Big Mac

He's also now 5th in the AL in OPS at .875. He has certainly earned an all-star appearance, I hope he gets that recognition.

It's not semantics they are entirely different things. Wanting someone optioned means you want them to remain in the organization and hopefully straighten things out in Norfolk (there could be other reasons but that is typically it). A DFA means you are fine with giving every other organization the chance to claim the player for nothing, essentially cutting the player loose. In that case you are indifferent if the player is ever in an Oriole uniform again. Nobody has advocated for that for Mountcastle to my knowledge.

Wish we could stop derailing every single thread about how we need more starting pitching in order to compete in the playoffs. I know the argument verbatim because I've read it from one poster in probably 100 threads at this point.

Kjerstad promotion has already been reported.

We need to go 56-52 the rest of the way to win 90 games. Given the record over the first 1/3 of the season, I would consider anything below 90 wins this season a disappointment.

Going into today he had an .821 OPS over his last 14 days and .744 over the last 28 days. Do we really expect Westburg or Ortiz to produce better than that? Sit him against tough lefties otherwise I'd keep trotting him out there everyday.

I think it's also worth noting that Westburg is much more seasoned than some of the other top prospect sthat have come up and struggled out of the gate. I mean, he has 594 AAA plate appearances at this point. He isn't some 21/22 year old kid jumping from AA or after a brief AAA stint. I'd like to think that experience would mitigate the transition period to ML pitching, but who knows.

If you don't like the cherry picking we can also go with the .665 career OPS for Mateo. Maybe Ortiz can't top that as a rookie, but I'd call it a coin flip. Ortiz's OPS over 4 major league games is irrelevant.

You would be shocked if Ortiz couldn't match the glorious .354 OPS Mateo has posted over the last two weeks?

I absolutely disagree with the notion that the industry does not think much of him. He looks awful right now but let's not discount the caliber of prospect Stowers was. I think we are getting a lot of recency bias here and I personally don't believe the gap in talent level between Stowers and Cowser is that significant. But people will see 30 sporadic plate appearances and jump to conclusions, it happens.

Other than in a technical sense of he's lost prospect eligibility, in what world is Stowers not a prospect?

Gameday is now showing that Tate pitched the 7th. Was anyone watching on Milb.tv that can confirm?

Not really the thread for this, but Povich has a 1.91 FIP this season in AA.

If only they put the names on the back of the jerseys to clear this up .

Completely fair point to not get too worked up into WAR numbers and especially dWAR numbers this early. I'd counter with his dWAR was -0.2 last year and he posted a whopping -6 OAA last year. This isn't an early season statistical fluctuation, he's been a bad defensive outfielder for some time now. I hope he keeps hitting but if he reverts to the ~750ish OPS player he's been his entire career, we're looking at a close to replacement level player. Now, I'll qualify this by saying a move to RF could change all of this and his arm would really play there.

This is a good post. To call out a minor pet peeve here, it's "Akin" not "Akins". I've been seeing this all the time on here and blows my mind we can all know a player's average exit velocity, sprint speed, spin rate, extension, etc. yet miss the spelling of their name. Mini-rant over, I agree with the premise that it's early, the starters are relatively inexperienced and should get better. And even if they don't, we're still good enough to win a lot of games.

Hays hasn't played an excellent LF for about two years now...big part of why he is currently a replacement level player despite an .840 OPS.

Based solely on my eye test, he looks much better defensively in the OF than he did in his brief stint last season. Let's also remember that by every advanced metric, our corner OF defense is atrocious so the bar is pretty low for him out there. I put zero weight into his offensive results over 21 sporadic at bats and his K/BB numbers are fine. I'd keep finding ways to run him out there 4-5 games per week and see what we have.

I agree with all of this. It's a long season and you can't pull your starters at the first sign of trouble every game like you would in a postseason game. Your bullpen would never make it through 162 managing that way.

I'm not sure I entirely agree with the last sentence, I think he's just a bit off right now. He has a 5.86 FIP so it's not like he's been that unlucky, but probably a bit better than the ERA indicates. His K/9 is up, BB/9 about the same but as you pointed out the long ball has been a huge issue, jumping to 2.1 HR/9 from 0.8 last year. That all together combined with what I've seen when watching him is he's making a handful of bad mistakes per game and paying the price for it. I guess I don't see what a stint in AAA is going to do for him on that where he is more likely to just get away with those mistakes. If he goes like 2 IP and gives up 7 ER tonight and then can't get out of the 4th next start then sure I'd probably make a move and give Hall or Rom a shot or something. I'm certainly not in a hurry to bring back Irvin who isn't even able to miss bats in AAA right now. I think being a year removed from a 3.23 ERA and 3.80 FIP in 125 IP gives you more rope than 29.2 innings, especially when there is no obvious replacement.

I'm probably letting him get 3-4 more starts before I consider doing anything. His stuff looks good to me, we don't have immediate upgrades to choose from and I think people are putting way too much stock into an inflated ERA over 29.2 innings.

I seriously hope Baker and none of other pitchers are juvenile and stupid enough to throw at anyone over that.

When I went a few years ago, there was a train I took from downtown LA that dropped you off right by the NHL arena and Angels stadium that worked pretty well. https://metrolinktrains.com/explore/orange-county/angel-stadium/

Roch just tweeted that Hays "will try to swing the bat in a few days"...if that is the case why in the world do they not just IL him?

Just for another point of reference, if you compare their numbers including last season at Norfolk: Ortiz .351/.396/.542 (42 games) Westburg .281/.366/.520 (107 games) Two very good options indeed.