DrungoHazewood

The question was "who are the best players at each position?". It wasn't "who had the best overall careers at each position?". I could make the case that Trout's top, say, five seasons are about as good as anyone's top five seasons and that puts him on the list. What he does in his 30s doesn't change the fact that he was nearly a 10-win player in his 20s. Taking that just a little farther, I could construct a case that at his best Al Rosen was one of the greatest third baseman of all time. There will always be a subjectivity to what greatest means. Career or peak? Or some mix of each, and just what mix?

Object lesson on baseball's stratified economics. We talk about the Ubaldo contract as a massive, crippling disaster. If the Red Sox or Yanks or Dodgers had signed Ubaldo to that deal they would have released him two years in and nobody would even remember it. Ubaldo's old deal would make him the 7th-highest paid pitcher on the Yankees.

Is it weird that my first thought on reading this was "Hank Greenberg has to be about 120, not 86"? Greenberg was Hammerin' Hank about 20 years before Aaron. Aaron might be a little overlooked for an all-time great. Seems to me people talk a bit more about Mays and Williams than Aaron. Aaron was kind of like the 125% version of Eddie Murray. He never had a Ruth/Bonds kind of holy @#$% season, but almost every year for 20 years he was among the best players in baseball. At 22 he had a 151 OPS+, at 38 he had a 147 OPS+, and for his career he had a 155 OPS+. One of the marks of a truly great player is that they can win an MVP award in just another year. His one MVP came in what might be his 8th-best season.

So you may ask why I excluded Babe Ruth from that list. I have no idea. If you're curious he was almost as valuable at 36-37 as 26-27, but mainly because at 27 he missed 1/3 of the schedule, IIRC because of a "stomach ache" due primarily to debauchery. On a per-game basis he was still quite a bit more valuable at the earlier ages.

Looks like they accidentally fed the caps through the embroidery machine twice so the logo on the left is on top of the one on the right. I'd send them back and get a refund.

Who are the best players ever at each position? Catcher, Bench. At 26-27 he was worth 14.5 wins. At 36-37 he was worth 1.1. First base... Gehrig? 17.2 and 4.0. Second base, maybe Hornsby. 16.7 and 5.3. Short. Let's just use Cal, since we already have Arod and Wagner was over a century ago. 9.1 and 5.6. For fun Wagner was 13.6 and 11.8. Third, Schmidt. 16.9 and 12.3. Outfield, let's say Mantle (15.5 and 2.7), Cobb (13 and 10.9), and Mays (18.6 and 10.7). So absolutely the best of the best of the best and they go from 104.8 (6.6 wins/year) wins at 26-27 to 52.6 (3.2 wins/year) at 36-37. And those players were specifically, retroactively picked because their entire careers including declines were awesome. So based on an average inner circle HOFer your absolute best case you can expect is for a player to lose 50% of their value from 26-27 to 36-37.

Except that almost everyone has $30-50M in waste. It's that much harder when you start signing multiple players to deals that lock in $30M a waste in the outyears, and then you have your normal four injured guys and the two or three others who're putting up half-win seasons for $14M. You look up and you're fired because you had $75 or $100M in waste.

I think GMs assume that they won't be working there anymore when years 6, 7, 8, 10 come up. So it'll be someone else's problem. And it will be a problem because you have an unproductive, untradeable, unplayable player on the roster pulling down $30M a year. When you get to that point nobody's saying it's all right because he was awesome six years ago. It's just an intractable problem.

Trading a star's 26 and 27 seasons for his 36-37 seasons is probably worth about 10 wins or close to $100M. It's almost impossible to over-emphasize age.

He's 106th on the list of most PAs by a player with a career of less than 5 WAR. The record is Alfredo Griffin's 7331 in a career of 3.0 WAR. Griffin played 18 seasons in the majors and had a .604 OPS, and by bb-ref's figuring was a -28 fielder. After he turned 30 he had 2000 PAs of a .545.

There is value in being able to sit the bench for weeks at a time without saying a word, and then going into play a credible shortstop on Tuesday, and RF on Thursday. Especially in a world of 7 specialist relievers and 2- or 3-man benches. Personally I'd rather have a 6-man bench full of guys who can OPS .825 against lefties and a few plus-plus gloves. But baseball has decided otherwise.

Sure, for $11,000 a year. He'd be better off going to Korea or Taiwan. I'm not sure he's an above-average player in Japan. Or if he has a compelling backstory or compromising photographs of important people he could try the Willie Bloomquist career path. 3000 PAs of a 78 OPS+ because he's willing to play any position at any moment, including sitting on the bench for weeks at a time.

It would be surprising if they won 118.

And... it wouldn't be me if I wasn't a bit more complete: 1870s: Bobby Mathews, 47 (all in '72) 1880s: Matt Kilroy, 233 1890s: Sadie McMahon: 225 1901-02: Joe McGinnity, 66 It would take much more effort to compile the minor league Orioles' numbers. And the records aren't complete, so it's probably not possible with online sources. Lefty Grove did start 154 games for the O's in the 1920s, but that might not lead the team. Jack Ogden appeared in many more games, but starts are not broken out for his time with the IL Orioles.

McGregor surprised me, since he was only good in the first few years of the decade. His ERA+ was never 100 after '83. I would have guessed Boddicker, but I forget he was an '83 rookie and was traded mid-year '88 so he only had 180 Oriole starts.

Cy Young started 411 games in the 1890s. Palmer started 352 in the 1970s. Steve Barber had 211 in the 1960s. Hal Brown 77 from '54-59. McGregor 247 in the 80s. Mussina 254 in the 90s.

I won't argue for a minute that the Angelos' tenure has been good. I just don't transfer the guilt to Elias for trying to work under them.

Tanking looks a little different when you have $500M in revenues. It's like when Arsenal/Tottenham/Chelsea/Man U have a train wreck season and they're still around .500. Or more like when Man City crashes and burns and still ends up in the Champions League.

Okay, so you would give a failing grade to anyone who accepted the position without firm assurances about a quick resolution of the MASN situation. There is nothing Elias could be doing that changes that, his sin was taking the job in the first place.

That doesn't mean the Orioles will be better, it means that the context in which they allow fewer runs will make them look better. Although you could argue that a less juiced baseball's interactions with a homer-friendly park could be non-linear, and that the Orioles' gains could be greater than an average team's.

In the minors Myers walked 60 times per 500 plate appearances. Mountcastle has walked 23 times per 500 plate appearances.

We do need to be careful that we don't get ahead of ourselves. It's nice that the organization isn't getting D's in so many areas, but we're just getting interims in the first marking period of the new school year. Nobody's guaranteed any A's at the end of the year just yet.

So tell me what you expect Elias to do to fix the MASN situation.

I think you've missed the point that the MASN situation is completely being handled in the courts by the Orioles' and Angelos' legal team, and that the GM in charge of the baseball operations has nothing at all to do with that. It's a totally different part of the organization. It's like expecting a university's athletic director to fix a scandal in the English department.

What exactly should Elias be doing to handle the MASN situation? Should he be taking night school law classes to go inject himself into the legal process? Should he be going on undercover missions to DC to try to get the Nats to give up their case? This is an issue that has nothing to do with Elias' area of responsibility. If it turns out in the O's favor and you give him a gold star for it, you're giving gold stars to the rooster for making the sun come up.