Ohfan67

A Bonilla type buyout deal may be only way out. Say 5 million a year for 20 years. I don’t think Davis takes it, but I would offer it.

You are incorrect. If it was this easy, then every team would use this and contracts would not really be guaranteed.

The Orioles have to pay Davis. They can not assign him to minor leagues without his permission. If he says no, they still have to pay him.

Davis is going to play an important role in the Orioles chase of the number one pick. Play him and keep Mancini in left until the Orioles have at least a double digit lead on the race to the bottom.

You are totally correct, of course, that Bundy stunk it up. But Luke is also correct that Bundy had an elite SO rate even last year. I personally have lost most of my hope for him, but strikeouts are a strong peripheral. The Orioles are hoping he gets better. The slider is still very nasty. Also remember that the Orioles are not really trying to win games this year. If Bundy crashes and burns again, then he's helping the Orioles get that number one pick in 2020.

? That's the analytics the Orioles are using when it comes to Bundy.

They have time. And there’s no need to blow the high draft pick by winning a few meaningless games. Some posters get cranky when I say this, but the Orioles need to “earn” a top three pick in the 2020 draft. The current team looks like they will race to the bottom pretty effectively.

Oh man...you shouldn't put the joke setup on a tee! So many easy shots.

It would be a lot of fun to see the best models developed by ML teams to evaluate this stuff. I guess some of this stuff would be pretty easy to calculate...things like probability of average WAR in season eight, etc.

Looking at Wins Above Average by position for last year was very fun/extremely depressing. https://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/team_compare.cgi The Orioles were near the bottom at every position except SS, but of course that was due to Machado. The whole team really did stink...no surprise, I know. I was thinking about where the Orioles might see some improvement. As others have noted, catcher and 2B were two positions where the Orioles at least had six or more teams worse than they were. I could see catcher being about the same, maybe a little better if the O's get lucky. 2B could be about the same or maybe a little better. I don't think Villar will hit as well as he did with the O's last season, but Schoop was pretty bad and about 120 PA's went to a relatively long list of blah players. Hopefully the OF is "significantly" better. The OF as a whole was third worse (I could have used "hole" and it would have been accurate). They really have to get Mancini out of LF. The O's sucked at DH last year. If Trumbo actually plays a good bit (I'm skeptical that he will be healthy at all this year...I see him starting the year on the injured list or whatever it is called now and then going back on the list a little later in the season, rinse and repeat), then they may be better...but Davis could spend some time at DH. It doesn't look like there will be much room for improvement at 3B...maybe a little. Where do you guys think the O's will improve?

I don't know how Baseball Reference does their projections, but they are far more optimistic regarding Villar Projections Glossary Year Tm Age PA AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI SB CS BB SO BA OBP SLG OPS TB GDP HBP SH SF IBB Rel 2019 Proj. 28 501 449 58 116 20 2 14 47 31 8 44 134 .258 .327 .405 .733 182 8 3 3 2 1 84%

Schoop is an interesting comparison. Schoop was productive for the O's (11.5 WAR) and I think the O's got rid of Schoop at about the right time (of course a trade in 2017 would have yielded more return, but in terms of Schoop's play it was pretty good timing). The O's paid about 10 million for those 11.5 WAR. That's pretty good. If Hays productivity in his first six years was similar to Schoop's, then you would be paying 21.5 million for those 11.5 WAR with Kingery's deal. Not awful, but twice as expensive. I don't know. For the deals to make since, then the club option years are going to have to be bargains. Forecasting productivity in years 7, 8 and 9 seems really iffy unless the young player is really hot stuff. The more I think about it, the more I think that the reason you don't see these deals more often is because the models used by teams show that they are not worth the investment. What's the probability that Hays will be a productive player in his eighth season? Especially relative to the productivity per dollar that a younger player could provide at that point? Maybe teams aren't so dumb when it comes to long term deals for young players. I guess the models would also have to be tweaked for each team's financial situation, etc. This is pocket change for the Phillies, but not for say Tampa. Anyway, it's fun stuff to think about.

I agree with Frobby...I think that’s a good comp.

But really the point of the contract for the team is to not pay full free agent price for the WAR. The team would take a gamble by paying more in the first few years than they have to pay, but overall pay less for WAR than if they went through all the arbitration years. I find it hard to find a decent comp player to estimate the savings.

I too think Hays will be a better ML hitter than Mullins. I was mainly giving Natty some grief because he’s been pasting spring training stats into threads for several days. But the stats are still not very useful. Hays looked great, but all the caveats about SSS and standard spring training competition issues are still true. Super encouraging, but certainly not predictive. Rickard out hit Hays this spring but I don’t think you put much credence into that. That said, I am disappointed Hays didn’t make the starting roster. I think it’s irrelevant in the long run, but I want to see him play. Baseball is entertainment after all.

This is a great question. For me it's a slam dunk on players like Wieters or Manny after his debut. The money makes it a relatively low risk, I guess, but I really don't have a good idea of what Hays is going to do. The Orioles were really dumb for promoting him so early and the injury and near admission that he was too heavy last year add a little extra iffiness. Very interesting...I'm not sure if I would or not. I just spent some time cruising through stats and it is very hard for me to name best case comp and say 80th percentile case comp for Hays. Without that it is impossible to really analyze the potential savings to a deal like this.

JTrea spent a lot of imaginary money on payrolls. Ahh, fun times.

I didn't remember Geocities at all (and I'm old enough to know). Just looked it up...apparently it still existed in Japan until this month.

I just renewed my subscription. It's wild to think how much time, energy, joy and pain, I've invested in OH over the years! I hope my employer never figures it out!! I found the site in 2000. My first post, under a long dead username, was my opinion that the Rangers would regret investing something like 25% of their payroll into ARod. I was blasted hard! Those were different days when a lot of fans bought into Boras' claims about ARod helping the Rangers with real estate deals around the park, etc. I think I've probably checked the OH on about 98% of the days I've access to the internet since 2000. I've logged in from Brazil, Ecuador, Argentina, New Zealand, England, Spain, The Netherlands, Switzerland, and Poland over the years. Tony has always run a great site and although I've never met any of you it is amazing how much time I have "hung out" with you. Great site and worth the money.

Yeah, those stats mean a lot more than spring training stats.

My employer spent 500 million on a recent stadium upgrade. The university then pulled a very similar switch on season ticket holders. When you drop half a billion on a partial stadium rebuild, you need some quick cash. Some of the tickets had literally been handed down through two or three generations. It was going to cost one of my coworkers an annual $10,000 donation for the right to purchase the four tickets that her family had held for two generations. Some of the alumni went nuts, but the university stuck to their policy. The team immediately tanked after they completed the stadium rebuild, but they recently signed a top dollar coach to a ten year contract so the alumni and students are currently mollified. If the team tanks again, then this place will erupt.

I agree with all of this. MLB can be relatively inexpensive compared to other pro sports and things like college football (I work at a very large, very football focused university in Texas and the total cost of a season ticket for mediocre seats including the "donation" you have to give is unbelievable). MLB is definitely focused on a more "upscale" experience. Most of us are not huge fans of many of Angelos' decisions, but his focus on keeping Camden Yards affordable was real.

If you look at the ticket prices ranging from highest to lowest priced sections, the price for a ticket in the median priced sections range from $65-$68 to see the Astros play the Rangers. It would be a little cheaper to see somebody like the Twins. There are not four tickets in a row available in the $68 range for those games. If you wanted good seats and wanted to sit together, then you would likely pay more than $68. I am not exaggerating my point. You can easily spend $20 each for a beverage, a BBQ sandwich equivalent to Boog's, and a say split a bag of peanuts or a popcorn. Parking at the stadium is $25. The "average" price you quote is, I believe, an average priced ticket, a cheap hot dog, and a soda. That's equivalent to the old consumer price index stuff for food based on loaf of white bread, a gallon of milk, etc., it does not reflect what many people do at the ballpark. A family of four can easily spend $500 to attend an Astros game. I am not exaggerating. You can spend $500 without sitting in a luxury box.

So, you guys really think that going to a MLB game is not an expensive outing for the average family? That ticket and concession prices don't affect attendance? Earlier in this thread Drungo cited an attendance decline of 10,000,000 since 2007. You don't think any of that has to do with investment decisions regarding entertainment dollars? This "debate" started with me commenting that a family of four could easily spend $500 attending a game. I believe I more than backed up that statement with data. I did not state that the average cost of attending a game for a family of four was $500. Yes, MLB games, even in more expensive markets than Baltimore, can be attended for less than $500 (but still costs several hundred dollars), but even median ticket prices at the Astros stadium, for example, push a family of four into the $500 range.

I posted data for the median priced ticket. I think the numbers I posted are far closer to the median experience than the $18 per person option. Just to be clear, as I mentioned in other posts I take in a lot of "cheap" baseball every year. If I lived close to Camden Yards, then I would attend as many games as I could give time and money constraints and I would definitely go the much more affordable route. But there are fewer of those options in many stadiums and I don't think it is a typical fan experience in many stadiums (and certainly the owners don't want you spending $18 per person). I have basically decided that an Astros game is not a good investment for my family entertainment dollar (my wife and I are casual Astros fans, my teenage kids are not big baseball fans, etc.). I suspect that the cost of attending games in many markets result in others making this decision.