DrungoHazewood

I think it shows that MLB's model is very different than some other sports leagues. There are soccer teams, Premier League teams, that spend 80-90% of revenues on player payroll despite having other expenses that have to be fairly comparable to MLB teams. You can do that. There are owners willing to do that. MLB just has a model where it's expected that you spend 30-50% of revenues on payroll and then get some creative accountants to claim that operating expenses eat up almost all of the remaining 50-70%. The Padres have said, no, we're doing what we want to win. I have to imagine the Padres owners get regularly taken to a private room at meetings and have it carefully explained that they're ruining it for the rest of the owners. "You have a great thing here, we're printing money, why are you screwing it all up?"

Just as relevant is that he had a good game for a human ump and still gave the Red Sox +1.27 expected runs. "He came || this close to flipping the game to the other team with several key missed calls, but you know what, for an ump that's a pretty good job!"

It's really funny to talk about baseball with soccer fans and soccer with baseball fans. If you didn't know which group was which you might have trouble picking out their statements, they say many of the same things. "Who would ever watch that, it's slow, boring, nothing happens." "If you haven't grown up with the sport you won't understand all the strategy going on behind the scenes." "We're not one of those sports like basketball or American football where the scores are for ADD kids, like 55-45 or 102-90."

Have heard soccer fans (i.e. baseball is slow and boring) say, yea, I'll probably watch more games now.

The two teams scored seven touchdowns, made nine errors and it was over in 3:01!

Can. But doesn't have to be that way. Or here. Or here.

I think, or hope based on minor league experience, that the current time is here to stay and by May nobody will think much of it. It's just how the game is played. And in a year or so we'll look back and wonder why the heck it took so long to think of this.

Gotta love Mark Eichhorn, even if most of his best years were in Toronto. Submariner, pitched for the Orioles. His 1986 rookie season is astonishing. 157 innings in relief(!) to a 1.72 ERA. By bb-ref he had a 7.2 WAR season, third-highest total for any reliever, ever. Since that year nobody has gotten within 30 relief innings of Eichhorn's total. 2nd-highest? Eichhorn the next year. And despite being smack in the middle of that bizarre era where the voters handed out Cy Youngs to relievers all over the place he got all of two votes, far behind Dave Righetti. He was monumentally better than Righetti, but only had 10 saves to Righetti's 46. Even more of a head-scratcher was the ROY voting. This was one of the deepest rookie classes of all time, but Eichhorn finished behind Jose Canseco (.240/.318/.457 with 33 homers) and Wally Joyner (.290/.348/.457 with 22 homers). WAR didn't exist back then, but he totaled more than any other two vote-getters combined.

Ah, yes, the golden era when an ump could make up whatever strike zone he wanted and nobody could or would do a thing about it. Who was it... Eric Gregg? Who had that playoff game where his strike zone was 3' wide and 5' tall? I'd love to see a retroactive Ump Scorecard for that. One team probably got -4 expected runs from that.

Yea, the Sam Horn game was really good. But if it came down to it and someone forced me to pick the best opening day performance, I might go with Sutcliffe's shutout in the first game at OPACY.

Here's a game that's representative (if a little cherry-picked) of that era. September 1971, O's on their way to their third straight 100-win, World Series season. They're playing the Senators, so a little local rivalry. It's Jim Palmer against Denny McLain. O's have Boog, Frank, Brooks, Davey, Blair, Belanger and Elrod in the lineup. 5,601 showed up to watch.

Was it really algebra, or did he just spend a while contemplating how many wins a team would have if they had zero losses all year?

Yes, sorry. They're the ones that started this nonsense probably in the 80s. "Nate Snell, Don Drysdale, Carl Hubbell and Walter Johnson are the only pitchers to have an appearance of four innings, allow six or fewer hits, two or more strikeouts, two wild pitches, and three walks and one or more balks in a day-game relief appearance in Detroit or St. Louis between June 1917 and August 1987."

The worst opening day performance in modern O's history is probably Jonathan Schoop's 2018. He went 0-for-5, 0-for-3 with runners in scoring position. And in a tie game he came up in the bottom of the 10th with the bases loaded, one out and the winning run 90 feet away and grounded into a double play. That or maybe Milt Pappas' start in '61 where he went just 1.2 innings, allowing three hits, four walks and six runs in the expansion LA Angels' first game. Palmer, McNally, and Sutcliffe threw opening-day shutouts. In '77 Palmer took the loss in an opening game where he went all 10 innings.

Kind of a tangent here, but I wanted to see how Adley's day stacked up to other opening days in Orioles history and it's up there. But I think the best was Don Baylor's 1973, where he went 4-for-4 with two doubles, a triple, and a homer in a 10-0 win over the Brewers.

He obviously had a very good game, and I was glad to see it. But I hate these Elias-inspired junk stats that are specifically framed to make them look more unique or impressive than they are. It would have been more honest if they just said something like Rutschman was only the 13th player since 1900, and just the 6th since WWII, to get five hits on opening day. The more qualifiers you add the more contrived it looks. Other players to get five hits on opening day include some other HOFers like Craig Biggio and Eddie Collins, but also Bobby Byrne, Aaron Miles, Dale Mitchell, and Ty Tyson. In the first eight games of the 1927 season Tyson was 19-for-35 (.543) with a 1.327 OPS. By July he'd be in the minors for the rest of the season. The record for RBI on opening day is 7, by the Twins' Brant Alyea and the Cubs' Corey Patterson. Patterson went 4-for-6 with two doubles and two homers on 3/31/03. In 1990 the O's Sam Horn had two singles, two homers, and six RBI on opening day. On opening day 2002 Tony Batista had a grand slam off Roger Clemens in the O's 10-3 rout of the Yanks. Dante Bichette had four hits on opening day in both 1998 and 1999.

Does it? Last year he was +5 runs on the bases. In Vince Coleman's season where he stole 107 and was caught just 14 times he was +17. I think it's plausible Mateo could add another five runs of value this year, but that depends on him getting on base.

There were similar numbers in the minor leagues where they had the same rules. Last year there were 0.51 steals/game, I expect this year we'll have about 0.75. That's about the rate from 1990, and as high as the rate has ever been in the live-ball era. The only times with appreciably more steals were prior to 1920.

I'm sure it's like when Man City has a player injured in the Euros or the World Cup. They don't like it, but they have long since accepted the fact that the club team is not the only thing that matters. Sports are entertainment, and a large number of fans LOVE competitions like this.

He's 25 on the 10th of March and his minor league OBP is .329 (in AA and below), on the strength of a .217 batting average. Walks don't carry over to the majors unless you can hit. Remember Joey Rickard, and the year he had a .427 OBP in the minors? He's currently sporting a .300 in the majors. I'm hoping Handley has a reasonably good OBP for a glove-first backup catcher.

11 spring at bats means about as much as that beautiful woman in the mall food court looking your direction and smiling because you're standing in front of the Cinnabon and she didn't have breakfast.

Trout was 19. When Henderson was that age he'd yet to have an at bat above Rookie ball. If you can play in the majors at 19 and not look totally overmatched that's a pretty good indication that you're going to have a long, successful career. I'd guess that the average debut age of a Hall of Famer is 21 or 22.

Orioles who had between 8.2 and 10.2 rWAR through age 27 include Chris Davis, Rich Dauer, Curt Blefary, Jim Gentile and Gus Triandos. Davis had 3.3 the rest of his career, although with two good years and several trainwrecks. Dauer 5.7 total from 28-on. Blefary 0.3. Gentile 7.4. Triandos 4.4. I don't think that tells us a whole lot besides that players of Mullins' general quality and age aren't guaranteed to be really productive going forward. Other players with 8.2-10.2 WAR through 27 include Moises Alou, Luis Polonia, Aubrey Huff, Corey Patterson, Dexter Fowler, Joe Carter, Phil Bradley, Andre Thornton, Dan Ford, Vince Coleman. You can read pretty much anything you want into that list.

Just today I was looking for at least the Sabr bio of Meyerle, and it's not there. I think the best there is, is the entry in one of the 19th Century Stars books they put out years ago. Maybe this can be my retirement gig, researching and writing bios of obscure 19th century players. After Meyerle I'll tackle Perry Werden, the man who hit 88 homers between 1894-95.

No, I have not. So I'm sure this is good, but I really don't have a lot of interest in the recent Posnanski books. The Top 100, again, it's probably really good but how many books do we need on the best players in baseball history? I've probably read 1000 pieces on Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays, starting when I was about nine years old. Nothing against Posnanski, I'm sure the writing is good, he loves baseball, and this will probably sell a ton of books. But I doubt I'll read it. I'd rather find some obscure bio of Long Levi Meyerle.