DrungoHazewood

That was also the time period where you could sign Bartolo Colon for 2/20, so something like that was a much better option. It's not that hard to find 170 innings of a 108 ERA+ without routinely giving away Eduardo Rodriguez, Josh Hader, Kyle Davies, etc. I know win now is a thing, but the 2018 landing would have been less catastrophic and maybe someone would have walked away alive with those prospects still in the org.

I'm sure I argued at the time that Hader was quite unlikely to pan out, as a guy in low-A with good-but-not-great numbers. But it's been a really bad trade. Norris had two bad partial seasons and one year as a decent #3 starter. We traded one of the best relievers in baseball for one 2-win season. They should have just sucked it up and signed some free agent for too much money.

Yes, agree with all of that. But when you've been stationed on an oil rig in the North Sea for the last five years with a bunch of dudes in steel-toed boots and hard hats, it's a challenge to not have a one-night stand when you finally get some shore leave.

If Elias can really get three top 20 organizational prospects for Lopez I'd have to seriously consider pulling the trigger. Relievers are so freakin' weird. Last year the Orioles' pen had an ERA of 5.70 and this year it's one of the best pens in baseball and they didn't even go out and target anyone but reclamation projects to fix it. I wish I had confidence they could just come up with five good relievers from nothing every year.

What decent prospects are likely to be lost in the Rule 5? Currently the 40-man includes Tyler Nevin, Ryan McKenna, Rougned Odor, Robinson Chirinos, soon-to-be free agent Trey Mancini, Jonathan Arauz, Louis Head, Denyi Reyes, Rico Garcia, Beau Sulser, and Chris Vallimont. You could release all of them at the end of the year, free up 11 spots for actual prospects, and have little or no impact to the competitiveness of the organization.

You're asking if it's inconceivable the Orioles end up in 3rd place after they've won nine in a row, 12 of 13, and 24 of their last 29 to be sitting on 60-49 after being 35-44? No, not at all. But I'm not sure you're asking about the right inconceivable thing...

My first thought is none whatsoever, given that his ERA in 200 innings since the start of 2019 is 6.83, with a FIP of 5.41. Over that period there have ben 214 major league pitchers who've thrown at least 150 innings. Harvey is 214th in ERA+, ERA, and 213th in FIP. He's thrown 14.2 innings in Norfolk and allowed 21 baserunners and four homers.

You mean like acquiring #3 starter Bud Norris for Josh Hader, LJ Hoes, and a 2014 competitive balance pick? Or are we just trading 11-20 prospects that won't pan out?

I don't understand why we're entertaining trading prospects right now. This is a roughly .500 team with multiple highly valuable players still in the minors. It's very easy to get into a situation where the player you trade for is not only much more expensive and under team control for less time, but also not as good as the players you sent away. Also, the Orioles are still very much longshots to even get to the 2022 playoffs. Don't lose focus on the goal. The goal isn't a '22 lottery ticket. It's being contenders for a long time to come.

The 1897 Louisville Colonels lost 36-7 to Chicago and they finished 23.5 games ahead of the Browns. Their manager in that game was Hall of Famer Fred Clarke.

Espinoza is a Venezuelan who's listed at 6' but looked 5' 8", had a Magnum PI moustache and glasses that were stolen from a mom on Stranger Things. I love that he's the symbol of the best era of Yankee baseball.

This is a very silly exercise but I think what I did was 21 steals minus six caught plus nine first-to-thirds, plus two scores from first on a double, plus 11 scores from second on a single, minus three outs on bases... but that's not right so maybe I double counted something. The easy, non-goofy solution is to just look at the Rbaser total under value and it takes all that stuff and converts it into runs above/below average For Mullins that's +2.

The bust scenario for Henderson is something like Todd Frazier or Mike Moustakas or something. Alright, maybe not bust, but he has the talent to be better than those guys. Maybe a lot better. So 12-15 wins over his six years of team control at reduced prices with upside well beyond that. I'm not trading that for almost any pitcher at any price. When you're rebuilding your only goal is to acquire as many Gunnar Hendersons as you can.

In the majors. He had a .964 in the Mexican Winter League in 2018-19. He had a .907 as a 21-year-old for Diablos Rojos in the Mexican League, then a 1.011 for the same team in '17. In 2017 between regular and winter league he hit .333/.432/.520 in 600 PAs. Sure, you have to take a lot of helium out of those numbers. Mexico City is at nearly 7000' altitude. But a .778 OPS in the majors at 28 doesn't seem too crazy.

A $500M+ annual revenue team tanking a year once in a long while to retool and get some high draft picks isn't teaching their fans a lesson about losing. It reeks of the same entitlement and faux street cred Yanks fans have when talking about that brief period in the 80s and early 90s when Alvaro Espinoza was their shortstop and they weren't winning 97 games a year.

I have no respect for the Yankees. Them winning is like a Rockefeller getting into Harvard. It hard to not have a winning season when you have three or four times the resources of much of your competition. And the Red Sox, they're just as bad. Ohhh... woe is us, we hadn't won the Series in 80 years. So what? They've had two seasons under a .450 winning percentage in my lifetime. The Orioles top that in the 2020s. I'd be thrilled if both teams won 50 games a year for the rest of my kids' lives.

I'm skeptical that they'd get three decent-to-good prospects for a guy whose entire value is staked on 46.1 innings this year. If the tables were turned would you give up, say, Westburg, Rom, and another lower guy for someone with Lopez' resume?

Here. Scroll down to baserunning and miscellaneous stats. I think I counted like the old pre-1898 stolen base definitions, so if you scored from first on a double or, scored from second on a single you got an extra base and 0.136 furlongs.

If you're saying that you want to take a balanced lineup with nine guys who all have .700-.800 OPSes, and remove several of them and replace them with .850 and .950 OPS hitters, sure. Who wouldn't do that? But I think Frobby's point was that a team with an OPS of .750 will score about the same number of runs no matter the distribution of individual players. A team with a shortstop with a 1.000 OPS and a 2B with a .500 will score about as many runs as a team with a SS/2B who each OPS .750.

If there's anything I've learned from Orioles Hangout over the years it's that a player's long-term true talent wildly varies all the time, and is most accurately measured by his last 12 plate appearances. If you're not watching every pitch you might be fooled into trading a boatload of talent for an A Ball player. Of course that could all change in the 7th inning...

Speaking of horse races, Cedric Mullins has run 5.05 net furlongs in extra bases advanced so far this year.

There's nothing stopping you from non-tendering high.

Most people's opinions at the age of 16 are mostly just lifted from influential people around them. Most 16-year-olds are incapable of piecing together the experience and logic to form substantial opinions of their own. I shudder to think of the trail of ridiculousness I'd have left if Twitter existed in 1988. I was well into my 20s before I started seriously examining whether the stuff I believed had any real foundation to stand on. If we exiled everyone who ever liked an offensive thing to Siberia I'd be toiling in a Kamchatka mercury mine.

Age is almost irrelevant for pitchers. Aside from not wanting a 21-year-old to throw 20 complete games. But I'd rather have a 37-year-old with 11 K/9 than a 25-year-old with 7 K/9. 148 pitchers have appeared in at least 30 games in 2022. Tate is 120th in K/9.

Name an established major league hitter who completely changed his approach and went from a very aggressive hitter to a selective hitter. Guys like Sammy Sosa and Chris Davis don't count, they didn't really change their approach. The pitchers changed how they approached them when they started hitting every 5th ball 450 feet.