DrungoHazewood

I think we can blame Thrift for acquiring a mediocre player, but I guess a high K, high-walk guy who you think is 21 has some upside.

Sure. This was the era where Syd was calling up asking for guys who'd been released two years ago, or were completely fictional.

Age is always important. 4-5 years is huge. But Brea had a 4.24 ERA and 6 BB/9 for AA Binghamton at the time of the deal. I guess you can't expect much for two months of Mike Bordick.

He filled two mostly extinct roles: Platoon DH and American League pinch hitter. He couldn't field, and couldn't hit lefties. But had about a .700 OPS as a pinch hitter, which isn't easy to do.

I think the thing I didn't fully understand at the time was the age and contract status of the players involved. The Orioles were mostly trading old guys on expiring deals. What would a rational GM give up for two months of Mike Bordick or BJ Surhoff or Will Clark? Pretty much what the O's got - longshots, AAA vets, grade C prospects. And, strangely, a few players older than the veterans they were dumping.

Yep, the end goal is to always follow the unwritten rules of transactions. #78. Never trade a Grade D prospect for a random bullpen arm when you could wait around a while and take the next random arm from the waiver wire. The results are exactly the same but you've theoretically come out ahead in some way I've forgotten... wait, what?

But then you have to DFA someone to make room on the 40-man. Someone who might look a lot like Jarret Martin.

What if it means that we don't have to be berated by Sports Guy ever again? Because his banning was the most significant outcome of that deal. The 80000 page thread on Eveland, Jarret Martin and Tyler Henson was taking process over results to an absurd level. No, you don't trade anything of value for a replacement-level arm. But neither Martin nor Henson ever appeared in a major league game, and weren't particularly close. Martin finally got to AAA this year and allowed 12 runs in five innings, before going back to indy ball and giving up 19 runs in 16 innings.

His career minor league OPS was .947. In his debut at 18 in the GCL he went 30-for-60. There are people who don't hit .500 in church softball. At 27 with the Royals' AAA affiliate he OPS'd 1.164 and had 35 homers in 89 games, then hit seven more for the Royals. So he had 42 homers in 124 games. The prior year in Mexico he hit 25 homers in 88 games, a 162-game pace of 46. And of course the offseason after he was EL MVP and in the running for the triple crown at the age of 21, the O's went and signed 30-something Will Clark to a multi-year deal. I'm very confident that Pickering was somewhere in the Conine-Millar range as a major league player. But instead of a 15-year career he got 310 PAs.

I'm more of a Ned Hanlon, Harry von der Horst guy. Pre-selling-us-out-to-Brooklyn, of course.

Dan needs to write a juicy tell-all book. There are tens of us here that would buy it.

That was a nice consolation prize. But at the time of the deal the odds of Melvin Mora having a season where he hit .340 and led the league in OBP was smaller than the odds of the Earth being obliterated by an asteroid. Another head scratcher from that deal: They traded Mike Bordick and his $3M salary for a mediocre package, assuming it was to save money. Then in the offseason they re-signed Bordick to a contract that would pay him $4.5M and $4.8M over the next two seasons.

That has to be one of the worst-executed fire sales ever. Offloaded Surhoff, Bordick, Baines, Clark, and Johnson, and every one of the trades netted someone 28 or older. Plus some spare parts and minor leaguers that never worked out. Syd's going in position for all of this must have been "Hey, who''s your 7th-best infielder? That's who we want." Who acquires a 30-year-old catcher, multiple 27-year-old AAA first basemen, and a 36-year-old outfielder in a fire sale?

Young was a poor man's Calvin Pickering. They were both absolutely gigantic left-handed first basemen. But Pickering had great plate discipline and had a 1.000 OPS at Bowie at 21. Young had Adam Jones' plate discipline and an .884 OPS at Bowie at 24. I will always contend that Pickering got a raw deal from a disorganized and outmoded Orioles organization. Young just wasn't good enough to play in the majors.

Still the most massive player in the baseball-reference database. Or at least most mass anyone would admit to.

At least stuff was happening. The 70s wouldn't have been as much fun if Omar Moreno and Ron LeFlore were in AAA and all anyone could talk about was Bob Horner, Greg Luzinski, launch angles and striking out 225 times a year.

I never liked Chris Gomez, and I'm trying to remember why. I think it has to do with the fact that he was tapped to be the regular first baseman in 2005 when Raffy had his meltdown, and Gomez was a 34-year-old utility guy with a .701 OPS. I was probably obsessing over the O's not giving a chance to Alejandro Freire and Walter Young. Also... Gomez' transactions page is odd. In the winter of 2004-05 the O's signed Gomez. I'm assuming that was as a minor league free agent, because the Phillies took him as a 34-year-old Rule 5er. Then the O's immediately bought him back, so they spent actual cash to make up for neglecting/forgetting/betting it wouldn't matter to put him on the 40-man.

I don't know of any, but that doesn't mean much. You might have to control for the (presumed) higher correlation between teams that play service time games and teams that don't have a lot of cash to spend on free agents and extensions. You'd also have to deal with the fact that only a small percentage of players have service time games played with them, so SSS.

But they should be nice to Ryan instead of being mean. What happens in 2027 when he's a free agent? There's a somewhat better than zero chance that 1) he's good enough that re-signing him makes sense 2) the O's want to resign him 3) he's the kind of guy who seriously holds a grudge 4) he definitely remembers those 14 days where Mike Elias inexplicably followed wildcard's plan and he was deprived of (14/172*$550k minus his minor league salary) and 5) the world, the Orioles and MLB still exist. Being really nice to him and not extracting some advantages from the negotiated CBA wording could definitely pay off if those hypotheticals all line up.

The Cardinals trace their origins to the old St. Louis Browns of the AA. They were great in the 1880s, bad from about 1890-1910, but haven't had more losing seasons than winning in a decade since then.

I liked McLemore, too. It's strange to think that he only played three years in Baltimore, but 15 elsewhere in the majors. Also... he wasn't so much a utility player as he was the only person I can remember being a 2B-RFer. For the Orioles he only played 26 innings at third, and no other field position than second or right. Think about it... that's a weird combination. RF is where you play if you're not fast/quick enough to handle center but you have an arm. Second is where you play if you're real quick on the pivot but don't really have an arm. Before the O's he played short and third a little more, after he left he played all over the place. He was also one of those guys who either couldn't hit lefty/lefty at all, or shouldn't have been switch hitting. Against southpaws he had a career OPS of .621 with a .294 slugging.

Did Koufax take a lot of heat for retiring after a season where he won 27 games? Thinking about Andrew Luck and the negative comments from his early retirement.

My point was that when Kevin Mitchell was this young he may have been in shape but he was three levels below the majors. Maybe Soto gets lazy and fat. But his performance is massively better at the same ages, and for all we know he could be an MVP with six more years of growth as a hitter and around the waistline. Mitchell is a weird comp for Soto. Everyone who was as good as Soto at this age ended up with a long, successful career. The washouts and injuries and lazy guys on this list are like Vada Pinson, who I always have to go check if he's in the Hall or not. Is there some reason to think Soto is going to get fat and lazy?

I'm sure there are many, but it's all different now with expanded playoffs. Kershaw has pitched in 32 postseason games, 158 innings. HOFer Early Wynn pitched in four games, 20 innings, 4.95 ERA. Robin Roberts started one postseason game in his career. Phil Niekro pitched over 5400 innings, and allowed 11 runs in 14 postseason innings. Fergie Jenkins never pitched a postseason game. Bob Feller was 0-2, 5.02 in the postseason. In two starts. Hal Newhouser had a 6.53 ERA in his four postseason appearances. Gaylord Perry had a 6.14 ERA in his two postseason games. Hoyt Wilhelm pitched 1072 major league games, two in the postseason. CC Sabathia has roughly twice as many postseason starts as Mike Cuellar or Dave McNally.

When Kevin Mitchell was Juan Soto's age he was playing for the Lynchburg Mets in the Carolina League. It would be five years before he reached Soto's MLB experience. Soto is about dead even with Mickey Mantle in playing time and value through age 20.