Ruzious

.169 batting average with RISP, .559 OPS.

It's always a good move to replace Stewart in a RISP situation.

Finally Hays gets a hit. About time!

Btw, the home plate ump looks like he weighs way over 300 lbs. How is that ok?

Does that ump have something against Lowther? Lowther made a perfect 3-2 pitch - easily caught the low end of the zone, and it's called ball 4. Also, I think one of the first 2 balls was on the top end of the zone. And this causes Lowther to leave the game. I'd rather not switch to machines to call balls and strikes, but this kind of gross incompetence makes it necessary to change.

And for the year, he's OPSing 1.026 in 206 plate appearances. Also 11 of 11 in steals - not that he's going to steal a lot of bases in the majors, but it's a good sign.

Atlanta 5 - 6 San Francisco: Final 11 | 2021-09-17 | Major League Baseball | Yahoo! Sports The link is to the highlight's of last night/this morning's game - with Jon Miller doing the best of the broadcasting. At the end, he calls Kevin Gausman's pinch-hitting (yes Kevin Gausman as the pinch-hitter) in the 11th inning. Jon started doing O's radio in 1983 replacing Chuck Thompson - who moved to the O's tv games. What a magical year to be an O's fan. It was the Cal and Eddie show - with Cal winning the MVP at age 22/23, and Eddie was 2nd - holy... bleep. Kenny Singleton was so solid as the 3rd big bat with Lolo and Rino as the best platoon in baseball. Flanny and McGreggor were so good as the veteran lefty leaders. Palmer was aging, but no problem - we had Storm Davis getting compared to a young Palmer, Mike Boddicker was so good! It almost didn't even matter that Dennis Martinez was having an off year. Tippy and Sammy Stewart did something you almost never see the last few decades - both pitching over 100 innings out of the bullpen. Bigfoot Stoddard wasn't effective as the closer, so Tippy finally got the chance and was his usual reliable self. We... went 98-64, won the AL East, won the ALCS, and won the World Series 4 games to 1. Best team in baseball, best tv broadcasts, best radio broadcasts... we really did have it all.

What about Wildcard? Does he become the new GM? Ohhh, you mean we get in the playoffs. Yeah, I think that's a reasonable guess of the plan.

Honestly, life's too short to bother with people like you.

My fault for asking. It won't happen again.

If you think Elias is going to tell us the truth, I have some nice beachfront property in New Orleans to sell you. What has actually been done to make you think so.

The packages definitely have to be real good. I don't see any sign that ownership is committed to 2022 as anything but another developmental year.

Agreed, and if Marte's the best free agent CFer, teams will likely be very skeptical that he'll have the range to play there for long - with him being just about 33 - he's probably looked at as a LFer.

Yeah - there are a lot of similarities between Bedard and Means - and Bedard was traded when he was Means' age. I guess if we're offered a similar valued package to the Tillman/Adam Jones package, we should consider it.

With the worst pitching staff in MLB - probably by a wide margin - I think it's foolish to consider going after a Means trade. Obviously, nobody's untouchable, but it'd take an offer of clearly more than he's worth to make me consider it.

Agreed - which is why I didn't mention Santander - he's irrelevant in trade discussions.

You post comments like that too often - though I like the clever spelling thing you did.

Those are the reasons he likely doesn't have a lot of trade value - likely considerably less than Mullins. Meanwhile he might end up surpassing Mullins within the next couple of years. So I'd be more inclined to trade Mullins than Hays. There's risk involved, but I'm inclined to bet on him.

Martin came in as a late inning defensive replacement and made an error... He can't even beat out Valaika.

Hays finishing the season strongly and getting 500 plate appearances will be a big positive for the O's and... he may become more valuable if the O's trade Mullins and move Hays to CF. Hays' development makes it easier to justify trading Mullns.

Nice...as long as you didn't have to stop in the middle of the highway for several hours.

It was petty of Ray to basically accuse the O's of stealing signs. Otoh, Hyde probably did go a bit too far with his attempts to get Ray to speed up.

Trying to figure out what folks here would do as a GM is one of the more interesting and thought-provoking things to do on a board like this.

And note that while Cowser was picked 5th, Watson was picked 16th, and right now - MLB.com has Watson as the 28th best prospect in baseball while Cowser is 78th. Watson seemed like a more logical pick at 5 to me than Cowser - and I say that as a fan of Cowser's. How bout this - Meyer (31), Watson (28), and Cabrera (30) for Mullins and Gunnar?. We wouldn't need Gunnar - with Watson and Westburg and Mayo as infield prospects - not to mention Norby, Vavra and Ortiz. That's a good trade for both teams. And all of a sudden, we'd have our pitching staff of the future - not to mention at dirt-cheap for years. Gunnar's a heckuva prospect, but he's more like a fringe top 100 type. Those 3 are all... top 31. Or would it make more sense to include Wesburg or Mayo rather than Gunnar? Come to think of it, I'd probably rather trade Mayo. Hold the Mayo?

Yeah, the pen is where we ought to be especially cheap. Use that 14 mil to make a splash on a pitcher. Speaking of which, we need to acquire at least one starting pitcher - be it by free agency or trade - to go with Means, Grayson, Bauman, and maybe Akin. . Fast-track Vavra and Ortiz if they hit well in the first half of the season. If we don't think DL Hall is a starter, make him a late inning reliever - with him and Wells our 8th and 9th inning guys. Figure out what to do with both of the Kyle B's and Smith. Maybe pigghback starters? Don't forget Drew Rom.