Bubble Buddy

Driving down from Gainesville for July 3rd game. Just bought 2 tix and reserved an air b&b for me and the fiancee. The Trop is the worst, but ain't making the trip to Baltimore this year. I'll take in some O's baseball for $6 total ($1 service fee for each seat). Edit: Shoot, Means is slated to start too! I am happy with this purchase.

I actually enjoyed the article. There wasn't a 100% clear reason for the improvement, but they looked at a lot of different factors. Two takeaways for me: The reduction in ground balls and the improvement against off speed pitches. It could be temporary, but I definitely like to see the improvement against off speed stuff as it's one of the biggest hurdles once you get to MLB. Definitely sounds like an adjustment to me that could be sustainable. He's gone from very poor against them to average, while still mashing fastballs.

I thought he could put it all together. But the further we get along, the clearer it is that he is just a two pitch pitcher and that was basically the scouting report out of college. And even the splitter isn't the most reliable second pitch. When he has the slider going, he can be dominant. But he's never developed it consistently and doesn't look like he will.

Kinda reminds me of Sandy Leon. Now Pedro is younger, but certainly signs point to him crashing back down, or becoming a huge outlier.

Good little write up on fangraphs. I feel like it just puts some numbers to what we've been seeing. Means may be able to be a #4/5 if no further improvement is made. If he can add an effective breaking ball, perhaps this is just the beginning. https://blogs.fangraphs.com/john-means-changeup-means-business/

Kid is 22. 39 games at Norfolk. He's obviously kicking A right now, but I don't have an issue with him staying down there at least half a season. We'll obviously get to see exactly what the FO does with a real prospect soon and it will be interesting to see how they define "master".

I wonder if people on here are thinking he may be traded by then. I know that rumor came out that he was on the market.

Definitely should be encouraging that he's kinda bounced back and is putting up good numbers at AA right now. Struggled a bit end of last year. Hopefully he can keep it up.

How Reputable is MLBPipeline? Nice to see we have 4 guys in there (that I counted, although I think it should be 5 guys if Rodriguez is our #5 guy)

Kevin freaking Millwood. Haven't thought about his season with the Orioles in a long time.

Me too. The experience of watching him rise and then fall off a cliff as a starter has definitely kept me cautious about putting hopes in a young pitcher. I feel like I wait at least a year and a half before setting serious expectations.

It's no joke that this guy now sits at 92 MPH on his fastball. (https://www.fangraphs.com/graphs.aspx?playerid=16269&position=P&pitchgraphs=true&statArr=&legend=1&split=base&time=daily&start=2018&end=2019&rtype=mult&gt1=15&dStatArray=FA&ymin=&ymax=) If the change stays and he can get a breaker over the plate, what's not real about him? It's not like he's up there throwing 88. Sitting 92, with location and a change up could very well continue to play. I'm excited. When Brian Matusz was dominant for that early stretch, his change up was his best pitch IMO. Could pitch backwards, low 90's FB. His breaker is better than Means, but hopefully means can stay consistent with the change up how Matusz couldn't.

I didn't get to watch last night. It looks like he threw a lot more breaking pitches.. And he didn't get shelled? Did they look passable enough? Threw them as strikes?

Also, isn't Keegan Akin a decent prospect? Backend starter type? Struggling a bit in AAA right now, but had a good year last year.

And both of those guys were really legit pitching prospects that have been beset by injury. So barring injury, it's easy to get excited about the kid.

His breaking ball isn't great, but I thought it looked at least average a couple times he offered it up. About 80% of the time it was pretty bad, but he had a couple good ones. Control looks pretty good. FB velocity definitely playable and his control is pretty good too. If he can throw a breaking pitch for a strike, we might have a pretty solid starter on our hands.

Interesting. Felix Pie has his moments with us. That's a good comparison for me to temper expectations.

His first two seasons his FB average was 94.8 and 94.9 MPH. So he was sitting 95. And that was as a starter most of the time. This year it's 93.6. Definitely didn't get the velocity bump out of the pen, which is a bit surprising because a lot of guys do. Projections | Minor Leagues | Regular Season Season Team vFA vFC vFS vSI vCH vSL vCU vCS vKN vSB 2015 Orioles 94.8 92.5 81.3 84.0 77.1 2016 Orioles 94.9 93.2 81.8 83.7 79.6 2017 Orioles 94.1 93.1 85.5 86.5 2018 Orioles 94.1 92.6 83.1 89.9 78.6 2019 Orioles 93.6 92.4 88.8 88.8

Also, Alex Gordon has had a pretty hot start to the season this year after a few years of scuffling. I know it's one anecdotal case, but nice to see someone in as deep of a hole as Chris bouncing back a bit.

I've thought about that situation as well with Palmer. I know we can't know all the details, but it wreaked of "kicking a man while he's down". I really like Palmer as the color guy and I know he's connected to people. But not really a fan of the way he hung Davis out to dry like that. And obviously Davis is showing he's not lazy or a quitter.

Didn't Wright used to hit high 90's every now and then? I feel like I remember in his first couple of starts he was hitting high 90's? Answer is yep. He used to sit around 95 MPH. https://www.fangraphs.com/pitchfxo.aspx?playerid=12586&position=P&pitch=FA&statArr=&legend=1&split=base&time=daily&start=2015&end=2019&rtype=mult&gt1=15&dStatArray=FA&ymin=&ymax= I always thought he'd be some kinda useful out of the pen. But the results were putrid.

I can kinda see it from their perspective and basically what you were saying: 747 OPS in minor league career. Not a big HR hitter. Average OBP. Makes me feel like he's probably due for a pretty good regression. But he's been a great pick up for us and we've got room to see if he can blossom in MLB. From my amateur eye test, his game looks pretty good.

He usually really struggles with pitches up in the zone. Took that 92 MPH heater the other way. I hate to get my hopes up, but I'm encouraged. I honestly think so much of what he's gone through has been mental. Here's to hoping he can keep it rolling.

I guess that's fair. Based on his production last year and how the market has been, he probably deserved a 1 year deal at 3-5 mil. But I don't know, it was a short term deal so didn't hamper that much and hopefully he can eat innings this year.

He has pretty decent stuff. I think he does well for this team and honestly might have been OK as a #5 last year. But everyone else pretty much sucked too. If he stays healthy he can eat some innings, which has value at this stage of our development.