LookinUp

No Baumann?

Unfortunately, they're both smart and rich. The Dodgers of the AL. Makes them a tough competitor.

The Yankees have to be up there with the smartest teams too.

Great stat, but I'm still partial to 2,632.

Lol. Trolling alert!!!! It's a good thread. A lot to follow over what is otherwise a quiet time of year for O's fans.

Just thinking more about this. Consider player X. On day 1, player X puts this thing on their body. This player is in a hot streak to end all hot streaks. Coach Y pitches BP, and the machine takes a look at the swing metrics. On day 10, player X puts it on again. He's had a tough week. He's off balance and not seeing the ball well. This tool can identify the differences between day 1 and day 10. You can further break things down by pitch type, velocity and even spin rate (probably from another data source). After all, player X's swing is likely somewhat different for fastballs, curves and changes, inside and outside, up and down, etc. So this is one tool in a larger tool box of analytics in hopes of informing a player about what goes right and wrong over many different circumstances. It's another information gathering tool. Sig and company are then looking at all of that information for an individual player, informing coaches and players, and attempting to build the better approach. It's more systematic than a hitting coach's eye and knowledge of the next day's opponent starting pitcher, that's for sure.

I didn't mean to write the post as skeptical. I think tools like this, which will certainly improve and become more sophisticated over time, help hitting coaches and players become more aware of swing deficiencies, and that can guide training. However, like any teaching tool, if you don't understand the individual, you can really screw them up. I'd say that's particularly true on the mental side in baseball. Smart deployment of tools like this can be game changers in a positive way, but misappropriated use will likely leave some behind. The org needs to be smart enough to know for whom that line exists.

Touche. Five years from now, we'll almost certainly look back and see it very differently.

Yeah. Having 3 of the smarter teams in our division, and 3 of the wealthier teams, makes it tough.

I started listening to Patrick Jones' podcast after I heard he was hired by the O's. After listening to a few, you can tell how much of an art hitting really seems to be. Of all people, Kevin Youkilis was particularly interesting. He (and others) talked about not becoming too mechanical, which some of this technology could make happen if not properly understood. He talked about in game adjustments, hitting off balance and the importance of your own personal cues for timing or fixing your mechanics. Really interesting. Most of the guests talk about the individual hitter needs as opposed to building a robot like hitter. So this technology is important, but it still exists in a realm of maximizing the individual, not completely changing him.

Deepest list I can remember.

I don't think I would. It's not a knock on him. It's just that he's a very young kid who has done nothing really noteworthy yet and he's being compared to guys who have high probability to be in the majors. Your placement of Rodriguez, Diaz and Baumann is interesting, to say the least. I think most have Rodriguez as top 2 or 3 (latter for me). I assume this means you're a huge fan of Hays and Mountcastle. There will be disagreement on Diaz (mostly from me), but he's 4 or 5 for me. You can make the case for Baumann anywhere from as high as 5 or more likely 7 or 8, IMO.

I'm not saying you're wrong, but I think the bolded line is the old way of thinking. I don't know whether Elias thinks that way or not.

This is an interesting discussion. I wonder how much the "bird in the hand" scenario will affect Elias' thinking. If Villar were still with the Brewers last year and became a FA, would Elias offer him a 1 year/$8 million contract? If that answer is no, then (absent emotion) the only real reason to offer arbitration is because you think you can trade him this offseason before you pay any of that real money.

Actually, if there's a team that might not want to pay for such a player, the O's would be on the short list. Elias isn't interested in 70 wins.

This isn't a bad take. Is it "worth it" to pay $4.5 million for the opportunity to get a couple of B- prospects? I'm not sure what the math says about expected future value, but if the O's could flip him for, say, one B- prospect this offseason, I think the math may work out better. We'd have $4.5 million more, but one fewer prospect. I have no idea how I would handle that conundrum.

It would be hard to believe that none of Mountcastle, Diaz, Hays, Baumann, Lowther, Akin, Kremer or Wells make a league top 20 list. [Edit: Now I see from Luke's post that 4 of them were on top 20 lists. I assume it's from the above list, but I guess I'll look.]

Note, the "it" I was referring to was the same post you had previously responded to, not the O's, or any obligation they do or don't have. My point is that we just don't know enough to draw strong conclusions about the success or failures of our J2 efforts. All we know is the org *seems* to be really focused on it, and that's a good thing.

It also represents a lack of transparency into what we actually have spent, plan to spend, and the quality of that spending. We may have fallen farther behind 25 teams, or 10 teams. We don't really know.

Take me out of the Torkelson camp too, but I'm sure he'd be fun to watch. If drafted as an outfielder, he could be our Aaron Judge. Everyone would want that.

How highly rated was Hader when we traded him? How about Davies? That's two smart teams who traded for two valuable pitchers who weren't all that highly ranked on prospect boards. Hopefully Elias can pull something like that off.

I'm not sure how much better you expect our AA/AAA pitchers to make us or how much better hitting you're expecting, but in terms of run differential, we were 365 runs worse than Tampa Bay, who is the AL playoff team with the worst run differential. A couple of hitters aren't getting us there. A couple of pitchers aren't getting us there. 2020 should be better, but not good enough to really want to hold onto Villar, IMO, assuming we get a decent return.

Absolutely. If he pulls it together on the command front, I expect him to dominate in the pros at some point, or at least be very good.

I honestly think we wring our hands on this site about his command more than I've heard from the internet evaluators. I know I have. @Frobbydoes too. I'll just assume you guys are right since you know what you're looking at and I'm essentially just looking at stat lines.

This is a quiet board right now. Hall himself was quoted as really unhappy with his first half. It seems like everyone who watches him points out his command issues but is still blown away by his stuff. I'll take that. He has great upside and a good enough probability to be really bullish, IMO.