DrungoHazewood

I doubt that they do, if only because the payroll is starting at such a microscopic level that they could sign several $15-20M a year free agents and still be in the bottom 5 or 10 in the league.

I don't think they assumed everything would just carry over and get better. I think they were given a budget by Angelos, and weren't able to secure (m)any upgrades within those limits.

Yea, that's exactly what I was getting at in my last post. Manny might end up playing another 10 years until he's 40 and getting 3500 hits and close to 100 WAR. Manny today has more career PAs than Buster Posey. So the question really is dependent on if you mean value in the six years of team control, or career value.

I'd argue the other way around. Gunnar is three years younger and isn't a catcher. Catching just takes a lot out of you. There are non-catchers like Lou Whitaker and Larry Walker who have similar career WAR totals to Johnny Bench, who was probably the greatest catcher ever. And they are struggling to get significant HOF votes. Gunnar will have to have something go pretty wrong to not be at least a very solid MLB regular for well over a decade. Adley could just be a catcher and randomly miss three half-seasons to injury and then have 2-3 other years where he takes a foul tip off his meat hand in April and it just isn't right and OPSes .720. Adley could potentially have a HOF career for a catcher and still not quite have the value of a borderline HOF SS/3B, especially starting off three years older than Gunnar.

Did you? How? If you didn't live right next to the ballpark there's no way you watched more than a fraction of you favorite team's games, and very few of anyone else's. In 1950 it was probably physically impossible to see more than 10-15% of MLB games. If you lived in St. Louis and had season tickets to both the Browns and Cardinals and went to every game that would be watching 12.5% of all the games.

Hopefully. The other day I mentioned to my 14-year-old that there was a time in the early 1980s where the consensus was that the Orioles and Redskins were among the best run, if not the best run, franchises in the Majors and the NFL. He found that kind of hard to believe.

I understand the restrictions of needing to finish the season somewhat coincident with the academic year, but baseball is just not a sport that's playable in 40 degree rain. Soccer and football, sure, but even those can be pretty miserable. Baseball in those conditions is just silly.

I think it's also likely that some of the 30 game improvement will not stick, it won't carry over. Improvement is performance/skill plus luck. The Orioles were pretty lucky with regard to injuries this year. A number of pitchers significantly out-performed their FIPs, while only Baker, and maybe Watkins and Bradish went the other way. They have a lot of positive indicators, but remember that the 1990 and 2013 Orioles declined by 11 and eight games, respectively.

Would love to see metrics that show any shred of evidence that's true. Without some facts to point to I think there's at least a 99% chance that there has been no measurable decrease in outfield arm strength since the good ol' days. Since the average player is bigger, stronger, and faster today with far better access to biomechanical data, medical technology and metrics than in the 40s, 50, 60s I'd assume arms are better today than ever before.

Your heros should be humble. Namaste.

Technically they could, but I think they try to avoid that because it costs one of the teams revenues. But I don't know how a lot of that works. When a game is completely cancelled do season ticket holders get refunds? I'm assuming individual game ticket holders do? Are concessions workers and ushers and the like on hourly pay and they don't get anything if the game doesn't happen? Let's say the Orioles gross $50 per fan on tickets, concessions, parking etc. Even a game with just 10,000 in attendance brings in half a million dollars.

They played the tripleheader in exactly 5:00, although there was probably some amount of time between games. Nevertheless, three games in five hours, and the abbreviated six-inning game three took just 1:01. An hour into a typical game today we're in the 3rd. Two weeks ago the Guardians and Twins played a single 15-inning game that lasted 5:24. In August the Mets and Phillies played a nine-inning game that lasted 4:26. Earlier in that 1920 season the Dodgers and Braves played a 26-inning tie (the famous Oeschger-Cadore game where both pitchers went the distance) that lasted 3:50. I cannot wait for the pitch clock. Don't tell me about commercials. Commercials don't turn a 2:00 game into 4:26.

I hate to disappoint you, but there's always room for doubt.

It can happen again.

I have no special insight into Hays, it just seems to me that he is capable of playing well. But his injuries appear to precipitate slumps. Baseball never really affords you the chance to heal from significant-but-not-disabling injuries, not until the offseason. My theory is that Hays has been a little bit hurt in about 80% of his career, and I wouldn't be surprised if one day he's healthy most of a season and is quite good.

On September 7, 1896 the Orioles swept Louisville in a tripleheader, at home in Union Park. 4-3, 9-8, and 12-1, to move to 9.0 games up in the standings with 15 left. On the 4th and the 8th they played doubleheaders, with the 5th and 6th off. Three game days, seven games. 6-0-1, with the tie being 11-11 against Cap Anson's Colts.

Is this just a round-about way of saying that we need to get rid of Hays? If he's not any good, he can't play here, we can't expect other teams to offer the Orioles something of value in return. I think he was playing at about 80% health most of the year. I also think that "injury-prone" is mostly backward looking, that many injuries are bad luck and even repeated injuries that have healed may not predict future injuries. You can find players who were labeled fragile who then ended up being healthy and great for years (example: Paul Molitor). There's clearly talent there with Hays, but I wouldn't blame them if they decided it's time to move on and find an option that is more likely to produce.

I assume that almost everyone in the Majors has had to work very hard or they'd have been released in the minors. It's a microscopic percentage of the population that is so talented that they can be a Major League player without constantly working hard, learning and adjusting.

Defense can slump. Or streak. We don't usually see it because most people don't look or don't believe at defensive metrics.

The 2012-13 Orioles were different because outside of Manny they didn't have a regular who was under 26. Almost all the contributing players were around peak or later. This team is exciting because not only did they graduate a bunch of rookies to the majors, but the farm is so deep they'll probably still be around a top-5 system after two #1 overall prospects came to the majors. I don't think they've had a group of young talent like this at once since the 1970s.

Isn't it weird that the Padres had Mateo for a little over a calendar year and they played him at shortstop for one inning? Literally one inning. Yes, they have Tatis, but Tatis is hurt or suspended or something quite a lot. He missed 32 games last year. They had the guy who may well win the 2022 AL Gold Glove at short and they were playing him in the outfield and third base. Also, in 2019 he spent the whole year with the A's AAA affiliate in Las Vegas and had an .834 OPS with 29 doubles, 14 triples, 19 homers, 24 steals. And never got called up at all. Yes, Vegas in the PCL is a great place to hit and Marcus Semien was putting up MVP-ish numbers. But still. Not even a call up. Just interesting that two different teams had one of the best fielding shortstops in the world and said "yea... no, we're not putting you there at all."

The biggest things I see are: DRS/UZR seems to have a greater spread than OAA, so defense in general gets less credit in fWAR the FIP/RA philosophical differences in fWAR/rWAR for pitchers. That's Perez. He had a 1.50ish ERA but an xFIP of 3-something and a LOB% of 88%. I don't recall if LOB% is in fWAR, but his RA/FIP difference is big. Fangraphs says value is in your peripherals, i.e. you pitched like a guy who should have X.XX ERA. Baseball reference says you allowed Y.YY RA, that's your value. There's a little more than that, but basically that's it. May be some minor differences in leverage I forget if one uses 3-year park factors and one 1-year? 3-year is almost always better, but OPACY is a weird case. That's probably 80-90% of the differences. Bautista is like Perez, FIP/xFIP much higher than RA.

Please let us not go down this rabbit hole of "if your team doesn't win enough you don't have any value" lest we end up arguing for 1991 AL MVP Cecil Fielder. If you're good, you have value. If you aren't, you don't.

As of today they're 31.5 games ahead of last year. Could end the year anywhere from +30 to +33. 33 would be tied with the '46 Red Sox for 2nd-biggest one-year improvement since 1900. 30 would be 9th. '88-89 Orioles were 32.5. They'd have to sweep the Blue Jays to beat that. If Hyde doesn't get manager of the year I'm burning the place down. Not sure which place, but some place...

Love that they batted him leadoff so that he had more opportunities to strike out.