CaptainRedbeard

5 whiffs on 6 swings on 8 fastballs all up in the zone, averaging 96.1. Against some pretty solid hitters. I don’t know how the rest of this game is going to go or how they’ll make space for him in the pen, but that’s a pretty electric fastball. Whatever they do, they can’t DFA a guy who has that ability. More whiffs on the 4 seamer in 8 pitches than Irvin has on his 4 seamer in 47 pitches this year!

Interesting point about his zone rate since he only has the 1 BB in his AAA innings this year, and very good BB rates in Spring Training too. In watching him in Spring Training he was living above the zone with his fastball, which IIRC has mediocre IVB but exceptional horizontal movement. That could explain the low in-zone rate if he was continuing to live up and out of the zone but get chases there. Based on this Spring Training results, the new & improved stuff he’s carried and and his small sample AAA numbers (bad ERA, but great K/BB), I think there’s a pretty good chance he’s a solid MLB pitcher. I’m skeptical he’s going to be a proper SP since it was really only his fastball that looked like a true plus offering, but I like that he’s getting a shot at that first. So long as he gets moved to the pen and not DFA’d when he gets bumped from the rotation.

I’m not sure about Suárez as a SP, although I’d rather him than Zimmermann. He gives us the best chance to win today so I understand prioritizing that. It’s just that I really like the prospect of him as a RP where he should be able to better maintain the upper 90s velo we saw in Spring Training. Anyway I’m excited to watch Suárez today. I just hope he doesn’t ultimately get DFA’d due to a roster crunch before he gets a shot as a RP. If Bradish and Means bump him and Irvin out of the rotation, Suárez, Irvin, Baumann, Webb and Ramírez don’t have options, Perez is coming back at some point and doesn’t either, and Akin isn’t going to be optioned. There’s likely to be some DFAs and I don’t want to see Suárez be an odd man out without seeing him in a RP role.

The problem with Suárez is that he doesn’t have options, so once they add him to the 40 man he needs to stay on the big league roster or be DFA’d. If this will only be a start or two before Means is back and they don’t want to add additional non-optionable roster crunch on the pen, it may make more sense to be Zimmerman today and then potentially Povich for however many more they need. I really want to see Suárez get a shot at some point this season, especially as a RP. But not if that means just 1 or 2 starts and then he has to be DFA’d and not ever given a look as a RP.

Hoping that this is just a minor injury and he’ll be able to pitch again soon, but that this results in Wells being moved to the pen. It’s now 3 straight years he’s hit the IL as a SP, and his stretches as a quality SP involved sizable outperformance of his peripherals. His fastball velo is significantly worse as a SP and he becomes very homer prone. We need a quality RHP reliever (with options to boot). Means and Bradish should hopefully be back soon and Povich has started off on fire. It was worth another shot at the rotation, particularly with Bradish and Means out, but let’s get Wells in the pen now.

That’s right, that was from a Fangraphs article last year in April: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/ryan-mountcastle-is-having-a-weird-one/ However, it wasn’t exactly conclusive: Mountcastle is hitting plenty of balls in the air, but he’s only pulled three fly balls so far this season. Two of those, incidentally, became home runs. So he should hit more of those, I guess. Other than that, it’s hard to see much of anything Mountcastle could improve, strictly in terms of his batted ball profile. All he has to do is wait for his luck to change, and he’ll be the best hitter with a sub-3% walk rate of all time.

Cowser got a steady diet of breaking balls just under the zone last night, he was pitched to pretty well. He’s got a great eye for pitches off the plate and seems like he can cover the top of the zone well enough (although he has some whiff there too), but he looked pretty helpless on the low breaking pitches over the plate. Cowser and Westburg have very similar Statcast pages in that it’s a lot of red, they are clobbering the ball, but then have quite poor whiff rates. It’s a great development for both of them that they’re tapping into power that neither displayed at the MLB level last year, but there’s there’s going to still be some ups and downs with both of them of adjustments and counter adjustments to their scouting reports and opposing pitchers’ gameplans. I expect that both are going to settle in as above average hitters that capitalize on hitting mistakes, but have some clear holes in their game that can be consistently exploited when the pitcher executes.

Worth noting that Mullins has very consistently outperformed his xwOBA by around 25 points since his breakout year, I think as a consequence of (1) speed contributing to infield hits and (2) consistently pulling his fly balls. Mountcastle has also rather consistently underperformed his xwOBA, although that’s more difficult to explain.

It would be very unusual, but nothing about the Athletics right now is typical. Mason Miller’s huge injury risk also makes it even more of a reason to make them open to dealing him now. If he were a position player prospect it wouldn’t be the same equation. The Athletics made Miller a RP because they think he physically can’t handle starting. If they think that’s a permanent shift, they should trade him. No sense in having 6 years of an elite RP when you’re in the A’s position.

The only reason for Oakland to not be open to trading him is if they think his trade value could increase by holding him longer. He’s under control a long time but he’s also had major injury concerns, including a partial UCL tear, which is why he’s relieving and not starting. They’re going to be horrible for multiple years and Miller’s trade value could be peaking right now / at the trade deadline unless they think he will eventually be a SP again. That said, I agree he will be extremely expensive, and Oakland may prefer higher upside younger prospects, which the Orioles are not overflowing with. For instance even if the Orioles were willing to trade Kjerstad, doesn’t make a lot of sense for Oakland to target him given his age. I’d be surprised if Elias was willing to trade a lot of value for a RP. I expect Norby and Stowers are on the table for RPs, but even together they’re not even close to getting Miller.

Kimbrel, Cano and Coulombe have been excellent and we really can’t afford to have them falter, so that’s been a great development. Cano and Coulombe in particular is encouraging to show that last year was not just a fluke. Akin emerging is a huge boost and I hope we start seeing him in higher leverage. We still could really use another trustworthy RH RP to bridge the middle innings beyond Cano. Even though Webb’s results have been good I don’t trust him to be that guy when he’s throwing 92. Same with Tate, and Baumann looks pretty much the same as last year in having good stuff but bad command. I hate seeing him out there with a lead.

With Means and Bradish presumably on the way back in the next month or so I don’t expect we’ll see Povich replacing anybody in the rotation now, but if we get some more absolute duds in the next turn through and Povich has a 4th straight excellent start, it could get very interesting.

Totally, up until this last draft it seems like the philosophy was that pitchers have way more volatility so might as well hope you hit on the later picks. This past draft they used a lot more draft capital on pitchers throughout the whole draft so chances are probably improved that one will work out nicely.

Mayo was 4th round but got a pretty big overslot bonus with the savings on underslot Kjerstad IIRC, so I wouldn’t count him the same. Ortiz in the 4th and Hernaiz in the 5th are probably the most successful later picks, no? Those are still much earlier compared to Etzel as a 10th rounder.

While the Elias Orioles have been incredible at their hit rate for the prospects drafted in the first and other early rounds, they’ve yet to really hit a home run on a later round guy. Obviously those are much more rare but they do happen occasionally, and you’d expect an otherwise elite hitting development org to hit one eventually. Etzel is looking like he could be that first one.

With a lot of velos down across the board for many Orioles pitchers (more than just “early season” amounts) but nobody hitting the IL yet (fingers crossed) and a lot of really good pitching performances command-wise, I’ve been wondering if this is influence of a new organizational pitching philosophy. We have the new pitching coach, and I’m curious if this could be a next frontier of analytics. We know that for a pitch in the same location, more velo and more movement are better…but also know that location matters a lot. Throwing at less than max velo for better location should in theory improve your effectiveness if it improves your command enough. And for some pitches, less velo can also mean more movement. There’s also the obvious hypothesis that throwing at a lower percentage of max velo reduces injury risk. I haven’t seen any Orioles media comments to support this being a conscious initiative and it’s not universal for every pitcher, but I’m wondering if it could be the case.

Right, the point was not about the differential between wOBA and xwOBA and being “lucky” with batted balls - it was that with a larger sample of PAs with that same chase rate he’d definitely have more walks, which would raise both of them. He was “unlucky” in only having one walk given he’s not chasing out of the zone. Anyway, what I was saying about his xSLG and barrel rate changing quickly with one or two barrels happened exactly last night - 90th percentile barrel rate and 97th percentile .654 xSLG now

He has gotten lucky but the xwOBA is also much lower because he only has the one walk, and that’s at least in part small sample noise. He still has a very good chase rate. With that low xwOBA is a .277 xBA, which is really high given his K’s, and a 53.8% hard hit rate. So he’s hitting the ball hard but it’s mostly been of the high-AVG, low-SLG variety, with only a .366 xSLG and one barrel. A lot of that sounds like what Westburg has done in his MLB time. It only takes a couple barrels to really change that xSLG, so he just needs to get more of those hard hit balls in the air. The only thing I’m concerned with Cowser so far is he is still whiffing a ton.

He kinda looks like JJ Hardy too, so easy to draw that connection…

So encouraging to FINALLY see Westburg get into one at the MLB level. That HR was absolutely pulverized and you can see how much power he has when he gets one of his hard hit balls in the air. Did it a lot in the minors obviously and just hasn’t quite clicked against MLB pitching until that HR. Must have been big for him mentally too. Hopefully it’s a sign of more to come!

It’s beautiful. Holliday will be leading off vs. RHP soon enough but for now just enjoy an incredibly fun 7-8-9.

Why not? In most other organizations he would be in the majors sooner but the Orioles don’t need him now, so they have the luxury of letting him continue to play everyday at 3B in AAA to see how that develops. That doesn’t reflect much against his value as a prospect. And even if Mayo is only a 1B I’d rather have him than Luzardo. But I also don’t think that highly of Luzardo, and Mayo would still be easily a top 50 prospect at 1B only. He’s better than Kyle Manzardo who is in that range, for instance.

If the Orioles stay fairly healthy this year, I suspect that Mayo will end up with less than 45 days / 130 ABs and be a ROY favorite next year. He comes up earlier if there are injuries or he performs so well in AAA (including defensively at 3B) that they trade Urias, but the absolute latest I imagine is a September callup with the expanded roster to be an extra RH bat down the stretch. The bat is ready now but they have the luxury of keeping him in AAA until either they are fully confident in his 3B defense, they need the bat, or he performs so well at the plate that he forces his way up regardless of defense. But if they just need a DH bat from injuries, I suspect Kjerstad and even Stowers are still ahead of Mayo given the emphasis on his 3B development. I can’t imagine any scenario where the Orioles trade Mayo, even if he looks like he can’t play 3B. After this season they’ll have a much better idea of his 3B defense but regardless he’ll slot into ABs vacated by Santander and O’Hearn. It’d have to be for an immensely valuable pitcher (like Kirby, as SG suggested), and those guys just don’t hit the market as available. He’s more valuable than Luzardo in a 1-1 swap straight up and the Orioles should turn that down.

I agree, although the other alternative is that Kemp’s contract was like the one that Teheran signed with the Mets where the salary was pro-rated? The Mets DFA’d him 6 days later so only paid that tiny amount of his $2m salary. And maybe Wong was unwilling to agree to that, but Kemp was? There’s no way Kemp got $1m guaranteed from the Orioles for 10 PA with no strings attached to leave now. Elias had to know that calling up Holliday now was a strong possibility, if not outright predetermined. Either Kemp needs to stay in the org in AAA to keep that salary, or he only got a pro-rated amount for the MLB time. I’m curious what the answer there is.