Say O!

Gunnar — get out with heaters, be wary of get me over breaking balls as crushes those Adley — chasing much more this year out of the zone, particularly with offspeed. Can get aggressive jumps off Os pitchers and Adley won’t mow you down OHearn — doesn’t chase out of zone, so challenge w/in zone as not hitting super well recently Mounty — hot/cold streaky player and is cold ATM Taters — same as Mounty, except scalding hot RN Westburg — better hitter with 2 strikes Hays — same as always, free swinger, best against fastballs Mullins/Urias/Mateo — defense first players Cowser — throw him offspeed all day Stowers — has big time pop if get sloppy with pitches

The Ian Happ comments are misguided as teams have their own non public defensive metrics. Re Cowser — where have you noticed any reluctance to dive? There was play the other day (IIRC vs TBR or TBJ?) where he dove and laid out for a ball at LF line that he just missed getting to which would have ended the game.

Co-sign. Even in Os history, we have the 79-83 run which produced 2 WS and just one championship. Super fun teams with Eddie, Cals emergence, plenty of likeable characters and exciting brand of baseball.

IMO Stowers is great part-time player who gets exposed if a regular. He’s always going to tantalize that could be something more. In part time role, he will do things like today where 3 run HR but also strikes out uncompetitively in two other at bats. Putting aside platoon splits, I think best case Stowers is a Lowenstein 82/83 player type where gets 300-400 PAs and can deliver 15-20 HRs in limited role.

Cowser should get +1 WAR boost for being team connector and keeping everyone loose (btw I’m only half kidding about this).

Kimbrel has been nails. Even better than was expecting. Stuff looking better and better recently. Only question is will he hold up all season or invariably go through one of his characteristic rough patches.

Gotta admit I was skeptical of Webb early in the year, particularly when his stuff was noticeably slower and not as sharp (may have just been typical end of spring training “dead arm” period). He looked like DFA candidate to be honest. But he gutted thru with gile, started to lean on the changeup and his FB began to tick upward in velo. According to Stuff+ Webbs changeup this year rates as best pitch at 119 (was only 89 last year), and per savant, it’s generating 36% WHIFF%, and BA allowed is just a minuscule .097 against the change. His FB velo has gone from 91-92 at start of the year to more consistently 94mph with a few 95mph sprinkled in too. And what I particularly enjoy is how Webb seems to feature a different pitch each outing (and sometimes batter to batter), getting Ks on changeup, rising fastball, and sometimes on sweeper.

I thought BRob and Olson really blended well their insights as player along with modern statistical analysis. Hopefully gone are the days of former players just waxing about historical tropes and anti-stats biases — we see this too frequently from the FOX/national guys like Smoltz, Papi, ARod, Jeter. (And just for the record; I’m not talking Palmer here as he is exception to this).

Thx for unpacking this detail. You are indeed correct, I am thinking reaction.

That’s definitely what plays out when watching the games. Shaky jumps but covers tremendous amount of ground in LF, really in all directions. I think his relatively poor jumps get exposed a bit more in CF.

Keep in mind that the sprint speed numbers are averages for competitive runs. IIRC on broadcast there was instance of Cowser running over 30 ft/sec beating a potential double play grounder.

Interesting parallel here is the Ravens philosophy where EDC has stated in multiple interviews that he does not subscribe to the “all-in” approach to maximize competitive window and instead looks to draft/development to be in contention year-in-year out.

In agreement. Not sure why @Can_of_corn rehashing the QO debate. Let’s be happy that Tony is having another solid year for our birds and contributing to the ALEast race.

Tony Taters now up to 125 wRC+ on the year and just a tick higher than his prior levels. Even with his defense rating poorly again, Tony is heading for another 2-3 WAR season. After a lot of worry to start the season, glad to see Tony get back to his normal production.

Baseball reference has some great stuff for these type of debates in the “HOF Statistics” section on the individual player pages. Here’s the section for Murray (and Palmeiro’s pasted further below). I’ve also included similarity scores as well, since Murray and Palmeiro are one another’s closest comps. Statistically speaking, these guys are essentially dead-heat looking at bWAR, 7-yr peak WAR, and JAWS. Note that both of these guys 7yr peaks probably would be ~2-3 WAR higher since Murray’s 1980 season was strike interrupted and same with Palmeiro’s 1994. To me any delta between the two comes down to preference and as O’s fan, Murray’s 7yr peak came with the O’s, while Palmeiro’s straddled TEX/Os tenure. Palmeiro’s