Ohfan67

Tate and Givens are starting rehab assignments this week, but I’m assuming it will take them a while to be ready to pitch at the ML level.

Can’t complete one inning with a big lead. Voth is pretty close to useless right now. Anyone at AAA with a realistic chance of v being a better BP arm?

Super high probability IMO.

It seems like they view the 26th roster spot as a place to rot and mainly use it for players they don't care about.

That's a load of baloney.

By the way, some of the Hall quotes in that article are really weird IMO. He's just now figuring out that he needs to learn how to pitch and not just blow away hitters? That seems pretty damning in regards to Hall's baseball intelligence and pretty damning in terms of Orioles pitcher development. There was similar language in a recent article about Grayson at AAA (I think it was quotes by Irwin maybe?). I would hope that it wouldn't take getting your brains beat in by major league hitters to finally understand this concept.

Akin averaged 1.8 innings per appearance last year. Both is averaging 1.37 innings per appearance this year. I think Hyde would LOVE to have a reliable reliever or two that could throw 2 or 2+ innings when needed. But unfortunately Akin and Voth and other options have not performed well this year. There have been many times when it was clear that Hyde would like to stick with a reliever longer, but had to yank the pitcher to keep the Orioles in close games. I think Hyde and the organization are trying to maximize what they can get out of the bullpen. Last year Akin was able to be that guy early in the season (but obviously struggle later in the year). So far this season none of the "long man" type options have pitched very well. Hopefully this is the start of a good run of pitching by Akin. That would be really helpful. That said, I don't think they are going to regularly pitch a bullpen guy for three innings. They have to use multiple bullpen pitchers basically every game. You can't do that if you have a couple of bullpen guys that need like three days between appearances to recover from a three inning outing.

This. I would platoon O'hearn with Mountcastle for a while and see how that plays, but over their careers O'Hearn has been worth -2.3 WAR with a career OPS+ of 86 while Mountcastle has a career +3.2 WAR and a career OPS+ of 109. O'Hearn has averaged about 60 games a year in the majors. Mountcastle has a much better track record.

Good grief man.

Way to own it.

At first I thought maybe I missed Hays getting thrown out.

That’s an idiotic post that is blatantly in violation of the board rules. If you want to see dumb, then go look in the mirror. The team has the 29th smallest payroll in MLB and is currently 15 games over .500 in mid June.

Wrong thread?

I guess he has recovered from his illness! Good news.

Huh? The data you posted do not show an improvement.

You mean the Hicks with the OPS >1.0 with the Orioles? Yeah, he’s really killed the team this past week.

Nailed it.

I just saw a photo of Creed Williams for the first time. He's clearly Kenny Powers' son. It's a waste of his God-given talent not to use him as a closer. Come on Elias!

I expect Hicks’ performance to decline soon, but his mini resurgence has dramatically helped the Orioles compensate for Mullins’ injury. If Hicks can keep it up for another week or two, then that would be super helpful.

A GM/organization has to take risks when you’re 29th in payroll, have a shockingly competitive team, and you want to take 2023 as far as you can. I think they are willing to push these “free” relief pitchers very far. It’s a double edged sword for sure. Don’t push them and then the orioles are probably not in the hunt. Push them too hard and then the orioles may fall out of the hunt. I think they will push these guys hard and hope for help for the second half from Hall, Grayson, and the trade deadline. I don’t think they have much choice if they want to stay near the top.

Very happy for this guy. Barring a Cowser promotion or similar, who loses playing time at Norfolk? I guess a mixture of OF and 1B?

I hope Hicks has a great rest of the season and he especially crushes the Yankees. But unfortunately he will probably come crashing back to earth soon. I predict the Hicks experiment doesn’t last very long. Not sure how long not very long will be, but I think weeks not months is a good bet.

He has the fifth highest WAR of all the positional players. Sure, if he doesn’t hit better in the future eventually he will get benched. But overall he’s been a positive contributor this season even with his horrible month at the plate. He’s a very weird player and I’m not a giant fan. But I don’t like when some posters pretend that he has not contributed to the success of the team so far. And of course he could have a wildly positive streak or two left in him this year.

Tomorrow is an off day. Seems very unlikely that the Orioles would cut him loose so fast much less right after a game and before an off day.

I listened to the Braves radio broadcast a lot during the spring. Their radio team is excellent IMO. I think that’s actually rare right now…a lot of teams have pretty weak radio broadcasts these days. That’s definitely been my experience.