emmett16

Yea. No. Virtually impossible middle hop.

Poor kid

Wow. Guy struggling with breaking stuff and they throw him 6 FB and blow him away. Interesting.

Mayo needs to sit Curve & Launch. Curious his approach tonight.

Oi. Ugly swings for Eloy.

That was….um….ugly. Shesh. Tonys right. What is the out pitch? The change looked nice. Butternut in on a couple of those. The Fastball At 93 is not good and he’s not commanding it either. The slider looks below avg. what’s his best pitch?

Oh boy

Any chance Rogers velo is up, he makes pitches and just shoves all night for 8ip?

Seems like a nice gesture. Better pay vs. a pay cut after a bean ball.

I agree. Avg. MLB OPS is .712 so not even an absolutely stinker of a month. He's consistently had great ABS and squared up the ball all season.

Catching Burnes this year: Adley 80 ip 20 SB McCann 63.2 ip 11 SB

I was checking out his BBREF page trying to decide if he'd hit .800 OPS this year (decided he would) and came across something pretty interesting. In a year with everyone talking about the HR approach and not being patient, O'Hearn has completely gone in the opposite direction with some pretty drastic changes. He's getting close to the same number of PAs this year(349) as he had last year (368) and has increased his BB% and cut down on his K % significantly. 2023/2024/Career BB% 4.1/10/8.3 K% 22.3/12.9/23.2 He's more than doubled his BBs this year (15 to 35) and has almost cut his strikeouts in half (82 to 45). He's walking a lot more. His SLG & BA are pretty similar (both down a touch) but his OBP is up .020 despite the BA being a little lower than last year.

Cowser, Gunnar, Holliday, O'Hearn, Santander

That has been my biggest surprise this year as well. It was said to be his "weak" spot and I heard a lot of guys say he'd be a 20+HR type of guy. He's only 20 y/o and is putting up impressive EV #s. I didn't expect him to have as much power as he does at this stage of his career.

Your first point has some credence. If pitchers are missing by a ton, it makes his job incredibly more difficult and has to almost 'play the defensive' with framing vs. really attaching and pushing the limit of what he can steal. He's framing the high ones well. He's top of the leaderboard on all the high zones. It doesn't look like he's getting his body low enough to be consistent with the low zone locations. That would be my complaint is that he's almost too upright. Maybe he's nursing an injury, maybe he's banged up, maybe he's just grinding out there and conserving energy, but for the last few weeks+ it's seemed he can't get the stealable low pitch called a strike. There is a thread on here about playing him into that ground. Maybe that plays into it and he's more banged up than anyone can imagine. That's party of the gig being a catcher. I don't want people to think I'm knocking the guy or think he stinks, but he's show he can be elite at receiving and just takes me as odd that his ability has depreciated so much so quickly.

I agree. Thats the one fail. It sounds like the price for solid RP was insane, but still the BP is a little shaky and will need to step up if we are going to make a legit run. It would be a heck of a time for Soto to go back to his old dominant version.

Yea, that's what I've been looking at. After seeing the #s on high in the zone it made look at it a little differently. But like I said, he's calling the pitches so he knows where the location should be.

I like KB and think he is Uber talented. He has an incredible voice and a passion for the game. With that said, his pop culture tangents get a little annoying. But then again, I can’t imagine the things that would come Out of my mouth if I had to talk for 3 hours non-stop.

To your first point, yes, the speed is the difference maker. That plus the power makes him a potential superstar who has the ability to effect the game in a variety of ways. To you second point, the beauty of their deadline approach was that they were able to add pitching plus two big bats (Holliday & Mayo). They arguably got the best pitcher available. Had they gone after a higher target (Skubal) they would have only been able to add pitching and NOT been able to add the impact bats (Holliday & Mayo). Net net, they came out way ahead of where they'd be with Skubal in the rotation IMO.

105,104, 97, 102, 101, 81, 105, 100, 102, 109, 99, 98, 68. Those are his EVs on balls in play since he came back up. That’s insane. Thats an average of 98mph. That is upper echelon elite type stuff.

It’s nice to see him get some hits, but I’d hold on getting too excited. Here are his 5 hits: 102 @ 7 = single 101 @ -11 = double 73 @ 17 = single 101 @ 12 = single 94 @ 4 = single The only other ball he’s put in plays was 91 @ -13 = groundout. I’d say he’s been pretty lucky and that luck isn’t exactly sustainable. He’s hit the ball well averaging 93.6 on his 6 balls in play so far. But as you can see almost everything is on the ground or at a low trajectory(avg. LA 2.6). I think he’s going to have some hot spells along with some cold frustrating periods. I don’t really think our development team is going to change his swing in the short term to get the ball in the air more. If he starts to strikeout a lot and if his avg. EV starts to drop he will become pretty useless. Ride the hot hand, but don’t be supposed if he hits a cold patch before long.

Following up on my post from yesterday. I spent some time looking at the statcast framing numbers. https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/catcher_framing?year=2024&team=&min=q&type=catcher&sort=4,1 That tracks with the eye test. Adley is 44th out of 60 Catchers in framing(overall). The AB I pointed out last night to Lane Thomas (Low pitch) is the location I’ve seen him continue to struggle with. He just reached down and pushed the ball below the zone instead of getting under it and bringing it into the zone. Digging further if you look at Zone 17 (low outside to RHB), Zone 18 (low middle), and Zone 19 (low inside RHB) you’ll see that he ranks 43rd, 53rd, & 56th in those locations. Interestingly enough, his best zones are the ones above the strike zone. In Zone 11(up & outside to RHB), Zone 12 (up middle), and Zone 13 (up and inside to RHB) he ranks 2nd, 4th, & 1st. So maybe he/Orioles put more emphasis on those pitches? Maybe that’s where they are focusing on the zone? But with all that said, he calls the pitches & locations, he knows what they are trying to achieve, so to me there really isn’t much excuse for not putting forth a better effort on framing the low pitch locations.

Burnes didn’t give him much chance. I’m just looking at the throws. Weak. Slow. Inaccurate. The throwing, for me, is a secondary issue I’ve noticed. Watch ball 4 to Lane Thomas in 1st as an example. He’s not bringing ball into zone consistently. He’s just catching. Not receiving with a purpose and intent.

It’s pretty wild we still have the return of Westburg + Kjerstad as lineup upgrades for post season.

Pretty wild. It feels like the beginning of a new season. I think FO sees it as the beginning of their 2024 team. The last few months were the final transition. Lift off.