DrungoHazewood

The 2019 draft has already provided more value than the Orioles' 1980, 1981, 1983, 1984, 1985, 1986, close to 1993, 1994, close to 1995, 1998, 2000, 2002, about even with 2004, close to 2005 and 2008. There are another half dozen or so they'll pass in the next 2-3 years. And I didn't go back before 1980. So it's likely that by 2024 or 2025 this will already be a well above-average draft for the Orioles, with probably 10+ years of accumulating value after that.

There are no easy games. The 2019 Orioles, loser of 108 games, won 15 games against playoff teams.

Where do you want to draw the line? There are 13 or 14 current HOF pitchers with a lower rWAR total than Morris. Not even including the Negro Leaguers. Probably eight or nine if you exclude the relievers. Morris was quite a bit better than guys like Rube Marquard and Jesse Haines, and that's before you adjust for the slope of history and the fact those guys never faced an integrated team. No matter where you draw your line in the sand there will always be borderline cases. I was never a Morris advocate, but the Hall is what it is, and Marquard, Haines have been in for over 50 years. They put Jack Chesbro in in 1946 and he had about 5-6 good seasons, one really good season. My opinion is that they broke the model of only inducting the super-super stars around WWII, and we're never going back. So it's a big Hall, like it or not.

I like the math, but this is only valid if you treat Adley and Gunnar as randomly selected MLBers, which we know they're very much not. Also they're not independent. Their combined successes will lead to multiple championships, which adds to their HOF resumes.

#BainesbetterthenBradyAnderson #BradywasbetterthanTommyMcCarthy

What percentage of players in MLB history are Hall of Famers? There are 268 players who've been inducted as players. Probably a handful more who were really players but pre-1876, so let's just say 275. Gunnar Hendeson was the 22,806th player in MLB history according to Baseball Reference. That means 1% of MLB players get a plaque, give or take. We know that Henderson (and Rutschman) are more highly regarded than an average MLB player, far more, really. Those 22,806 includes Jeff Tackett, Ryan Flaherty, Caleb Joseph, David Newhan. Players who had essentially 0% chance of going to the Hall when they were called up. They were often just too old to have 10 productive years, and just not talented enough. If you look at #1 overall picks there were 45 between 1965 and 2010. ARod, Chipper, Griffey, Mauer, Baines... all either HOFers, soon to be, or would be if not for PEDs. Bryce Harper is a probable HOFer. Strasburg, Cole, Correa, Price... plausible. So among #1 picks we're looking at let's say seven out of 45, or 16%. #2 there are three out of 45, or 7%. But think about it... these draft comps aren't that gret because even top picks have to navigate the minors, and many don't get there with the fanfare of Gunnar or Adley. There have been five #2s through 2015 who never played in the majors. Another 15 or so didn't really do anything in the majors. Pick a name... Tyler Houston. #2 overall in '89, had a .686 OPS in the minors, didn't reach the majors until 1996, clearly not on Gunnar or Adley's level as a prospect. What would probably be useful is to look at Baseball America top five overall prospects and see what level of success they had. But I don't know of a simple way to do that. They've been handing out Rookie of the Year awards since 1947, one for MLB the first two years, one for each league since so 134 total. We don't have a great gauge on the careers of the recent ones, so lets knock off the last 14 and stop at 2015. Roughly 25 of them are or will/should be HOFers, or 21%. So I haven't really quantified their odds, but it has to be much more than 1%. Just not quite sure how much more. I'd guess something like 10-20%. If they have a solid first 2-3 years that will go up pretty rapidly.

There will be many Gunnar Henderson highlights, enjoy the time in Greece!

90% of his chances involve catching a ball someone else throws to you at chest height. The large majority of a 1B chances are very routine. But a lot of the important chances are ranging far off the bag and/or fielding very sharply hit balls that would otherwise become hits. Basically being a third baseman who doesn't have to throw as far. A lot of the best first basemen would be 2B/SS/3B but they can't because they're left-handed. I would rather have a 5' 10" first baseman who could handle shortstop than some 6' 6" guy who isn't mobile but could reach the occasional wild throw.

Short players can play first base.

I'm not 100% sure, but we used to joke pretty regularly here on the Hangout about how he was considerably shorter than his listed height.

And probably 50% of players listed at 6' 0" are really somewhere between 5' 9" and 5' 11" but don't want to be listed under 6'. Because there's a prejudice against small players, and at least some of that is warranted. There was a year (1999? 2000? somewhere in there) that the O's didn't list anyone under 6' despite Jay Gibbons being about 4' 11". I kid, but he's not much taller than me, and I'm 5' 7". Anyway, I think players can certainly handle first if they're not really tall, but shorter players with defensive skills (who aren't lefties) are usually put at second or third, so the 6' 6" oaf can get in the lineup. I think Ozzie Smith (5' 10") probably would have been the greatest defensive first baseman of all time by a considerable margin if he'd been allowed to try. But of course he had more value as the greatest defensive shortstop of all time.

"I'd expect him in the lineup most nights, with rest against tough lefties until he proves he can hit them." I assume that's just a throw-away statement. Nobody hits tough lefties really well over a long period. The assumption for everyone is that they have a 75 or 100 point split between L/R pitchers. Sometimes they have a little bigger or smaller but that's almost always just random variation. If Henderson hits, which he will, he'll hit everyone and he'll play almost all the time. Elias knows all of this, Connolly's statement is just filler.

That's only because he's sad that he's not in Baltimore. If he was still here that would be .544.

Weighting of said evidence: 0.01.

Or he could hit like Jim Traber, Chris Davis, Chito Martinez, Don Baylor, or David Newhan, all of whom OPS'd in the .900-1.000+ range in their first 30 MLB games. Manny wasn't even hitting that well in AA, but had a .765 in 2012. Eddie had a .759 his first 30 games. It's not terribly likely that the best player in the International League is going to hit like Odor for a month.

If you want to use a metric that counts singles, doubles, triples, and homers as the same thing and ignores walks and HBP, sure.

No. If anything it's gotten the "Orioles are cold, heartless SOBs" stuff out of the way already, so we won't have to hear it as much this offseason when they don't sign him to an ill-advised 3/60 deal.

You can't risk a Pascual Perez situation with Odor. Too important.

Negatives for Bell: He's a 2-3 win player entering his 30s, so anything more than a 2-3 year deal for moderate salary is kind of meh. His value has been solid when he hits .280-300, not so much when he doesn't. Positives: I can finally get rid of the Josh Bell negative connotations from associating the name with our failed third baseman of the future from the George Sherrill deal.

Maybe @Frobby can offer up some legal insight, but I wonder how this might impact the CBA? I don't know this for sure, but right now decisions made about the minor leagues can be made unilaterally, right? If the Majors want to cut loose 40 affiliated teams they just do it. But what happens if the 1000 players on those 40 teams are now union members? Will the CBA now cover things like how many affiliated teams and affiliated minor league players the MLB supports? What spurred this thought is the idea that if minor leaguers are unionized, this would heavily incentivize the MLB owners to minimize the number of affiliates. If the MLBPA wants a $50k minimum salary in the minors the owners might say, sure... but we're going to just two or three levels of affiliated minors. Let everyone else go to the indy leagues or Mexico or Korea or the unemployment office or something.

No way they go from $25M to $100M in one offseason. That's nearly impossible.

You can't have it both ways. You can't expect every word to be a literally true prediction of the future, but then expect him to say that absolutely we're going to beat out 29 other teams trying to sign big talent. They are going to try, and it's a near certainty that some of their targets really want to play somewhere else and they won't get them.

Seriously? You've been around long enough to know how to interpret GM-talk. In what world does "sure... he's got a chance to make the team" mean "we're going to give every possible chance to a guy who's never pitched above AA in an org that is very conservative about promotions and expects to win 65 games"? This is a purposely naïve take. Anyone who has even casually followed the Elias Orioles knew he meant it was highly unlikely. You have to put things in context, and the 2023 Orioles context is very different than early 2022. This is almost like Trea hearing MacPhail say they need a big bat and interpreting it as they're obviously going to make an 8/300 offer to Teixiera.

He had an .890 OPS for 37 games. That's not nothing, but his .758 career mark is more relevant.

From my perspective he's a guy who played better the last two years and he has some positive to very positive batted ball numbers that indicate he could bounce back. In 1st year arb he's only going to get a couple million. I don't think bringing him back, along with some internal competition, is big risk.