24fps

IMO the O's will need another starter anyway regardless of GrayRod's performance. Gibson is trending the wrong way and Irvin in the bullpen makes sense. Also innings limits and fatigue is going to start being felt toward the end of August. Rodriguez is lined up to face the Dodgers, Rays and Yankees before the deadline; fairly tough teams, so I wonder what would constitute failure? Unless he is truly horrible, I think he'll get the remainder of his 2023 ration of innings at the ML level anyway.

Over their last five starts Irvin has pitched to a 3.62 ERA and Gibson to a 7.62 ERA, and that includes Gibson's 7 inning 3-hit, 11K outing. Gibson has been pretty dreadful lately - the team has lost five of his last eight starts - so I agree, he should be the one to give way when GrayRod comes up IMO.

The O's are currently on a 99-win pace (95 if you use pythag). 92 wins would require 37-35 the rest of way which is certainly plausible. I think it could be a little conservative, but only by a game or two.

That some teams are defensively better than others is easily observable but you seem to be arguing that it’s not possible to measure it precisely enough to be meaningful. Measuring differences is the whole point of the statical revolution in baseball that’s been going on for around 35 years now. If you are saying that the defensive aspect of that revolution has thoroughly failed then how so? I don’t know what fielding at 98% means, but if 29 teams out of 30 are doing it, then I think I want to know.

I remain skeptical that Means will be much of a contributor if at all. I think some kind of starter even if it's necessarily the caliber of a Jason Montgomery is going to be necessary along with relief help. Elias is right to be concerned about health issues as the season grinds towards the end.

God put Bill James and his acolytes on Earth to bury notions like that once and for all. A lot of work still needs to be done on the defensive side, but that statement is most decidedly not true.

Yes. BBRef has a stat called 162-game average which give you an average of career WAR broken down into 162 game increments. By this metric, Belanger's WAR is 3.3 per 162 games, oWAR is 1.2 and dWAR is 3.2. Note that adding oWAR and dWAR doesn't equal WAR due to statistical duplication in the WAR formula.

Belanger's 162-game dWAR average is 3.2 while Mateo's is 1.6. Skepticism is certainly warranted with defensive stats but I'm not sure that Mateo is "easily" as good.

Remove the defensive component of WAR and you get an oWAR of 14.7 over his 18 seasons which is more in line with what you would expect given his anemic batting stats. dWAR is the separated defensive component and Belanger's career total of 39.5 and is also representative of his fielding ability.

Why yes... I WILL buy that the Yankees are more disliked than the Astros. But I don't understand why the Cardinals are more disliked than the Red Sox.

Prior to the recent Yankees and Twins series (and the two lopsided victories) the O's run differential was only +19 including -2 at home. For reference, both Texas and Tampa Bay were at +158. If the conversation is about how deep into the playoffs the O's will get, it seems like there's been too much smoke and mirrors so far to get comfortable just yet.

I can't speak for anybody else's desire to see Kjerstad move to 1B, but mine stems from Eric Longenhagen's writeup on Coby Mayo prior to this season. Following is the pertinent section: So it's not about Kjerstad's suitability for 1B but Mayo's tools potentially fitting best in RF that is behind my suggestion. It's too early to write Mountcastle off as he will get the rest of the season to demonstrate that he still belongs and unless he's traded this year or during the offseason, spring training as well. He reaches Arb 1 in 2024 and is about to get more expensive while both Kjerstad and Mayo will soon be ML-ready. Mountcastle needs to get back to hitting RHP without delay because I don't see room or need for a platoon next year.

Playing 1B? Kjerstad.

Cole Irvin. The surprise part is because most people here have already completely written him off. Since June 10 he's started 5 games and pitched to a 2.92 ERA (4.05 FIP). He's got a lot of innings left in his arm and they will be needed as the season wears on. It won't be all that impressive - think 4.15 ERA or so - but incredibly useful nonetheless.

I dunno, Lew Ford played there 1996-1999.

More like the name of a K Street lobbyist.

I doubt that kind of money wouldn't even cover the year-end bonus from the top-ten teams. Elias has to know that.

If Elias doesn't take steps to address the clear organizational weaknesses in regard to pitching, then the team isn't ever going to "come into their own". And it won't be a passive process, especially now when the team is actually competitive and has been consistently for over a half-season. I wouldn't want to be the person to tell them at this point that they're not ready, so actions will now speak louder than words, Mike Elias.

Yes as long as it's Ortiz, not Westburg.

In the 20 years from 1966 to 1985 the O's had exactly one losing season and six WS appearances. This is the standard the team should aspire to from this point forward IMO.

I agree, but it's understandable too. Look at it from the other side - if players thought that management would behave the way a lot of posters in this thread are demanding it behave towards Mountcastle, every one of those players would try to hide injuries up to and including fresh amputations. He should have spoken up sooner, but it's to his credit that he didn't hide it and get hurt.

I don't think anybody does, but Elias and Co. are simply not going to arbitrarily jettison a home-grown, formerly productive player especially coming off an injury. That last part means he gets a fair shot at proving he can still contribute at the same level as before. However, if Westburg or Cowser gets sent down I'll help lead the march on the Warehouse.

Like he always does? Last year over the course of the entire season he OPSed 48 points higher vs RHP than LHP.

Excellent. Hyde has decided that the Orioles should win the game.

Ha! Urias to the rescue. I just love this game sometimes.