Ruzious

First and foremost, the O's need a great talent - almost regardless of position. If the best player is a Pete Alonzo, a Cody Bellinger, a Josh Bell, a Freddie Freeman, or a Nelson Cruz - so be it.

My mistake - meant to say good against righties while historically bad against lefties. But with a 25 man roster, even a utility guy has to go against lefties sometimes. Being versatile is great, but being good is better.

I like Wilkerson, but no. He doesn't hit well enough to be a super-anything - though he does hit lefties pretty well. Utility players actually do grow on trees. Shake one, and you'll see. If McKenna has any legit chance to become a starter, you don't protect Wilkerson over him.

Agreed - Scott could be the wildcard. I watched some video of his AAU play, and he's a physically tough player - kinda reminded me of Justin Anderson - who used to play at UVA. Anderson became a good 3 point shooter at UVA.

That's a lot of parts, so they should at least have excellent depth. I'm just not sure any of those players will be better than ok as starters - other than Stix. I think Wiggins has the best chance. They do have tough guys in Ayala, Scott, Morsell, and Lindo - but all seem very limited offensively. Ayala's the only one of them who can shoot and was better than I thought he'd be, but I don't see him being a playmaker. I think the team needs Cowan, but they need him to be a much more reliable 3 point shooter.

Things can obviously change, but Torkelson would be my first pick. His power appears to be remarkable to go with good hitting skills and fwiw, he appears to be excellent defensively at 1st base.

Yes, I meant doghouse. Ugg.

It's hard to stay in the dugout when your post-season OPS is 1.460.

To me, Styx is the one guy we know that's gonna be reliable - it's everyone else that's the questionmark. I think Andy Katz lost his mind when he called Anthony Cowan a top 10 player in America - considering Cowan shot under 40% from the field and only 33.7% from 3 last season and had only a 4.4/2.8 assist.to ratio. Honestly, he was quite disappointing last season. I think MD's talent level is being overrated at the moment - with the exception of Stix.

Yeah, 96 OPS+ this season for both of them. Sisco has the better career OPS+ and far better minor league numbers, so I'd expect more offensive improvement from him going forward. Both improved offensively this year and got valuable experience catching, so I think both made strides - I'd call it a useful season for both and for the O's in regards to both.

Riemold toast?

Btw, one of the catchers Atlanta used when Murphy failed was young Biff Pocoroba - along with former Oriole (included in the Dave Johnson trade) Earl Williams.

I remember Murphy's debut as a catcher with Atlanta. Some of his throws to 2nd base were almost catchable by the centerfielder. They must have figured he was trying to tell them something, so they said, hey let's move this kid to centerfield. And the rest is history - multi GG's and 2 MVP awards later.

He looked surprisingly good today - hitting 94 and 95 on his fastball late in the game and with really good command and control of his pitches. And obviously going 7 innings was a significant plus. Is he part of the O's future? No, but it was nice to see a well-pitched game.

You're under-thinking it. Of course they're going to look for better talent. They'll do that with every position.

Again... … … my post used the same criteria that the person I responded to used. I'm not at all interested in looking up scouting reports from 2013 in order to answer your questions.

The numbers I mentioned - and the numbers used by the person I replied to were WAR numbers - not dWAR.

In fact, McCann's career WAR was 0.0 coming into this season, and he's 29.

Which is where all-star catcher James McCann was when he was 24 - and actually better than McCann was at 25 - and about the same as all-star catcher JT Realmuto was at 24. It takes more time for catchers to develop. It's obviously too soon to talk about writing off Sisco, imo.

Yeah, I don't think he was even a good teammate. It'd be hard to imagine him being a motivator.

Yeah, I'm okay with an accurate 1-hopper from my LFer.

Wow, I've never heard someone be so consistently negative. Is your basis of his defense, the one slip he had on a very wet surface? What I've seen in Stewart is the player with the smartest at bats on the team - including Mancini - and probably the best batting eye on the team. And the last game I saw, he made 2 outstanding catches and one very good running catch that he turned into a double-play because the runner at first didn't think he'd catch it. He may have a weak arm - I don't know - but I haven't seen that make a difference so far.

https://www.testudotimes.com/maryland-terps-basketball/2019/8/27/20834968/chol-marial-freshman-suffers-stress-fracture-both-legs-undergo-surgery He's out 3 to 4 months with stress fracture on BOTH legs, but they do expect a full recovery. So the earliest he could possibly return is the end of November. Gotta figure he won't be available until the 2nd half of the season. So we need the Mitchell brothers to provide the size and power. Speaking of which, Turgeon was recently quoted as saying Stix Smith has gained 32 pounds since he came to Maryland. I think he's ready to be the star of the team.

You've gotta be kidding about the Davis thing. That was 100% on Davis acting like a child, and Hyde has done EVERYTHING to excuse Davis all year long. If anything, he should be applauded for his handling of Davis. And I actually agreed with your point about keeping in Harvey too long, but then linking that somehow to the Davis situation makes no sense. And calling him an idiot because you disagreed with his using Harvey too long was way over the top, imo. As another poster pointed out, it was good to see what Harvey was made of. I still wouldn't have kept him in, but you can see a reason why Hyde would have thought differently.

Nah, 17 walks is unacceptable. Send him to the GCL. Heaven forbid, Elias actually ruuuuuushhhhhhes a player.