DrungoHazewood

We used to play one-on-one or one-on-one-with-all-time-pitcher, or other small sided versions of baseball in backyards and suburban streets in the 80s. We'd occasionally get our hands on a pink rubber ball but it was unplayable. We used regular wooden bats, and even at 10 years old we could hit that ball 200 feet. In two-man baseball 200 feet might as well be 1000. We'd always revert to some kind of plastic ball, or later a tennis ball.

We had countless threads from the day Manny was called up until the day he moved to short about how he could be much more valuable playing there than third. You know, like Cal. I was on record saying I thought he would be more valuable at third, but I got the impression I was in the minority.

Joe Torre had a .405 winning percentage with the Mets, including seasons of 63, 66, and 67 wins. He was fired from the Cards' job after going 83-98 in his last season+. Then he went on to a Hall of Fame career. Casey Stengel's last four full seasons as a MLB manager before taking over the Yanks saw win totals of 63, 65, 62, and 59. Hall of Fame manager Bill McKechnie once managed the Braves to a 38-115 record. They won 78 and 71 games on either side of that season. He managed 11 more years afterwards, including two World Series teams. Connie Mack managed the A's to consecutive seasons of 43, 36, 48, and 53 wins. Later on he managed the same team to consecutive years of 91, 98, 104, 102, 107 and 94 wins. Before becoming Babe Ruth's favorite manager and being inducted into Cooperstown Miller Huggins had seasons of 51 and 60 wins for the Cards.

Fantasy. Where steals are worth almost as much as homers, and you're a hero if you qualify at multiple positions even if you can't really play some of them.

Unfortunately there aren't 27 hours in a day, so you'd never get them all in.

Villar has maybe $10M in surplus value, give or take. He's under contract for one year if/when he's tendered. That's what Elias has to work with, and the expectations he has to deal with.

In some literal sense that's true. If the Orioles have a smallpox epidemic and Martin is the only healthy shortstop in the organization he'll start on opening day. But if you're willing to go all year with a regular shortstop who's OPSing .550 with just okay defense, that kind of player is available on the waiver wire late in every March. It'll be a very unusual situation if Martin gets significant time in Baltimore the first half of the year.

I probably watch almost as much sports as ever. But it's mostly U13 and U12 soccer instead of the Orioles, DC United, and Virginia Tech. Five or six days a week I have either Dad or coaching duties with my kids' games. But it's true that when I was 25 I tried to watch every inning I could, and at one point had a run of about two years where I never missed being in attendance at a Tech football game, home, away or bowl. At 48 it seems excessive and wasteful to spend 650 hours a year watching the Orioles. You only get so much time on Earth, it doesn't all have to be about Rich Amaral.

Sure. Also your ability to drive yourself in.

I think Richie Martin would have to OPS 1.200 in the spring to not end up in Norfolk.

Runs scored are highly dependent on a few things: 1. How often you get on base. 2. Who is batting behind you. 3. How much you play. Villar played 162 games, had a better-than-average .339 OBP, and had 530-odd plate appearances batting first or second with Trey Mancini plus homer-centric guys like Santandar and Nunez batting below him. His "skill" in scoring runs is really a product of getting on base at a decent clip and being at the top of the order while playing every game. Runs are like RBI, in that they are very context dependent. Players create the opportunities but to a large degree up to their teammates to determine if they're going to have 80 or 120.

Extreme pessimism, a two-week slump, and prognostication aren't a good mix. This is the same timeframe where he projected that the Orioles would end up in the mid-30s in wins.

Someone with a permanent BAC of 0.2?

So Oriole-y. Not only was K-Rod apparently a fairly terrible human, but his time in Baltimore involved exactly zero of his 437 career saves. 4th in saves in all off history, and 22 innings of a 4.50 for the O's, and they actually gave up a halfway decent prospect for him. I guess we're lucky Nick Delmonico looks like he's not going to have a major league career of any consequence.

I'm sure those are important. But what if a key reason is that younger people just aren't that into baseball? Sometimes selling people born after 1995 on baseball feels like trying to get the same crowd into buying Buicks and Harleys. Years ago the three most popular sports in America were horse racing, boxing, and baseball. I'd rather clean grout than watch horse racing and boxing.

Every team has a player who they let go and later they went on to unexpected success. Not too many have guys they gave away with a 7.00+ ERA who literally was the best pitcher in baseball a year later. Arrieta was like trading away Jimmy Paredes, only to find out he was actually Paul Molitor.

I said I'd be very upset if they traded Manny. You wouldn't like me when I'm upset.

1.99 ERA, 3.58 FIP. Also, you have to be a little skeptical of a guy who could touch 100 mph but averages just seven strikeouts per nine. I really thought that after Julio left Baltimore he went to Mexico or retired or something. I had no idea he pitched another four years, 172 games, for seven teams in the majors.

That reminds me, I have to get a chunk of Parmesan cheese out from under the couch. That's where it ended up Saturday night after I turned on the Tech-Miami game, watched for 10 minutes, yelled, threw some cheese, then gave up and turned to some Gordon Ramsey show. Tech won, but it felt like a loss.

And if you're going to judge a trade shouldn't the baseline be "what was the consensus of the deal at the time, given what we knew then?" For these deals it was that the O's were trading a few months of a couple guys, they'll be lucky to get any kind of real value in return. If someone like Diaz has 2-3 good MLB seasons that's more than I would have expected for three months of anybody.

To "win" the Manny deal the Orioles have to get more than 2.8 wins out of the players they got in return. To win the Britton deal they have to get half a win out of Carroll, Rogers and Tate. Extensions or new contracts have nothing to do with any of it.

And yet every time the O's get three days of success out of a middling prospect there's a thread about whether or not we should trade him right now at the peak before the other teams realize what we on the messageboard already knew: that it's all a mirage. Don't worry, if it's a mirage the 29 other teams already know. If only we could go back to the time when you'd sign a guy because Connie Mack's son-in-law's barber saw a guy play in Davenport in the III League and he said he totally raked.

The lesson is that you need a 2nd AAA team. The first one is staffed like normal, with everyone falling in line with the team's overall development philosophy. The second one is the remedial team, where you hire guys like Mike Marshall to try out crazy stuff with players like Jake Arrieta who've been given more chances than Earl's first wife, still haven't turned the corner, and need a radical change of scenery.

There's some good news hidden in everything. Derek Jeter, 120-203 record, 811k attendance. That just warms the heart.

You draft based on tools and abilities that you think will translate to success at the major league level. Sometimes a player has abilities that play well at lower levels that will probably be exploited in the majors. You might be a relatively finished pitcher with multiple pitches and good command but an 88 mph fastball with little projection, for example. That guy might get drafted in the 10th round. He might also have a 2.25 ERA in Delmarva. None of that changes the idea that you don't think his stuff will do well at higher levels. Every once in a while a Hader or a Davies will overcome perceived limitations. It's not that you're wedded to their draft slot, it's that most pitchers with their general profile don't succeed in the majors.