DrungoHazewood

Hernandez wasn't as ludicrous a choice as might appear at first glance. He had an 8.7 WPA, which is the 10th-highest total of all time, and the highest of any reliever in history. But the rest of the ballot reflected the fact that nobody had any consistent, logical way to combine or compare different types of production. Kent Hrbek finished 2nd? In what universe is a first baseman with 27 homers who was like 8th in the league in RBI on an 81-81 team the 2nd-best player in the league? Eddie was also a first baseman on a .500-ish team, but had more homers, RBI, walks, runs, steals. Cal's value was so, so high in part because of otherworldly defensive metrics which were unavailable then. Nevertheless, Cal hit about as well as Hrbek, while being a GG-caliber shortstop, on a team that won four more games, but Hrbek beat Cal in MVP vote points 247-1. Steve Balboni, an overweight DH/1B with 77 RBI in 126 games, got more MVP votes than Cal. Sometimes you just can't justify old award votes, because they were a few hundred writers subjectively making stuff up as they went.

Of course 90% of collage athletes never go pro in their sport, so the education they get, the degree they get, is going to get them a substantial advantage in career earnings in whatever field they end up in.

A sham. The origins of amateur sports, and this high-minded idealism surrounding the concept, started off in cricket in England 200 or more years ago. Amateurs were the members of the landed gentry, the minor royalty, who had enough inherited wealth to not need to work. Naturally the posh, upper-class athletes weren't always the best. So cricket teams started recruiting working people, miners and blacksmiths and tradesmen and the like. But to play sports, especially cricket matches that took as many as five days, you'd have to pay them to take off work. Otherwise they couldn't live. So professionals were members of the unwashed, uneducated lower classes. Amateurs were, you know, better people, at least in the traditions of that era. For many years cricket would talk about "gentlemen" and others, they'd have matches pitting gentlemen amateurs against lower-class pros. Eventually they had to stop because the pros destroyed the gentry. The modern Olympics were started in the 1890s when this sentiment was still very strong. And this carried over to other sports, most notably in the US, college sports. Over time it became convenient to talk about the purity of amateur athletics so that you wouldn't have to give the players their fair share of the profits. The Olympics eventually gave up, the final straw being the Soviets pretending their pros were amateurs and beating the US players who were more like actual amateurs. College stuck to this longer than almost anyone else, in part because it was so darned profitable for everyone except the players. And the players had no way to organize to try to fix it, and the best of them didn't have a huge incentive to upset the system because they were dreaming of NFL riches just around the corner.

Yea, I'd argue it's just as bad for football. Even good teams will often see multiple starters leave. I really only follow Virginia Tech, but it seems like half the players are on their 3rd college, and it's being touted as a huge win and a minor miracle that 90% of their starters are returning for next year. Sometimes you'll hear people talk about baseball free agency, and say stuff like "in the beginning they should have made everyone a free agent every year, the supply would be huge and nobody would get these giant contracts, it'd be awesome!" Yea... that's what we have in college sports now: everyone is on a one-year contract, and it's pretty much chaos. If you're not closely following a team you have no chance of figuring out who's playing for them. "What happened to our QB, he's awesome, is he hurt? No, no... he's playing for Missouri now, but that's okay we got this other guy you never heard of from Utah, hopefully he learned the system in the last month." Clearly this is a far worse experience for the fans, who pay for all of this with tickets that are often just as expensive as the pros. But having said all that, it was always ludicrous that Frank Beamer made $5M a year in a small town in SW Virginia, his assistant coaches $500k or more, while his players got $30k scholarships, and could be suspended a month for charging $5 for an autograph, and EA Sports had to keep names out of their college football games. Like the Olympics, it was a corrupt house of cards propped up by this nonsensical and frankly disingenuous notion about the purity of amateur sports, which was really a way to funnel $millions to the people running the organization.

If I'm aligning an infield I prefer it to go northeast-southwest. That's the way most ballparks are built.

Maybe. But there's a difference from the style of baseball I'd like to see, with lots of speed and triples and balls in play, and what wins games in reality. If he ends up as a guy who's a plus defender who steals bases at a high percentage, hits 12 triples and 10 homers with a .300 average and 60 walks that would be awesome. But he could also be 2007 Juan Pierre. Hits .293 and steals 64 bases but is still a well below-average player because his glove is just okay, he doesn't walk enough and had zero homers. Obviously rooting for option A.

Follow on question: Are there any people who have a genetic mutation that makes soap taste like cilantro?

I suppose I'd rather have cilantro taste like soap than a vestigial tail or a second evil head.

Some people have a gene switched that makes cilantro taste like soap. Sucks to be them, I guess.

I think given that Angelos didn't often spend a lot, and when he did it was often misplaced and mis-prioritized, it's reasonable to think the new ownership group that's coming in in the context and reality of 2024 would be more likely to have better spending habits. A decent chunk of Pete's cash over the last 30 years went to mediocre 32-year-old free agents, and very little to long-term or forward-thinking investments. I think it's unlikely that the combination of Rubenstein and Elias will do that.

There has been a team called the Baltimore Orioles every year since 1882, with the exceptions of 1900 and 1915. He most certainly could have attended hundreds of Orioles games between 1949 and 1953. Four-year-old Rubenstein could have been living and dying with every at bat of Stan Jok.

The 1894 Orioles only had 20 players appear on the team all year, which actually was higher than average for the era. They were: Wilbert Robinson, career rWAR 6.7 Dan Brouthers, 79.8 Heinie Reitz, 12.8 Hughie Jennings, 42.3 John McGraw, 45.7 Willie Keeler, 54.3 Steve Brodie, 19.4 Joe Kelley, 50.4 Frank Bonner, -0.7 Boileryard Clarke, 5.4 Kirtley Baker, -5.4 Sadie McMahon, 43.6 Bill Hawke, -1.0 Kid Gleason, 8.8 (bat), 33 pitch, 41.8 (total) Bert Inks: -0.5 Tony Mullane: 61.0 Duke Esper: 18.0 Stub Brown: 0.8 George Hemming: 15.1 Jack Horner: -0.1 Total: 479.4 And that's just for one year, and many of those players played the bulk of their careers in 130 or 100 or fewer game schedules. But in any case, the average 1894 Oriole (including all the short-career and ineffective guys) had a career value of 24 rWAR, or about that of Al Bumbry. Also note that six of those players are in the Hall of Fame, but not career WAR leader Mullane, nor 1919 Black Sox manager Kid Gleason. McGraw, Robinson, Jennings, Kelly, and Gleason all had significant careers as MLB managers. If you were to include anyone who appeared on the Orioles in the 1890s you could add Dirty Jack Doyle (25.9), George Van Haltren (40), Gene DeMontreville (14.9), Dan McGann (34), Jimmy Sheckard (49.5), Perry Werden* (17.7), Iron Man McGinnity (61.9), Bill Hoffer (19.4), Jerry Nops (10.9), Doc Pond (7.5), James McJames (15), and Frank Kitson (21.9). Among others. * For Minneapolis in the Western League in 1894-95 Werden hit .417 with 43 homers, and .428 with 45 homers. Through 1918 the MLB single-season HR record was 27.

I just realized the Orioles now have the opportunity for a guaranteed sell-out giveaway day: Burnes Night! Bagpipers around the stadium, and the first 10,000 fans get a book of Scottish poetry and a haggis. What's not to love? I'm ready to buy my tickets now. I already voted for option #2, but with the haggis I'd have probably gone with #1.

But it's the wrong St. Mary's College! St. Mary's of California St. Mary's of Maryland

But you have to remember that Frank played his last game in an Orioles uniform when I was not quite four months old. And I'm 52. The median age of an American is 38. The typical Orioles fan is really reaching deep to remember seeing Mike Devereaux play. Most folks don't remember the Why Not? team, much less seeing Merv Rettenmund and Don Baylor in the same outfield.

Since Burnes is from Bakersfield, California, went to college in the Bay Area, and has spent his whole career so far in Milwaukee I'm going to assume he loves crabs, Old Bay, the Ravens, the National Aquarium, and is pressing hard for Boras to wrap up an exceptionally team-friendly extension with the O's right now.

It's been so long since we've talked about the Orioles non-ironically signing a top free agent I'm not sure I can value something like that. In my mind it's just make up some $400M number and laugh when the Dodgers and Yanks actually offer that. I kind of hope the new owners don't have pockets deep enough to consider contracts like that, especially for 30-year-old free agents.

Sure, he could be. Ceilings are usually pie-in-the-sky. Felix Pie coulda been Lou Brock. I'd just take my chances with Ortiz since Hall has 495 times the odds of tearing his UCL.

At some point you have to switch out of hoarding 100% of your talent mode and start dealing from surplus. Yes, it's likely the Brewers win this from a dollars/wins perspective. But this makes the Orioles more likely to win more games and have a shot in October. And I think they're more likely to regret Ortiz more than Hall. Ortiz might be a good starting shortstop for six years, while Hall could be good but could be hurt or lose the plate at any moment. I guess worst case Hall could be Josh Hader, but I think that's unlikely. But worst case Ortiz could be like Alan Trammell or something. It's like the question I saw yesterday somewhere else where someone asked if you'd rather have a young Strawberry or Gooden, minus their off-field problems. I said Strawberry because there was always a good chance the young pitcher's arm falls off and he's never the same. Especially if he's so good he's throwing a lot of innings early.

A little sidebar, and we've talked about this, but isn't that just the dumbest, most simplistic statement ever? Like he hasn't had even a PowerPoint slide deck of basic economics? John Angelos thinks, or wants us to think, that if you charge $50 for 10,000 of something you'll make $500k, and if you charge $500 for that same thing you'll make $5M. Without any thought or regard to the idea that nobody is going to buy your $50 thing for $500. If he were to raise prices dramatically he wouldn't make any more money, because many people just won't buy what he's selling at that price. In any case, it's statements like this that make me think this deal wasn't happening with Angelos in charge long-term.

I concur with the folks who said that the new ownership group signaled a switch away from the necessary strategy of hoarding every bit of young talent on the assumption that everyone will leave between their 4th and 6th years in Baltimore. Because it's likely that no one of consequence was going to be extended, so you have to do this to win. But now they can at least occasionally trade from surplus because there's a good chance some of the talent gets locked up longer-term.

Remember when @rshack (I think that's right? - been 15 years since I thought of that name) was in the middle of a bunch of long threads here arguing with with us how it was totally legit that MASN was broadcasting in 480i standard def years after every other major channel had gone HD, because it was expensive and hard and... something about trucks and buying HD video trucks, and Angelos couldn't afford that! I mean, who needs HD? Back in my day we watched the Brooklyn Dodgers on a static-y 3" black and white set with rabbit ear antennas and it was heaven! Good times...

They were also handed a franchise that had massive history and championships and Cal Ripken and a groundbreaking brand new stadium and no one was able to convince them to not crash that into a wall.

That's certainly a lot better than subscribing to ATT/DirecTV streaming at $100+/month just to get MASN. And more legal than, for one completely hypothetical example, borrowing someone else's DirecTV login to access the MASN app.

What I want from my ownership group is a bunch of people from the same place with similar backgrounds and mostly the same thoughts and built-in feedback loops that take different and innovative ideas and crush them as the weirdo outsider concepts that they are. I mean, you really can't do better than Ol' Pete and his 82-year-old buddy Syd Thrift sitting alone in a room telling each other how right they were.