SurhoffRules

With the season winding down, Markakis finds himself on the DL but may get a few more ABs when he comes off. Assuming there's no significant improvement or collapse he'll probably finish around 100 OPS+ and 0.4-0.5 WAR in 104+ games on a $4M salary. I imagine he might find a team willing to play him next year if he wants to return in some capacity, although I wonder how much longer he'll play the majority of games in a season. I will say this, despite his ups and down in production, Nick has been remarkably healthy over the course of his career, playing an average of 150 games a year. Adam has also kept himself on the field more than not since he stuck in the majors with Baltimore. He's sporting a 91 OPS+ for the season and 0.2 WAR in 124 games. He's hitting enough that he'll likely see a little bump in WAR before the seasons ends on his $3M contract. Given the slow market for his services last year I don't imagine he'll see an increase in interested for his age 34 season this winter. There's probably still a spot for him, but I'd be hard pressed to see him as a starter next season. TLDR: Nick has provided a bit more total value this year as his bat remains relevant into his mid thirties. Both could find work next year but the odds of them finding starters work continues to decline. I'm a bit stumped as to why Nick is at -8 RField and Adam is -1 despite having a relatively similar looking defensive line in RF. Maybe park effect or some other input. I'm not all that familiar with the inner working of DWAR.

If Means finishes strong I think he's got as good of a shot as anyone at AL Rookie of the Year. Just looking at bWAR as a bellwether, Tampa's Lowe has a slight edge (3.7 to 3.6) but he's out for the rest of the season. Houston's Alvarez could be in the conversion (3.0) but he's a DH/1B type with a below average glove. I'm not really seeing another AL rookie pitcher that jumps out at me this year and some other just don't have the games yet to accrue the numbers that would put them in the conversation (Bichette, Guerrero Jr.). Two or three more solid starts for Means and he could be the first Os RoY since...Gregg Olson in '89.

Mark was a poor-man's Adam Dunn and I know that type of player can get a lot of flak but I don't even think he was the worst player on the roster those years. In 2011, Felix Pie posted a -1.7 bWAR in 85 games and Vladdy was barely above 0 in 145 (though he was a full-time DH). games. He (Reynolds) was worse in '12 but that year we also played Ryan Flaherty in every other game despite negative value on both sides of the dish (had to carry him for Rule 5) and gave BRob 74 at-bats to post a ~400 OPS. Despite having a limited toolbox, I never minded Reynolds. He seemed like he was trying out there. Though, I will admit to being surprised he still had an MLB job as recently as this July.

AAA is using the MLB ball this season. This came up as evidence in the HR thread that this seasons spike was mostly ball related and not launch angle or something else. AAA switched balls and offense is through the roof there.

From what I can see here his OPS is 56th best in the IL min 82 ABs (https://www.baseball-reference.com/register/leader.cgi?type=bat&id=d8c9afa1). He is one of three 22 year olds on that list, there are no younger players. Age # Avg OPS 22 3 0.922 23 5 0.900 24 13 0.937 25 6 0.977 26 6 0.949 27 5 0.966 28 3 0.903 29 4 0.899 30 3 0.853 31 3 0.944 32 3 0.873 33 2 0.865

As much as I like moving numbers around, I like that other folks can put some context around them even more.

Year R/G SLG pSLG dSLGS SLG/pSLG 1977 4.47 0.401 0.361 +0.040 111% 1911 4.51 0.357 0.326 +0.031 110% 1969 4.07 0.369 0.340 +0.029 109% 1921 4.85 0.403 0.372 +0.031 108% 1953 4.61 0.397 0.370 +0.027 107% 1919 3.88 0.348 0.325 +0.023 107% 1973 4.21 0.379 0.354 +0.025 107% 1993 4.60 0.403 0.377 +0.026 107% 1920 4.36 0.372 0.348 +0.024 107% 1981 4.00 0.369 0.388 -0.019 95% 1967 3.77 0.357 0.376 -0.019 95% 1971 3.89 0.365 0.385 -0.020 95% 1963 3.95 0.372 0.393 -0.021 95% 1926 4.64 0.389 0.411 -0.022 95% 1978 4.10 0.379 0.401 -0.022 95% 1933 4.48 0.376 0.400 -0.024 94% 1942 4.08 0.350 0.375 -0.025 93% 1904 3.72 0.321 0.346 -0.025 93% 1988 4.14 0.378 0.415 -0.037 91% 1931 4.81 0.391 0.434 -0.043 90% Top and bottom 10 changes in slugging since 1900. Interesting that in 77 it went up 11% like you said, and then in 78 plummeted right back down 9%. Power drop in8 8 and power bump in 93. Also, that 67, right before the "year of the pitcher", slugging dipped 5%, then in '68 itself dipped another 5%(68 just missing the bottom 10 list by 1 spot). It rebounded shortly there after, but I guess the hitting lows at the end 68 we're 2 years in the making.

Especially in HS, if you're the best player on the team you're probably starting your Saturday at SS in the morning and then moving the mound to start the evening end of the doubleheader. I bet a 17/18 year old Thome could absolutely pick it when compared to his teammates at Illinois Central (Junior) College in East Peoria, IL.

Yeah, I only go through about the top 5-8 rounds when complaining about previous high draft picks. Outside of that I don't feel like there's a reasonable argument that we would've "could've had X who was drafted in the 15th round!" Those names would've never been in the conversation for 1st rounders at the time. It would've bee unreasonable to expect the Os (or any team) would've taking them in that position. My criteria kind of boil down to: 1) How did their career pan out against players taken in the same slot in different years? Were they really a bust? 2) Was there a considerable amount of talent taken directly after team that the Os could've reasonably expected to draft in their place? Did a fair number of teams get better value with their picks after directly after the Os? Matt Hobgood is an example of a player who fails both the performance side and Orioles selection side. He was a bust and there were a number of other reasonable candidates in the first 2 rounds of his draft. Ben Mcdonald and Matt Wieters were justifiable picks who had average career for their draft pedigree. That last qualifier even ignores players who didn't make the bigs from the draft, which raises the bar for average performance a fair bit.

A very quick glance at that draft list puts Thomas(7) and Knoblach(25) in the 1st round, Oleroud(79) and Salmon(69) in the 3rd, and Bagwell(110) in the 4th. That's all I see going through the first 8 or so rounds. The Mcdonald pick was fine and so were the results.

Ben Mcdonald ended his career with 20.8 WAR, pretty much dead middle of the pack for 1-1 picks who actually made the big leagues. The draft, even 1-1 is not a sure thing and the Os could've done a lot worse than Ben. He was the 5th highest producing of the 1st round that year (only Thomas and Knoblach were considerably better), the 2nd round was a complete bust, and you find Oleroud and Salmon in the 3rd. The draft, even with high position, is very much a crapshoot.

Going back to 1965 the average bWAR for a 1-1 is 22.42 (for those that made the majors). 17.9 is the median. For 5th rounders, Matt's 18.4 is 9th all time. Avg is 12.3 and median is 2. He has done very well for that slot. The list of 1st rounders taken after him that you'd rather have is Bumgarner and Heyward. So, 2 possible guys the Os could have had there are no doubt more valuable than Wieters, with 20 of the other 22 not panning out in any considerable way at all.

One last entry because I was pretty sure I screwed something up in my numbers and it was bothering me. Now I'm pretty confident you have indeed found the winner of this competition (looking at MLB seasons). The 1884 Chicago colts are even worse if you compared them against the MLB HR/G figure of .22 (NL only was .35). A whopping 329% of the league average. If we restricted the criteria to only seasons where the league averaged more than .6 HR/G I come up with the '82 Twins. They yielded 1.28 HR/G to the league's .80 HR/G. Our 2019 Orioles rank 4th in that list behind the '64 Kansas City and the '47 Pittsburgh Pirates. On the other end of the spectrum is the 1902 Pirates, who surrendered 2 HRs to the league average of 22. Finally, if we raise the criteria to only seasons with a lgHR/G greater than .9, we find the 2011 Giants, who gave up 96 HRs to the leagues 152. The staff gave up 37% less than the average that year.

This was bothering me because it wasn't showing up towards the top of my dataset. I see that you were judging NL teams vs the NL avg and so on. So other reader are aware, my numbers are using MLB averages. In 68, the leaguewide HR/G was .61 and the PFF was 106 which bumped that season down a bunch in my lists. I guess AL pitchers were really slacking off during the year of the pitcher.

Going down this rabbit hole...Maddux tossed 4 HRs in 202 innings the strike shortened 94 season. Man he was a machine.

Pulling in HRFactor from ESPN would be nice but would take some time so I adjusted off BBREF Pitcher Park Factor (>100 favors batters) and extended the dataset to 1959. The 2019 Os still rank ahead of all the other seasons in the range, though the 1982 Oakland team got a nice bump when you factor in they play in an enormous park. The 82 Phillies and 94 Braves managed to pull off really impressive seasons even with an unfriendly park. Year Tm PPF lgHR/G HR/G HR/G / lgHR/G HR/G * PPF HR/G * PPF / lgHR/G 2019 BAL 100 1.35 2.09 155% 2.09 155% 1982 MIN 104 0.80 1.28 160% 1.23 154% 1964 KCA 106 0.85 1.35 159% 1.27 150% 1982 OAK 94 0.80 1.09 136% 1.16 144% 1995 MIN 102 1.01 1.46 144% 1.43 141% 1963 DET 103 0.83 1.20 144% 1.17 140% 1983 DET 96 0.78 1.05 134% 1.09 139% 1992 CLE 99 0.72 0.98 136% 0.99 137% 1977 SEA 101 0.86 1.20 139% 1.19 137% 1978 SEA 101 0.70 0.97 138% 0.96 136% .... 1965 PIT 99 0.83 0.55 66% 0.55 67% 1996 ATL 102 1.09 0.74 68% 0.73 66% 1996 FLA 96 1.09 0.70 64% 0.73 66% 1971 HOU 97 0.73 0.46 63% 0.48 65% 1982 PHI 102 0.80 0.53 66% 0.52 65% 1982 LAD 97 0.80 0.50 62% 0.52 64% 1994 ATL 101 1.04 0.67 64% 0.66 64% 1980 HOU 91 0.73 0.42 58% 0.46 63% 1984 LAD 98 0.77 0.47 61% 0.48 62% 1981 HOU 94 0.64 0.36 56% 0.39 60%

Arizona and Colorado I buy, but the PF for Baltimore is normally right on 100. Opposing pitchers don't tend to have to much trouble at Camden compared to other parks. That said, I've definitely seen it speculated that we have some odd park effects that aren't accounted for. Our outfielders defensive metrics have been questioned a number of times and some folks things the dimensons reduce triples while inflating HRs. The hotel that popped up across the street comes up in HR conversations often too.

Year Tm HR/G lgHR/G HR/G / lgHR/6 2019 BAL 2.09 1.35 155% 2011 BAL 1.30 0.94 138% 2016 CIN 1.59 1.15 138% 2010 ARI 1.30 0.95 136% 2002 COL 1.39 1.04 133% 2001 COL 1.48 1.12 131% 2005 CIN 1.34 1.03 130% 2013 BAL 1.25 0.96 130% 2009 BAL 1.35 1.04 130% 2004 CIN 1.46 1.12 130% .... 2013 STL 0.69 0.96 72% 2007 SDP 0.73 1.02 72% 2009 ATL 0.73 1.04 71% 1999 HOU 0.79 1.14 70% 2005 FLA 0.72 1.03 69% 2002 SFG 0.72 1.04 69% 2015 PIT 0.68 1.01 67% 2019 TBR 0.89 1.35 66% 2013 PIT 0.62 0.96 65% 2011 SFG 0.59 0.94 63% Ask and ye shall and all that.

There are like 631 seasons in this data set. There are 8 Orioles Seasons in the top 10%.

For your consideration, the top ten from the last 20 seasons: Year Tm HR9 lgHR9 HR9/lgHR9 2019 BAL 2.1 1.4 150% 2011 BAL 1.3 0.9 144% 2009 BAL 1.4 1.0 140% 2005 CIN 1.4 1.0 140% 2004 CIN 1.5 1.1 136% 2001 COL 1.5 1.1 136% 2016 CIN 1.6 1.2 133% 2011 HOU 1.2 0.9 133% 2013 BAL 1.3 1.0 130% 2012 COL 1.3 1.0 130% And the bottom 10 from the same time: Year Tm HR9 lgHR9 HR9/lgHR9 2013 MIA 0.7 1.0 70% 2013 STL 0.7 1.0 70% 2009 ATL 0.7 1.0 70% 2007 SDP 0.7 1.0 70% 2005 FLA 0.7 1.0 70% 2011 SFG 0.6 0.9 67% 1999 HOU 0.8 1.2 67% 2019 TBR 0.9 1.4 64% 2002 SFG 0.7 1.1 64% 2013 PIT 0.6 1.0 60%

With June and hot weather just around the corner we're through about a 1/3rd of the season so I wanted to check in on the HR story from a month ago. 2018 HR/9 (season) - 1.155 2019 HR/9 (to-date) - 1.351 If a similar number of innings are played this year as last, the total number of HRs MLB-wide would rise almost a 1000 from 5585 to 6530. Juiced balls, bad pitching, new hitting approaches, whatever, it appears there's gonna be a bunch of souvenirs this year.

Through roughly 1/3 of the season, both Nick and Adam have played a similar number of games 56/53 and both are mainly in right field. Nick slashing .278/.371/.423/.794 and Adam .273/.323/.498/.820. However, I guess due to park effect, Nick is 4 Runs better than replacement with the bat, whereas Adam is at -1. Nick is holding his own in the field and Adam's been dinged a bit for his glove and his baserunning. All told, Nick is at .9 WAR and Adam at .1 WAR. Nick is on pace to meet or exceed his production from last season for 4M, Adam is making 3M(up to 5M with his PA incentives). With the cost of a free agent win somewhere north $10M (I think, not sure if this accounts for pitchers vs fielders), Nick would have to go off the rails to not exceed his contract value by a significant margin. Adam will have a bit tougher time given the higher offensive bar for his home park, but he could easily provide 3(to 5)M+ of value this season.

Game %RHH %FB %SI %CH %CU BAL@NYA (3/31/19) 80 68 18 12 2 OAK@BAL (4/11/19) 74 51 26 20 3 DET@BAL (5/28/19) 73 45 39 8 8 NYA@BAL (4/6/19) 61 53 19 20 8 NYA@BAL (5/23/19) 59 41 27 21 11 BAL@MIN (4/28/19) 56 52 18 23 6 MIN@BAL (4/21/19) 54 44 18 24 14 ANA@BAL (5/11/19) 53 53 19 23 6 BAL@TBA (4/16/19) 44 52 19 20 8 TBA@BAL (5/4/19) 42 51 19 19 11 BAL@CLE (5/17/19) 23 41 17 31 11 It's still early but his pitch usage has been in a fairly narrow band most games (call it 50/20/20/10). If I squint I guess I see some trends above 60% RHH (ignoring his first, fastball heavy start of the season). His mix looks pretty similar from about 40-70% RHH but the really heavy outliers (both in terms of one-handed heavy lineup and pitch mix being heavily altered) are recent (5/17 & 5/28). A sign of things to come perhaps.

Last night Bundy threw 45% fastball, 8 % curves, 39% sliders, and 8 % change ups. For the year he's tossed 50% fastballs, 8% curves, 22% sliders, and 20% change ups, so that's a pretty marked deviation. His previous high for sliders was 27% but it's normally been closer to 18%. Interestingly enough, his average FB was 91.8, only a half mile an hour faster than his 91.4 average for the year. He did touch 94 at least once though, a feat he's accomplished in only 1 other game this season.

Reading through the article this is almost a no-brainer for Stewart. The compensation over the next six year is much higher than going as a 2nd round pick and working his way through someone's farm system and he maintains avenues to joining the MLB in his mid-twenties. Is there an avenue for players to switch leagues without posting? I didn't here anything about the Os posting for Koji or other older/more under the radar types. At some point are players just considered free agents and free to sign with other leagues outside of the posting system? On its face I like the idea of players having more options on where and who to play for. Interesting development.