DrungoHazewood

It's A. But it's by five or ten runs per 600 PAs, not something huge.

Davis' '73-74 seasons are straight out of a bizarro-world time capsule. He was basically a full-time DH with a 105 OPS+, just over replacement level. But he had a Hanser Alberto line, hit .306 but with a .732 OPS, and somehow finished 10th in the MVP voting. In 1973 there were people who thought he was the best player on the Orioles. In 2019 we'd be talking about his exit strategy, if maybe some contender would like to have him as a platoon guy or pinch hitter so we could ditch his contract. Now 10 years prior... Davis may be the answer to "Who is the most obscure post-WWII player to have a 150 RBI season?" He actually had two batting titles. I'll have to do a bit of research but he may also be the only player whose single 100-RBI season also cleared 150. His top RBI season was 153, his second-best was 89, and he played 18 years in the majors.

Essentially all trades discussed online involve at least a few suggestions of "We know he's about to tank, but clearly the 29 other GMs of MLB teams don't. So we need to jump now, before they read this thread."

Before 1999 they were right all the time, since prior to the mass resignation the rulebook was just guidance. The umps ruled by decree. If the home plate ump decided to call stuff 18" off the plate a strike that was the rule. At least now there's general consensus that the rules are above the umps in the hierarchy.

If you didn't want a life-altering skull fracture you shouldn't have violated that unwritten rule you'd never heard of.

We can sure try to take it out of the umps. It was one thing to be in 1975 and say there's no way to tell what the right call really was. But today? There's multiple replays and highly accurate tracking systems of every major league play. You're telling everyone from the fans to the players to the managers to the guy flipping hot dogs that the call was unambiguously wrong and we think that's fine because humans are flawed. And there's no way we'll let replays and reviews disrupt the flow of a game that has natural pauses every 12 seconds and we also can't be bothered to stop managers from using 11 mid-inning pitching changes a game. Making sure calls are wrong seems like a strange place to draw the line and fight for tradition.

I hate challenges. Why don't you have an ump in the booth watching the game and the tracking, and he just hits a buzzer and radios the head ump when he sees something wrong. On balls and strikes... give the home plate ump a little key fob kind of thing tied to Trackman. Two buzzes is a strike, one is a ball. The ump calls it. If the robot is clearly wrong, like calling a strike on a pitch 3' outside, the ump calls it right.

What would you trade for a pitcher who you believe has an unsustainable path to success?

Hire a Zeppelin to hover over the stadium and block the sun. It can move with the sun as the day progresses. Plus they could sell Zeppelin Seats for only $350 each.

I like the idea of weekend day games, so it's easier for kids to go. Then I remember that the Orioles play in Baltimore, Maryland, where an average summer day at 2pm is 97 degrees with 144% humidity and most of the seats at OPACY are uncovered. I've had Sunday day games when my kids were younger where the usher let us sit up next to the press box in the shade because we were about 12 minutes from catching on fire in the direct sun.

I was at this game with some of my college buddies in 1991, which happened to be the only 2-homer game of Chito's career. Also was the first MLB win of some guy named Mussina. Allowed three hits and struck out 10 in eight innings.

In his first 135 PAs in 1986 he OPS'd 1.032. For the rest of '86 (105 PAs) he OPS'd .493, and for the final 738 PAs of his career his OPS was about .540. His AAA OPS was .786, but he did have a couple of nice years with the Kintetsu Buffaloes in Japan in '90 and '91.

Was the second coming of Hurricane Hazle. Or the new Brett Barberie. Remember when Rico Brogna hit like Willie McCovey?

I'm not going to completely dismiss what you're saying, everything else being equal I'd rather have a guy who looks like a linebacker than John Kruk. But then Jimmy Paredes.

I'll agree that what someone has done in his last, say, 500 PAs is somewhat more important than the 500 preceding that, and the sum of those 1000 PAs are somewhat more important than the 1000 prior to that. But 150? That's pretty small. And 60 or 70 in three weeks? That's nothing. OPS takes maybe 500 PAs to stabilize and be reliable. Contact rate, K rate and line drive rate can be more reliable over samples as small as 150 PAs.

Wow, that was your takeaway from the post? That 15 PAs is an insufficient qualifier? All right, I'll redo. The O's have played 17 games this month. 3.1 times 17 is 52.7. We'll round down to 50 PAs, since some teams haven't played 17 games. Santander is 85th in the majors in OPS in July among the 217 who have 50+ PAs in the month. That makes him in the top 40% of MLB batters over that period. That's a nice little hot streak, nearly as impressive as that of Jeimer Candelario, but not really on the level of Mark Canha.

So this is going to come off as overly negative, and I'm trying not to be. It's far better that he has a 119 than a 80 or something. But in 209 PAs in Norfolk he put up a .726, this year. In winter ball this past offseason he had a .748, and was out-hit by several unimpressive teammates. Last year in Bowie he had a .695. His career mark at AAA is .702. I hope this 119 is a sign of things to come, I really do. But I'm going to need some more before I jump on this train.

He's 121st in the majors in OPS in July (min 15 PAs). It's nice to be in the top half of the league in hitting for three weeks.

I thought when you turned 65 they just superglued your remote so it's always on Fox News. That's my parents' house.

It's nice that he's having his moment. He's probably glad that he got called up in the year you get a Major League home run in every box of Cracker Jacks.

You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours. MLB has blackout areas forcing fans into expensive cable subscriptions. Cable supplies a large percentage of the Majors' $10B annual revenues.

Stevie is ancient for a prospect. Yaz is a year older. Yaz is two years older than Machado and Harper.

We'd be better off with the 2019 ball and dramatically longer distances to fences. Unfortunately that's very hard to do in most parks. Nothing about today's power game that wouldn't be more exciting with a park that's 333-410-475-422-375. And the 475' sign is on a 60' tall in-play scoreboard. I would make and strictly enforce a rule that says that for all parks built after today, the sum of the LF/LC/CF/RC/RF fence distances has to be at least 1950 ft. And no fence can be less than 300', no fence between LC and RC can be less than 385', and no straightaway CF fence can be under 425'. And the commish or his designee gets to subjectively review all designs to ensure they're not trying to game the system and create a Kiner's Corner HR porch.

If someone is arguing against the data, against the math... we're going to disagree, and they're going to be wrong. Steals are down about 50% from their early-80s peak because of math.

He wishes he'd been born in the long era prior to 1980 or 1990 when batting average was king, and nobody paid much attention to OBP, SLG or certainly not OPS. The time when Doc Cramer could finish in the top 10 in the MVP voting with a 105 OPS+ because he hit .332. Cramer had a handful of MVP votes in four different years where he was a below-average hitter, and was an All Star in four years where he was a below-average hitter. Because he hit .300. He got MVP votes in three straight years in the 40s with OPSes between .684-.710, as a a late-30s CFer.