DrungoHazewood

Through May 13, 1990 Gregg Olson had the following career line: 85 games, 66 finished, 115.1 innings, 75 hits, 22 runs, 21 earned, 62 walks (4.8 per nine), 114 Ks (8.9), 2 homers (0.2), 1.64 ERA, 2 HBP, 11 WP, 4 BK. 7-3 with 35 saves. Through yesterday Felix Bautista's career line is: 110 games, 69 finished, 114.2 innings, 61 hits, 27 runs, 21 earned, 42 walks (3.3), 184 Ks (14.4), 10 homers (0.8), 1.65 ERA, 3 HBP, 8 WP, 0 BK. 9-5 with 43 saves. I probably wouldn't kick either one off the team...

I think they will make some trades, probably for starting pitching. But they need to be cautious. Which they will be. Elias isn't some guy on Twitter ready to trade five top 100 prospects for the first starter who's available.

Deep depth is a good thing. You consider trading from it, but be careful. I've seen time and time again where a team goes overnight from "this guy is blocked, why haven't we traded him" to "dear God, why are Ryan Flaherty and Caleb Joseph playing every day?!"

The issue is that at least until very recently there was no reliable way to convert defensive value into runs, so if some guy hit .125 in rookie ball he was just done no matter how well he fields. Or they turn him into a pitcher. Still, today, if you hit like a pitcher at Aberdeen you're not going anywhere fast even if you're the best fielder they've ever seen.

Being completely serious I think that it's at least somewhat likely the the best defensive shortstop (or really defender at any position) is someone we've never heard of because they hit .166 in A ball. If you can slug .550 they'll play you no matter how bad your glove is. But if you can't hit at all, doesn't matter if you're Ozzie, you're not playing. There was a guy named Harry Sage who played 81 games for Toledo in the American Association in 1890. Mostly as a catcher. That's the sum total of his MLB career, and his photo looks like a vampire. Hit .149 with a .464 OPS. But... total zone thinks he was a +22 fielder. That works out to +44 per 162 games. Maybe he was the greatest defensive catcher in history but we didn't get to find out because he hit like end-stage Chris Davis.

But what does that mean? Currently on Fangraphs the O's have a 3.6% chance of winning the Series. The top three teams are the Braves (25%), Dodgers (12.2%) and Rays (11.5%). Let's say Ohtani lets the O's switch places with the Rays. Do you trade five very solid prospects for a one-year, 8% increase in the odds of winning the World Series? I don't know. It might be exciting, if he stays healthy and they make a run. But even once you make the playoffs you have steep odds against not going home disappointed. And you have to assume Ohtani isn't signing his next contract with the O's. It'll be a Reggie situation. The O's have given out one $100M+ contract ever, and Ohtani will require $500M. That's just not happening. The trade is for two months plus playoffs of Ohtani.

So Total Zone is just an approximation, we'll never have Statcast-level data for most of history. But... Belanger is two runs ahead of Ozzie in 40% fewer innings. And nobody else is close. If someone was going to make an argument that a player other than Belanger or Ozzie was in the top two it would have to involve serious beefs with how Total Zone works and legit arguments that some other player was cheated out of value. Or, argue for the peak of someone with a much shorter career like Andrelton Simmons or Adam Everett.

For Cy Young the case is one of the following: 1) His WPA is big, it says he's among the most valuable players in the league. 2) Dude, he struck out 18 per nine and had a 1.00 ERA. The case against is: 1) He's a reliever who going to throw 70 innings or something, while even today a starter will throw 200. 2) No reliever has gotten any real traction in the Cy Young in 20 years. Even Britton who was arguably about as impressive. Dellin Betances threw 84 innings to a 1.50 with 134 Ks and got one vote. Aroldis Chapman had a year with 17.7 K/9 and got zero votes. 3) His WAR total is going to be far behind the best starters. 4) Like it or not, few people pay any attention to WPA. I think the only way he gets serious consideration is if he knocks out a bunch of high-profile, high-leverage saves in September.

The last reliever to win the Cy Young was Eric Gagne in 2003. The last reliever to win the MVP was Eck in 1992. The fewest innings for a Cy Young winner in a full season is 80. Bautista is on pace for 79. Last year the Mets' Edwin Diaz had a 1.31 ERA and struck out 118 in 62 innings and he got three Cy Young votes, finished 9th. He got zero MVP votes. The year before he had 57 saves and a 1.96, got 4 Cy votes, five in the MVP (18th place). In '19 the Padres' Kirby Yates had a 1.19 ERA an struck out 101 in 60 innings and finished tied for 9th in the Cy Young, zero MVP votes. The year Josh Hader allowed 66 baserunners in 81 innings and struck out 143 he got four Cy votes, zero MVP. In 2017 Craig Kimbrel had a 1.43 ERA and 126 Ks in 69 innings, finished 6th in the Cy, zero MVP votes. If Bautista ends the season with an ERA around 1.00 and close to 18 K/9 he's going to finish 4th or 5th in the Cy Young and 8th-12th in the MVP.

After Buck didn't win in '12 and Hyde didn't win last year after most projections had the O's winning 60 I fully expect Bruce Bochy to win it this year.

I would have said that's awesome, certainly surprising. But... people will often say "well, the Orioles could contend this year but everything has to go right." And that's never right. Even the best teams have things go wrong, have players under-perform, have things go sideways and they end up with some random guy playing right field. The 2014 Orioles won the division by 12 games, despite the '13 team being just over .500 and having the 10th best pitching staff in the AL. Most people picked them to finish 4th or 5th. So everything went right, correct? Not even close. Matt Wieters missed all but 26 games and his replacements hit terribly. Manny went out in July and never returned, being mostly replaced by .221-hitting Ryan Flaherty. Chris Davis not only had a bad year, but was suspended for the rest of the year in September. Nick Markakis had his worst year as a Major Leaguer to that point, OPSing .729. They never really found a regular LFer, with David Lough not hitting and Alejandro De Aza being picked up at the waiver deadline. Ubaldo made 25 mostly cringy starts. Kevin Gausman spent two months in the minors. Their third starter was Bud Norris, who went 14-33, 5.07 from 2015 to the end of his career. And they won the division by 12 games. Everything doesn't have to go right, just enough.

What assurances could the governments of Baltimore and Maryland give you that would satisfy your concerns? Is that even possible? There are elected officials who play small parts in trying to solve large, systemic, long-term problems. They will certainly say that they have plans to improve things. If they're at all realistic they'll admit that shifting the reality of crime and poverty and drugs and the business climate in a city or a state is hard, and it will take the combined efforts of countless people working over years, or probably decades. Someone like the governor cannot be in office more than eight years, and at best he'll help put in place things that could move the city in a better direction and then pass the baton to someone else who may or may not have his same vision. What you're asking for is likely a long-winded version of "I have some big plans, and I really think they're going to work out." And depending on your political leanings you may or may not put any stock in that. If you own the Orioles you commit to the city whether or not some politician promises you the world. You have to rely on the history and the culture and the fanbase of the Baltimore Orioles.

There are always those people. The ones who can't believe that Cowser hasn't been sent back to Norfolk. The guy who I sat next to at a game years ago who couldn't fathom that the GM hadn't been fired for having Caleb Joseph on the team after he started his career 1-for-25. 100% guarantee there were some people who'd written off Cal after he OPS'd .320 in his first 41 games, but luckily they didn't have the internet to forever preserve their unfiltered rantings.

Errors are not usually given on plays that could be described as "he should have been smarter". If you take a crazy, circuitous route to a fly ball and it lands 10 feet behind you it's a hit. If you run straight to where the ball is going to land and just miss it, error. If you skip on the easy play at first, miss the out, and try to get the guy coming home from third even though you have no shot... fielder's choice. Not an error. If you're the third baseman and you're staring off into space standing 40 feet from the bag while the runner takes off from second, it's not an error. Errors are one of those things that kinda made sense when they were trying to figure out how the game and scorekeeping was going to work in 1875, and they never bothered to fix or update anything. The solution is leaving the old metrics alone because there's no real drive to mess with continuity of records, but add on things like Statcast that better describe the situation. Now we can say things like the Rays just gave up a base on a play where the guy stays at second 98% of the time, and the run impact of that base in that base-out situation is X.

I've heard a lot of people talk about it, but haven't tried. As SteveA said, I'd excel in the super-popular categories like stars of the Union Association, or Guys Who Had Delayed MLB Careers Because They Spent So Long in the PCL in the 1910s.

The best part of online fandom is the part that attributes all success to luck and unintended consequences of subterfuge, and all failures to rank incompetence.

As soon as you start winning in earnest you'll take a huge hit in ratings like this. Virginia Tech were the underdog darlings of ESPN for a while, but by 2001 the inevitable backlash came and someone else took their place as the scrappy, lovable team. Every team that wins has a large contingent of anti-rooters.

I'd just let him play. I don't think you're ekeing out any more wins by sitting Henderson against lefties. Here's your Drungo lesson of the day, you can put as much or little weight in it as you want: Vic Wertz was a young star for the Tigers in the late 40s and early 50s. Hit pretty well as a rookie in '47, had a really big year in '49 (.304 with 20 homers, 133 RBI, 80 walks), played even better in '50, still had a really good year in '51 (.285-27-94 with 78 walks). All star three times, got some down-ballot MVP support in '49-50. But he didn't hit lefties very well. So his manager, Red Rolfe, decided he was smarter than the average guy and in '52 platooned Wertz. Took the guy with the nearly .400 OBP and 133 RBI and sat him against lefties. The Tigers went from 95 wins in '50 to 73 in '51 to 50 in '52. It wasn't all because they platooned Wertz, but it didn't help. Wertz didn't hit any better being platooned than he did before, and the Tigers used a bunch of nobodies against lefties like Bud Scouchok or Cliff Mapes. Sure, maybe in theory they were going to be half a win better than Wertz facing lefties, but so what? They took a young star with confidence and instead of getting him to work on hitting lefties Rolfe sat him, the team tanked, he was fired, and Wertz' career kind of went off track. He ended up with an okay career, but he got stuck with the platoon label for a long time and he never again had a four-win season. Took until he was in his 30s to have a couple more really solid, full-time seasons. Just leave Henderson alone. Let him work on some things to attack lefties better. Let him play, stay confident, get established. No reason whatsoever to risk anything by trying to turn him into a platoon player at 22.

The Orioles have like five guys who could be solid MLB shortstops. They're still sorting out what that's going to look like in the end. I've often said, really just repeating others, that moving rightward along the defensive spectrum doesn't work. If you're really a 3B moving you to SS isn't going to do anything for you. If you're really LF you're going to be a negative in CF. But the O's have like five real shortstops. Just need to take some time to figure out what works best.

I don't really believe that massive platoon splits (or even reverse splits) are a real thing. They are almost always small samples that get turned into this narrative that someone can't hit X pitchers, they get platooned, rarely face those pitchers and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Unless Henderson is completely futile against lefties for years on end I'm going to assume he'll have a normal ~75-100 point OPS split vs. lefties compared to righties. The worst thing the Orioles could do with their 22-year-old coming star is to get it into his head that he can't hit lefties and is going to sit twice a week.

When the most likely case is that Aaron Hicks will not be playing regularly, and if he is he'll be OPSing about .700 for the Orioles.

Since 2019 Aaron Hicks has a .697 OPS and Statcast has him as a -12 fielder. He's a fourth or fifth outfielder who's had a very solid 22 plate appearances. His rest-of-season projections are something like .225/.320/.355 with below-average defense. Nobody is trading anything for him, and nobody is starting him unless they don't have another choice. It's very much an open question as to whether he's better than McKenna in 2023.

If I said that, I don't recall the story. John McGraw did run off to NY with half the 1902 Orioles, and joined up with the Giants. But truthfully I don't remember a story about the colors or the uniforms.

Are you the guy who put us in that Ramada in Milwaukee?

Someone could go into bb-ref and get most common lineups for each year, but that would still be a lot of manual work and wouldn't be comprehensive. I don't think it's an easy question to answer.