DrungoHazewood

I guess some people work in very limited niches. It's easy to think your little corner of the world is representative.

Being a -10 corner defender sets the offensive bar pretty high.

And yet I have any number of co-workers and peers who are every bit as smart as me, or smarter, and often more driven and successful who went to West Virginia Tech, or Capital College, or got their degree from some unknown school taking online night classes while working as an enlisted Marine, or don't even have a degree at all. Weird, since selection of college matters so much.

You can just declare victory and go have a beer with your fellow Yale alumni, I've lost all the drive to continue the conversation. Probably because I settled for Virginia Tech.

Okay, I'll take your word for it. The point stands that no one cares where you got your degree as long as an accredited college printed it out, and not Staples.

That would be one of the weirder batting titles of all time. I think he trumps Bill Mueller ('03), at least on par with Freddy Sanchez ('06), further out of nowhere than Carney Lansford ('81). Norm Cash might have the most what-the-heck title, when he hit .361 the only year of a 17-year-career that he hit .300. Debs Garms was kind of an old Hanser Alberto, kind of a utility guy who hit .355 at the age of 33 with a PA total that wouldn't even qualify today. Also, has anyone since 1900 even won a batting title with less than 15 walks? I kind of doubt it. Alberto currently has 13. Drungo-ism of the day: In 1890, the year of the Players League disruption, Louisville's Chicken Wolf* hit .363 and won the American Association batting title. He had been in the league for eight years prior, had never hit over .300 before, and would be out of baseball in a little over a year. That's a weird batting title. * Given name William Van Winkle Wolf.

Maybe it's different with lawyers, but as an engineer I can tell you that about three weeks after you're hired the only time anyone cares where you went to school is when it provides an opportunity to make fun of your school's football team. Never once in 26 years as an engineer have I heard someone say something like "we're not relying on Joe's engineering acumen, he only went to UMBC." Not even once.

Jeff Fiorentino was listed as a catcher when he signed. Which gives him something in common with Dale Murphy, Carlos Delgado, and Nerio Rodriguez.

Mike Fontenot! #19 overall by the O's in 2001, but was actually the 2nd 2nd baseman taken that draft after Chris Burke. Fontenot was an unconventional pick, and being from the Syd Thrift era widely panned. But his 4.3-win career is in the top third of all 2001 first rounders. Ended up with a better career than much more hyped players like John Van Benschoten, Colt Griffin, and Dewon Brazelton. And not too far from the epic Casey Kotchman.

Also, I don't think it's unusual to get seemingly weird distributions of positions in a draft. In 2000 the Orioles took seven catchers, but just five outfielders, no second basemen, three shortstops and one third baseman. In 2001 they only took six infielders and two catchers in 50 rounds. In 2002 they took just two shortstops, none before the 16th round. In 2003 they took no first basemen. In 2012 they took six catchers and seven total infielders. In 2014 they didn't take a shortstop until the 27th round. In 2007 the Rays didn't draft a shortstop at all. The 2010 Pirates didn't draft any infielders or a catchers until the 15th round. The 2016 Twins didn't take any first or second basemen and a single third baseman.

Someone check my math, but I think that if you a) assume catchers are distributed evenly across rounds/talent, b) there were 40 rounds, c) the Orioles took the best available player each round... 1200 players drafted, 9.5% were catchers, carry the one... there's about a 2% chance that the Orioles not taking a catcher the whole draft was the best choice. Kind of remote, but relying on assumptions about distribution of catcher talent. But also not zero. There have been 54 drafts, 2% would be once every 50 drafts. It could happen. Also, the Orioles took 27 pitchers out of their 40 picks in 2016. They were clearly targeting pitchers. Odds are much higher that they correctly, logically wouldn't select a catcher with their 13 position players if you assume they were targeting something like 27 pitchers. Something like a 27% chance that no catcher was the best choice out of 13 rounds.

61st overall picks should be starting in the NFL for years and years. Not hanging out on the practice squad for five or six seasons like Sisco.

Remember, to be a good draft pick you have to be in the 90th or 95th percentile. If you're in the 75th percentile you're a bum you should have stopped playing in high school.

Good catch. But Lee was a little different than Arrieta, in that two years before his 6.29 ERA he was 18-5, 3.79. When the O's gave up on Jake he was 20-25, 5.46 for his career.

It's not that often that anyone gives up on a guy with a 7.00+ ERA and literally 18 months later he wins the Cy Young. Mostly because there aren't that many Cy Young winners who had a 7.00 ERA just prior to winning. Like, probably, two ever. And I don't know who the other one might be.

Because they're the Red Sox. They went from semi-lovable losers who hadn't won the Series since WWI to a swarm of insufferable, entitled locusts in green third alternate jerseys in 15 minutes, in late 2004. Also, David Ortiz. And Manny Ramirez. I've never seen a fanbase go more quickly from "woe is me" to "whatta ya mean we haven't won the Series in 18 months, the world must be broken". I'd be happy as could be if they were relegated to the CanAm League for the next 75 or 100 years.

So what about Villar's flawed defensive metrics makes his value as implied by WAR off? Is he dramatically better or worse than he appears by that view? Or is he a typical case where the defensive metrics just have a somewhat higher margin of error than the others and we're not quite sure, but it's not a game changer unless we're really missing something?

It's hard to be offended when you're picturing a guy in a pith helmet and a handlebar moustache calling you Sport in an exaggerated aristocratic English accent. The piffle in a following post just added to it. "Hrrumph. Perhaps young Mr. Yastrzemski has been using an un-sporting al-u-min-ee-um bat to strike the ball during his brief holiday in San Francisco?"

I wasn't the one who started this by comparing Little Yaz to Manny.

Trey Mancini is hitting the same as Bryce Harper. Hasner Alberto is out-hitting Miguel Cabrera.

Blimps may not be quite as massive as a fully rigid dirigible, but they still present a large radar cross section.

The season before Santander was selected in the Rule 5 draft he had an .862 OPS as a 21-year-old in the Carolina League. 62 extra base hits in 128 games. One of the top couple dozen hitters in the league while being one of the couple dozen youngest players in the league. Then the O's selected him, had him jump three levels, and mostly sit the bench for a while until he got injured. I'm not sure if it was a "Rule 5 Injury" or a real one, but he missed over 100 games. But when he was rehabbing at AA Bowie he had 10 extra base hits in 15 games and a comic book, SSS OPS. After what was a mostly wasted year he bounced around several levels in 2018, played less than 100 total games. I don't remember but he may have been hurt some then, too. And this year he didn't hit real well in Norfolk, but in just 200 PAs. I think his development was derailed a little by the chaos of being a Rule 5 pick and bouncing around to so many levels and locations and he may have also been legitimately injured. If he'd just stayed in the Indians organization and been healthy I don't know that his performance this year would be that remarkable. On a normal, conservative promotion pace he'd have spent 2017 in AA, 2018 mostly in AAA, and probably gotten a real shot in the majors this year.

We'll just have to agree to disagree. I think on a recklessness scale of 0-10 this is a 2 or 3, you think it's a 9. Okay.

Question away. But I'd hope we can do that in a rational manner. You act like 10 additional pitches in an inning is the difference between a solid manager and someone who only has the job because he was flat dumb enough to hitch his career to a floundering franchise. This isn't a black-and-white on-off switch. Managing isn't a series of logic gates, all OR'd together, and if one gets tripped it's firing time. It's more like a collection of heat maps, all quasi-subjectively defined. Last night Hyde ventured a tiny bit into a red area of your personal heat map for pitcher use and WHAM he's an idiot who couldn't be gone fast enough. Hyde seems like a pretty reasonable, decent guy who was selected by a smart GM to help the team get through rebuilding. He might be a caretaker manager, he might not be around for the next good O's team, but we don't know that for sure. And I'm quite confident that the O's had way more applicants for his job than they could interview. It's one of 30 major league managerial positions making $hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, with no expectations and pressure to win. Almost every minor league manager and half of every major league coaching staff would have taken the position.

When I was 25 I thought I was pretty well off making $30-40k. I don't feel that much better off 23 years later, making substantially more. I'm guessing it's pretty easy to settle into a reality where monthly $15,000 house payments and $3,000 car payments are normal, since you know you're going to be a star into your late 30s. Then all of a sudden you're released at 27. All sports need someone to frankly, forcefully tell all young players that there's a good chance they're going to be bankrupt in three years unless they set some aside and just don't touch it. Even then it won't sink in for everyone. Not when their first paycheck ever is a $3M signing bonus. Most lottery winners are back to where they were before they won within a few years.