DrungoHazewood

Plate discipline tends to get better throughout a player's career, but it's exceedingly rare for someone with 21 walks and 115 Ks to become someone who walks a lot and really controls the strike zone. It would be a win if Mateo ever had 50 walks and just 130 strikeouts in a season.

Have you ever brought an eight year old to the game? Even my dad, who had zero problem saying no to annoying kids begging for stuff, bought me a pennant and a baseball bat pen at my first game in '79. Many times my wife and two boys went for a walk about the sixth inning when they'd get squirmy and came back with random O's merchandise.

The pen has a 3.16 ERA as of now. The ROS Depth Chart projections look to be about a run worse than that. That seems pretty pessimistic. I wonder how they're doing park factors? Most of the Orioles' relievers do have an xFIP a run or more higher than their ERAs. Although all the top 10 teams in bullpen ERA are outperforming their xFIPS. They Yanks by nearly a full run, Houston by 0.70.

What were the projections for those players at the beginning of the year? Kind of a rhetorical question, I don't know if they keep those archived anywhere handy. But I'd be very surprised if their projections were just the beginning of the years numbers scaled to the number of games left. I would think they'd be something like (1 x two years ago) + (2 x last year) + (1.5 x so far this year) / 4.5. Or perhaps something more complicated incorporating xwOBA and batted ball data. And using some kind of MLEs for years where he was in the minors. It's not at all Fangraphs-y to project someone like Mateo by ignoring what's now 63% of his career MLB PAs.

Hopefully my digressions aren't too boring, but on nonsensical lineups we have the 1982 San Diego Padres. Their most common 1-2-3 hitters were Gene Richards (.286/.333/.359), Tim Flannery (.264/.317/.330), and Gary Templeton (.247/.279/.352). Templeton had a .624 OPS batting third in over 500 PAs that year, the worst mark since 1901. They basically batted 2022 Rougned Odor third almost every game. Their three best hitters were Sixto Lezcano, Ruppert Jones, and Terry Kennedy, who usually batted 4-5-6. Somehow they finished 7th of 12 NL team in runs scored. More evidence that lineups just don't really matter. The 1987 Cardinals batted Tom Herr (.677 OPS overall, .645 with two homers in the three hole) 3rd 116 times and they finished 2nd in the NL in runs scored. The 1991 Expos batted Tim Wallach (.225/.292/.334) cleanup almost the whole season. They had Delino DeShields, Larry Walker, Marquis Grissom, Ivan Calderon, and Andres Galarraga and finished last in the league in runs scored.

There's no way a normal family can afford that kind of thing more than once in a long while. I have a buddy who's a huge soccer fan and wanted to go to that Bayern match to boo them with me, but he has three kids and his wife doesn't work outside the home so $600+ for him was a non-starter. I have to think that season ticket holders mostly don't eat or drink at the park and find ways to limit parking costs and similar. Either that or they're rich. If you had a 15-game plan just for yourself and you spent like $60-70 on each ticket, $30-50 on food and drink, $20 to park, that's $2000 a year for one person and less than 20% of the schedule. Anyone with a full season plan has to be some kind of senior executive or something.

That's a ton of money for a single ballgame. I'll try remember what I paid when I went with the family to see DC United get obliterated by Bayern last month. Tickets were a huge gouge, about a $100 each, so $400 there. Food was probably $100 or so. Didn't buy any merchandise. Parked at Ft. McNair, so that was also free. Total of $500. Not cheap. But for a normal game I could have gotten tickets for half that, so total would have been more like $300.

Some of the more ill-conceived leadoff choices in history: [code] Rk I Player Split Year G OBP GS PA AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI SB CS BB SO BA SLG OPS 1 Horace Clarke Batting 1st 1968 135 .249 133 586 561 51 125 6 1 2 23 18 7 20 45 .223 .248 .497 2 Dave Cash Batting 1st 1978 116 .270 116 519 489 43 117 15 1 2 33 7 5 22 20 .239 .286 .557 3 Whitey Alpermann Batting 1st 1907 118 .272 118 517 495 42 122 20 14 2 32 5 6 60 .247 .356 .627 4 Don Kessinger Batting 1st 1967 137 .275 135 621 573 60 132 10 7 0 41 5 13 33 80 .230 .272 .548 5 Ivy Olson Batting 1st 1920 140 .275 140 655 630 69 160 13 10 1 44 4 6 18 20 .254 .311 .586 6 Don Kessinger Batting 1st 1968 154 .276 154 687 641 61 151 13 7 1 32 9 9 34 86 .236 .282 .558 7 Tito Fuentes Batting 1st 1966 111 .277 111 503 485 58 128 20 2 8 37 6 3 7 51 .264 .363 .640 8 Bert Campaneris Batting 1st 1972 145 .280 145 666 612 82 148 25 2 8 30 49 14 31 85 .242 .328 .608 9 Alfredo Griffin Batting 1st 1980 150 .280 150 688 645 62 162 26 15 2 41 16 23 24 58 .251 .347 .628 10 George Case Batting 1st 1946 114 .281 114 523 480 46 109 23 4 1 22 28 11 33 38 .227 .298 .579 11 Del Unser Batting 1st 1968 148 .281 148 665 612 62 140 13 7 1 27 11 6 44 66 .229 .278 .559 12 Sandy Alomar Batting 1st 1972 134 .284 134 586 537 54 124 19 2 1 20 17 9 41 51 .231 .279 .563 13 Brian Hunter Batting 1st 1999 111 .285 110 509 466 71 112 12 6 4 33 38 7 31 76 .240 .318 .603 14 Rabbit Maranville Batting 1st 1916 127 .285 127 562 501 64 112 11 12 3 28 26 42 57 .224 .311 .596 15 Bill Virdon Batting 1st 1962 146 .285 146 665 623 80 152 27 10 6 44 5 13 36 63 .244 .348 .633 16 Bert Campaneris Batting 1st 1971 131 .286 131 607 567 80 142 18 4 5 47 34 6 29 64 .250 .323 .609 17 Ray Powell Batting 1st 1920 139 .286 138 631 577 65 132 12 12 6 33 9 16 42 79 .229 .322 .608 18 Horace Clarke Batting 1st 1970 157 .287 157 731 685 81 172 24 2 4 46 23 7 35 36 .251 .310 .596 19 Hughie Critz Batting 1st 1930 132 .289 132 624 588 96 152 17 11 4 49 7 2 25 29 .259 .345 .634 20 Enzo Hernandez Batting 1st 1971 137 .289 137 599 534 55 116 9 3 0 12 21 5 51 34 .217 .245 .534

Here I am thinking about brushing up on my German so that in 10 years I can retire and spend summers in the Alps where the cost of living is all the money.

Right, and that $200k is going to be taxed since you're living on the interest/investment gains you realize and pull out. So it's like a $200k salary that you still have to pay taxes and health insurance and the like from. So it's a very good foundation, but not some kind of lavish lifestyle with mansions and butlers and Ferraris. But you could pick and choose a job based on whatever you want to do without financial considerations.

I was trying to think of a team that cost itself the most runs with lineup construction, and the first thing that came to mind was one of the early 80s Pirates teams with Omar "The Outmaker" Moreno. In 1982 he was the Pirates' everyday leadoff hitter despite hitting .245/.292/.315. He got nearly 700 PAs from the leadoff spot with an overall OPS+ of 68, by far the worst on the team. He stole 60 bases but was caught a league-leading 26 times. He made 535 outs, which is 9th all-time. 1st is the 1980 version of Omar Moreno with 560. 535 outs is the equivalent of all the outs in 19.8 games. The Pirates finished in 4th place, eight games out of first. And probably cost themselves 10 or 15 runs just through poor lineup construction.

Moving players around in the batting order is like taking homeopathic medicines, you know the ones that are like a drop of some obscure plant oil in ten gallons of water? It's not really hurting anything and some people really believe in it even if there's zero evidence it does anything. But sometimes the placebo effect works, so why not? No exaggeration whatsoever, if you bat your worst hitter first and your second worst third and so on, that'll cost the team 10 or 20 runs over 162 games. You need an electron microscope to tell the practical difference between Rutschman batting 2nd and 5th. Here's some math to support this. Let's say you have Player A, and he leads off every day and gets 730 PAs. He creates 125 runs, or 0.17 per PA. Player B is a defense-first shortstop who bats 9th. He gets 600 PAs, as the difference between the #1 and #9 slots is about 130 PA/season. He creates just 50 runs, or 0.08 per PA. What happens when we swap them in the order? Player B gets 730 PAs and creates 58 runs. Player A, stuck in the nine hole gets just 600 PAs and creates 102 runs. The difference between the two scenarios is 14 or 15 runs over the full year. That's the impact of a nonsensically extreme lineup choice, 14 or 15 runs over a full year. Or a run every 11 games, maybe 2-3 runs a month.

It's the internet. No matter how well a team is doing the web finds a way to connect the pathologically bitter and gives them a platform to express their belief that the next inning, the next pitch, the next at bat... it all spells certain doom for the franchise.

I don't know, I'm not that familiar with the $1M+ a year tax brackets. Feel free to change the math to whatever you think is appropriate. If he got to keep half instead of 2/3rds, then he has to make due with $175k a year.

You're trying to argue that the Orioles shouldn't call up someone who is playing very well in AAA because he's flawed in some way. I was just pointing out that almost every promotion involves weighing strengths and weaknesses and making a judgment as to whether or not the player is likely to be better than whomever he would replace.

If you want to learn about WAR you should go to bb-ref or Fangraphs, where they break down all the components that add up to the final total. Phillips was a 2.4-win player mainly because he was a +11 fielder in about half-time play (by DRS), which makes him one of the better defenders in baseball. No, I'm not going to tell you anything is perfect.

Paradoxically, poor teams tend to have better traditional fielding stats, including double plays turned, than good teams. I think the Orioles are quite good at turning two and metrics like the 79% turned/opportunity reflect that. But just the fact that KC leads the league points to the fact that one of the primary drivers of DPs turned is opposition runners on base. If you find a great pitching team, one with a ton of Ks, you'll usually see their fielders pretty far down the GIDP list because they just don't get the opportunities. And no matter what you have to eventually get 27 outs for the game to be over.

Show me a team that had a 24-year-old .900 OPS player in the minors at a position of need that refused to call him up until he fixed all his flaws. I'd like to see a team that actually operates in this manner. Do you remember Russell Branyan? 11-year career in the majors. If the Indians had waited to call him up until he'd gotten his strikeouts down to some arbitrarily low level he'd still be waiting for that debut at 46. What you're asking for just doesn't happen, and it doesn't matter because you don't judge players on the basis of their just last four PAs or batters faced.

I could put together a list of approximately 5,000 major league players who ended up with good careers who didn't dominate the minors. No exaggeration whatsoever.

He's 34 and since the start of the 2020 season Pham has a .709 OPS, and a -4 defender. He was acquired for a PTBNL because he's not an .800 OPS player. In 1150 PAs he's been worth two wins, or about one per full season. If a month ago your crystal ball said Pham was a better acquisition than calling up Stowers, good for you. It wasn't based on any real evidence.

Should be. Let's say he keeps $10M after taxes. Spends or gives away $5M, remittances back home. Puts the other $5M in some kind of relatively conservative investment making 5% a year. That means with a bit of self restraint he could live on $250k a year indefinitely. That's not too bad.

$15.5M to sign out of Cuba seven years ago, right? How much of that do think he still has? Anybody know what he drives? Hopefully he was smart about it.

Actually, no matter what happens the Orioles own six years of Kremer's career. They could trade it. Or he might not be good or healthy enough to play six years. But the Orioles still own it.

I believe he's a six year minor league free agent. As someone who turns 26 in October and has a career AAA OPS of .569 I don't know what would be next for him. At this point he doesn't look like a MLB player at all. Maybe somewhere like Korea, or an indy league?

You mean 1/3 of a season of Manny, who was never going to resign with an Orioles team on the verge of a complete teardown and rebuild? Even if Kremer is the only real value the Orioles got back they traded 300 PAs of Machado for six years of Kremer.