Pickles

Co-sign this.

In the grand scheme of things? No, none of this stuff does. In The Defense Thread, 2024 it is one of the most notable incidents.

My bad. I moved a decimal. All I can say, is go watch the play. He didn't have time to get in front of that ball, and the announcers were as surprised as I was it was an E. People want to say it was questionable is fine by me. Saying it was "clearly an error" or he "had time to get in front of it" are not dealing with reality.

He didn't have time to square up and thus attempted to backhand the ball. Go watch the play. 79 MPH exit velocity at 85 feet is less than a 0.10th of a second. I don't believe it should have been called an E, and the MASN crew said the same exact thing.

Clearly, exit velocity is hardly the only factor in the difficulty of making a play.

Might want to look at that again. Urias had no time to square up, and thus attempted to backhand the ball. It was a short hop, on a wet field, with an extremely fast runner. Could he have made the play? Sure. Should he have made the play? Not imo. And to me that's the bar for assigning an error.

Absolutely.

I'd just like to go on the record here and say I think Urias' error in the first inning should not have been called an error. That was an extremely difficult play.

This is a game that deserves a detailed defensive write-up. But got to be said, they're going to run all over Kimbrel. Everybody is. Just like Felix. That's the trade-off.

What moron put this lineup together?

LOL. And then Mayo just threw a wild ball to first and Kjerstad didn't even make an attempt on it.

If he can't make that play, he's not an option in the OF either.

That was a bad play. Moving to the bag, he had a sloppy transfer, and then backflipped the ball over the SS's head. Work to be done, And as I was typing this, Kjerstad just dropped a throw from Holliday at 1b for an inexplicable error.

And they won't be wrong. That's the kind of play that loses baseball games. He has to work to do at 2nd base.

That's all well and good, and admirable, but what's far more important is winning the fans over from the DC suburbs who have disposable income.

If we're consistently better than the Nats, and Rubenstein can use his DC contacts to entice business/corporations back to O's games, I think it's doable. But it's basically a best case scenario, and will require a lot of things to go right- starting with on the field.

I wrote before last season, fully expecting the O's to be competitive and in the playoff race all season, that if they didn't get to 2 million fans I had long-term reservations if the fans would ever come back. They got to 1.9+, so that was close enough to assuage my concerns. I fully expect them to get to 2.5 this year, or very close, which would give them the highest attendance since the Nats came to town. 2.5 gets them to about middle of the pack ML-wise. If they can have long-term sustained success, I believe they could consistently draw 3 million a year, which would put them top 10 in the league. That's what Rubenstein should be shooting for, imo.

Attendance is going to increase 25% this year. Book it.

Mateo will never start a game at DH. He'd just play the field somewhere and they'd let somebody else DH.

With this club the questions are largely going to be on the pitching side. We should probably get used to that for the next few years.

That's pretty significant news. We'll see how long it holds up in the face of the inevitable and unforeseeable circumstances to come. My initial reaction is that this means less playing time for Mateo than many anticipated.

That's just bitter hating.

Do you mean to tell me Mateo isn't a useless piece of garbage?

I personally don't think either of them make it, but I wouldn't be bothered by any of the possible scenarios: Neither make it. Fine by me. Both make it. Fine by me. One makes it; one doesn't. I'm cool with it.

I said Mateo would be at SS on Opening Day, thinking the Angels would start a LHP, in a poll conducted months ago. I think I'll be right. And I think people will complain.