DrungoHazewood

Yes, the rule is a holdover from around 100 years ago when most starts were complete games, and typically a starter was only removed if he was getting hammered or was injured. It kind of made sense in that context. Ironically it wasn't in the rulebook until something like 1950 when relievers started taking on a somewhat larger role. If you do a stathead search for 9-inning games where the starter went four innings or less but still was awarded the win you get 236 hits between 1902 and 1949. The database only goes back to about 1900, so I'm sure there were other cases in the 19th century. HOFer Herb Pennock had five wins that wouldn't count under the modern rule. Christy Mathewson had four, including a game where he started, faced three batters, and was removed for Rube Marquard (who years later was credited with an 8-inning, 12-hit, 5 run, 14 K save). I believe it was generally accepted, at least for a while, that the starter was eligible for the win if he was injured early in the game. I don't know how many of the 236 cases were because of this. The cheapest win in history just might be this one. The Indians' Duster Mails got three outs in the first, but also allowed a three-run inside-the-park homer to Braggo Roth. In the second he walked Bobby LaMotte leading off and was promptly replaced by Guy Morton. But somehow by the rules of the day he was awarded the win. I think we'd be a lot better off if the rule was changed to "the win will be awarded to the pitcher on the winning team whom the official scorer deems to have pitched most effectively regardless of how many innings he completes." It makes no sense that a starter has to get 15 outs to get a win, but technically a reliever could come in, pick off a runner to end an inning, be removed from the game and get a win if his team takes the lead despite not throwing a pitch.

I think Law's assessment was pretty harsh. But on July 1st Mateo's career OPS was .611, and as you noted he's 27. At that point he's, at best, a Cesar Izturis, Belanger-lite kind of player. Someone who could stick around for a while as a glove-only SS, or a utility player. But probably not a regular on a good team. His last six or seven weeks have been much better, but we'll see. He had a .748 OPS for 32 games for the O's last year sandwiched between a few hundred PAs of sub-.600.

Home field advantage is something that's pretty consistent across all teams and all sports. The surest way to win more on the road is to win a lot more at home.

Hey, maybe the best thing on Twitter is Footy Scran. You can tell a lot about a sports team from how epic or crappy or mind-bogglingly expensive their food is.

Yea, so don't bat the guy with the .575 OPS leadoff and Odor 3rd and Rutschman 9th and you'll be fine. Don't make the lineup by reverse order of wOBA. 20-30 runs is the difference between picking the worst lineup you could possibly put together and the theoretical best.

That, and you're driving on 95 in a big van full of people you haven't seen in person since 1996 or 2007 or 2017. They're all 40-90 years old. All of them are constantly talking over each other telling you how awesome they, their kids and their dogs are, and how they're constantly doing awesome stuff. And making sure you know the sports teams they follow are way better than everyone else's and that you should definitely care about them. Oh, and they're randomly interjecting news and scores from three days ago.

This is the point in the conversation where I talk about how lineup order is trivial compared to who is in the lineup. Literally the difference between the most and least logical lineups (given the same nine players) is 20-30 runs over 162 games. I mean, like the difference between whatever you think is right and batting Odor leadoff and whomever is in the coldest slump third. The difference between any two halfway reasonable lineups will be so small as to be undetectable.

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Me? No, I don't. I'd have all of them up right now. But the Orioles didn't ask me.

Not: Mullins CF Vavra/Westburg platoon 2B Rutschman C Santander DH Henderson 3B Mountcastle 1B Stowers RF Hays LF Mateo SS with one of the 2B and Urias as bats off the bench?

And starting their clocks, moving that last year of control left.

Two appearances in 2012, one with a leverage index of 0.79, the other 0.13. Two appearances totaling 1 2/3rds innings in games they were losing. Would be like calling up Grayson in late September to face six batters.

Whichever it was, the end result is the same. And Elias has Costanza'd the process, so @hoosiers, @Can_of_corn etc should be thrilled. It's all about stockpiling value for the future and building a sustainable pipeline. A fleeting, quixotic attempt at a wildcard isn't going to change that.

In some ways Duquette had it easy, becuase outside of Machado he was never faced with decisions like with Hall and Gunnar and Cowser. Because there were no impact prospects ready to go in the minors. He did call up Gausman after 35 innings in Norfolk, who pitched badly and had to be returned to AAA the following season. But remember the constant (and pretty legitimate) criticisms of Duquette - he always operated like he wouldn't be here in a few years. A lot of his decisions were win now at the expense of the future. Trading prospects for modest MLB upgrades, calling up guys like Gausman and Schoop and Machado with limited success in the high minors, treating allocation money and comp picks like the $5 your aunt gave you for your birthday that you blew on Twizzlers and Big League Chew. Elias is nearly 180 out on all of this, doing what much of the board wanted throughout last decade.

They've decided that going all in by calling up all the prospects and starting their clocks this year aren't worth an outside shot at a wildcard. You don't like that strategy, but that's what they're doing.

It's a long season and even the best teams lose. Everyone needs a day off sometimes, the backups get rusty on the bench, and the manager has way more insight into who's banged up than we do. Earlier this year I looked at the 116-win Mariners team and found like a half dozen games where they basically threw it away with errors and mistakes. I'm sure someone could write a thesis on all of the seemingly stupid decisions made by Frank Robinson and Roland Hemond that kept the '89 Orioles out of the playoffs.

A typical player, even one with a substantial career, probably has 80% of their value in their 20s. So far Cruz is sitting at 18%. May not be unprecedented, but definitely unusual. Especially if you don't include players who couldn't play much in their 20s due to wars, segregation, being in Japan, the majors not existing yet, etc.

Walker is about as good as you can be while hitting .218. Looks to be someone who's really taken launch angle to heart, and even Statcast says he's an elite defensive first baseman.

Always better to have the data than go by memory. So, here's the biggest percentage gains year-to-year in MLB history. I may have missed a 19th century team or two because my source list only went to 1900 and the only older team I know of from memory are the 1889-90 Louisvilles.

The 1989 Orioles improved by 32.5 games. I think I can count all the teams in the history of MLB who've improved by 30+ games on one hand. 1890 Louisvilles who have a massive asterisk, the 1936 Braves... I'm already running out of teams. Neither the '69 Miracle Mets nor the '14 Miracle Braves improved by 30 wins. If the O's go .500 the rest of the way they win 83 games and improve by 31 wins. Certainly one of the top 10 year-to-year improvements in history, maybe top five.

It almost feels like a team that we all expected to win about 67 games this year won't win every game down the stretch against some of the best teams in baseball. Strange.

If the Orioles' second-best pitching prospect has a 12.27 ERA going forward how are we ever going to contend? Right now he's on a 162 game pace to go 0-33 and allow like 250 runs. I mean, the team has a payroll lower than most Korean teams. Gunnar Henderson is supposedly the best prospect in baseball but can't even get out of AAA. Grayson Rodriguez is taking forever to come back from some kind of supposedly not serious injury, like we can trust the org that had Dylan Bundy miss years with injuries and then he wasn't any good. Elias is all about saving cash, so you can assume Hays, Mountcastle, Mullins, Santander, Lyles will all be gone this offseason. And he's probably lining up that Rutschman trade before he hits his arb years. Nashville, here we come!!!

In his last start Watkins allowed four runs in five innings to a lackluster Pittsburgh lineup. Two starts before that he allowed 10 hits in five innings. I think you're too quick to call decisions dumb. Hall had some problems yesterday in his debut, but there was certainly no guarantee that Watkins was going to roll to victory. If Watkins was "disrupted" by pitching relief on his start day he must be pretty beholden to stringent routine. Not that I think this is at all true, but do we really want to count on a pitcher who is flummoxed by coming in in the 4th inning instead of the first on the day he was scheduled to pitch? Half the threads on the board for weeks and weeks have been berating Elias for leaving top prospects in AAA while the Orioles are trying to contend. But when he finally calls up their 2nd-best pitching prospect for a spot start and he's not Steven Strasburg Elias is dumb.

You know that a 4.52 ERA in the minors doesn't typically translate to a 12.00 in the majors, right? Especially when it comes with 14 K/9 as a starter.

I don't think the strike zone is different in AAA than the majors. The batters and what they swing at, somewhat. But it was clear he was a little amped up for his first start and not hitting spots. I think Elias' plan is for him to work from the pen, that's not going to change because he wasn't spot on everything in his first few innings in the majors.