DrungoHazewood

I think it's legitimate to dismiss microscopic samples of statistical measures against wildly varying competition, while being happy/disappointed over more subjective things like mechanics, pitch selection or quality, health, attitude, etc. I didn't read the quotes you're talking about, but was Hyde excited about numbers or more general performance?

I pretend that never happened.

That may have been the worst of all.

Agreed. I was only saying that in an alternate universe where a player became a free agent at 28 no matter when he was called up a lot of young pitchers would throw 60 innings in the pen and make some spot starts for a while before becoming starters because you could call them up at 20 or 21 without worrying about starting the clock. Someone like Akin could work on his stuff in relief or as a spot starter in the majors rather than spending two years in AAA facing mainly organizational guys.

Conine II, Tejada II, Surhoff II. Palmer's 45-year-old fiasco comeback in spring training. Ross Grimsley in '82. Don't get back together with your ex, it rarely works out.

I don't blame him at all. In retrospect the only question I have is why anyone would sign with the Orioles of that era. I think if I were a Kevin Millar type I would have gone to Japan instead. Either that or just accept that I was getting my $3M so it was fine that I was going to lose roughly 100 games with no real hope for the future of the org.

Isn't "we think he will grow into a productive major leaguer based on his current skill set and potential" deserving?

And it's not like they had a Luis Terrero, JR House, Jon Knott, Oscar Salazar type player hanging out in AAA ready to give the team half a win for league minimum. They had to sign Millar for four to six times as much. Plus, without Millar who headlines the circa 2008 remake of the Orioles Magic video? Quality signing.

1983 was pre-metrics. Rating defense was basically subjective, as was gauging the relative value of offense/defense/pitching. The narrative at the time was that Cruz was really a shortstop playing third base, so he'd automatically be one of the best third basemen in the league. And that a great third baseman didn't really need to hit to be an asset. For all we know they actually believed that.

I didn't. It was very bitter losing the free agent bidding to the Angels when he was a HOFer in his prime, then getting him seven years later when he was done.

It's not entirely implausible that if the O's hadn't traded for Moreland they win the division in '89. He was almost a win below replacement. I still want to know the Phil Bradley backstory. In less than three years he was traded three times. The first time coming off a year with 40 steals and an .850 OPS for a package headlined by Glenn ".689 OPS" Wilson. The second time the Orioles traded Ken Howell for him, at a time when Howell had thrown 67 innings, 5.19 ERA in the last two years combined. And finally for a completely washed up Ron Kittle. I guess it was the 80s and teams still wildly undervalued OBP? He was kind of out of the Nick Markakis mold, but while teams have been willing to let Nick play every day with .680-.740 OPSes, as soon as Bradley had an off year he was done.

I think it's more like that. If the service time and option rules were such that you became a free agent at 28 no matter when you were called up the average age of the Orioles would immediately go down by three or four years. Guy like Akin are pretty clearly among the best 12 or 15 pitchers in the organization, but no sense burning service time. I guarantee he'd be a better 6th reliever than (insert random body here), but nobody does that because CBA.

I think we could do better than Fred Lynn. Lynn was 33 his first year in Baltimore, but coming off a year with an .840 OPS (pre-PED era, so 132 OPS+). He wasn't a top-tier free agent, but he also wasn't trying to squeeze one last year out. He played six more years in the majors, and netted the O's Chris Hoiles three-and-a-half years later.

So why would he make the team? Compromising photographs of Rick Dempsey? Information tying Angelos to the Kennedy assassination? I think the reality is that he'll make the team if the O's think he's deserving, whether or not you share that opinion.

You mean the Rule 5 guys? Doesn't sending them packing just indicate that he thinks they're not going to be long term pieces, so there's no sense in taking the extra short-term hit in performance to hold on to someone they don't think is ever going to be good?

Except for his comment that "it seems high for a rebuilding team." No one cares if your short-term placeholders for year of contention minus-two or minus-three are 27 or 33.

They're all fungible. Iglesias and Givens are the only ones who they could trade or release tomorrow and anyone would really care. None of them have any direct impact on how good the 2022 Orioles will be.

It's March 10th and you're expecting us to stay on topic? Rutschman isn't even in the major league camp any more, what are we supposed to talk about?

I guess that could be it. But I think that's way too subtle. The director wanted a happy ending, he wanted to change the book from bleak and dark to everyone gets to live happily ever after. I'm sure that sold more tickets.

I think he just reached the point in his life where he couldn't stand going to bed with atomic mad at him anymore.

Now I'm going to have to go back and read the Iowa Baseball Confederacy. I remember being a little upset when Shoeless Joe became Field of Dreams, and JD Salinger became James Earl Jones' Terence Mann. Even though it's hard to dislike James Earl Jones in anything. Assuming Salinger wouldn't let himself be represented in the movie.

I may have liked The Iowa Baseball Confederacy better than Shoeless Joe. But it's been 20+ years since I read either. Maybe 30. Something about a 6,000 inning game that lasted for months though epic storms and supernatural events.

Or they decided that there are a lot of 35 (current) 45 (potential) rated pitchers they could find by other means that don't require keeping them on the roster all year.

I've long thought that someone like Tim Burton (or even better, Werner Herzog) should reboot The Natural and stay much more faithful to the book. Dark, bitter, with the lesson being that no matter how promising things look, it will probably go very wrong. Maybe the Orioles should be the team instead of the Knights!

I was eight years old in 1979. So my formative years of sports fandom involved the Orioles being among the best teams in baseball every year until I was about 15. I had no clue the farm was barren, or that the Orioles' business model was firmly planted in 1955. Every radio and TV broadcast talked about the Oriole Way being the model for all other teams to emulate. Then the whole thing fell apart, and it's only been sporadically good since. But they hooked me when I was 9-15, and there was no going back.