ChosenOne21

Sure, but there was the back strain this year that delayed his return by a month or so.

I don't think anything will beat 2012 for me, but man I love this team... ...maybe if they sweep the Braves in the World Series

The results are decent, but it's not like he's destroying AA and he's not exactly young for the level at 24, and I'm not sure the tools are good enough to play at the major league level. I think he's probably earned back of the top 30 considerations, especially with our graduates, but I think the odds are against him being more than an up and down guy. He has really good numbers in the flashy stats like HR and SB, which I think makes people overrate him. A .329 OBP in AA at 24 should really give people pause. I haven't seen him play, but the stat line and what other people say about him reminds of Eric Byrnes. I think Byrnes is probably Cook's 99th percentile outcome, but Byrnes was the kind of player who both drove you mad and was an absolute blast to watch. I think it would be pretty neat to have that in an Orioles uniform, so fingers crossed for that one percent outcome.

I could probably do a nice job on the A's lineup. Only half joking

If Elias believed that clubhouse chemistry or whatever wasn't important, he wouldn't say so out loud. I would take his words on the topic with a grain of salt.

Thank you for saying that. I think there's a lot of people here who need to hear that. Watching people in the game thread basically begging the baseball gods for more runs so they could relax when we were up by four in the seventh inning and have one of the best bullpens in baseball just makes me sad. This is probably the best Orioles team in two and a half decades and so many people don't seem to be enjoying it because they're STILL convinced it's all going to come crashing down.

Slightly worse than Kyle Bradish is still a darn good MLB starter.

I feel like Fuji is one of those guys who's stats make him look worse than he is because when he melts down it's spectacular but you can only blow one game no matter how many runs you give up on a bad day. Hall looked pretty good today, I dunno. I'm sure he'll be the kind of guy who will be nails for like four to five relief appearances than have a spectacular meltdown. But I think he has the ceiling to be better than that.

So what should we do about Gunnar's error today? Start Mateo at SS in the playoffs?

This is pretty accurate. There's some real "sky is falling" going on here. Realistically, if Bautista is out for the season we might lose an additional game or two during the regular season. The playoffs is where it might hurt more.

I'm pretty sure he's hit triple digits in the past

Fixed that for you

It's not like the Pirates are a bunch of sluggers either.

Meh? That was awful.

I don't really care what he does, the earliest I'm calling up Holliday is sometime next season.

Me too. If he wants to stick around on a reasonable one year deal, I'm for giving him one last chance. Who knows what he wants, though.

I wouldn't go that far, but yeah, I think we have much better options for high-leverage. He really shouldn't be pitching with a one or two run lead unless we're really desperate.

I'm all for getting the extra year when you can, but I think being too blatant about it can have consequences--team/player morale, player union filing grievances. Optioning Adley and Felix for three weeks in the middle of the season after you clinch would be waaay too blatant unless they were really struggling hard. Even then they have such a track record that I don't know. Bottom line is I want the Orioles to have good players for as long as possible. If that means these guys make 40 million in their careers instead of 55 million, I think I can sleep at night with that knowledge.

I gotcha. Few things piss me off more in baseball than hitting a batter you have an 0-2 count on.

And he just threw a perfect pitch that caught the corner of the zone for strike three and the ump called it a ball

We're going to be lucky to get 5 out of Irvin at this rate. Let's just hope he doesn't blow this up.

91 fastball middle of the plate at the numbers = home run

McCannon does it again!

I downvoted him because he's way off base. We actually have a great top two starters and a great bullpen. Other than Tyler Wells, I don't see any evidence our pitchers are any more gassed than anyone else's. I also downvoted him because he's always doom and gloom even when we're winning baseball games, and I'm getting tired of the schtick.

It's really mind-boggling how they've done basically nothing despite having the best two players in baseball for like the past five years.