DrungoHazewood

I think it depends on how the team is doing in a few weeks. If the Orioles are in a wildcard spot and Odor is hitting .190 and Nevin is still here it'll be harder and harder to justify keeping the #1 prospect down so they can have his last arb year in 2029. The Orioles have about a 1% chance of winning the Series, but you can't really have a September playoff race where your 3rd, 6th, and 11th best players are not on the team because 2029.

I don't want to derail the thread, but I hope they don't ban the shift. I just don't get why you'd quash innovation that helps creative teams so you can boost Joey Gallo and Chris Davis trying to hit .220.

This year. It would be quite surprising if he's still here in the spring.

Perhaps it's that he gets really good jumps and is faster than he looks. They use tracking technology that's accurate to fractions of an inch, that reliably measure velocity and hang time and fielder position and sprint speed. If Schoop leads the league in OAA it means he's getting to more balls than anyone else given his number of opportunities. Part of it may be that he profiles more as a third baseman (strong arm, not fast) so he may be positioned in ways that let him get to more balls and use his arm to make up for being father from first than anyone else. He also leads the league in innings at second by 70, so he's had more opportunities to compile OAA than anyone else. It's like leading the league in RBI when you've played 100 games and nobody else has more than 90.

Yes and no. Before wildcards you could be the 1980 Orioles, win 100 games, second best record in baseball, and just go home after 162. While three teams with worse records get to go to the playoffs. Or even better in the pre-division era you could be the 1963 Orioles, win 86 games, finish 10 over .500, and your season is essentially over in late July when you find yourself 10 games out. Every year you'd have 50, 60, 70% of the league going through the motions not long after the All Star break. Pennant races were fun when you were the Yanks or Dodger or Giants or the 1966-1983 Orioles. But no so much if you're the Phillies or the Senators or something and you knew in January that it would take divine intervention to catch the big teams. If we were still in the pre-1968 setup the only time since 1980 the O's would have played a postseason game was 1997. Even the 1983 Orioles had a worse record than the White Sox.

There's a kernel of truth in the bolded part, but it may not be as significant as you think. The 2014 Orioles were 11th in OBP, 2nd in SLG, 6th in runs, and 1st in homers. The 2022 Orioles are 11th in OBP, 7th in SLG, 7th in HRs, but also 9th in runs. So they're about the same in getting on base, worse in homers, but also they don't score as many runs relative to the league. Yes, they are about 25 runs ahead on the bases. 2022 so far is +12 in baserunning runs, tops in the AL. The '14 team was last at -13. But I don't think there's any evidence that you win more in the postseason with fewer homers and more steals. In fact, since you generally face better pitchers in the postseason sequential run scoring involving getting guys on base, stealing and getting several hits per inning is less likely to be successful than just hitting homers. However they get there you'd rather have the 6th-best scoring team come October than the 9th-best.

OAA takes the ball's trajectory, velocity and hang time, the player's positioning prior to contact, how far the ball is going to land from the fielder's starting spot, and determines a catch likelihood based on all the data compiled in the majors over some period of time. So, basically, a ball hit 25' from Cedric Mullins with a hang time of 2.3 seconds has X% catch probability based on all the data of similar balls hit in the majors. The fielder is credited or debited OAA based on how likely it was that he catches that ball. It's exactly what you want out of a defensive metric. I don't have any real reason to be skeptical of it.

I kind of doubt that either of those deals were negotiated mostly on the basis of how either of them hit in their last 70 PAs against lefties.

So I was wondering about the best draft classes in history, and I should have known better but the '19 Orioles draftees are going to have to really overachieve to even get in that conversation. Even if Adley and Gunnar both become HOF candidates they're going to need a lot of help. For example, in the 1968 Dodgers drafted Steve Garvey, Ron Cey, Davey Lopes, Doyle Alexander, Bill Buckner, Tom Paciorek, Joe Ferguson, Geoff Zahn and Bobby Valentine. All of whom had long careers, many all star appearances. Totaling 236 WAR. The '83 Red Sox took Clemens, Ellis Burks and some other minor players. The '76 Tigers took Trammell, Morris, Dan Petry, and Steve Kemp, and drafted but didn't sign Ozzie Smith. The O's best draft ever may be 1978 when they took Cal, Mike Boddicker, and Larry Sheets.

The Hall voters don't really know what to do with relievers, so they just kind of randomly induct ones with decent stories. The 70s and 80s were a weird time where relievers got probably outsized credit for their work. Especially in years where there wasn't a dominant starter. Remember 1989, when Mark Davis (1.85 ERA in 92 innings) won the Cy Young over guys like Orel Hershiser (2.31 ERA in 256 innings)? Fingers wasn't actually a terrible Cy Young choice in '81. It was a strike year with just over 100 games and he threw 71 innings to a 1.04. His rWAR of 4.2 was only slightly behind Steve McCatty (who had just 91 Ks in 185 innings) and better than any other starter. He was 10th in overall WAR in the AL, so not really a justifiable MVP. Should have gone to Rickey or Dewey Evans.

Jim Kaat just got in, and Mussina is very clearly a better pitcher. So, yea, he'd have eventually gone in. Mussina ended up with 82 rWAR. The next-highest eligible non-PED guy who isn't in the Hall is probably Rick Reuschel at 69. Yea, Jim McCormick had 76 but he pitched 140 years ago mostly in the underhand, sidearm era.

Some of us married women who wouldn't put up with that stuff and trained us in the ways of cleanliness and organization. My computer desktop has like three icons. Anything more and I lose my mind. I see people who have icons on every square inch of their screen and just assume they're a mess in all aspects of life. But I can do without the messageboard police telling me a thread is too prospect-centric to be on the main board. That's a step too far!

The best part of any messageboard is arguing about if a topic is in the right section or thread and chastising the people who put it in the supposedly wrong place. You don't really even need baseball content when you have that.

Was part of the Manny deal, Dodger had some familiarity with him. But a 26-year-old with a .733 OPS in AAA has a bunch to fix and likely won't.

Pitching. Just expect that 40% of your pitchers will get hurt in any given year.

DeGrom is an unusual case in that he came up late and has been injured a lot. And he doesn't have the massive innings/wins totals of someone like Koufax to get the traditional vote. Pitchers like Kershaw, Verlander, Greinke, Scherzer, they'll go in easily. It's DeGroms and Felix Hernandez who'll be harder sells. They'll both probably end up with career value around Koufax, but in a modern context so for a long time there will be voters who stick to "didn't win 20 enough" or "shoulda thrown 275 innings a year or he's not a real man".

ROY is a fickle thing. Some years a 1-win player wins it, sometimes a 4-win player doesn't. In '86 Wally Joyner (3.2 WAR) was 2nd, Mark Eichhorn (7! WAR) third. Other years Todd Hollandsworth or Chris Coughlan win with ~1 WAR seasons. You can't really count on that, ROY voting is such a weird metric to use.

#3 prior to 1994. Okay so they've had more top-10 prospects in the 1985-2015 era than this year. But not by a lot.

Matusz peaked at #5. Gausman #20, at least by BA. I feel like pitchers have a much higher flameout rate, so I'm a lot more comfortable about the current class being heavy on non-pitchers.

Ah, of course. #1 prior to 2009.

He would have eventually gone in, even if it took a while. The HOF needs to come to a reckoning eventually, and figure out new standards for pitchers. Or they'll end up in a place where they're still relying on old standards and no pitchers go in for years and years on end. Look at someone like DeGrom. Mussina had more value with the Orioles than DeGrom has had in his whole career so far and he's 34. Robbie Ray is 30, Mussina had more innings through age 26. Even if Mussina only had 250 wins if he'd been a career Oriole, that's 53 more wins than Max Scherzer, who'll walk into the Hall first ballot even if he retired next year.

Henderson is #1 overall by BA. Manny was the #11 overall by BA prior to 2012. Mussina was the #19 overall prior to 1992. Markakis was #21 overall in 2006. Ben McDonald was the #2 in 1990. Am I missing any other highly-rated Orioles prospects from the 1980s-today? Because Rutschman was #1, Henderson is #1, Grayson is #4, Holliday 41, Hall 61, Cowser 97, Westburg 98. This is the best farm system the Orioles have had since at least the mid-70s. If you played a game between the Orioles who've been in the minors this year against the 1985-2015 Orioles farm system all stars I like the chances the 2022 team have.

The system is set up so that teams can capture extra value by leaving players in the minors some additional amount of time. It is not always intuitively obvious and correct that the path to take is to ignore that extra value to try to win a little more right now. A month of an MVP-level performance, which is rarely what a rookie provides, is worth perhaps a single WAR. But delaying that debut might mean an entire extra year of a high quality player, either on the Orioles or as trade value. It's at least worth the discussion and analysis to trade off a win or two now for the possibility of more wins down the road. I wish and hope that future CBAs eliminate service time as a basis of value, but that's not today's reality. Personally I'd try to offer a number of these players contracts to buy out arb and early free agency years and call up many of them now. But I don't know what the Orioles are doing in the background.

Baseball America released their updated top 100 prospects list today and Henderson is #1 overall. How many organizations have ever graduated the #1 overall prospect and a couple months later had someone else move into the #1 overall prospect slot? This is like calling up Manny in 2012, and in September another Oriole was the best prospect in baseball. The 1982-2011 Orioles would go 10 years between prospects of this caliber. Even that's being generous. The only guys close to that level in the 30 years after Cal were Mussina, Markakis, and Manny. Cowser might actually be on the Markakis level, so you could argue the 2023 Orioles might have three young talents as good as anyone they developed from the 80s through the 2000s.

Yea, but what about the scenario where Mussina resigns for a 8/100 deal but then the 2005 Orioles melt down and subsequently trade him to the Astros for Chris Burke and Ezequiel Astascio?