DrungoHazewood

It's astonishing that he sobered up enough that one day to sign the contract.

Maybe they're just trying to set the record for highest percentage of payroll given to a guy we knew would have a 5.00 ERA before he even signed.

I've binged a lot of great TV the last few years. Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, Downton Abbey, Mad Men, The Americans, All Creatures Great and Small, Scrubs, House, Cobra Kai, Ms. Maisel. Ted Lasso is as good as any of it.

You know that anybody can get the Spanish flu or Ebola (named for the river) or Lyme (Connecticut) disease?

He was constantly battling Dutch Elm disease.

During the sports shutdown in the early days of the pandemic scOtt sent me a link to a site that streamed almost everything sports, including the Belarusian Premier League which was probably the only active sports league left in the world. It worked for a long time, I was sometimes able to watch my favorite 3rd division German soccer when that came back. If you could put up with the constant ads for very, very dicey Russian mail-order brides and the like. It randomly disappeared within the last few months.

In 1993 he didn't pitch from June 22 to July 2nd, and then again from July 21st to August 20th, and not after September 15th. In 1998 he only pitched three times from April 17th through June 5th. In 2004 he didn't pitch from July 7th though August 18th. In 2005 he didn't pitch from August 30th until September 22nd. In 2007 he didn't pitch from April 12th through May 2nd. That's an extremely healthy pitcher. Someone who only misses 3-4 weeks worth of starts every few years.

Brown signed a one-year deal with the O's after going 7-9, 4.82 with the Rangers in '94. They traded for Erickson (for Kimera Bartee and Scott Klingenbeck) midway through 1995 when he was 4-6, 5.95 for the Twins. Key was mostly injured in '95, went 12-11, 4.68 for the Yanks in '96 then signed a two-year deal with the Orioles. Wells was acquired from the Reds in a trade for Curtis Goodwin and Trovin Valdez. Sid Fernandez signed with the O's after going 5-6, 2.93 in 18 starts with the Mets in '93. When they signed Rick Sutcliffe he was 35, coming off a 6-5 season in 18 starts for the Cubs. Fernando had been out of the majors for the better part of two years when the O's signed him. Jamie Moyer went 10-8, 2.86 for the Toledo Mud Hens before signing with Baltimore. They signed Randy Myers after he led the NL with 38 saves with the Reds in '95. If the O's ever signed a top free agent starter at or near his peak I think it would be the first time.

Challenge: Find me a pitcher who pitched in the majors for a long time and was never hurt.

What I ditched a year and a half ago? Was satellite, but same difference. Since it's not MASN, and no cable, and free... I have to ask if it's legal?

People will sign up for Apple TV for just $5 a month, and in 2029 realize they'd never unsubscribed. You know, the new Ted Lasso season comes out in August, so I'm guessing I'll still have Apple TV in September, ready for the O's pennant push, so no big deal.

Is it called MASN.com, free with your $150 cable bill?

If it was up to me the number of pitchers would be eight. But only as a stoppin' off point to 15-man rosters, where you have to pick pitchers in part on how well they hit because they're also your backup outfielders.

I'm on board with this if it'll be like every ACC/SEC football game and the ump speaks in a kind of exaggerated Alabama/Tennessee/NC accent. Holdin', nummer twanty six on the d-fence! That's a ten yawd panalty, and that's a auto-matic first down!

I want metrics. How many players were optioned to the minors six or eight times from May 2nd on last year, or in 2019? My expectation is that the number is like four across the entire league. This isn't going to be a substantial change. It just seems big to some, because it used to be that almost no one was optioned multiple times in a year and now a bunch of guys go up and down every few months. But I could be wrong. Five times after May 2nd means a player can still be optioned once a month. To me that's still a lot. Somebody is going to say this is a radical change that shouldn't happen; my thought is it's barely anything.

C'mon, it's MLB. Sydney is blacked out for the Royals, A's, Braves, Mariners, Angels, Blue Jays, Expos, Rays, the entire Eastern League, and the Dubuque, Iowa men's fast pitch league. Just because they can.

How about instead of a computer algorithm you just kind of eyeball decent-fielding first basemen with OPSes just a bit better than league average? That's not going to turn out much better.

They were on PEDs and still were worth essentially nothing in their 30s! As much as I like Mancini, it'll be an upset if he's still a productive major league player in 4-5 years.

Looks good. I'm curious about how the notches at the aisles are going to work with balls in play.

Mancini's top four through-age-29 comps on bb-ref are Yoenis Cespedes, Kevin Mench, Jason Kubel, and Jay Gibbons. All had essentially zero value after age 30. The rest of his top 10 combined for about one above average season after 30. Mancini could be an exception, but 1B/DH types with 110 OPS+es tend to age very poorly.

I know Mancini is a nice guy, but he's 30 and has been worth 8 wins over his career. Yes, he has some mitigating factors with health. But I'm very reluctant to sign someone likely to be an average performer to a multi-year deal into his decline. It's reasonable to assume half a win a year decline for anyone over 28. Even assuming a 2-3 win 2020, Mancini has a 2-win established level. I'd assume his value over the next four years will be 5-6 wins. So 4/40 might be defensible, but why are you signing him at all since he'll likely be below average by the time the Orioles can expect to compete? Heck, he was below average last year. When I said they might as well keep him, I meant through 2022, not forever.

You just might need an electron microscope to measure it. This is going to change 76% base stealers into 78% base stealers. Maybe we'll see single digit percent increases in steals. An average team goes from 77 steals a year to 83. If it all works out we'll be back to those heady, go-go days of 2014 when there were 0.57 steals/game.

One year of team control at something like $8M. So roughly one win of expected surplus value. Unless someone is offering up above-market returns because they really need a 1B/DH right now, I'd almost rather keep him. What's the current state of compensation for lost free agents? Do you get anything back, or did the new CBA quash that?

It will not in any measurable way. In '21 there were 0.46 steals per game. I'm going to say that with this rules change there would be 0.45 +/- 0.03 steals per game. If they want to increase steals there are many other far more effective ways to do that. I kind of like the idea that every pickoff throw to a base that doesn't result in an out counts as a ball on the batter.

I've read that in the 50-odd years they played in the Polo Grounds in that configuration no one ever so much as hit the CF wall on the fly. Much less through a window 15-20' up on said wall.