Moose Milligan

CoC? Maybe indie bands and obscure music, but that's about it.

Great article, I read it a few minutes ago. IMO, this is the area where Roch really shines. Yes, it's a fluff piece but it's a good fluff piece. The alternate site during Covid-19 really seemed to help him a lot and turned some heads in the organization. Without that, who knows? Good bet he still develops because of his work ethic but maybe that sped things up a bit.

Talk about a guy who was ahead of his time. He'd be making a ton if he played today. I dunno, I'd like to see Gunnar settle in somewhere but maybe he could be a guy who can play multiple roles. That said, I don't think that can stay forever. I mean, Jackson Holliday should be here in a couple, maybe three years and then what? If Henderson is at 3rd, Holliday is at SS or vice versa. You've got the left side of the infield set until the end of the decade. At that point it wouldn't make sense to keep moving him around.

I've written longer on here, fairly certain. It's not actually all that much writing, just a bunch of quotes. I'm fine with moving him around the infield this year, too. He's young enough and athletic enough to make these changes. But I agree, he needs to settle in next year, preferably on the left side of the infield.

Well I'm also not ignorant enough to understand that no one bats 1.000 when drafting and developing guys. People miss in evaluations all the time. Players don't live up to their billing and all the coaching sometimes can't get a guy to where he needs to be. If everyone was correct all the time, this would fail to be interesting. But the infuriating part, for me, is to know we had two guys that the Orioles seemed to actively work against their strengths. As I said, the 2010s could have been very different for us if they let Gausman and Arrieta did best. Bringing this back to Gunnar, just let the kid play.

His ERA since SFG figured out how to use him properly is 3.18. That's a big difference. But to say he had 10 WAR here doesn't really tell the whole story. He's at 19 for his career, 8.9 of which he's picked up in Covid-19 shortened 2020, and full 2021 and 2022 seasons. He's essentially doubled his WAR in from Baltimore in less than half the time. His ERA this year is 3.45 but he leads the league in FIP at 2.41, BB rate and Strikeout/Walk rate. His strikeout rate has increased since he's left Baltimore by a good bit and his WHIP has improved. It is safe to say he's made big progress since leaving here, although unlike Arrieta it didn't happen immediately after leaving. The three I mentioned along with Britton all had success while they were here but none of those guys outside of Britton were drafted and developed by us. Miguel Gonzalez spent years in the Angels and Red Sox systems and, IIRC, was picked up off the scrap heap from the Mexican Leagues. Tillman was drafted by the Mariners, although we did develop him some in the minors here in AA and AAA. Chen, as you know, was pretty much a finished product and came over from Japan. Britton was tried as a starter and failed and found success in the bullpen. I would argue we got lucky with him. Yes, these things are hard. But the overriding point is that you don't draft guys like Arrieta and Gausman and start screwing with what brought them to the dance. Arrieta wasn't a high draft pick but he fell to us due to signability concerns, he was labeled as a 1st or 2nd round talent. Caleb Joseph speaks to how they botched it with Gausman in that article that was posted. From the article: That does seem to say that they wanted him to attack the lower part of the zone instead of the high part of the zone but again, my reading comprehension isn't the best. Can you clear up the part in the last two highlighted sections where they wanted him to attack the zone low and away but he'd end up leaving fastballs thigh high, "leading to frequent meatballs?" Very odd. More: You'll note the use of the word mismanagement. The article is partially correct from the slider usage standpoint. He threw it a fair amount in Baltimore and practically abandoned it while with the Giants but this year it's back up to where he was using it while he was here. So let me get this straight, Gausman is more successful now because the game has changed and Gausman hasn't? Is that what you're saying here? The biggest change for Gausman, and it's inarguable, is the usage of the split finger fastball, which again, Joseph said they wanted to limit to two strike counts. The Fangraphs data bears this out, he's practically doubled the usage of it since he's left here. No, the reason he is more successful now is because the Giants let him do what he does best. Here's a whole article explaining it from last year: https://www.nbcsports.com/bayarea/giants/kevin-gausman-credits-giants-teammates-rediscovering-splitter So in 2021 his splitter was the second most valuable pitch in the majors and it resulted in strikeouts nearly 46 percent of the time, am I reading that correctly? And we limited his usage of it while he was here? We tried to get him to throw more sliders instead? And you wonder why I was infuriated by the Caleb Joseph article? Is it not plain as day as to why it's so infuriating to know that Rick Adair, or Dave Wallace or Buck Showalter or Gary Rajisch whoever the **** was around back then made decisions like this? "Oh awesome, you have an amazing pitch, let's use it LESS and have you throw a pitch you're not quite grasping MORE. Meanwhile, we're going to get you to try and throw a fastball in the zone where it probably doesn't make a lot of sense for you." What? Dude, he threw a changeup no more than 3.7% of the time he was here. He's barely gone over 5% with his changeup anywhere he's been except for 13.6% in the 2020 season at San Francisco. He's thrown it a whopping 1.1% of the time this season. No, they're linked. They're absolutely linked. In both cases it was the Orioles way or the highway. And I'm not making up things about how the Orioles used Gausman. All I've done is quote the article that I originally said infuriated me that takes quotes from someone who caught Gausman for years and explains how they mismanaged him, looked at Fangraph data and found another article for you that shows you how the Giants used him properly. If you want to continue the points of those articles, feel free to start another thread about the mismanagement of Gausman and Arrieta since this is the Gunnar Henderson thread. I'm sorry for hijacking this one but I can't help myself, the whole thing is entirely too ridiculous. Or, as you said, "Very odd."

Because they tried to make him into something he wasn’t. What they did with him wasn’t working yet they kept at it. Same with Arrieta. He threw across his body a little bit, so what? They tried for years to correct things that didn’t need correcting. Literally, as soon as he stepped off the plane in Chicago they let him get back to what made him a success in college. Go to baseball reference and see how quickly he became good in Chicago mid season when he arrived there. That’s what good coaching does, you don’t try to overhaul what a guy does that makes him successful. Maybe a tweak here or there, some fine tuning. Maybe teach a new pitch. But you don’t **** with the reasons you liked a guy in the first place. Who gives a **** if the high fastball wasn’t popular in MLB then? Why spend a first round pick on a flamethrower who was dominant in college with high fastballs and try to get him to change what he excels at? Would you draft Frank Thomas and try to get him to be a singles hitter? Would you draft Verlander and try to get him to become a change up artist? Why does it infuriate me? Because imagine how the 2010s could have gone for us if we didn’t screw up the talent we had! Imagine if we had peak Arrieta and Gausman and Tillman and Chen and Gonzalez. That doesn’t infuriate you? All you took from that article was that the high fastball wasn’t popular at the time?

Could swap out Griffey Jr on that Mount Rushmore. Certainly doesn't have the WAR that Bonds, Williams or Cobb had but he was the face of baseball in the 90s.

It's just really sad that his career is going to be wasted on the Anaheim Angels, a pathetic franchise that couldn't figure out how to build around him. Maybe that changes and maybe they figure it out or maybe they trade him and he wins a World Series somewhere else. But it sucks that, at this rate, he'll be on the Mount Rushmore of ballplayers that had amazing, transcendent careers but never won a World Series with Bonds, Ted Williams and Ty Cobb.

What's the deal with Norby? He's been killing it at Bowie. Is he thought of as a legit prospect or a guy who can rake in the minors but won't be able to translate to big league pitching?

Agreed. Yes, you see these guys do it for a little bit and then they fall back into their ways.

The offense just needs to get it together. I'm not entirely worried about the pitching and I can't believe I'm actually typing that but it's true. I'm sure they'll have a blowout loss or two in these next 20 games but that's any team. This has always been a swing happy, hacking bunch but it just seems amplified over the past few weeks. They're up there trying to hit 6 run homers and abandoning any semblance of a decent plate approach they can muster. The notion of making a pitcher work, making a pitcher labor, seeing more pitches and getting deep in at-bat is lost on most of these guys and if these at bats continue that result in one and two pitch outs, we'll be toast.

Yeah, I don't know if these guys are pull happy or genuinely just can't hit it to the opposite field with any consistency. In other words, I can't believe USING THE WHOLE FIELD, DAMMIT, is as easy as we like to think it is. But then you see Hays and Mountcastle rolling over outside pitches and grounding out to SS (when they make contact) and it sucks to see. All I know is that when I played in HS and summer league teams, I liked going to the opposite field. I felt like it allowed me to wait longer, see the pitch better. And all my coaches wanted me to pull it because I was big and strong. I tried, but I never was good enough at it. Hitting is hard, IMO, it's probably the hardest thing to do in sports. But I always felt going the other way made it somewhat easier.

Firmly convinced that Hernandez isn't in the HoF because of his problems with the booger sugar.

1. Hernandez was an All-Star in '87 and still quite good. Yes, he fell off a cliff in '88 but vetronosity, team leader, etc. Two years removed from the '86 team, they still thought they could capture some of that '86 Magic. Let's also not forget that they went 7 games with the Dodgers in the '88 NLCS 2. Probably, but Strawberry was Strawberry and he was 30-30 in '87 and lead the league in homers in '88. Even if the Mets (they probably did) know he was on coke, he was still producing and all the coke stuff didn't surface in the public eye until he went to LA. Hindsight is 20-20, Milligan certainly had a case to play but with the way baseball was looked at in the 80s, it's not a surprise he didn't get a shot for the Mets when Hernandez and Strawberry were there.

He was also blocked by Keith Hernandez and Darryl Strawberry.

True, there are physical limitations that some of these guys probably can't overcome, McKenna might be that guy. But even then, if he knows he can't get around on a 93 MPH fastball, wouldn't it be better for him to change his approach to become an opposite field hitter? It would be a way to perhaps mask his physical limitations. If his bat is slow, why try to pull anything at all? But to your point, I'm assuming it's easier (yet still really hard, none of this is actually easy) to tease out better performances of a physically limited pitcher such as Watkins than a physically limited batter like McKenna.

Nah, if Elias hops out of the DeLorean in '89 and sees that the 27 year old Milligan has struck out 68 times and walked 88 times, he promptly signs him to an extension that takes him through his 33-34 seasons. Even at an "old 32" in 94 with the Expos his on base percentage was over .100 points higher than his batting average. Throw in some conditioning and whatever other secret sauce Elias brings with him, I think Milligan is still a wildly productive player into his early to mid 30s. Safe bet about the Davis deal and not knowing that Finley would become the player he became, but I was thinking it'd be un-Elias due to giving up Schilling and Harnisch. I flip flop on who the most surprising player from that deal was between Schilling and Finley. You could make a good case for both of them depending on the day but I'm assuming Finley had some "help."

Well there'd be nowhere to post it in 1988 for starters. But yeah, totally. Not only would the '89 team win 120, they'd probably never pull the trigger on Glenn Davis. Matter of fact, I bet the Astros would have been laughed out of the room. Randy Milligan (.900 OPS In 1990) would be rightfully entrenched at first base for the next 7-10 years. Mickey Tettleton stays and I bet the 1990s would be a lot different for the Orioles, even if and only if BB rate was the only thing they would have been looking at, a proto-Beane take on undervalued assets.

I'd pass on Abreu. He's going to be "36 years old" if you get my drift. And while I know that cliche has been apparently put to bed, I still believe it from time to time and he's a guy that I wouldn't be surprised if he really wasn't 36. He also doesn't really seem to fit the profile of what Elias is trying to do, he doesn't walk a lot and there's no positional flexibility there. Seems to me that the stars from Asia usually wind up on the west coast teams or NY/Boston. I don't expect the Orioles to be a destination for him but you never know.

I don't want to hijack this into a Kevin Gausman re-hash thread but this was infuriating to read.

Pretty sure it was posted on here a few weeks ago that Voth was impressed with the Orioles analytics department and figuring out the best method of attack for his pitching. IIRC, he said that the Nationals didn't have anything like it. This goes back to my overriding thought about how many of these guys just need a change of scenery, need the right coach, need the right analytics department in order to go from a fringey Major Leaguer to a good (or even great) one. These guys aren't that far apart from each other in terms of reflexes, hand eye coordination, etc. What it really boils down to at this level IMO, is the fine tuning. Look at a guy like McKenna, it's not hard to picture that guy being a good every day player if he lands in a situation where the right coach or analytics department can help him become better than he is.

Baker seems to have settled down recently.

FYI

Get some more runs here, get heated up proper for the Jays.