LookinUp

As a middle aged man whose eyesight has recently started to nosedive, I'm very uncomfortable with glasses. If they weren't part of his upbringing, I can see how it would be the same for Creed. I know it might seem obvious for a baseball organization and/or a hitter, but sometimes you need an epiphany to make a seemingly obvious decision.

Of course we'd like all of these teams to be competitive, but what's really important is to get a few guys out of the bunch who end up top 10 ish prospects, with an occasional top 1-5 guy coming through.

After watching Henderson two years ago, to last year, to now, I'm choosing to wear orange colored glasses and assume that Mayo (and Cowser) are going through a similar growth cycle where they're working on specific things and basically eschewing standard results while focusing on specific things. That means Mayo should be a top 10 in baseball prospect at this point next year.

This may all be true, but I'm not sure you can practically come up with a scenario where Baltimore leaves before Tampa or Oakland or where another jurisdiction is going to have a stadium in place plus another commitment for $600 million. The math doesn't add up for a move regardless of any Angelos' personal qualities.

Agree, but as a fan, for the last ~25 years my two favorite teams have had D and F owners. Terrible.

And it should help trade value too.

Yes. Not that they couldn't overtake him, but he's ahead until they force their way into the conversation. Add in Vavra and it would seem like we have a bit of a log jam at 2b moving forward, especially if they're sold on Mayo as a 3B (not sure). That's a good problem to have.

As a Redskins/Team/Commanders "fan" and an O's fan, I always thought it was hyphenated. Snyder-Angelos

Move Austin Hays to 3B.

Yeah. No chance of that. I mean with the 2nd pick if he's there. Giolito went 16, for reference. As others have noted, it's hard to see Kumar falling to us without something serious presenting itself.

This guy has Lucas Giolito vibes to me. High risk high reward draft pick. I'd love to see the O's break their tendency and make a selection like this (understanding I have no clue if it would be smart at all).

I'd think Henderson at SS and Westburg at 2B would be done because they have Mayo penciled in as 3B of the future. If not, seems like Prieto would play 2B and Westburg/Henderson would fill SS/3B however best they could. If I were another team, I'd be trying to get Norby in a deal. Seems like we have depth there and he's got some real upside.

The reasons I don't typically criticize draft picks are twofold: 1. I don't assume the worst about the people making the picks. In this case, that means I assume Elias wants to do what's best he can for this organization. 2. I know I don't have nearly the information they have to go off of. For all we know Lawler said he didn't want to be in Baltimore. Maybe he had a deal in place with the Sox? Maybe he has a knee issue, or there were reports that he was immature, or there was just too much unknown on him because he was a HS guy and Cowser was a college guy with more data. All of that is reason to take Cowser. Doesn't make it right, and I personally don't like the HS issue because that would be a systemic blind spot and that's not acceptable, but beyond that Elias ran his model and took who he thought was best. After that we have to wait and see if he was right.

Gunnar's AA season was terrific. Couldn't ask for more. Saying that, I think people are sleeping on how highly the O's think of Westburg. I'm not saying he deserves to be as highly touted as Henderson (he doesn't), but this guy has the potential to be a sold ML starter beginning next year. I think that's what the O's are expecting.

Seems like a candidate for a driveline offseason to see if he can gain 4 mph and change his profile. Not saying that's at all likely to succeed, but it's what guys are doing nowadays.

I just think it's a bit of a pessimistic assessment of his value going forward. I expect he'll settle in a little better than he's been the last 4 months. There's got to be adjustments made by other teams. Now he has to work through his own. This is still a guy going through a learning curve since it wasn't that long ago that he ditched switch hitting.

I think the question I have to ask myself is should Elias adjust his draft plans to his stadium or the ones the players will generally play more baseball in? I think that answer has to be yes. These players all have statistical inputs and it's possible that the projected outputs change significantly for an offensive profile like Jones in the new Camden Yards. We'd be foolish to ignore that just because Jones would be the clear #1 choice for a lot of other teams, right?

If the O's are in a pennant race in August, you can bet he'll be added to our team. Probably will anyway, but for now it sounds like it's better to let him settle in at AA, work on pitch efficiency and going deeper into games, and then see where he is in a month or two.

Trade possibilities aside, Elias also recently said that we intended to promote 5 of our top 10 prospects. Looking at the math, that would be: Bradish, Rutschman, Rodriguez and I assume Stowers and Hall. Not sure who else it could be. Mayo, Henderson, Westburg, Cowser, Norby, Ortiz, Prieto, Rom, Kjerstad and whoever else I'm forgetting that someone might have at one point said was a top 10 prospect. There are a couple of infield prospects who could get the call in theory, but Stowers would seem to be ahead of them.

I'm guessing he'll start to hit his ceiling in terms of arm strength, endurance, feel for secondaries and velo in 2024. Innings in 2025+.

I long for the days of the jigsaw puzzle. Cheaper, time consuming and requires thought. Not as functional though, of course.

I'd expect is velo to pick up during the season and last longer in starts. I know he's been working out and building strength, but there's nothing like in-game pitching. Real innings are irreplaceable, particularly since I doubt they put him on anything like a driveline max effort program during his rehab. Last night was a great step, but I'd expect a lot of him getting better on the horizon.

Yeah. I wouldn't read a ton into velo or secondaries after 1 start. He's pitching. That's what's most important.

Tony's implying something here. I'll go ahead and state what Tony's post means to me. Probably overstating it, actually. Kremer used to miss a lot of bats in the minors. As he made it to the majors, he kind of hit a ceiling stuff/command wise. If he adds a plus change to his repertoire, this is a significant development. He could be a very valuable starter for the O's. Not saying Hall/Rodriguez valuable, but #3/4 starter upside is there IMO.

Bummer. I will say this. After a slow start, he really started to show some promise. I don't know quite how much, but it seemed like he belonged, at a minimum, after he was able to get his feet under him. Hopefully this is a short set back and he can continue to develop.