LookinUp

I'll say this...I'd be a huge hypocrite to disagree with Tony re: Ortiz. That is based solely on the small sample size issue. I've been on my soap box going back at least to Xavier Avery about not over reacting to small sample size success. More recently I've harped on people drawing any favorable conclusions about Ryan McKenna's bat. For some reason I want to draw more favorable conclusions about Ortiz. It really does make sense to temper expectations while waiting for him to put a few months together.

This VR stuff is fascinating to me. My son's Oculus (?) is unreal. Actually, it's too real. It makes perfect sense to me that they'd develop a program to allow someone to swing an actual physical bat (connected to the VR) and simulate contact. You would be able to have natural timing too because you'd see the pitcher's wind up. Seems like a ton to develop, but I bet it'll be a real thing in the future.

The entire discussion here is about saving money for the purpose of using it during a winning period. That's the opposite of having zero do do with winning later. There's a similar argument about 5 more wins this year from a pretty good 32 year old journeyman having zero to do with winning later too. I'm not that black and white on any of it. I get, and respect, that you disagree with the approach. I don't get that you just discount it as not being a valid possible option.

Ok. 70 wins. Rationale still applies.

I read the OP and don't disagree with your general observations about the players. I do disagree with the nothing left to prove framing of it though. I think it only makes sense if you're comfortable with what they are and don't have a focused plan to work through their issues. I think McKenna is the perfect example, and Frobby's post articulated why. If they've concluded he'll never hit enough, sure put him in the majors. Let him be the 26th guy on the roster and give us a few innings. But that's only a good strategy if you've already made that conclusion. You could make the case that those guys have crossed the minimum threshold to come to the majors. I just think that's a long ways away from nothing left to prove. Only if what you're proving is you can be on the bottom of the roster of one of the worst teams in baseball.

Yes there is. If they save $20 million for the future instead of spending it on wins 55-60 that's a favorable context. There's at least a good rationale for it, even if you disagree.

Put another way, any good business has a financial plan. In that financial plan, there are knowns and unknowns. Arbitration raises fall mostly into the known category. I'd bet a million $ that the O's financial plan, under Elias, is stashing some of the money not spent now for a later competitive time. I highly doubt it's as much as you or I would like just based on our ownership, but I actually do believe that Elias' planning does account for this future need. If you believe that to be true, I think it puts our FA strategy over these years in a different, more favorable, context.

Re: the opening post, I disagree with this idea that those guys have nothing left to prove in AAA. That idea makes assumptions based on SSS and without any knowledge of what the O's think does or doesn't need to be improved. I'm not arguing that several of those guys couldn't help the O's on opening day. I'm sure they could. But if the O's want Bradish to put extra work in on a secondary pitch or actually want to see if McKenna can hit AAA over a larger sample (likely they'd actually care less about his stats and instead want to see if he can implement swing adjustments that would indicate higher probability of ML success), that would make sense to me. I just think it's a naïve OP in the context that it's in.

The only thing tempering my opinion on Ortiz, to be honest, is the fact that Tony didn't raise him MUCH farther up the list. True SS whose hit tool took a big step forward in action this year. What's not to like? I don't exactly know the answer, but there are still doubts about his offense is my guess. I honestly wanted him closer to the top 10. For example, if the hit tool is good, he would be above Norby in my book, and I like Norby. So I figure I'm missing something.

Not sure I believe this, but take it fwiw.

I think I was one of the first to raise this last year. On one hand, I've seen the Freddie Freeman videos where he just peppers line drives over the SSs head in BP. It's awesome, so I love that Gunnar lets the ball travel. I do expect that an extreme LF trend means he's not turning on the inside stuff for power. That's what I was worried about. He should live from the bullpens to the flag court at Camden Yards one day. I think he's a work in progress, but with great tools, and I feel like this player development staff understands the nonsense I just spewed much better than me. I'm sure they're working on refining what he's doing.

To summarize the Rodriguez write up...his fastball is awesome. Top 3ish in the list. And his next 3 pitches are better. Whoa. To summarize Hall. If he pitches, he's a beast. Just throw strikes young man. Just glowing stuff there. BTW, if Gunnar Henderson actually ends up a better prospect than any of these guys, 1, I'll be surprised a bit but 2, it's fabulous news.

On one hand I want to totally agree. I'm a huge believer in offseason non-field work. Millions of drills, focused fitness, etc. On the other hand, I think offseason development may be reaching a point of diminishing returns just because people are doing all of that stuff as younger players. Think of a guy like Henderson. To my untrained eye, his swing needs adjustment and his footwork when throwing does too. Seems like two things that could make massive improvements in the 4-6 month offseason when he doesn't have a full game schedule to fall back on bad habits. At the same time, he's been in this org a couple of years now and it makes me wonder what they're going to try that they haven't already. As you say, this makes it fun to follow them, but I don't want to get my expectations too high because massive changes in profiles for physically mature people just don't seem that likely to me.

This ramp up/struggle point is true, but he will have a full spring training to ramp up, and he's been doing baseball activities for months. I agree with those who say it would be a red flag if he doesn't go straight to full season ball, and if THAT assignment is conservative, I don't expect him to spend a lot of time in that lower league.

Yep, Mayo's the perfect illustration. If he rakes in the first couple of months, it will be interesting to compare him to Cowser, Kjerstad and the #1 overall pick this year. It's good times in the minors forum these days.

It's kind of a funny position though. Rankings are not just a reflection of performance against competition. There's this tiny element, a thing referred to as scouting, that is kind of important. I can't blame these national guys for not getting as many eyes on guys like Mayo or talking to as many folks as Tony has, but there's a pretty clear blind spot here IMO. It's not that age/level/performance don't matter, they very much do, but the scouting report does too.

For him, I think it was just an instructor having fun with kids. My son's a decent pitcher, but not even at the top of travel for his age so it's not like he was being highlighted like driveline does or something.

I know my son was recently clocked with a similar run up as opposed to off a mound and he had a few more mph. He's 11, so a few mph is a higher % increase than a few would be for Peek. I think it would be wonderful if he were operating in the 96-97 range though.

Nope. I just forgot about that, lol. I'm an idiot.

I think Kjerstad will start in the GCL unless he gets that "orientation" in spring training.

This seems to be quite an interesting development for Peek. I understand he wasn't on a mound and had a couple step run up, but has he always had this velo upside?

Because the majors aren't the only place that exploits that. The best orgs work these problems up before they're getting meaningful ABs to the greatest extent possible. I'm not saying they fix every problem, but McKenna really doesn't deserve ML time without fixing holes in his swing. AAA is a great place to work on that.

Frobby kind of already made this point, but if McKenna is really a 1.000 OPS guy consistently in AAA then he'll be a fine MLer too, particularly given his defensive profile. There's no reason sending him back to AAA to show that wasn't just a SSS streak would be unfair to him. Heck, he could really prove something if he could put up really good numbers for a few months in AAA. That might allow him to actually earn an extended look at the ML level. I don't believe he's earned that at this point though.

Successful, to me, means the staff can stay in the game something like a league average of innings or better. You're right about the dimensions helping all pitchers, regardless of team. No argument there. In theory I'm guessing dimensions affect some profiles more than others, but if it allows the guys we can actually get on our roster to go 5-7 innings instead of 3-5 innings, it affects your entire staff, keeps you in more games, etc. And before C_o_C calls me on it, no I don't expect the dimensions to actually improve our starter's avg innings pitched by 2 innings.

While I don't think the goal of this construction is to maximize our current composition of players, I do think what it does is broadens the list of pitchers who can be successful here. Grayson Rodriguez, assuming health, should be successful in any stadium, but we'll almost never be in the market for them unless through trades. It's the tier 2/3 guys that we will probably always target who will have better chances of success.