24fps

Little did Voth know that the gas can was meant for him.

Especially if GrayRod's start turns into a dumpster fire.

Not having the defensive talents of Urias and Mateo on the left side of the IF would do a grave disservice to Orioles pitchers. That's established. How much of a finishing school to you think a major league team - any major league team - ought to be? I happen to think that Henderson has the offensive and defensive chops to stick at 3B and maybe even SS, but you don't get to kick Mateo and Urias to the side because your opinion is that Henderson is "the future of the team". Too early to tell. Maybe his ceiling is the IF equivalent of Matt Wieters. Henderson has the obvious talent to warrant a good long look, but ultimately he needs to earn his reps and a lot of us are hoping that he starts to do a better job of that soon.

I want them to jettison the plan, accept Bradish's freak injury as a gift from the baseball gods and not look back. Hey Grayson, have a chat with Tyler Wells about the benefits of unexpected opportunities and good luck tomorrow.

I wasn't saying that Vavra didn't have priority, I was saying that he shouldn't have been out there in the first place. Especially with Hayes in the game and Stowers on the bench, but that's a whole different conversation. I just rewatched the play several times (around 1:28:00 if you have mlb.tv). It looked like Gunnar heard Vavra at the very last split second and indeed the ball did tip off the webbing of his glove. Fine E6, but I question whether focusing on Gunnar's experience addresses the real issue. BTW I also found Vavra's expression after the play to be really interesting. Sneering and a couple of pointed comments were loudly made at Gunnar's back. And the rookie clearly heard them too. I'll bet Vavra dreams of having one-fifth of Henderson's talent.

In my first post in this thread I suggested that Hyde stop screwing around with seemingly unlimited position flexibility and by that I meant that it's time for the core members of the team to settle into their primary position. Spring training is over. Convention says that the outfielder has control of a situation like the pop fly that dropped, yet Henderson called long before Vavra did and was planted and waiting before having to duck out of the way. Gunnar got the error, but if we have to find fault then let's include Hyde in the conversation, because I have to believe that players who play their positions most every day already have their communication worked out a lot better than what we saw on this play.

A ball was hit into the LF corner - not that hard - and as he went over to get it, it got past him in such a way that made it clear that he had no business being out there. At least to my eye.

I don't think McKenna's error was representative of his defensive abilities. I also don't know why he is on the team. What the hell was Vavra doing in LF and why did he bother to bring a glove anyway? Can anyone confirm that the Orioles actually do have a player named Kyle Stowers who can play the OF? I think the defense will tighten up quickly enough so I'm not that concerned about what we've seen the last three games even though they've been difficult to watch. I share everyone else's concerns about the bullpen. Maybe it's just me, but I think it would be great if Hyde stopped screwing around with the uber flexible lineup approach. Mountcastle's looked pretty good so far.

I'm trying to come up with a game I've enjoyed watching less than this one and coming up empty.

But Vavra's primarily an infielder, isn't he, and he couldn't stop a ball rattling around the LF corner get past him anyway. Yeah, the Stowers mystery needs to end.

I see everybody's favorite Baltimore Oriole came to play today.

Bulls starter Taj Bradley

Really disappointing performance. Too early to call bust, but man... At least Bradley sucked too.

I don't think he intended to either, although he's clearly stupid enough to walk into this minefield wide-eyed and whistling.

At 76.5 I'll take the over on the O's and pass on betting their place in the standings. While I'm pretty upset with this past off season, I'm not quite ready to grab a pitchfork. Given that Westburg and Cowser and several others could all be ready to contribute soon, Elias should have a fair amount of flexibility at the trade deadline. Was that his strategy all along? Beats the heck out of me, but if that's the case and we sit and watch another failure to launch (liftoff v2.0 anyone?) then most of the goodwill I have toward him evaporates overnight. Bottom line? The 2022 O's earned a bigger investment than they've received so far but it's not too late to fix it.

83-86 was my choice because I'm an optimist. What I really mean is more like 82-84 because the off season was one giant exercise in treading water. More than anything else, right before opening day, this season looks most like a squandered opportunity where any potential gain was offset by neglect elsewhere.

If they had blown a little bit more on starting pitching, I wouldn't have minded.

Mountcastle Gibson on the pitching side

Looking at the schedule, there's less of a big market bias than I expected. All-in-all, I think it's a pretty representative lineup of games.

A consistently winning team made up of solid but internationally invisible ballplayers will generate more gross revenue. Far more over time. It's hard to look at the Orioles signing Ohtani as anything other than a stunt given what it would take to land him.

Okay, which of the two approaches do you most support? I know this is meant to be a hypothetical (the regular season really can't happen soon enough can it?), but without at least a little common sense, it's not particular entertaining. Me, I support a system that permits things like locking up Adley, Gunnar, GrayRod long-term along with supporting a first-class development program and strategically spending on free agents when needed. Oh, arbitration raises too when they still make fiscal sense. Hard to do when 35-40% of your yearly budget is tied up in one player. And don't get me started if said player, in a frenzy of patriot fervor during the WBC, does a little happy dance after completing a save and collapses in a heap. Don't laugh, it could happen.

You keep producing cheap talent to give the organization the most flexibility to stay competitive long-term. Your proposal to give Othani 35-40% of a probable Orioles budget puts the team on an extremely narrow path and removes almost all flexibility.

A quick look at Sportrac shows that Sherzer and Verlander at 12.9% of payroll, Judge at 14.9% and Cole at 13.44%, Bogaerts is a relative bargain at 10.74%. 12.5% of $400 million is $50 million and that is how I arrived at the suggested team payroll figure based on $50 million AAV. Your 20% would require the payroll to be $250 million and currently only two teams reach that threshold - the Yankees and Mets.

How high would the team payroll need to be for $50 mil per year to a single player be sufficiently protected? I would say at least $400 million. Lesser teams need not apply and it's safe to say that includes the Orioles.

I think it's reasonable to question whether the team will be as healthy as it was last year, but I don't see a particularly worrisome impact on the middle IF if that happened. -If the team was trying to win this year then why weren't they more active in addressing the starting rotation? Everything I see indicates that 2024 is the year the O's get serious - whatever the hell that means with the current ownership. I'll be paying close attention to what takes place around the trade deadline later in the season and maybe that will shed some light on why Adam Frazier is in Baltimore. -Putting Gunnar Henderson at 2B raises the floor by a whole lot if Odor in 2022 is your baseline and Urias has a GG at 3B after all. Putting Urias or Vavra at 2B is also a perfectly justifiably gamble - moreso if $8 mil matters as it should to the Orioles. Then there's Westburg, Norby and Ortiz. Certainly one of them has a higher floor than Adam Frazier. There were a lot of choices that were rejected for some reason.