Sparky Andersons total WTF attitude towards defense his later years in Detroit. Tettleton was a catcher/DH with the A's and the Orioles, occasionally playing a game or two in the OF or 1B in a pinch. In 1993 Sparky played Tettleton at first in 59 games, at catcher in 5, in RF 39 times and 18 more in LF. More or less repeated that in '94. By modern calculations he was somewhere between below average and "Mark Reynolds at third" at every position. But who cares. They led the league in runs, OBP, and were 2nd in homers. They had a winning record despite just missing allowing the most runs in the American League.

By the way, I started this thread to post a bunch of cool and interesting stuff about the minor league Orioles.

I'm going to use this thread to post interesting things about the minor league Orioles that played in the Eastern League and then the International League from 1903-1953, with the exception of 1915. They're kind of the forgotten heroes of Baltimore baseball because anything that's not Major League is sometimes treated like it didn't happen. So even the 1890s Orioles get Hall of Fame plaques, while the seven consecutive IL champ Orioles are rarely mentioned at all. My first bit will be on the 1925 Orioles, the 7th of the seven consecutive IL champs. After the '24 season Jack Dunn finally relented and sold Lefty Grove to the A's for $100,600 (about $1.5M today). In '24 he'd gone 26-6 for the Orioles. As an Oriole Grove went 108-36 in parts of five years. But not to worry, those 26 wins would have been fourth on the 1925 Orioles. Tommy Thomas, who'd pitch for the White Sox for years after leaving Baltimore, threw 56 games, 354 innings, and went 32-12. George Earnshaw started 41 games, pitched in 53, threw 332 innings, and went 29-11. And sitting in the back of the rotation was Jack Ogden who only got into 51 games, 327 innings and went 28-11. 89 wins out of their top three starters. The 2019 Orioles got 28 out of theirs.

No other major league team. But I can root for foreign or indy league teams. Also fictional teams on OOTP. I've admitted to a brief affair with the Indians in '88 and it still makes me feel a little dirty.

The 1920 team that won the pennant and their last 25 games and had a .719 winning percentage only beat out the Toronto Maple Leafs by 2.5 games. Toronto won 24 of their last 26. That is a pennant race the likes of which we won't see again in the world of wildcards. Toronto was managed by Hugh Duffy, former star outfielder of the 1890s Boston Beanaters who once hit .440 in a season. Even 100+ years ago the Orioles couldn't escape battles with Toronto and Boston. The article seems to have missed Ralph Worrell, who I mentioned in another thread. The 20-year-old star of the 1918 Orioles staff who died of the Spanish flu after his one professional season.

When I was about 15 I found the original Rotisserie League Baseball book at a bookstore. This was the origins of fantasy sports. I still have the book somewhere. So I started a little fantasy league with my brother and a handful of other kids on the street. It only lasted maybe a month or so, but I drafted Cory Snyder. Pretty sure this was his rookie year. He was really good, or at least hit a lot of homers. He became my favorite non-Oriole. When the O's tanked completely in '88 I had a little dalliance with the Indians. Not proud of it. Didn't last long. But I got tickets to an O's - Indians game. Printed out a big banner on a long, continuous sheet of computer paper that said "Cory Snyder". At batting practice me and a friend held up the banner, Snyder saw it, and threw a ball all the way across the field to us. Some other kid got it. After the '97 playoffs I burned my Indians hat I had from '88.

If you're not playing challenge mode you can just edit his injury status back to healthy, or only a few days left injured/IL'd. Then give him a rehab assignment to make things realistic. If you're in challenge mode I think you're stuck with whatever the game gives you. If you can't find him, just enter "Mancini" in the search box at the top.

How long until you break down and try to acquire some help? Or are you going to go full Elias and just stick it out? In my sim Carlos Beltran is still active at 42 (and wasn't bad at 41), and he's just sitting there on the free agent list, asking for way too much money. At least in my universe there are always a few free agents hanging out, hoping for an injury or a weak-willed GM into April.

Tearing my ACL was some of the worst pain I've ever felt. Both times.

It's a problem. You can't flip a switch and suddenly be cool. The closest I can get my kids to watch a baseball game is Youtube highlights. Or physically take them to OPACY. But they won't watch a whole game of anything, even a two-hour soccer match, and they're good soccer players who love to wear their favorite team's gear.

Jim Traber had a .949 OPS in his first five weeks in the majors in '86. Outside of that his MLB OPS was about .550. He hit about .150 in Earl's last forgettable month as a major league manager.

Kevin Hickey.

Dave Johnson was just good enough at exactly the right moment in '89. People say Pete Rose got more out of his talent than anyone else. But Johnson threw about 83 mph. He had nothin'. If a 29-year old version of Johnson showed up to Orioles spring training this year you'd check Elias' sanity. He had 26 strikeouts in 89 innings. And he started the most important game of the 1989 Major League season and almost won the thing. In his MLB career base stealers were 4-for-17 off him.

Don Mossi.

The DiMaggio streak would be more vulnerable if there were conditions where somebody could hit .400. It's been 10 years since anyone hit .350! I know nobody listens to me, but I'd much rather have a league that hits .290 with five Ks a game than .250 with 10, which is basically what we have now. And if Scooter Gennett can hit four homers in a game, is it really that unlikely that someone hits five? Might as well be someone like Ryan Mountcastle.

Just wait for 50 or 100 years from now when the world's population grown rate is negative. If your business model is grow every year or quit you may be in for a bit of a shock.

There's an assumption across a lot of businesses that if you're not growing a lot, you're failing. I don't think it's catastrophic if baseball and other sports sometimes have a period where they have to retrench and rethink how their models work. They shouldn't expect weird market quirks like countless people who don't like sports paying $6 a month for ESPN to continue or even grow forever.

Yes. Berg is interesting, but he comes across as a little bit of a poseur, and a bit creepy and weird.

For about 11 of his 15 years in the majors he was a third catcher, basically a bullpen catcher who'd come in the game if someone got hurt or something. My understanding is that he was active on the roster the whole year in '30, '31, '38, and '39 when he played 20 games or less a season. Just hanging out in the pen, telling the relievers stories about that one time he went to Japan. In '39 he made the 2020 equivalent of $75k for playing a game in May, a game in July, 10 games in August, and one in September.

OOTP is deep, but not quite that deep. From one of the developers: My solution would be to not have an extra roster spot because, really. You can't manage a 25/26-man roster for a season like pretty much everyone has done for 120 years? Especially now with the 3-batter rule, you don't have to have five guys who just face one batter a game. I'd prefer a game with 21-man rosters where managers would really have hard choices, not just figuring out if their 8th- or 9th-best reliever was juuuust right for two out in the 7th. Strategy comes from difficult, unintuitive decisions. Not from acquiescing to managers' desires to do anything they want at any moment.

Belated Happy Birthday, Tony. I haven't started by OOTP season yet, still importing my league's distant past one player at a time.

It should, but the heart wants what the heart wants. I grew up staring at the Baseball Encyclopedia page with "1897, Keeler, .432". You don't need no homers or walks or whatever when you hit 200 singles in a 130-game schedule.