DrungoHazewood

So did rolling a hoop around with a stick. It's 2022 and baseball needs to get on board with how people want to pay for and consume their product. It's utter nonsense that I can watch way more third-division German soccer from Southern Maryland (for free!) than I can legally stream the Orioles without paying for some $100/month ATT/Directv package. Yes, baseball dominated when there was little or no other competition and just the revenues from one million ticket sales made you the Scrooge McDuck of sports. That was a long, long, long time ago.

But what's his acceleration? A big truck with a 700 hp engine might be about as fast as a Porsche, but it ain't getting there as quickly. Actually the data is there on Statcast. He's 117th in 20 foot sprint speed, 45th in 40 foot, 48th in 60 foot, and 6th in 90 foot. That tells me he doesn't accelerate particularly fast, but has a high top end.

That's all probably true. But I think that range is the most important thing, and it's mostly reaction time, quickness, and sprint speed. That might peak at 16 or 18. I'm pretty sure my boys, 14 and 15, are as fast and are way quicker than I was at any point in my 20s. And I wasn't slow.

That's a good post, and I agree. Baseball has a big problem that younger fans have turned to other sports and other activities, but it compounds that problem when people born in 1990 or 2000 or even 2010 mostly know the Orioles as a team that loses 90 or 100 games most years. I've been an Orioles fan for over 40 years and my teenage kids watch and certainly play a lot more soccer than baseball. Heck, for most of the last 4-5 years I have, too.

Counter-counter point: there's a lot more down than up in a player's defensive career. Everyone is unique, but I'd say 80-90% of players are better defenders at 22 than 28 and almost everyone is better at 28 than 35. I bet if we had Statcast tracking for everything from Little League through the Majors we'd see that defense peaks at 20 or 22.

A move to the outfield would not at all surprise me.

Went to my first game at the age of eight in 1979. Until I was about 13 or 14 I really believed that the Orioles were like the Patriots or Man City or the Lakers or something, one of those teams that just was magically better than all the other teams and would always be in the hunt, every year. But even better because we earned it, we didn't just go buy the best players. But I've also been completely immersed in the team from 1986-today, and am 100% aware that most of that time they were essentially eliminated by June 15th. It's as much of a gut punch for the oldtimers because we remember the dynasty years and see exactly how chaotic and poorly-executed the last 35 years have been. We know. We all know.

I don't know what to tell you, but DRS, OAA, and UZR all have him as a well below average fielder this year. And it's really hard to tease anything meaningful out of traditional minor league fielding data, but his minor league range factor at short was even lower than his MLB. Completely a guess, but it sounds like he's really athletic and toolsy and looks good, but just it just hasn't translated to a lot of outs. The Statcast breakdowns make it look like he's okay going in and back on balls, but really lacking in lateral range.

I don't know the reasons or if there is underlying talent that just needs to be refined. But he's 3rd percentile in OAA. One of the worst defenders in the majors. I have to think it's rare to turn that into an asset. Also, athleticism doesn't equal defense. Bo Jackson was perhaps the best baseball athlete of the 20th century and was an average to below-average LFer overall.

Of course there's variance. This is old, but I think it's still valid. The $H column peaks the year the data starts, at age 21, and just goes down from there. Everything in baseball is true talent overlaid with Gaussian noise.

The question I was getting at was who will have a better career, Henderson or Witt? It's still way too early, but I like Gunnar's chances because I think he's a much better defender. Offense, we don't really know yet.

Very much so. Same positions, came up at about the same age. Witt is still a very good prospect, up early (although not Machado/Trout/Soto early). Downsides are that so far he looks like a fast Mountcastle at the plate. Not great that he's hitting .246; batting average usually peaks the day you hit the majors. Usually but not always. I see a bit of Alfonso Soriano or Ruben Sierra.

That's really what they've been doing for a while, but I think it's reached the point of being kind of silly and you still have almost half the league giving up by the All Star break. You have a 162-game seeding tournament followed by a month of short series that are often decided by randomness. The regular season doesn't really mean anything, and the playoffs are designed so that even a epic, dynastic .700 team has far less than a 50/50 shot at the championship. It's the worst of both worlds, except that there are a lot of revenue-generating opportunities. Having seen how soccer around the world works I'd rather have a shorter regular season with a meaningful pennant race and multiple tournaments and competitions that give you several chances at a trophy. At the very least I'd like to see: 1) Regular season with league pennants and $bonuses as the big trophy 2) World Series playoff tournament 3) Meaningful World Baseball Classic every X years 4) World Club Competition (i.e. MLB vs NPB vs Korea vs Taiwan vs Everyone else) every Y years 5) Draft pick tournament annually between everyone who doesn't qualify for #2

It's all relative. Baltimore is way safer than Tijuana, Cape Town, Caracas, or Juarez. Only slightly worse than San Salvador, Cali, or Guatemala City. You'll be fine. 99,949 people out of every 100,000 Baltimoreans aren't murdered every year!

I certainly hope so. But the O's moved from St. Louis in 1954 and since then only a small handful of managers have ever made it five years total. He's already working on finishing up #4. I would love to have Hyde be a new Joe Torre, except that his Mets and Yankees tenures are both in Baltimore.

Still British subjects living in a British colony.

You go to Quebec City and there are displays about winning the war of 1812 and beating the Americans all over the place. I didn't have the heart to remind them that the war ended pretty okay for us, and Canada didn't negotiate their independence from Britain until about 50 years later.

I bought 40 season tickets prior to that year because of the excitement of them getting their 9th-choice GM and the high-profile signing of Wilson Betemit.

I guess you mean he had a truncated career, which is true. But I think I'd frame it more like Roberto Alomar. He was very good when he was here, but he just wasn't here very long.

I think that most of the people who think going to Camden Yards is super dangerous and they don't want to risk it are people who rarely go to Camden Yards or cities in general.

He's 466 wins behind Buck. 466 wins, I think, would be the 3rd-highest win total in Orioles history. That's the equivalent of five years of 95 wins each. That would be great. Seems somewhat unlikely. I think the O's have only had three managers (Richards, Weaver, Buck) who managed for five full seasons.

Buck is 2nd on the modern Orioles list for managerial wins, but if you had a poll today ranking the team's all-time managers I think he'd fall somewhere between Sam Perlozzo and Phil Regan. He'd be miles behind Davey, even though Davey was only here two years and had a roster full of big-name free agents.

Fangraphs uses OAA for defense, which I think is objectively better than DRS/TZ. So trust fWAR for non-pitchers more. For pitchers it's more of a matter of taste.

Being two hours away I probably wouldn't. But I turn into a pumpkin at 1000-1030, so I often go to bed before the game is over even when watching on TV. I'd love to see a game with a strictly enforced pitch clock and a 6:30 start time that ends at 8:45. 100 years ago there were no lights, but typical games would start in late afternoon and never really risk being called due to darkness because baseball was a two-hour sport. Like all the other sports except football.

When they were expanding and discussing how to handle larger leagues in the 1960s someone (Joe Cronin?) had a famous quote like "nobody will root for a 14th place team" and it stuck. I don't think it's based on anything. Give fans something meaningful to root for and they'll will show up no matter where they are in the standings. But whether you have one division or six you still have the problem of one overarching goal of winning the World Series, but half or more of the teams have almost no realistic chance of that by May. There needs to be something else for non-contenders to fight for like a secondary cup competition, a NIT-style tournament for the top draft pick, something. People will push back, they'll say bad teams have always had nothing to play for except pride. Well, it's not 1935 anymore and nobody cared about the 60, 70-win teams then either. That's not a feature, it's a bug.