Moose Milligan

Random, but whatever. I hate how he picks up his front leg in his motion. Anyway, not surprising that he's having a terrible season like the rest of them.

Part of me just wants to see how bad it can get. Just a morbid curiosity. Keep trotting him out there every day, see how many strikeouts he can rack up, how low that batting average can plummet, see if he can get that OPS to under .400.

Anyway, two days on the bench, two losses. Hell of an improvement.

It could be a picture of him on the bench, that'd be better.

Whatever. Next thing you know we'll have a starting pitcher step on a nail before he has to make a start in Toronto.

You could write one, too.

Cause they're softer than puppy $#%^. (side note, can we just use the regular profanity filters or is that still a bannable offense?) And check your DM, numbnuts.

Yep, I don't want Brady around being involved in running the club, either. It is my fear that the new GM search will take forever in the offseason and that person will come in with most of the offseason behind him. Angelos has screwed this franchise so hard, I don't think any good GM or manager candidate will want to be here.

Well, we disagree there. Buck is a problem, but the roster is a bigger one. The FO, as a whole, is a bigger problem. DD is going to go, and then there's Brady who looks to be a problem. You are correct, you do start fixing the problems you can. The problem is that the people doing the fixing are problems themselves. Thus, nothing ever really gets fixed. So what do you want, Buck fired tomorrow? An interim manager to manage out the string? Then DD leaves, the Orioles spend all offseason with Brady running things acting as the defacto GM. Maybe they hire a real GM, maybe they don't. Brady, no matter what, will probably have a large say-so in who the next manager will be. Angelos, still around pulling puppet strings, of course. That's how I see it playing out. Thats what I see happening this offseason. I don't think it's a giant stretch to see all of that coming true. Based on that, do you understand why I don't care of Buck is fired tomorrow or gets to manage the rest of the season?

Not sure, it appears to me sometimes that people feel like Buck is the #1 problem without a doubt. Agree that it's time for a new voice but I'd prefer to see a proper search done in the offseason. But in regards to your statement about a new voice at the top, I agree there. Without that, I expect them to botch a new manager search and pretty much everything else. I hate this. We are headed to the dark ages again and people are saying David Hess is the man and are whining about Mike Wright not getting starts over Chris Tillman which is somewhere near #87 on a list of things that need to be fixed.

Please, let's stop acting like David Hess is the savior. He's had a nice start and pitched well but if we are talking about evaluating talent in the organization I am sure you can see as well as I can that he has middling stuff. Castro, maybe, but it appears that the team wants to use him as a reliever who can go more than one inning, Lord knows they need it. Wright is not way better than Tillman. I mean, if your measuring stick is Tillman and Tillman is getting an F, Wright is getting a D. If you're happy with your D because the kid sitting next to you got an F, that's faulty logic. Wright's ERA is 6.37 this year. That is absolutely terrible. You're trying to defend Mike Wright? He's got a 5.95 career ERA. Read that sentence, take a breath, then read that sentence again. I guess you're happy with your D. Let's slow down here. You just said no excuse for Tillman, doesn't happen in a real organization. Your words, not mine. And I agree with that, Tillman shouldn't have been given a spot in the rotation. But your answer is Wright, who has a 5.95 career ERA. I got news, that doesn't happen in a real organization, either. Swapping out the guy who had a 7.84 ERA last year for a guy that has a career 5.95 ERA doesn't win you games. It doesn't move this organization ahead. It is the very definition of shuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic. What exactly are we arguing about here? If Davis starts crowing because he gets benched or and the Orioles are trying to make his life miserable, the MLBPA will definitely step in. That's what a players organization does. The MLBPA will want to make sure that Davis gets every last dollar of his contract no matter how bad he's performing. Why? Because it sets a precedent. If the Orioles try to make Davis' life miserable and succeed in doing so in driving him out of Baltimore without seeing every last dollar on that contract it will set a precedent that other MLB teams can do that to other MLB players. Say Kershaw keeps getting hurt and turns into a Tillman type overnight and the Dodgers want to get out from his massive contract. All of a sudden they can point to the Orioles as an example of how to get out from a players contract that is no longer favorable. That's what a players association does, it steps in to go to bat for issues like that. And the MLBPA is the strongest one out of all the 4 major sports.

David Hess is better...for now. Let's see where he is in a month or two when the book is out on him. I am assuming you remember the month where Josh Towers looked like he was an all-star. I'm defending Buck because, as I've said to you dozens of times before, there's no one else out there that can do a significantly better job. A win here or there, maybe. But to pretend that this team is in the cellar because of Buck is shortsighted. I get it man, you need a scapegoat and a whipping boy. You need to harness your negative thoughts and emotions and direct it at one person to make yourself feel better and condense all the frustrations you have towards this team. I will say that Buck is part of the problem, but he is not THE problem.

Or he and DD and Brady understand that the guy is being paid 160 million and...will not accept a demotion to the bench or to the minors. Buck is loyal to a fault, but he's not dumb. We can whine about Tillman all we want, but the facts remain that there weren't significantly better options available for the rotation. The FO wasn't going to pony up and sign anyone significant and Mike Wright is terrible. I can't stand these arguments, it's not like the inclusion of Tillman was at the expense of someone else who was a clearly better option. But back to Davis, no one likes this situation, how can anyone be happy here? If they bench Davis, try to demote him or whatever...better believe that he'll cause a fuss and openly complain to the media and then we'll have a REAL issue of crap hitting the fan. I don't want that. I'd prefer this to be handled behind the scenes and not airing out dirty laundry for all to see. While I am a sports fan, I don't seek blood on the sportspages every day, especially from my favorite teams. If they bench Davis or try to make him miserable in an effort to get him to accept a demotion or have him sit on the bench, you bring agents and maybe even the MLBPA into the mix. It could escalate and get nasty. Some people might want that, some people might enjoy that drama. Like I said, I don't. I'd prefer this to be handled quietly behind the scenes, as I said before. I am hoping that the Orioles are talking to Davis and his representatives to see if there's a way they can have a buyout or come to an agreement on how to proceed here. My guess is that they are not but it could happen this offseason. But make no mistake, Chris Davis is in the lineup because his salary stipulates that he should be.

Going way past it.

Chris Davis: 160 million, two seasons of leading the league in homers, a top 3 mvp finish. Hyun Soo Kim: Like, a few million, from somewhere in Korea and while a really likable, fun guy, a 4th outfielder type who is expendable. I am firmly convinced that anyone who does not understand why Davis isn't on the bench is being intentionally obtuse.

Again, Buck can't do anything with this roster. Earl Weaver, Tommy Lasorda, Miller Huggins, Casey Stengel...pick any manager, ever. None of them could do anything with this roster. I get it if you're mad because Buck had a hand in selecting this roster but he's not responsible for all of it. No one will truly know how much of it he's responsible for. People on here will act like they know, but they don't. But if you're going to want to blast Buck for day to day stuff as far as lineup decisions, in game moves, he's working with a deck stacked against him. If that's the hill you want to die on, that's all for you. I've got news though. Buck won't be back next year. Davis has a better chance of being back here, actually. So you're going to have a manager with a worse roster (no Manny, no Jones) and a bunch of youngsters trying to figure it out. And who's the whipping boy going to be then? No Buck to manage, same crappy players. Same terrible results.

Right, but you and I both know how sports work and and you know as well as I do that when you have a guy making as much as he does, he's in the lineup. I don't like it, you don't like it, no one likes it. But that's one of the crappy things about professional sports. It's not Little League where everything is fair and everyone gets to play. If you've got a guy with a big salary, he's in the lineup. Putting Davis in the leadoff spot was dumb, but at least it was an effort to think outside of the box and try to jumpstart him. If you recall around here there were cries of DO SOMETHING and FIGURE OUT HOW TO GET DAVIS TO HIT BETTER and a whole bunch of whining about...well, trying to get Davis to hit. So an attempt was made. I'll give Buck some credit to try something different in an effort to get a poorly performing player to perhaps figure out a different approach and figure things out. Subtract your emotions from the situation and look at it for what it was, it's not the most terrible thing in the world. I mean, down in Tampa there's a guy who's starting relief pitchers instead of starting pitchers. How come that guy's not getting tarred and feathered but actually being celebrated for trying something new? Maybe because he's had some decent results with it (also some poor ones) but I don't blame Buck for one second for trying to make chicken salad out of chicken $#@#.

He won't. As pointed out, he's gotten worse since last year. I didn't think it was possible but here we are. He will be under .150 for the season, no doubt. He might not even double his number right now and get to 8. Batting .139 over his last 11 games (arbitrary number I just picked on baseball reference). -1.8 WAR for the season. OPS+ of 32. The phrase "video game numbers" gets tossed around when someone is putting up ridiculous stats. But Davis is like, video game numbers if you picked up a video game you haven't played before and cranked the difficulty all the way up.

That might be one of the dumbest things I've ever read on here. Do you measure the difficulty of everything in life against hitting a baseball? That's not even an apples and oranges comparison, that's like an apples and spatulas comparison. Davis is 32 years old and is by most accounts, healthy and should be able to hit better than he is. Buck is 62 years old and hasn't picked up a bat in decades. And you're trying to say Buck's season is worse because of....what again? You were right about one thing. Buck has to fill out a lineup card. You, or anyone else here couldn't get significantly better results with the players he has to pick from.

They're gonna have to have a buyout. No one would consider taking this contract on. Not really, but ok.

Keep OPACY, right? I am not sure where I would stand on this. On the one side, it'd be awesome to get rid of him. On the other hand, I know I can outlast him. The wild card here is his sons.

On MLB draft day, I wonder what guys like Billy Rowell are up to. What happened to that guy? Flamed out, of course. But is he washing dishes at a diner in Topeka or is he got his life together? Judging by how he went out, I don't think he's got his life together but I'd like to see. Same with Chris Smith, etc.

I think some athletes have a built in delusional aspect to them. I think it's something that's been acquired over time in order to help deal with slumps or declining play. It's the same thing that keeps an athlete hanging on for too long past their prime. This is no different than Derek Jeter thinking he can play SS effectively into the later years of his career.

You're right. It just doesn't seem like every 6.5 at bats. It seems more like 1/10 at bats.

Yeah. I mean, granted a 1/4 night will prop that batting average up a little bit but he's like 3 for his last 34 or something ridiculous. .153 is too high for him.