ChosenOne21

Hicks is a free agent after the season, so there's that, too. If someone offered an organizational top 20 pitcher for him, I'd probably ship him out. We'll be fine without him. We'll be fine with him.

Swings are complex. They may be fixed only to break again soon after.

I'm not saying no one would give him a chance for O'Hearn money if the Orioles cut him. There's certainly the potential to be better. But I think it's obvious why people are down on him, and given the choice I'd rather go with O'Hearn. Mounty's approach at the plate seems inconsistent with the organization's philosophy. He might do better in a different organization. But Mounty has been trending down and O'Hearn is trending up (albeit in a small sample size).

If he qualified, he'd be 127th out of 151 in OPS. He's also a poor defensive first baseman. So far this year, somehow, he's been worth 0.2 WAR. I think it's fair to say he's one of the worst players in the league. Replacement level first basemen aren't exactly exciting players

I'm pretty sure Grayson has been down long enough to be 6+

At this point, calling Irvin a 4 is generous. He's more like a 5/swingman, maybe. Prieto could probably get us a 5 all by himself

Ryan "Wheelz" O'Hearn

Is anyone buying? He was DFA'd like a month ago. That said, if anyone offered any kind of interesting prospect for him, I'd print his plane tickets myself. Not to say he doesn't have value to this team, but we can do without him, especially now that Cowser is up

Agreed. He's had some MLB success. Let's see if he can do it again

Reality is they probably don't need to shut him down. The Verducci effect has been pretty well debunked. https://www.baseballprospectus.com/news/article/19497/baseball-therapy-fact-or-fiction-the-verducci-effect/ They should just let him throw however many innings he can as a starter this year. If he gets up to 150, 160, 170, I'm not bothered

Gotta believe Grayson is back up soon after this string of starts. Pretty sure his time in the minors has given us the extra year of control, too

Could be Hays to DL with the All-Star break coming

Dean Kremer lead the minors in strikeouts once. Not saying it's a bad thing that Povich is up there, just that it doesn't mean he's going to be a great MLB starter.

Then I'm not sure why Frazier isn't the DH and Santander the RF. Unless Tony is dinged up or something

Is Frazier really a better RF than Santander?

I have no idea what Elias thinks of Hicks. He could have viewed him as a decent stopgap for Mullins, or as someone fixable or who needed a change of scenery. Or he could think Hicks is having a dead cat bounce. I doubt you'd get a prospect of note for him pretty much regardless of what he does until the trade deadline. If someone did offer one, my guess is he'd trade Hicks in a heartbeat and call up Cowser, but who knows?

It blows my mind that someone that awkward looking is this good at baseball. He'll be fun to watch

If we trade Fabian, we don't have a good CF prospect above A-ball (don't think Cowser is a CF in MLB, at least not for long). We've got Mullins for, what, 1-2 more years? The Orioles also love him to death. I can't imagine they'll trade Fabian.

Yeah, everything I've heard says that Prieto and Norby aren't going to be assets with the glove, at least not at 2B

I could see Westburg being a similar player to Hardy offensively, though he'll probably walk more. Defensively I don't think he's close to as good as Hardy.

Sure. I'm not saying I wouldn't trade Coby Mayo for him necessarily. But that would have to be most or all of what I'd trade.

I trust Elias in everything. He's done well enough to earn the benefit of the doubt. Doesn't mean I agree with all his decisions or that he's never wrong, but I'm never going to start from, "Elias is screwing up"

Fortunately this years free agent class is very pitching heavy. No one truly incredible without question marks except for Ohtani, but if Elias is smart and willing to spend there's a good chance we could come away with one or two good starting pitchers

Santander maybe not. Definitely not McCann and that's because he's not a great hitter. I'm not comfortable making that call on Hicks based on seven at bats.

Abbot's FIP is 3.79 and his xFIP is like a run higher than that. Would love to have him, but I'm not convinced he's TOR