DrungoHazewood

Never miss an opportunity to assume fatal flaws in an Oriole. Why, dear God, didn't someone suggest CJ Abrams who'll have 100 times Rutschman's value?

Perhaps most importantly, Maz never came close to election by the BBWAA. He was elected by a Vet's Committee 29 years after he retired. I'm reasonably confident Andruw Jones will be inducted sometime between now and 2041.

There was an (in)famous study about 10-15 years ago where the author concluded that there was no aging curve in baseball since 35-year-olds in the Majors hit about as well as 27-year-olds. What he was missing, of course, was that 90% of the 35-year-olds were no longer in the dataset because they weren't good enough to play any more. The only 35-year-olds left were the guys who'd been 27-year-old stars. While 27-year-olds get the whole spectrum.

But they have, by far, the most plate appearances because they are, by far, the most productive. There are some influences other than quality, such as contracts, and uneven distribution of talent, and uncertainty of future value. But it's mostly the best players get the most playing time.

As I alluded to in my prior post, you have to remember that the large majority of very young and 31+ players would have very poor OPSes and other metrics if allowed to play in the majors. Robinson Chirinos is about the same age as Robert Andino, who's been out of the majors for six years and would be OPSing like .425 today. Paul Goldschmidt was born the same year as 70 different MLBers who haven't appeared in a game since 2014, and would be sub-Chris Davis level players if they tried today. So in some kind of hypothetical world where everyone plays regularly in the majors from age 20-40 the numbers would be something like: OPS by age: 25 and under, .600 26-30, .725 31-35: .625 35 and up: .475

The old writers don't believe defensive metrics (even though Jones was considered an elite CF during his career), they suspect Jones was on 'roids, and they'll point to his rapid decline as why he's not worthy. Yes, there are a number of fundamental flaws with the Hall of Fame voting system(s). But that's been the case since the 1930s.

The Hall has a weird de facto standard where you're mostly inducted based on peak but you have to have some threshold of bulk before they'll take you seriously. So someone who was awesome for five years and then okay for five will be considered less of a candidate than someone who was awesome for five years, okay for five, and just hung around another five. Just picking an example... Enos Slaughter probably doesn't get inducted if he didn't spend six years as a pinch hitter and platoon player at the end of his career. If Dwight Gooden had been able to put up 5-6 random seasons of 180-200 innings and 4.00 ERA in his 30s he'd probably be in the Hall. David Wright would probably have strong support if he'd put up 5-6 average years in his 30s.

What are you talking about? Nick was a 2-win player his last while with the Orioles. He was a 2-win player with the Braves. I guess it's somewhat notable that he just kept being a 1-2 win player for years instead of being forced out of the league.

Manny will almost certainly finish this year with 50+ rWAR. Here's a complete list of non-steroid-tainted, retired players with 50+ WAR through age 29 who aren't in the Hall: 1. Andruw Jones 2. Nobody else Even including steroid guys the list is just ARod and Bonds. Cesar Cedeno and Sherry Magee just missed the 50 WAR cutoff. Jones will probably, eventually make the Hall. Manny would have to retire in the next couple years or have a Chris Davis extended collapse to not be inducted.

Markakis had one season in Atlanta where he was a somewhat better-than-average player. His last year in Baltimore was about as good as any year he had with the Braves. Verlander's last year-and-three-quarters in Detroit he was worth about nine wins over replacement, he was probably one of the top 10 or 20 pitchers in baseball. Even if Manny did sign a huge extension with the Orioles it's unlikely he would have remained with the team through a five-year scorched Earth rebuild.

Perhaps. But just the number of players and total WAR represents the fact that the group gets selected and is more productive in their mid-to-late 20s. WAR/g would probably reinforce these conclusions because the better players are concentrated at ages around 27 and would get more playing time. It's also important to remember that at each age bucket there are (let's say) 100 players of roughly MLB quality. The ones not on the list aren't good enough or healthy enough to play at that age. So in this example at age 21 there are three current MLBers, but probably 97 potential MLBers who haven't advanced enough to play or are hurt. Similar at age 38, there are five MLBers, but 95 who had MLB ability at some point. If you were to include those players and their likely production the WAR totals would be much, much more skewed. The 38-year-olds would be at like -40 or -80 as a group, instead of the -0.6 from the five guys who're good enough to make a MLB roster. Something like that for the 21-year-olds, too. But the 27-year-olds would only have 23 players of "ballast", who are not currently capable of performing in the majors.

The 1963 Houston Colt .45s coincidentally scored 45 runs in 29 June games. I think that's the fewest number of runs scored in a full month of MLB games since 1900. In August of 1906 the White Sox allowed 44 runs in 26 games.

In 1972 the Orioles played 28 games in June and allowed 68 runs. That same year the Rangers scored 57 runs in 29 September/October games, and had a .473 team OPS over that period.

So much for looking at a tiny bit of a snapshot of mildly surprising information and assuming you can draw broad conclusions from that.

Total 2022 rWAR, non-pitchers, by age (number at each age): 21: 2.4 (3) 22: 1.2 (11) 23: 5.9 (24) 24: 9.5 (26) 25: 19.2 (57) 26: 6.3 (50) 27: 25.4 (77) 28: 17.6 (55) 29: 23.2 (57) 30: 15.9 (42) 31: 9.3 (43) 32: 15.1 (37) 33: 3.2 (21) 34: 5.4 (13) 35: -0.2 (10) 36: 1.6 (4) 37: -0.5 (3) 38: -0.6 (5) 39: -0.7 (3) 40: 0.0 (0) 41: -0.2 (1) 42: 0.2 (1) That looks typical to me. Players are peaking around 27 as always. The total value of all non-pitchers over the age of 34 is below replacement.

Clearly they don't want to get a reputation for burning out players to the point where their MLB careers are impacted, because that has a negative effect on recruiting. But just as clearly NCAA teams prioritize winning now more highly then preparing young people for the future. It would probably be hard to find a college football player who didn't spend hours in the training room trying to get past an injury, then took all kinds of painkillers to be able to be on the field because they needed to win that Saturday's game. For almost all college coaches the self-imposed limits are "am I pushing the kid so hard that my chances of winning today/this year have gone down?"

A meat market? I thought they were baseball teams trying to win games and trophies. Would you prioritize Matt Wieters' theoretical age 30+ seasons for another team in the majors over winning the ACC or a College World Series game? Would you tell the rest of the team or the AD or the fans that it sucks to lose with your 2nd-best closer on the mound, but you were possibly reducing the risk that Weiters would get hurt in 10-12 years? Of course there are limits. I once saw Brad Clontz throw a complete game in a Virginia Tech 22-13 win. He had to have thrown 200 pitches. But Wieters throwing 87 innings across three college seasons is a complete non-issue.

No, I don't think he signs. The Orioles were not going to give anyone a $300M+ deal. Remember, when Davis signed his contract that was half the value of what Manny got and that was more than double the largest contract the Orioles had ever given out. I'll believe the O's will give out a close to industry-leading contract when I see it. And yes, it would have been bizarre to go through a tear-it-down-to-the-studs rebuild but still have a very expensive in-his-prime superstar on the roster. A 50-win, $50M team for multiple years with a 7-win, $30M guy also on the roster. It really doesn't make a lot of sense to pay $30M a year for wins 51-58 for 4-5 years. If you're Manny, is that how you want to spend 1/3 of your career, as an MVP-caliber player on a team where your 3rd starter has a 6.50 ERA? Almost guaranteed that he would have been Miami'd, traded to the Yanks or Dodgers a year or two after agreeing to be here forever.

There are always options. They could have jumped to the Mexican League. Or played for Eddie Feigner's barnstorming softball team. But noooo... they had to betray the Orioles.

True. I won't root for any other MLB team than the O's, but I will root for teams in other leagues, so that would have been fine. I don't know why Mike didn't consider my feelings. Jerk.

But.. but... he grew up not rooting for the Orioles and ended up playing for them because (among other things) the Mariners valued Marc Newfield way more than Mussina, so he should have just re-upped for whatever the O's offer forever. And if that didn't happen he should have signed with the Rangers or something to spare my feelings.

Mine is that you'd have to retire about a dozen other guys' who were just as meaningful to the organization.

We all think of the players as bleeding black and orange, or we did as kids. They're Orioles, of course they love the team like we do. But then after a while you think, huh, Manny grew up in Miami. Mussina in Pennsylvania, closer to Philly or Pittsburgh or NYC than Baltimore. Nick Markakis went to high school maybe an hour from Atlanta. What team does most everyone root for? The team they followed when they were a kid. A long time ago I made peace with the fact that 95% of Orioles grew up rooting for some other team and they're never going to love the team like I did when I was 12. It would be like if I was drafted by the D'backs. What do I care about the D'backs besides they happened to draft me? I'd still look for the O's box score every day.

Forgive me if you know some of this already, but the evolution of pitching from the 1860s through the 1890s was massive and dizzyingly fast. In 1865 pitching really was more like pitching a horseshoe than what we think of as pitching today. The rules changed almost annually, but you might see a pitcher limited to having both feet on the ground during his delivery, the hand couldn't even come up to waist level, he couldn't snap his wrist, and the batter could call for a high or low pitch. Called strikes and balls started to be written into the rules by sometime in the 1860s, but umps were usually very reluctant to call them. So you would sometimes have individual at bats that lasted 10 or 15 minutes with pitchers refusing to throw hittable pitches, and batters refusing to swing at balls 3' off the plate. This threatened to ruin the game as a spectator sport, so over the next 20-odd years they tinkered with the rules in ways that would make today's "stop messing with baseball" folks contemplate jumping off a bridge. From 1865 to 1888 they went from underhanded tosses and 70-pitch at bats to fully overhand pitching much like today. After 1893 the pitching rules were basically in modern form. Kilroy was 18 before overhand pitching was legalized. When pitchers tossed the ball underhand and probably rarely threw a pitch 60 mph nobody even contemplated things like rotations and relievers and the like. You could throw all day. As the rules changed it took a while for use patterns to catch up. The early days of overhand pitching as hard as you want saw pitchers start 2/3rds or more of their team's games. Old Hoss was the most famous, but Kilroy threw 583 innings at 20 and 589 at 21. Nobody had done this before, so nobody really knew what the limitations of human psychology are. Most of these 1880s pitchers who threw these superhuman innings totals fell off very quickly. Kilroy was done as an effective pitcher by 24. Radbourne didn't pitch in the majors until 26, pitched until 36 but was a .500 pitcher after his 60-win season, and was dead at 42. By the 1890s teams were using at least primitive rotations to spread the workload. The Champion 1894 Orioles used nine different starters in a 129-game schedule, including five with at least 15 starts. Wasn't quite a modern rotation, but it was a far cry from one guy completing 85% of his teams starts as would have been common about a decade before. Anyway, Kilroy was throwing from flat ground in a box whose front edge was 50' from the plate. He had to start striding 4-5 feet behind that so he wouldn't step over the line. But in any case, he was pitching from maybe 55' in today's terms, overhand, to 5'8", 150 lb batters many of whom had been recently playing sandlot and semi-pro ball. And he averaged 7.9 K/9 as a rookie, falling to 3.3 the next year (which happened to be the four-strike year).

If the Orioles are smart they'll realize that an average hitter in today's Camden Yards will have different raw production than a player at another park and account for that. Many, many many stars played in pitcher's parks and won a lot of games. Joe DiMaggio didn't suddenly become a mediocre player because it was 460' to LC at Yankee Stadium.