DrungoHazewood

Both of these things can be true. It's plausible that the Orioles would have 17-18 wins if they'd kept Lopez. Although in August Bautista has allowed two runs in 13 innings and hasn't blown a save while Lopez has blown two since the trade. So maybe it would even out. Never hurts to have an additional good pitcher, but Lopez hasn't exactly been Dennis Eckersley. Hopefully the Elias waiver wire machine keeps cranking this winter.

I think there'd be some justifiable surprise if the same bullpen that pitched to a mid-3.00s this year had a 5.00 next year without substantial injury or change to personnel. I'll have to look up their FIP, but I'm guessing it's nowhere close to 5.00.

In 2021 DRS had the Orioles as a -30 defensive team. This year it's +34 so far. I think DRS may overstate defensive impact compared to OAA, but I think we safe in saying 3-6 wins of the improvement are due to better defense. Despite the dimension changes to OPACY they're 8th in runs scored this year, were 14th last year. On pace to score about 30 more runs despite runs being down across the league by about a quarter run per game. But by far the biggest difference is that they're on pace to allow almost 300 fewer runs. Which has to be approaching a record. I don't know a good way of systematically searching for year-to-year improvements but that's almost two full runs a game. Last year the Orioles had the 9th-worst ERA since 1900. Truly historically bad. This year they have the 18th-worst (or 13th-best) ERA in MLB. The only two post-WWII teams worse that the '21 Orioles were a pre-humidor Rockies team and the '96 Tigers. This year they're above average, at least before adjusting for context. Yea, some part of this (say, 30 runs) is due to league runs being down probably due to the increased use of the humidor.

Why is it wrong? It's the average of the last three years. Yes, we know the dimensions changed. Park effects are very noisy, they vary year-to-year by 5 or 10 points or sometimes more when there are no dimension changes at all. We talk a lot about the wall as though it's some massive, impenetrable barrier, but the one-year park effect is just 98. In 2018 the one-year factor was 96 hitting/99 pitching and they didn't change anything. 2017 it was 96/97. 2014 it was 97/96. Yes it's harder for RHH to hit homers now, but a 98 happened every few years with the old dimensions. In the late 90s and early 2000s OPACY was regularly a moderate pitcher's park before that horrible hotel changed the prevailing winds. In 2001 the park factor was 94/95, that may have been the year they moved the plate back and rotated the field slightly.

I don't think they get to $200-250M payrolls. I assume that if they're winning consistently and drawing relatively well and media revenue doesn't tank they could be in the $125M-150M range at least sometimes. I still don't know where all the revenues go. Forbes says the O's bring in $250M a year, but they've never had a payroll much over $150M, so we're saying they have $80-100M in expenses to run the team. But we know that, for example, there are Premier League soccer teams that spend close to 90% of revenues on player salary... I'd love to see an itemized list of expenses the Orioles have to keep the lights on and the front office employed. Or the Yanks, who have $650M+ in annual revenues but only spend $200M on players but Forbes says they only make a small profit. North American owners tend to run teams as a business, expecting to at least break even annually and seeing the franchise value go up indefinitely. Nobody runs the team solely as a vanity project, taking huge losses for the glory. Anyway... I don't count on any of the payroll savings of the last few years to go to expenditures beyond revenues in the future.

Yea, probably not at all. Like three guys get arb increases, non-tender the rest, then sign a couple six-year minor league free agents. When he said the plan was to tear it down, don't spend money when it's not productive, then add payroll when they're competitive what he really meant was "screw you, Baltimore."

Since 2017 his FIP is 5.32, and in Norfolk he's sporting a 4.84 ERA. The most likely outcome of Harvey in the majors this year is an ERA north of 5.00. He's a mopup pitcher.

I know I've sometimes said something like "save today so we can spend more tomorrow" but is there any evidence of teams (Orioles or otherwise) putting significantly more money in to a team because they'd had small payrolls in prior years? I think absent real evidence we have to assume that money saved today just goes into this year's profits.

The Dodgers had a big, sprawling minor league system left over from the Branch Rickey empire. In 1957 they had three teams at either the AAA or Open classification, and 14 total minor league teams. Gentile was good, but in '57 (for example) they had Gil Hodges at first in the majors, 1B Steve Bilko had 56 homers for the LA Angels, Norm Larker was the 1B at St. Paul and hit .323/.399/.502. So Gentile was kind of stuck. When he finally got to Baltimore he was 26. Played really well in 1960 and of course '61. Had a bit of bad luck on balls in play in '62. And then in '63 they changed the strike zone and ignored the big mounds, and runs fell off considerably. He never had an OPS+ under 122 with the O's, so he was still hitting relative to the league. But when they traded him to KC he was 30 and Boog needed to get out of the outfield.

What are the league averages in those situations? Halfway kidding...

Right. Ayala was a prototypical 1970s-80s Earl Weaver player made possible by 9-man pitching staffs. Ayala was a socially responsible Delmon Young. His only real tool was an ability to hit left-handed pitching. The Mets and Cards gave away Ayala because who needs a defensively suspect LF/RFer who OPSes .700? Earl said who cares if he can't field, can't run and can't hit righties, I can use him for 150 at bats a year and sub him for a better fielder when we're ahead.

I don't think he lost the clubhouse, he lost the owner. This was in Angelos' mini-Steinbrenner era where he fired Jon Miller, John Lowenstein, and a string of managers including Johnson, Oates, Regan, Miller. Fired Johnny Oates, the nicest guy ever, after he went 63-49. Fired Davey when he won 98 and was manager of the year. I never heard that the players didn't like Davey. And, yes, Davey resigned, didn't get fired. But the writing was on the wall.

Something like that would be best case. Posey goes to Cooperstown without much controversy.

So that's what happened to Jackie Brandt!

I don't know if that means anything. We can hope. Most good catchers have been catching somewhere, minors, high school, college, little league, a lot since they were teenagers.

That sounds pretty reasonable. They have an out if he turns into some kind of Fernando Tatis-Joey Belle.

Yea, that ingrate players association unilaterally changed the terms of the deal in '75.

Johnny Bench's last productive season was at 32. Yogi's last 3-win season was at 34. Carter 32. Ivan Rodriguez 34. Fisk was almost suspiciously good in his 40s... Piazza's last 3-win season was at 33, except one comeback year at 37. Mauer stopped catching (and playing that well) at 30. Dickey was basically a part-time player from 33-on. It's a reach to expect any catcher to be good past his early 30s.

I don't know why people keep saying something isn't going to happen just because it never has before. Plus, they locked up Brooks and Boog and a bunch of others to lifetime contracts right after they signed as amateurs.

I'm still a little skeptical of 14-year contracts for 22-year-olds. I like the stepladders and incentives and relatively low AAV, but it's still 14 years. He could have a near Hall of Fame peak and still have eight years on the back end where he's almost useless. He could be Vada Pinson or Cesar Cedeno. I doubt anyone would sign Rutschman to a similar deal because there's a much higher chance a catcher doesn't make it to his mid-to-late 30s productively. I could see Adley on an 8- or 10-year deal, maybe.

You also need to factor in that the league hits 15 or 20 points less than it did in Scott's career. Context-adjusted maybe they're the same, but Stowers is still likely to hit 20 points lower.

Also because the typical fan judges a manager by "if play resulted in good thing, it was a good decision, if it wasn't a good thing the manager is stupid." Without any acknowledgment whatsoever that about 67% of plate appearances result in an out.

It's the Twitterverse. If Hyde has Mateo batting 8th instead of 7th tonight people are giving up on the wildcard. And others would be giving up if he batted him 7th instead of 8th. First rule of social media: All coaching/managing/GM decisions are dumb, except possibly in the five minutes after a come-from-behind victory.

Ehh... Scott struck out in 20.7% of PAs, and less than 20% in AAA. Stowers was at 25.5% in AAA this year. So, Luke Scott minus 20 points of BA?

Someone in the Miguel Sano, Chris Carter, Steven Souza, Mark Reynolds, Chris Davis, Mark Bellhorn, Ian Happ, Patrick Wisdom, Kyle Schwarber, Mike Zunino continuum. Ryan Braun hit .296 and never struck out 130 times in a season. Stowers struck out 171 times between A+ and AAA last year. I'll be quite surprised if Stowers ever hits .296 in a single season, much less his career.