Moose Milligan

Kudos to Manfred for actually getting something right.

John Carlos Big Stanton tested positive for strikeouts

Probably pretty easily.

Baseball's been suspended, folks! Guess we have more handwringing to do for how we'll lose 100 games whenever the season starts and with what players we'll be doing it with.

If he can get David Ortiz out like that, I'll consider it a success.

Don't go man, it's not worth it.

What?

With exceedingly low expectations, any measure of success is a pleasant surprise.

Frobby, my approach of assessing prospects, especially Orioles prospects, is that they're all going to fail, and fail miserably. Until they don't. That's not humility, that's treating everyone equally.

One can kill you, one can't?

Probably. Oh well.

Semantics. IMO, filler is a quad A guy that gets shuttled back and forth. And when you have a team as crappy as ours, they might stick around for a season or two in the bigs for lack of a better option. Glad you're not really excited about Akin.

Ooooookay. Well, before going to bed, I just looked up his scouting report on 2080baseball.com and saw that his future offerings profile to a 50 on the 20 to 80 scale. So, average. The fastball that you claim to be average sits at 91-92, can hit 94. So, average. Everything else, delivery, athleticism, pitchability is average to below average. Mound presence is a plus, that's great. OH's own @Luke-OH back in November was slightly more generous and his fastball/change 55s. With the ceiling as a #4 starter. That's his CEILING. That's if everything goes RIGHT for him. It's rare that everything goes right for a player. The baseball landscape is littered with many players that things did not go right for. I wouldn't bet that everything goes right for someone with average stuff. But if you're excited about average pitchers, I don't know what to tell you.

Eh, it's not his fault he didn't have the horses.

We'll see how he ends up. I'm betting on slightly better than filler. You?

I believe you're partially correct. The thing is, I'm not sure what separates Akin from being a AAAA type. I'm too lazy to look up his stats and peripherals, but from what I've seen and the scouting reports I've read, he doesn't seem to be too far removed from that profile. If someone can explain to me what significantly separates Akin from an Eshelman/Wojo type, I'd love to hear it.

Earl Weaver II is the manager of this team.

The article doesn't do a deep dive into why he's performing well this spring, they're just taking note that he is doing better. Frobby, I do believe you pointed out earlier that he was as terrible in ST last year as he was in the regular season. There's some reason for optimism though, and that's good. He hasn't looked this good, ST or regular season at any point in the past few years so maybe there's some hope. It'd be quite a story if he could get back on track.

This is where I'm at. Manipulate the time for stud prospects. Let's be real here, Akin is organizational filler. I think people here are sort of enamored (for lack of a much better term) with him because he's popped up on top prospect lists for the organization for years now. But the depth of the minors isn't great and he's not in the top 5 prospects of what's traditionally been an organization with slim pickings. There's not much to get worked up about here, although many posters will for some reason. Despite the fact that I'm not hopeful about Akin being anything better than a 4th starter at best, I'm confident we'll see him in Baltimore this season. I don't see the need to manipulate the service time for a guy like this, I also don't see the need to whine about manipulating service time for anyone, really. We're going to see these guys when we see these guys. I know we all want to see some rookies in Baltimore to get our hopes up, only to have them come crashing down when we realize a guy like Akin has middling stuff, but whatever. It'll happen. Might happen in April, might happen in June. Hell, might happen in August. He'll arrive when he arrives and until then, hand-wringing about it is a fools errand.

Good. Sign 5 more tomorrow. Can't sign enough.

Lew Ford wishes he could be Colby Rasmus.

The. Worst.

Fair enough. For some reason I thought Eddie was better than he was in the 2nd time here.

So we agree he wasn't great for us...

CoC, why you gotta wet blanket everything all the time? Why you gotta be so extra? I'm merely playing by the loosely defined rules that were defined in the OP and here you come in acting all serious about something that's a fun topic. Who cares if it was his third consecutive season? He was well into the downside of his career when he came here. Fine, Millar, not an honorable mention, happy?