CaptainRedbeard

I also preferred Montgomery, but FWIW I think the main prospect who the Rangers gave up for him, Tekoah Roby, is a lot better than people realize by just referring to him as their 11th best prospect. It’s hard to evaluate prospects at the deadline because the evals are frequently not fully updated or just slow to catch up. Fangraphs did their full eval of the Rangers system on July 9 and had Roby as a 50 FV prospect and in the top 100. That’s above Povich, and closer to on par with Joey Ortiz. If you agree with that eval, I certainly prefer the Flaherty deal to the equivalent for Montgomery. To put it another way - STL definitely had a higher asking price for BAL for Montgomery than Flaherty. At the same price I’d prefer Montgomery, but how much more would you be willing to add/sub to Prieto/Showalter/Rom to get Montgomery instead? For a 2 month rental I don’t think the difference between Montgomery and Flaherty is big enough to give up much more prospect capital.

I agree this is likely the plan, unless a deal comes along where it makes sense to move one of Westburg/Ortiz. But there is still some time before Holliday forces the issue, he’s a likely Sep 2024 call-up. By 2025 Urias and Mateo will be 31 and 30, respectively, and definite nontender candidates if they haven’t already been traded, considering how much value they derive from defense and the aging curve for that. It’s a bit of a luxury, but you can easily accommodate 4 starting caliber players for the 3 IF positions. The Orioles are doing it right now with Urias/Frazier and even Mateo getting decent playing time with Gunnar and Westburg. You need depth in case of injuries, and prospects are no sure thing anyway. They clearly prefer a rotating DH and likely Westburg will be the piece that moves around most. He’s tall enough to play 1B and also fast enough to perhaps play LF (and he played a little LF in the minors). Wouldn’t put him out there in OPACY of course, but he could provide that flexibility.

There are 13 pitchers and 13 hitters on the active roster so it will be a pitcher they send out for Flaherty.

Also, Flaherty will take Rom’s spot on the 40-man, so no need to remove Krehbiel now. He has options so likely he gets optioned and he could pop up again if needed.

He had a 3.00 ERA at Norfolk on the year but his peripherals were awful. 7.50 K/9, 5.10 BB/9, 6.33 FIP, 5.34 xFIP. When he was added I assumed he was just serving as a fresh arm that they wouldn’t mind DFA’ing again or riding the Norfolk shuttle, plus he is well liked in the clubhouse and did have a good run in the first half last year. However, after seeing the stuff tonight, I’m more inclined to throw those season AAA numbers out and give the Orioles the benefit of the doubt that they may think they could have corrected whatever was broken. Still seems likely that Krehbiel is the one who goes when Flaherty is added, but perhaps he escapes a DFA and we haven’t seen the last of him yet.

Did the Orioles fix Joey Krehbiel (again)? He looked pretty darn good tonight. Statcast showing much improved velo and spin rates on the fastball and especially the cutter.

Rom and Prieto were definitely good pieces to deal now. A 40-man crunch is coming and they weren’t going to survive it. Prieto is a decent prospect but low ceiling given the lack of power and uncertain defense, and he had no future here even if we were to trade more IF this offseason. Rom is never going to be a SP considering his inability to develop a CH and lackluster FB velo. He could potentially be a good RP, but the FB would really need to play up. I think there’s a good chance we look back at this trade and think it’s clear we cashed in both of these trade chips at the peak of their value. Showalter stings and certainly feels like the trade could have gotten done without him, but he’s a A ball RHP who was not a heralded draft prospect and has a lot of reliever risk in his profile. Not a guy to lose a lot of sleep over. The problem is Flaherty is adequate but thoroughly underwhelming. Maybe we can unlock something more there, but to me he falls right around the Gibson/Kremer quality level. He’s more depth and we’ll likely be glad we have him if there’s an injury or Bradish/GRod/Kremer fade the way Wells has with the increased IP, so I’m glad we did something to support the playoff push. But it’s not going to be fun holding your breath if he’s taking the mound in a playoff game.

The small return for DeJong probably means there’s no sense in holding out any hope of getting anything notable for Mateo. Not a lot of buyers looking for SS apparently.

Players with limited NTC over X number of teams often choose teams who are most likely to trade for them in their NTC so they have that leverage. Like, nobody wants to play for the A’s, but why waste one of your teams on the A’s when the A’s aren’t going to trade for you. The Dodgers are like the inverse of that.

I’d only deal Cowser/Kjerstad/Mayo as the headliner for Gilbert. I could perhaps be talked into one of them for Cease, but only if much lesser prospects are the additional pieces. No way any of them for Keller. One of Ortiz/Westburg can be on the table. Every other prospect below that group is fair game. Norby is the only big name prospect I’d actively prefer to move.

Baker, Baumann and Irvin can all be optioned. And Perez has been hovering in DFA territory for some time. He’s a nontender candidate this offseason.

Opt outs are a great way to structure contracts so that you can guarantee a player a certain amount and give them additional value without actually guaranteeing more money. But that’s when you’re trying to sign a player - when you’re acquiring a player that already has one, it’s all downside. They are positive value to a player and negative value to the team. Eduardo Rodriguez would have more trade value right now if he was a true free agent after the end of this season and didn’t have the opt out. In fact, if the Orioles ever want to get serious about the FA market they are going to need to get comfortable with opt outs, which they were very opposed to in the DD days. They are never going to be able to compete on offering top of the line guaranteed dollars versus the big markets, so their best way to compete is with opt outs, shorter deals and higher AAV (which hit the luxury tax teams harder).

I like Carlson as a buy low target. If nothing else, he could fill the Hicks role for beyond this year as an ideal 4th OF - good defensively and can handle CF, switch hitter but better vs LHP. Complements the rest of the OF very well. Offensively, he’s got a good BB rate with a decent K rate, and underperforming his xWOBA quite a bit this year. It seems like the key to improvement is unlocking more power, and if the Orioles can do that with Adam Frazier than they can do it with anybody.

A player option / opt out is only downside for the team. The player is only going to not go to free agency if they think they’ll make less that way, most likely due to injury or otherwise a terrible end of the season. I think it’s likely a contributing factor to why Rodriguez is one of the last available SP to move, because it’s hard to value and is almost assuredly depressing his trade value, perhaps moreso than DET thinks is appropriate. (Unless you have an Arenado situation, but that was highly and unusual and you wouldn’t have that type of relationship with a 2 month trade acquisition.)

Right time to try a new pitch too, with a 6 run lead. Wonder if that even contributed to them wanting to get him some work in a blowout. Based on the results tonight we should definitely be seeing more of it.

Did Cano just debut a new pitch tonight? He threw 5 pitches that Statcast categorized as 4-seam fastballs. He previously had only 6 all season (likely miscategorized sinkers then). Higher spin rate and 12 inches less vertical break than his sinker. Great results too - 3 swings, 2 whiffs (2 of the K’s), 2 called strikes. He was pitching up in the zone with it and it had noticeably less movement than his sinker. That could be quite a weapon for him to be able to change eye levels on hitters.

I wonder if the interest in Lorenzen is an intentional leak by the Orioles front office to gain some leverage in talks for a different starting pitcher? Like, see we have other options… It’s interesting because the report only says it is the Orioles with interest. If it were coming from the Tigers they would want to make it sound like many teams are interested, no? And while Lorenzen is thoroughly underwhelming he is good enough and enough teams are looking for SP that there certainly are multiple teams interested.

Cesar Prieto could replace Frazier next year if they just want a lefty 2B bench bat. He’d almost certainly play better defense and be very similar offensively.

The hot stove rumors have been surprisingly quiet around Max Scherzer, considering the Mets are way out of a wildcard position and he could opt out this offseason (although he may not beat his remaining 1 yr 43M as a FA). Assuming the Mets pay down his salary to a sufficient level that we can take it on, what’s the best prospect that folks would be willing to trade for him? For me, I think it would be somebody in the Prieto/Fabian/Beavers/Wagner/Willems category. Not likely enough to get the Mets to eat the salary necessary to make it happen.

I’m more interested in the 13 K/9 and 3.06 xFIP as a 23 year old in AA. I like Jordan Montgomery and would trade some solid prospect capital for him but I think Povich is worth more.

The Orioles aren’t listed as a team scouting Eduardo Rodriguez in this article: https://www.mlb.com/news/eduardo-rodriguez-drawing-interest-at-2023-mlb-trade-deadline The Tigers left-hander has been drawing plenty of scouts to his recent starts, with the Rangers, Rays, Reds, Phillies and D-backs among the clubs keeping a close eye on the 30-year-old. Could easily shape up that the Orioles are not a fit for any of the notable available SP: -Rodriguez: Not scouting him, many other clubs in on him. -Montgomery: Cards want pitching prospects in return, not going to give up Povich for him. -Snell: May not even be available, may be overly expensive given Giolito return. -Stroman: May not be available. Any other back end available SP like Flaherty, Lynn, Hill aren’t going to be worthwhile improvements over what we have. At this point, I’m only expecting that we come away from the deadline with a RP.

I agree. He definitely needs to make adjustments and is not just having bad luck. But it’s still a tiny sample and it’s not all red flags, that’s all. He’s not overmatched by any means (except perhaps against tough LHP). His minor league track record gives me a lot of confidence that he’s going to make those adjustments.

Cowser and Westburg don’t have any barrels because they’re not hitting balls hard at the right launch angle, not because they are not hitting them hard. Cowser has a 38.7% hard hit %, slightly below the league average of 39.4%, and Westburg is at an exceptional 51.9%. Obviously both Cowser and Westburg are going to need to figure out how to hit the ball hard in the air to hit for power, and they haven’t hit anything with an impressive max EV yet. But they are making good swing decisions and hitting some balls hard, just need some more adjustment time. With the tiny samples they are working with, all it would take is a couple barrels for everything to look a lot better.

This explains why the Orioles didn’t go into their overage (and why they have historically been reluctant to do so). At least they planned well enough to use every dollar of their pool, unlike some of those other teams. Also explains why Baumeister went down to the wire - he was almost certainly trying to dip into the overage but the Orioles held the line.

I meant he’d have to be added to the 40 early if they wanted to call him up this year. Since he doesn’t have to be added to the 40 to protected from the Rule 5 until after 2024, that decreases the odds of him making an MLB appearance this season as a RP or spot SP before going back to SP in AAA next year.