DrungoHazewood

Eh, well, sorta. His top totals were 12, 5, 4, 3 and 3. His 31 in a career are two more than Pete Rose, and apparently the record. Rose never had more than four in a season. Josh Reddick is also way up on the leaderboards with seven in 2017 and 19 for his career. Brooks and Cal combined for nearly 24,000 plate appearances with nary a single reached base on catcher's interference.

Just get them to talk to Jordan Lyles and his 2.94 home ERA with just four homers allowed in 70 innings. If this had been last year's OPACY he'd have a 8.97 ERA at home with a homer every four batters. Dan Straily is going to be therapy for years after giving up 22 homers in 47 innings in 2019, including 18 in 33 innings at OPACY. I could just see a free agent pitcher going to Straily and he's shaking and sweating, grabs the guy by the lapels "Don't do it!!! Don't ever go there! Run away!!!!! It's evil! Evil I tell you!!!" Now Lyles is like "Dude, I threw Judge a 86 mph change up, belt high, didn't even get to the track. Is this heaven? No, it's Oriole Park."

The Orioles have like 10 relievers, and you're suggesting that anytime the game is close they really have 2-3 relievers. I don't think that's going to work. You can't just use Perez, Tate, Bautista for the last three or four innings of every game that's close. We want all these guys intact for 2023.

As I'm want to do, I saw this thread and wondered then catcher's interference became a thing. I'm at work today and don't have Game of Inches handy, but the interwebs provided a Baseball Analysts thread that refers to the David Nemec book The Rules of Baseball: By 1899 when this rule supposedly was enacted catchers no longer regularly stood well behind the plate, at least I don't think they did. The catcher's mask, chest protector, and a rather big mitt were common by the 1890s. And by 1884 overhand pitching was legal and it's kind of hard to imagine a catcher smothering 100+ 80mph one-hop pitches a game without every few going to the backstop like it's 8U ball. We have WP/PB data from that era and while high it's still less than one a game. In the late 1890s wild pitches were actually lower than today, although PBs were four times higher (0.05/game instead of about 0.2). In the early 1870s there were 2-3 (WP+PB) per game, which is still hard to imagine as catchers didn't really have gloves. I suppose it comes down to very restricted underhand deliveries that may have averaged 50-60 mph. If Connie Mack claimed to have pioneered the strategy of tipping the bat with the catcher's mitt I would put some weight to that, as he was known as an honest man not prone to lies and exaggeration. And he was a catcher before becoming a manager, despite being quite tall and skinny.

Maybe Mike Marshall was right, and Felix Bautista can throw 200 innings out of the pen while Hall is spending the next 3-4 years in the minors learning to channel his inner Dennis Eckersley.

In 1989 they lost 10-1 to the White Sox on September 1st and fell out of first place for the first time since May 22nd. But they kept on fighting and were only 1.0 game out as late as September 27th. Hopefully the '22ers can keep it going, too.

Connie Mack was born about six months before the battle of Gettysburg, and died during the Korean War (although he wasn't actually at either place). And he was a MLB manager for a pretty good chunk of that time. He managed against each of the three-time National League Champion Orioles from '94-96, and against the 1950 Yankees and Yogi Berra. He was once teammates with Davy Force, who'd been a star in the amateur era in the 1860s, and managed Bobby Shantz who played until the mid-1960s. Hyde was briefly a teammate at AAA Charlotte with Brook Fordyce, who was drafted in 1989. To match Connie Mack he'll have to manage someone who will play in the 2080s.

Just Hyde's version of this lineup.

Remember when Nate McLouth was 8-for-57 (.140) for the sub-.500 Pirates, the Orioles picked him up, he turned it around and was one of the keys to the '12 playoff run?

I don't know what to make of Cowser, except that he's a very different player than Nick. If you compare Nick's 2005 season in the minors to Cowser's '22 they had fairly similar OPS, BA, etc. But Nick struck out in 17.8% of PAs and had about a .363 BABIP. Cowser strikes out in 28.6% of his and has a .404 BABIP. Used to be if you struck out 150, 170 times in a full year you'd hit like .220. But some guys just hit the ball really hard. Everyone strikes out 150 times now, I guess that's why the league hits .240.

A little, but remember that from the dawn of time until about 20 years ago if you'd pitched seven innings, two hits, no runs you were coming out for the eighth and probably the ninth and chances are you give up a few hits. The Orioles have had 40 instances of someone pitching consecutive games with 8+ innings, four or fewer hits, one or fewer runs. I bet a fair number of them had no runs and two hits through seven. For example, this game Palmer had a one-hitter going to the ninth, gave up a hit and a run in the ninth so it wouldn't count for this list. But would have counted if they'd pulled him for Don Stanhouse in the 8th.

I played with this a little bit. If you bump it up to three hits you get Bradish, Bundy, Guthrie, Bedard, Palmer, McNally. Once each. If you make it six innings, still only Bradish, probably because until pretty recently nobody's coming out after six pitching like that. Of course if you lower it to one or fewer hits Bradish is disqualified and you get the 48 times an Oriole has done that, but never in consecutive games. If you make it seven innings, no runs, no hit qualifier at all you get four guys who did that three straight games: Palmer, Phoebus, Pappas, Fisher. All of them were three consecutive shutouts. In '64 Pappas had a run of three straight complete game shutouts with 11 hits, five walks, 19 Ks total, best of the lot. 39 times Orioles have had consecutive seven inning, no run games. Fisher threw his three straight shutouts in late August/early September of '60 when he was 20, then his next two starts he gave up 10 runs in five innings.

Yea, but every single pitcher is about a week away from having a 7.50 ERA the rest of his injury-riddled career.

I don't think this is true at all. In fact, in the last year Baseball Reference had some polls they sent out to subscribers asking if we wanted more odds and betting information, and if they should take substantial amounts of money from gambling sites in exchange for being more in bed with that kind of thing. Might even lower subscription rates. The response was overwhelmingly negative and they didn't do it. Sean Foreman didn't take the big check because he wants to stay mainly a reference site, not a tool of the bookies.

It's sports. Sour grapes is foundational to being a fan. Every day I root for all the other teams to lose, even if that's physically impossible.

If we're doing heckling stories... In 1995 a buddy of mine and I were at a BaySox game against the Canton-Akron Indians. Top of the ninth, the BaySox are holding a slim lead and a guy named Pat Maxwell come up with two outs for the Indians. He strikes out looking. We make our way down towards the bullpens and the teams are walking by, going back to the clubhouse. We're standing among a bunch of young kids looking for autographs. My buddy yells out "Hey Pat, might want to swing next time!" My friend was a big guy, and Maxwell turns to us and very loudly yells back "F___ you you fat F___!!!" The BaySox had a promotion where if they won or scored so many runs everyone got a coupon for a free cheeseburger. Later that summer my friend and I went on a big roadtrip, Cooperstown, Toronto, Thunder Bay, St. Paul, the Field of Dreams, Wrigley... and to Akron. We went to a Canton-Akron Indians game. Before the game we went down to the field level to get autographs and got Pat Maxwell to autograph our BaySox cheeseburger coupon. When we handed it to him he had this look like, don't I remember you jerks... but he didn't say anything. My buddy passed away a few years ago, but I have a big scrapbook full of mementos of that trip, including the Pat Maxwell autographed cheeseburger coupon.

It's almost like a $300M budget can buy more players than the standard $130M. Who knew?

Casey was a cool guy circa 1915.

Stengel had about four careers before the Yanks, and of course managed the Mets afterwards. First, he was a goofball but very, very productive platoon outfielder with Uncle Robbie's Brooklyn teams in the teens and 20s. Almost like a proto-John Lowenstein, but better. Managed the Toledo Mud Hens in the 20s, then the Dodgers for three years in the 30s, the Braves in the late 30s and early 40s. Had to go back to the minors and managed in Milwaukee, KC in the AA and then the Oakland Oaks in the PCL. The last year in Oakland they were 114-74, getting him the Yanks job.

The distribution is a little skewed. The '98 Yanks and '01 Mariners are the only teams since they went to 162 games in '61 to win 110. But 12 teams have lost 110. 35 teams have lost 105, but only 14 have won 105. And some teams like the O's, Astros, Royals will be over 100 losses for multiple years. But very, very few have streaks of winning 100+. The Dodgers have been around since 1884 and this year is probably going to be their first with consecutive 100-win seasons. If not for COVID the O's probably lose 100+ four straight years.

I'll have to dig around a bit, but I've already spent too much time digging around this morning and I have some work to do. Casey Stengel and Joe Torre famously were managers of poor teams before moving on to dynastic Yankee eras. Torre was 286-420 (-134) with the Mets. Connie Mack was kind of the opposite side of the coin you're talking about. After 1914 he was 1359-962, or +397. By 1925 he was -38, having gone 528-963 over those 10 years. Then 767-452 from '25-32. Then 1001-1448 the rest of his career. I think you know this story, but Mack was a manager-owner and really had no resources outside of the team. So any time they were in danger of losing money he sold off ALL of the players he was so skilled in acquiring and developing.

Somebody made this video about liftoff of the 2022 Orioles. It's pretty good.

Sometime around 2010 I went into a general store in Virginia, over in Rockingham county where I have family, and they had a box of I think '86 Topps. They must have found it behind a self or something and just put it out to sell. I bought a few packs, didn't get anything of note. But I chewed the gum and I'm still alive.

The Orioles tweeted out this today: I get it, it's nice, it's a big, round number. And I fully understand that he was brought into an impossible situation with the team completely rebuilding from scratch. And the COVID year is a significant caveat. But he has to have the all-time record (okay, since 150+ game schedules became a thing) for longest period of time for a manager to get to 200 wins. I'm trying to think of some other manager who got to 200 wins slower and I'm not pulling any names. Doc Prothro is kind of a benchmark of managerial futility, but he only was in charge of the Phillies for three years, finishing 138-320. The early Mets teams were managed by Stengel, who already had all those Yankees and Braves wins under his belt. The terrible A's teams were well into Connie Mack's career. Okay, doing a little research... so Fred Tenney took longer. Zach Taylor (at least in games, if not calendar days), and Art Fletcher, too. Maybe a few others who had relative success later on. Those guys had the advantage of managing in 154-game schedules, so Hyde gets 3-4 wins a year on that. Interesting, I wouldn't have thought that Hyde has a better winning percentage than Alan Trammell, Derek Shelton, John Russell. Preston Gomez managed seven years with a winning percentage almost as bad as Hyde's. Don't know how next year is going to go, but I think Hyde has a good chance to move significantly up the list in a positive way.

I think I have better odds of getting mine back on the road with the proceeds of 35 years of not touching my 401(k).