DrungoHazewood

For the youngins, the Sporting News was the periodical for baseball for many years. Early 1900s until probably the 1980s. I used to subscribe at the tail end of that period. Before the internet the Sporting News and the somewhat more obscure Baseball America were the only real sources for minor league results and numbers. The Sporting News gives out these awards because 80 years ago they were almost as prestigious as the official league awards, and I think they gave out some of them in years the leagues didn't do anything.

I think maybe you meant this for the Lyles thread?

I'd say yes, because in each of the prior years he managed a team that often was losing 6-0 in the third and he's just trying to get to the postgame presser without serious incident.

The Orioles are a $250M organization that pays everyone on the roster $700k a year, minimum. I'd imagine many of these coaches are making $100k, $150k, $200k a year (guessing, no source for that), that's a very good salary for almost anyone. From that perspective you could hire eight or 10 coaches for the cost of a single decent free agent reliever, or four or five coaches for the cost of the 26th guy on the roster. If you think you're getting even a single win from every two or three coaches, why not? Other sports already do this. I'm sure the Ravens have a coach specifically for inside linebackers, and several offensive line coaches, and by now probably a nutritional coach just for the kicker and punter.

Depends on what you mean by decline. It's pretty likely that Perez' ERA will be a run or more higher next year just his results catching up with his expected results. Rivera is arguably the best modern reliever ever and he had two seasons with an ERA around Perez' 1.41. Perez could pitch just as well next year and have a 2.50.

I bet my dentist still does. They're nice people, but they have every record in paper (my file goes back to when my Mom first brought me there in 1978). I have to mail (or I suppose hand-carry) them insurance paperwork that I print out after every time I go. I asked if I could just email it to them and they said they don't do that. The X-rays are all on film. They snail mail me a postcard to remind me of my next appointment. The hygienists are all 65 years old and while I'm in the chair they tell long, rambling stories about how the kids these days can't learn anything with all the TikTok and crime. My wife and kids go to another dentist where there's basically no paper, everything is in a consolidated electronic system, it's like going to Stardate 46379. Would not surprise me if the Angelos Law Firm was like that.

I heard we're switching to the triple option, but also running a 1-3-4-2 with a sweeper. Unconventional, but nobody knows how to counter that anymore.

I would caution anyone from taking away the lesson that you just need to get in and then anything can happen. If you're a wildcard team that has a 50-50 shot at any of the four playoff rounds you have a 6% chance of winning the Series. If you're a Division winner with a 60% shot at winning any of your three playoff rounds you have a 21% chance. Division winners have significantly higher odds of winning it all, even if in individual cases the wildcard sometimes wins, and the best team has just a 1-in-3 or 1-in-4 shot. You are absolutely better off as a 97-win team winning the division than an 87-win wildcard.

He's a different player if he's going to hit .240. Obviously still very productive, but interesting to see how much of his 80 point drop in BABIP this was luck, how much was shifts, and how much was not hitting the ball as well. Most of his Statcast numbers don't look too different this year, but his xBA is well off 2020-21 for some reason. It might just be like Hank Aaron in '60, when he went from hitting .355 in 1959 to .290. He was okay.

I don't think you have to be a Duquette apologist to say he did a pretty good job here, arguably a great job in the context he was given. It's no bad luck or weird circumstances that created 1998-2011. It's just plan old poor management of the franchise. We've talked about this countless times but the team had a crap farm system, didn't spend anything on development or analytics, refused to sign any international players who cost more than $5, signed $8M 33-year-old free agents all the time, drafting guys like Hobgood and Chris Smith, Angelos always prying and overriding and firing, they had disasters like the deaths of Steve Bechler and Mike Flanagan... that was the train wreck. The whole thing, from Angelos all the way down to Rochester and Bluefield telling the MLB team to go to hell. And in that context Duquette came in as the O's 6th-choice GM and almost immediately he and Buck had them in contention and kept them there for five years. In some ways you could call DD a miracle worker. He picked through the train wreck, took out the stuff that wasn't completely charred, and built a new ramshackle train that actually ran. Yes, as expected, the Frankentrain crashed and burned in 2018. But somehow it didn't from 2012-16. It would be like someone gets hired by the Pirates tomorrow, they're not allowed to fix any of the systemic problems with the Pirates, but somehow they're over .500 for each of the next five years.

The Angelos law firm just wants a straightforward, even-handed compromise, like the Nats move back to Montreal, issue a public apology for ever existing, and write them a check for $500M.

My motto is If It Was Good for Jody Davis, It's Good for Everyone.

There are a lot of 2022 MLB players who hit something like .240/.310/.450, which is about where I think Stowers could/should land. That's basically Santander. It's Adolis Garcia, or Randal Grichuk, Teoscar Hernandez, or Randy Arozarena with less speed. A RFer with an 120 OPS+ can play, even on a good team.

And nine runs of Rutschman's defensive value come from framing. I don't know how many voters realize that, but some who do are probably skeptical. I think that's real for now, some don't.

If he has his 2021 BABIP and his 2022 ISO he'll hit .260 with a .400 SLG. My fear is that older players often don't decline gracefully. They're like Nelson Cruz. Up through the first half of 2021 he'd been awesome for years. Since then he's OPS'd about .675 as a full-time DH.

With a 36-year-old you always have to be prepared that this is the year he has a .650 OPS and is done. Just so long as you build that into your plans I'm fine. But in a constrained not-really-free market like MLB there's almost always some team willing to give a free agent a silly contract. I don't think Abreu is the guy I'd outbid silly for.

To believe that a GG nomination would raise a player's trade value you'd have to think that some major league GMs have much less knowledge about baseball than 25 people currently active on Orioles Hangout. We're smart bunch of dudes but... no.

Soto nominated for the NL in RF despite being 39th of 39 MLB qualifiers in OAA. What the actual heck are they doing? Even by the 2013 process I wouldn't think this is possible.

That's actually one position/league where the nominees are 1, 2, 3 in OAA. Manny was +8 but fourth.

After seeing these results I'm going ahead and predicting that Hyde finishes 8th in the AL manager of the year voting, and Adley goes two notches below Chirinos in the catcher Silver Slugger.

In 2013 they did transition to a much better system. But it seems they've only taken nine years to fall back to being horribly behind the curve. It looks like most of the finalists were selected without any consideration of Statcast data at all. Which is like picking out the best stars but not using a telescope when a telescope is sitting right there.

I haven't looked at the selection criteria in a number of years. It certainly appears that they haven't updated it to include OAA, many of the finalists are ranked quite poorly by Statcast. At first base none of the three AL nominees are higher than 12th in MLB, with Guerrero and Rizzo in the mid 20s. If the process doesn't include (by far) the best defensive metric they're doing it wrong. But excluding Mateo is head-scratching on many fronts. Not only did he lead the AL in OAA, but was second in the AL in Rfield and was +8 by UZR. Clearly the world has passed the Gold Glove process by once again. I'd had such high hopes when they overhauled it from "randomly ask a bunch of coaches to free-associate guys they remember making good plays" to one actually involving subject matter experts and metrics.

That's all good information but I'm really talking about comparisons to 1982 or 1962 or 1902. Many people's baseline assumption is that pitchers didn't get hurt nearly as often back in the day (read: whenever the person saying this was 10), but I don't think there's any quantitative data to support that.

They push them hard in different ways. I'd bet if you graphed pitcher use, innings/pitches on one axis, and intensity of throwing on the other, there wouldn't be a big difference in area under the curve over time. A handful of oldtimers tried something like max effort for many starts and innings, but most threw at 80% except when they really needed a little extra. Otherwise they'd break. Today everyone maxes out intensity, but for fewer innings. And I think injury rate goes up dramatically between 80% and 100% effort. If you could get MLB to mandate a very small number of pitchers on the roster, like six, after the initial catastrophic injuries from people figuring out how to handle the new environment injuries wouldn't be any higher. Everyone would just get used to pitchers backing off enough to let them throw 300+ innings.

We do not have any comprehensive injury data from the past, so any speculation about lower injury rates in the past are just that. Pitchers have always gotten hurt at fairly high rates. In every decade since the 1870s you can find many star pitchers who suddenly lost effectiveness at ages where others pitched another decade. Pitchers in the past paced, while today's pitchers are almost exclusively max-effort. A few pitchers in the past could throw hard for many innings. Most couldn't. Clubs determined who could throw 300 innings a year by asking everyone to throw 300 innings a year starting as teenagers and observing who's arms fell off. Teams today have decided that's sub-optimal. The stars of the past are the ones who had intact UCLs and rotator cuffs. I'm sure all of them knew countless teammates who didn't make it. If Tippy Martinez and Scott McGregor were 20 today it's unknown if they'd be MLB pitchers, as they would have to transition from throwing 85-90 to much harder and it's unknown if their bodies could handle that, or if they would be effective throwing that way to MLB hitters.