Big Mac

The Brewers were rained out today and Hall is pitching saturday now.

Sure, then maybe include some rationale behind why you think he's a 4th OF at best or include some statistics that support it rather than just creating a thread for whatever reactionary thought pops into your head. The latter is what twitter and game threads are for.

Feel like this could go in the game thread rather than necessitating its own thread given there was zero analysis given in the OP.

I'll be at both of these along with the Saturday and Sunday games in Pittsburgh next weekend.

Each full season he has been in the league, his K% has decreased and BB% has increased. He's turned into a hitter that has almost exactly league average K rates, slightly below average BB rates to go along with excellent batted ball data. It's overall a pretty strong hitter profile but I agree with the sentiment he's not some player we can't move on from as he gets more expensive and we may have cheaper options internally with higher upside.

How much better would this lineup look with Mayo at DH and Westburg at 2B?

Anytime you have the chance to put a backup 1B/3B with a career .610 OPS on your opening day roster...you have to do it. I assume this is because either (1) they want him to face the left handed pitching we expect to see early, (2) they want someone they don't care about DFAing to hold the fort for a couple of weeks or (3) they expect to pick up someone on waivers. With Nevin, Mountcastle and O'Hearn on the roster you have three guys that you never really want playing anywhere other than 1B or DH, I don't see that lasting very long.

Cole Irvin is perfectly fine as the #5 Starter on a contending team and really, he is our SP #7. He's only in the 5th slot because two guys went down with injury. Irvin in 2021-23 (his three full/mostly full seasons in the majors): 436.2 IP; 4.16 ERA and 4.29 FIP. What do you all think most 5th starters look like? Sure he doesn't miss a ton of bats but he doesn't walk people and generally keeps the ball in the ballpark.

I do not think there is a GM in baseball that wouldn't consider Rodriguez and Kremer "bonafide major league starters". Kremer has started 53 games over the last two seasons and put up a 3.74 ERA, if he isn't a bonafide major league starter than neither is John Means or the vast majority of starting pitchers in the league.

That would be a fantastic rookie season, but the context of that season compared to Holliday's upcoming rookie season is important. Matt Holliday was 24 year old his rookie season. Also, given the offensive environment in the 2004 season that line was good for only a 103 OPS+. I think a 103ish OPS+ for Holliday this year is a reasonable expectation.

I'd guess something in the range of .270/.350/.400

I'm going to catch the O's there the first Saturday and Sunday in April. Have to be (somewhat) in the area for a conference that Thursday and Friday, so figured I'd take a detour on the way home. Anyone have any good recommendations? I already have the Roberto Clemente Museum and Forbes Field Wall on my list, but would leave to hear if anyone else has been to that ballpark or spent time in Pittsburgh!

Adley has a Nike sponsorship.

That stat certainly shows how the game has changed over time, what are middle of the road K rates now rank as two of the top 10 in franchise history. Something we all knew but this stat really highlights it, not sure why in the world it necessitated a down vote.

I like EBJ a lot, but he is certainly going to need to hit for more power than he showed in his brief professional debut last year to be a starter in the big leagues. Now, I think that he will and it seems most scouts have that opinion as well. We aren't talking home runs here, but he needs gap power and the ability to rack up some XBH. 3 extra base hits in 110 minor league plate appearances just won't cut it. If he doesn't improve on that and ML pitchers know that the worst he can do is flare a singe over the shortstops head, outfielders will play way in and pitchers will just attack. The walks will decrease significantly. If you have elite plate discipline, it's easy to rack up walks in the low minors without any power. There are too many pitchers with horrible command that couldn't challenge you if they tried. Again, I think he is going to improve on that. However, he'll need to do much better than a .038 ISO to be a ML starter.

Not you, someone complained about another AAAA acquisition and hoped this wasn't a replacement for Bradish and Means.

Love when people get up in arms about moves like this when they are depth moves every single team makes all the time.

They did not win the world series.

He's not a product of the old regime, he was taken by Elias in the 2019 draft along with Adley, Gunnar and Ortiz.

The article said that the naming rights were initially supposed to be announced today, but that the corporate sponsor was essentially blindsided by the sale so no announcement today. The WSJ was relatively critical of Angelos here. A few snippets below. The company that thought it was about to plaster its name around Camden Yards didn’t know anything about a possible sale until learning about it in the initial news reports. John Angelos acknowledges he can be capricious, prone to whims and changes-of-heart that make him unlike the careful corporate figures found in most owners’ boxes. He negotiated on and off with Rubenstein for three years, frequently leaving people around him wondering where things stood and what his true intentions were. He played down the intensity of his flirtation with Rubenstein to the end, to the point that many inside MLB didn’t know the sale was finally going forward until about a week before it was finalized. Yet the most surprising thing about John Angelos’s tenure as the head of the Orioles might just have been his lack of sentimentality. He can conjure up affection for Brooks Robinson like any good Baltimorean, but he made a deliberate effort not to wear Orioles merchandise or even the color orange. Angelos’s dispassion for his own ball club stands in contrast to that of Rubenstein, who described himself in a statement as being an Orioles fan for his “entire life.”

Without researching every teams projected rotation right now, I'd bet there are about 26-27 teams at least that would kill to have Dean Kremer as their #5 starter. I'd turn the focus to getting another impact reliever.

Sure, I don't disagree with that assessment. But we are talking Kremer, Cowser/Kjerstad/Westburg and a couple of other impact pieces in all likelihood v. Cease. I'd rather keep the prospects and roll with Kremer or use prospect capital to get an impact reliever.

I would be hesitant to give up much to replace Kremer in the rotation with Cease. I think you are paying a premium there for what could very well only be a marginal upgrade. Of course if we get the 2022 version of Cease that's a huge upgrade, but otherwise I don't view it as a significant upgrade.

While the specifics of a deal like this are vastly different, typically in an M&A transaction once the deal terms have been agreed upon but before the transaction actually closes, there are restrictions on what the seller can do to the business during that interim period. I've never done a sale of a sports franchise and I am sure that there are significant structural differences, but I'd think there was a bit of a holding pattern on making anything beyond minor moves in some way.

I think Mayo's bat is much more major league ready than Holliday's.