DrungoHazewood

I think it's like all of the stuff that happens before their MLB career starts. It's just what you have to accept to become a MLB player. They'd rather not eat peanut butter sandwiches three times a day in A ball, they'd rather not share an economy apartment with six of their teammates in Muskegon, Michigan. They'd rather they weren't drafted by the Royals when they grew up in Miami. But once they get to the show and start making $100k a month it's all good, and why shouldn't the next group have to do the same things I did? Especially when the guys who're mostly likely to have service time manipulated are also the ones most likely to have 12-year careers where they make $100M.

Mullins had a long track record of not hitting well right handed in the minors.

Roughly 90% of criticism of in-game strategy in baseball is based on the fact that this particular strategy didn't result in a run being scored 30 seconds prior to the criticism. With little or no thought given to whether or not it was a justifiable choice given the odds of all possible outcomes of that play. Corollary: No strategic choice in any MLB game has ever gone publicly unquestioned since the internet became a thing.

He has 84 PAs against lefties. I'd give him another 600 or 800 before I thought about doing anything drastic.

A typical player sees a 14 point drop in wOBA when DHing compared to when they're playing in the field. Santander has only DH'd about 200 PAs so far in his career, so we don't have much to go on. So far he hasn't shown much difference. But I wouldn't count on his numbers getting better if he was relieved of defensive responsibilities.

Remember boys and girls, with two strikes you need to choke up a few inches, cut down your swing, and just try to put the ball in play.

I just meant that the other team would take on all or almost all of the remainder of the contract. If the Orioles were to even entertain a Trout deal I'd assume they'd want the Angels to pick some of the current tab.

I haven't looked it up, but I'd guess the Orioles didn't graduate a single good, long-term regular in half the years since 1985. Might depend on how you define long term regular. Like the 2004 Orioles graduated Bedard and Cabrera. Does Cabrera count since he made 155 starts for the team over five years but was mostly awful?

But there are teams that could offer half that package and $200M.

They'll just trade him to the Yanks or Dodgers. They'll take on the entire contract and give them back some decent prospects. Like the Stanton deal.

I don't disagree, I wouldn't go spend millions on the next Sal Fasano. But I expect Handley to hit .200/.275/.350. And I don't know if Handley can frame at all, but hopefully in a few years it won't matter.

I always assume that players who walk a lot in the minors but don't have much power will see their BB% fall significantly upon promotion. Remember when Joey Rickard had a .390 OBP in the minors and a .300 in the majors?

I'm sure it's part of the equation. But the bigger part is that other teams will offer better packages than Hays, Mullins, Hall and some other stuff. And the Orioles are not a team that needs to take on a Miguel Cabrera type contract. And, if I were the Orioles I wouldn't offer that deal. I don't know that I'd offer any deal that the Angels were likely to accept. The key to sustainable Orioles success is a pipeline of top prospects to continuously refresh the MLB roster with cheap talent. It's not to trade six or seven players for 32-year-old stars on $400M contracts.

1) That's why the Angels aren't going to be trading Trout for lottery tickets, they'll be trying to trade him for players like Gunnar Henderson and Grayson Rodriguez. Players who, if healthy, will give them six years of good-to-great performance, low cost, with fairly low risk. 2) I mean I guess anything is possible, but Cedric Mullins is 27 and his entire career is less valuable than five of Mike Trout's individual seasons. And Austin Hays' entire career would be Mike Trout's 9th-best season. I understand the risk and expense of Mike Trout and his contract. But nobody is going to shop him around looking for mid-career 2-3 win players. They're going to be looking for multiple top prospects.

Who wouldn't trade the best player of his generation for a couple of pretty good regulars and some prospects headlined by #60 overall in MLB? Also, better pull this off now before the game developers fix the bug that equates 16 0.5 win players with one eight win player.

I suppose. He is 24 and has hit .215 with a .677 OPS in the minors. Never played above AA. He's probably going a Paul Bako, Jeff Tackett, Ronny Paulino, Caleb Joseph, Taylor Teagarden kind of player. Solid defense, .600ish OPS. Might struggle to hit .200 most years.

Nobody's really used a sweeper in years. Maybe at the youth level, but not pros. Makes it really hard to run an offside trap. Wait... what?

Giolito belongs in Topeka? He has a few indicators that are down from last year, like his fastball velocity is off one mph, his K rate is down a little. But he still is striking out three batters for every walk, his HR rate is very similar, he's still striking out over a batter an inning. His metrics like FIP and xFIP and xERA are significantly better than his ERA. Really the main difference is that his BABIP, which is highly susceptible to randomness, is .357. 60 or 70 points higher than his career mark. He would clearly be the Orioles best starter, so Topeka must be killing it.

Didn't you hear Dave Johnson? He was practically begging Mateo to swing at the first pitch, since the pitcher hadn't thrown a strike yet so there was every chance he was going to groove one to get it over. And the pitcher was expecting Mateo to have the take sign knowing he'd thrown four straight balls, so it was unlikely he was concerned about Mateo swinging. Dave Johnson was a DH-era pitcher and perhaps not an analytical genius, but that does kind of make sense. Mateo just hit the ball in exactly the wrong place.

I've not seen anything that indicates any resolution, I think your first sentence is fine if you get rid of "some" and "older". If you live in the house by the Field of Dreams you're still blacked out of six different teams. I think MLB knows that they make way more money off of mandatory basic cable fees for MASN than they would off of people choosing to plunk down $125 for MLB's own streaming package. So any little thing they can do to stop people from cutting the cord.

Kiko.

If Sanders appears in a game for the Orioles he'll join Mickey Scott, Craig Lefferts, Edwin Jackson, and Will Ohman as the only Orioles born in Germany. Or major leaguers of any Baltimore team for that matter. And he doesn't have to do all that much to become the greatest German Oriole of all time. Or Die Größterdeutscheroriolekrugallerzeiten.

What a strange world it is where you can have an 18:1 K:BB ratio and over a K an inning, and a 5.40 ERA. In the entire history of the majors, even going back to when it took 9 or more balls for a walk, only five pitchers have ever had a K:BB ratio of 18:1 in 30+ innings. Two of them are Dennis Eckersley seasons, and the other three were in 1875, 1879, and 1882. None of them had an ERA over 2.59. I have to think there's something salvageable about a guy who has 127 Ks and 16 walks in 105 AAA innings.

We should go back and find some threads from Labor Day. They were 21-30 (66 win pace), lost 10-0 to the Mariners, were 14 games out, and just had a crowd of 8,074. Bet there were a few posts that day asking if .500 was a realistic goal for '23.

What's it looking like for the last playoff spot, like 88 wins? If the Orioles win 88 games that would be a single year improvement of 36. In the last 130 years the biggest year-over-year improvement is 35 games by the '98-99 D'Backs who signed Randy Johnson, Steve Finley, Luis Gonzales, Buyng-Hyun Kim, Armando Reynoso, and Todd Stottlemyre in the offseason. The 1989 Orioles improved by 32.5 games, the 2012 Orioles by 24. So... odds are long. But youneverknow. Gregg Olson was on both the 1989 Orioles and the 1999 D'backs. Anyone got a way to find him, get him here for the stretch run? I think he's on the Twitter...