DrungoHazewood
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Everything posted by DrungoHazewood
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I've always had a soft spot for straight-on kickers. They were almost extinct when I was a kid, but I spent many hours practicing straight-on kicking in my back yard. The Skins had Moseley, but also had Steve Cox who was their punter from 1985-88 and also long field goal specialist who kicked straight on. IIRC he once attempted a 67-yard field goal, but came up well short and wide. In a strange coincidence, I went to college at what had to have been the last holdout of the straight-on kicker, Virginia Tech. My freshman year (1989) their kicker was Mickey Thomas, who kicked straight-on. And a few years later they had Ryan Williams who had a kind of birth defect or injury that left him with only half a right foot, but he kicked straight-on with that half a foot. As far as I know Williams was the last major college kicker who didn't kick soccer-style.
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Something crazy was in the water in the early 80s. Rollie Fingers won the 1981 AL MVP pitching 78 innings with 2.6 fWAR, in a season where Rickey was at 6.7. Then the next year Moseley won the NFL MVP in a season where he probably was on the field for about 8 minutes the whole year.
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Is Yankee/Red Sox Hegemony coming to an end?
DrungoHazewood replied to Frobby's topic in Orioles Talk
I think that's a vast oversimplification. The Rays technically have a market similar to Baltimore, maybe even larger, but the have little history to build a fanbase and they might have the worst stadium situation in MLB. So their effective market is smaller. The Jays could and should be a HUGE market team. They monopolize Canada, and Toronto is one of the top population centers in the US/Canada. Driving into Toronto this summer I was surprised that there are suburbs of Toronto like Mississauga that have a larger population than the city of Baltimore (713k to 622k). If you look at Nielsen market sizes Baltimore is about on par with Sacramento, Toronto is similar to Dallas or Philly. When you say "these two teams win, even spend money" I think that's intentionally obscuring the facts. The Rays never spend money, win or lose. And, sure, the Jays spend - they're in a far more advantageous position to spend than the Orioles. -
Does that reset his HOF clock? It's not impossible that some sanity will have been injected into the process in another five years.
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He was funny last night. Jawing with the ump about the strike zone, lots of obvious facial expressions. Gave up a bases-loaded walk or two. Then York's manager got tossed.
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Sitting at Blue Crabs game watching Rommie Lewis pitch for the York Revolution.
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Exactly. I get the feeling Boswell's analytic baseball knowledge stopped growing about the time everyone decided Total Average just wasn't doing it for them, circa 1986.
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I'm sure that's a much (actually infinitely) more likely story to have been written in the late 80s than "sometimes the difference between 5-10 and 9-0 is luck on batted balls, and run/defensive support".
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And of course long after he left Baltimore he was involved in one of the great/infamous deadline deals of all time, when he was swapped for a pre-MLB debut John Smoltz. Alexander went 9-0 for the Tigers down the stretch*, helping them make the postseason where they were quickly dispatched by the Twins. And then he finished off his career with a couple more okay years in Detroit. But Smoltz spent almost his entire career on the dynastic Braves, putting together a HOF career worth ~80 fWAR. By fWAR the Tigers lost the trade 80-6. Or if you just count the six pre-free agency years of Smoltz' career it was more like 20-6. * Alexander was 5-10, 4.13 for the Braves, 9-0, 1.53 for the Tigers. But you could make the case that he really didn't pitch that much differently after the trade. His K and BB numbers actually got worse with the Tigers, but his BABIP went down 30 points and for whatever reason his homer rate fell off the side of the planet. At the time the story was written up as an almost heroic, gutty pitching performance leading the Tigers into the postseason.
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No reason to not root for Yastrzemski. But he's 25, still in AA, and OPSing .703 with 7 steals. As an outfielder who might be a fringy CFer, but more likely ends up in a corner. He's a longshot.
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That can't be the difference. He literally has had a 55 (!) run swing in his UZR/150 over the past three years. I wouldn't expect a 55-run swing if he'd shifted from LF to 3B. Lefthanded.
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But it's also based on very poor defense combined with very good offense this year. Parra is an odd case. I really don't know what to think, except that I'm skeptical of someone who's offensive gains are all BABIP-related, and his defensive metrics have collapsed. But someone will probably look at the upside in both.
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Does someone else believe that this isn't just a career year, but the new normal? The Orioles need to decide whether or not they can live with a 4/44 kind of deal for a guy who gives them a .740 OPS with so-so defense. They might because of the upside. Someone will almost certainly give him more than 2/16, that's paying for a little more than a win a year from a guy who's probably going to have been worth ~2 or more four of the last five years.
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You kids and your oh-so-cool hipster ways!
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Eddie. Liner to CF, diving catch by Robin Yount.
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No, it wouldn't have been automatic.
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On the other hand, there's the fact that the players and their agents are very much against QOs, the compensatory pick is enticing, and nobody is ever hamstrung by a one-year deal. Right now I wouldn't hesitate for a minute putting the QO on Wieters.
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It's hard to tell. If they thought his defense was solid and his hitting spike sticky then maybe. But it's probably more murky than that. I really don't know what to think with the guy - I've barely seen him play, don't trust my subjective judgment at all, and his metrics are almost random.
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No, no they don't. What I'm saying is they'd lose a pick if they didn't trade for Parra, the Brewers kept him and QO'd him, and then the O's signed Parra in the offseason. When a player is traded in midseason there's no option for a QO/compensatory pick.
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Resigning him has little to do with the trade. There's no expectation of resigning him, and even if they did it would be at a value quite similar to what he'd get on the market in a few months. The only benefit I see is that they avoid a situation where the Brewers could have given him a QO and costing the O's a pick. So you could argue that they traded Davies for a) two months of Parra, b) the value of a compensatory draft pick ($7M?) and c) a few months of exclusive negotiation. But that's only if he's resigned - if he's not its just two months of Parra.
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Be careful what you wish for. And remember, your new GM almost certainly won't come with a much bigger budget so he'll have to be more successful at exactly the things Duquette has been doing, and did quite well from '12-14.
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Angelos should have traded him for a bunch of prospects to stock up the farm, and then signed a cheap GM more willing to do (insert their overarching plan that's totally different from Duquette's here).
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I'm not going to argue too much, it's not like we just replaced Deivi Cruz with Cal Ripken. But Snider's somewhat similar numbers are in platoon/part time roles, Lough isn't nearly the hitter and has about as many career PAs as Parra did in 2013, and Reimold was last healthy in the 1940s. Parra has been more-or-less an everyday player since 2009.
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Nothing? You think Parra is no better than the Orioles' current corner outfielders?
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I said the same thing about a much older Nelson Cruz and people looked at me like I had snakes protruding from various holes in my skull.
