CaptainRedbeard

Kopech would be a great target. His fastball was always great, but now it’s absurd now that he’s a RP - the #1 graded fastball by Stuff+, higher than Mason Miller and Tanner Scott. Elite velo obviously but also elite spin. Doesn’t seem like he has much command or even decent secondary pitches, but when your fastball is that good you can throw it 80%+ of the time and be dominant. He’s probably infuriating to watch, like Baumann, but a much better fastball even than Baumann’s and he at least throws it a lot, unlike Baumann being in love with his slider/cutter that’s his worst pitch. My only request is that Baumann be included in the trade so I don’t have to watch both him and Kopech.

Bradfield has a .268 BABIP right now. Would this conversation even be happening if he’d just had more balls in play end up singles, as you would expect from a 80 grade runner who never hits fly balls? We don’t have any publicly available info to conclude what his exit velos look like. He actually has a decent (relative to expectations for him) .098 ISO with 3 2B and a 3B, plus still quite good K/BB.

OP may be trolling or just doing a dumb reverse jinx joke, but Kremer does have a 5.74 xERA on the season. He’s doing ok on K/BB, whiffs and chase so he’ll probably be ok, but he is giving up a lot of hard contact and tons of barrels. His xFIP is 3.92 and that’s still more predictive in this sample, but he can’t keep giving up hard contact like he’s pitching against the Orioles lineup every game. With Irvin pitching really well and Means lights out yesterday, I do think Kremer is more at risk of a numbers-game option to AAA if Grayson is able to come back soon and Kremer’s not straightened his contact quality numbers out. Povich is also lurking as a possibility to force a call up if he puts up another ~5 starts as dominant as his start to the season has been. Possibly they will consider going to a 6-man rotation for some period of time as well.

Cano and Kimbrel are both not going to be available today, so I think there’s a good chance Suarez is the first righty out of the pen regardless of score and Webb is the righty option in a closer by committee situation. Baumann also hasn’t pitched much, though.

Lot of young pitchers at A that look like they should be moved to A+ soon for more of a challenge. Forret, De Leon and Cooper have been dominant. Bragg and Money have also pitched very well in K/BB but without the expected ERA results.

100%. In other franchises, Norby would be given a chance to start. And he does have some upside to be a MLB starter. But he’s not a top prospect and projects best as a bench guy, with a solid righty bat and LF/2B defensive flexibility (even if below average defense). That bench profile actually is a good fit down the line with all the lefty prospects so Norby would eventually get that opportunity here, but while Urias and Mateo are around he’s better off in AAA. He hasn’t needed to be added to the 40-man yet and that has worked against him. If he plays better in AAA another team will be more inclined to trade for him as a potential starter. He hasn’t played well enough in AAA to force the issue.

Back issues would also explain why they yanked him in the first inning of that prior start, in addition to throwing a lot of pitches without getting out of the inning. Maybe the extra rest did him some good.

That’s exactly the profile I was thinking when you described him. If Cionel Perez was 6’3” and could maintain that same velo as a SP, and had a changeup for RH batters. Hopefully De Leon’s command is ultimately better than Perez’s, but Perez is pretty good evidence of how that profile can be successful even with pretty poor command.

Povich is not really comparable at all to Zimmerman or Rom. Povich doesn’t have a ton of velo on his fastball, but still more than those two and much better spin rate. Zimmerman and Rom really only have plus sliders, and everything else is bad, and Rom didn’t even throw his changeup. Povich a full arsenal of 5 pitches and his fastball/cutter combo for hard offerings are much better than the typical junkballer lefty that gets exposed at the MLB level, even if they end up below average overall. Arsenal-wise, Povich is more similar to Irvin than anybody else the Orioles have had recently, and he’s probably still got a better 4 seamer than Irvin (Irvin maybe better velo, but much worse spin). Povich doesn’t have the sinker but has a better curve and a slider/sweeper that Irvin doesn’t have, so he has much more upside for swing and miss. But there’s a huge difference in approach obviously, as Irvin is a strike-thrower and Povich is much more of a nibbler.

If De Leon stays healthy he could be on top 100 lists as soon as midseason. Right now, he’s got a 2.08 xFIP and 2.20 FIP in 21 IP, with 33/5 K/BB. He checks every box - age, build/projectability, velo, 3 pitches, swing and miss stuff, lefty, ground balls, and now throwing strikes and a low walk rate. Wouldn’t be surprised to see the Orioles bump him up a level soon. Being a lefty with a power sinker is a fantastic fit for OPACY as well. That’s going to make him very tough on lefties and should keep the ball in the yard against them, and if he struggles more with righties given the platoon splits on the sinker he has LF to take advantage of.

Mayo now has 22 homers at AAA and doesn’t turn 23 until after this season. Barring injury (to him or at the MLB level getting him called up), chance he ends up with 40+ homers in AAA before age 23. I wonder how often that’s ever been done before? Have to figure that most prospects good enough to do that get called up before they accumulate enough AAA ABs to do it.

Good spot. Definitely need a good changeup from that arm slot if he’s going to stand any chance against lefties.

Do you think he’d still have good enough contact ability with a swing change? As it is, he’s getting his fair share of 2B and a high BABIP, so he’s presumably putting the ball in play at solid exit velos. And he has a good walk rate, but not the K rate of a guy with a slappy swing. Basically if they make Cowser/Ortiz-like swing changes for him, I fear he might not be left contact ability for that to be worth it. He’s not starting with the same baseline hit tool as those guys. More power would be good, but maybe it’s still optimal to keep this approach?

Very funky delivery! Low arm slot. Definitely doesn’t seem like a future starter with this delivery, but maybe an intriguing relief prospect.

Weston hasn’t pitched much but his numbers in 57 IP at A+ in 2023/24 at age 22/23 were dominant, earning a pretty quick promotion to AA and now he’s off to a really good start there too. Looks like the scouting report on him when he was drafted was that the stuff was underwhelming and he hasn’t really been on the prospect map, but age-adjusted performance should garner some attention now. Curious if his stuff has ticked up at all.

Any IL stint with “shoulder” is bad news, but hoping deeming it “inflammation” means it’s minor (as far as shoulder injuries go). Ideally this is overly precautionary, given Grayson’s big workload last year and that we want to make sure he’s healthy for the rest of the season. You simply can never have enough pitching.

Webb has been pitching really well this year but I’ve been down on him because his velo disappeared. After being 95 mph his whole career he’s been 92 all season. Then seemingly overnight, last night he was back to 94/95, and not coincidentally was dominant. I don’t know if it was physical or mechanical or what, but Webb with a plus fastball and change and solid sweeper is a very nice pitch mix, and if he carries the improved command with with the return of his velo then he could have a solid year. Also, Keegan Akin has been dominant. Even with the numbers game and having an option remaining, I don’t see him being sent down.

Agreed, Akin is pitching too well to be optioned until there’s no other choices. Tate should certainly be optioned before him. The only reason I could see Akin needing to be optioned is if BOTH Means and Irvin end up in the pen (with Bradish, Kremer and Suárez starting). That’s possibly the best 5 SP right now if they believe Suárez > Means/Irvin. In which case you really can’t have 5 lefty RP and only one RHP to go with Kimbrel and Cano. Otherwise, they should carry 4 lefty RP (with one of Means/Irvin as the long man) before optioning Akin.

I think they’d go with 4 lefties before sending Akin to AAA. If everyone is healthy: SP: Burnes, Grayson, Bradish, Kremer, Means/Irvin RP: Kimbrel, Cano, Coulombe, Perez, Akin, Suárez, Webb/Baumann, Irvin/Means Option: Wells, Tate DFA: Ramirez, Baumann/Webb And then if they want Wells, they either DFA the other of Webb/Baumann or option Akin. They also have the ability to option Kremer, but he’s really have to pitch poorly for that to happen.

Tanner Scott is on his final year with the Marlins and Hunter Harvey has one more year with the Nats, those are the likely biggest available names. Kopech from CWS is also a potential RP option. Problem is there are very few actually worthwhile players on the teams that will sell - I don’t expect the Giants, Astros, Cardinals or Angels to sell even if they should. The Nats have some good young players that won’t be available, and not much else. And the Rockies are baffling adverse to trading any of their players, if they even end up with someone worth trading for. Mason Miller and Jesus Luzardo have plenty of team control left (pretty much all of it for Miller, and 2 years after this one for Luzardo), they will get talked about a lot but are not super likely to move. Luzardo also has pitched quite poorly thus far.

The Orioles have a wRC+ as a team of 128, which is better than the wRC+ for any single Orioles hitter last year - Adley was 127 and Gunnar 123 (although Hicks was 129 in his ~200 ABs). That’s the second best in baseball, behind only Atlanta at 128, and a good bit ahead of the Dodgers at 122, who are both riding unsustainably high BABIPs (.340 and .328; by comparison, league average is .290 and the Orioles are .294). Despite walking at a very low rate as a team, the Orioles are doing it by being by far the best power hitting team in baseball. Their .199 ISO is far ahead of the Braves second at .184, and the league average is .143. I think power numbers usually go up as weather gets warmer too, so that should only increase. The top team wRC+ last year were the Braves at 125, and then 4 teams between 112 and 118. So the Orioles will almost certainly cool off to some degree. But I also think we could see the walk rate tick up as the scouting reports adjust - Gunnar, Westburg and Cowser in particular have been hitting for huge power at low walk rates (for Cowser, until 3 walks last night), so I could see there being a trade off of walks for less power if pitchers are more careful pitching in-zone to them going forward.

RPs get used a bit more frequently early in the season with more frequent off days, SPs still building up and when the RPs are still fresh. There were 61 RPs with more appearances than Kimbrel’s 10 coming into today, and 109 RPs with 10 or more appearances coming into today. The thing that kills me is using the closer with a 4 run lead. Hyde did that with Bautista a few times last year, I hope we don’t see that with Kimbrel.

Exactly. If you go down a list of the leaderboards of velo leaders and note all their injuries, there’s a lot of them. But if you instead just take a list of all 30+ year old pitchers and sort it however you like, I don’t expect it’s going to look all that different.

He allowed only one batted ball over 95 MPH, commanding his cutter particularly well in this one. I think the cutter is the most critical pitch for Povich to take the next step. He’s never had issues getting punch outs, he needs to be able to pitch in the zone without relying too much on his fastball. It’s also a key weapon against RHP - if you don’t have a true plus breaking ball or fastball that can overcome the platoon splits (which I don’t think Povich does), you can only make it as a LHP SP through the strength of your cutter and changeup, which are more reverse/neutral splits. His changeup is probably not good enough to carry him on its own, so it’s the cutter that brings the whole pitch mix together.

It’s probably fairly inevitable that Grayson will need TJ at some point in his career. Velo increases the risk. However, it’s very common for all pitchers, regardless of velo. The biggest thing Grayson has going for him is that he’s made it to age 24 without a shoulder or elbow injury (at least that I can recall), which already separates him from many others in the high velo club. The best predictor of future injuries is past injuries, and while he did have that lat issue that knocked him out for a fair bit his record is pretty clean in that respect. Also, it’s more the conventional baseball wisdom than something I’m aware of being supported in stats, but Grayson has a prototypical pitcher’s frame and in theory that could help his durability. It doesn’t seem like he generates his velo from a max effort delivery.