Mark Reynolds OPS is .731...

[El Gordo]

It's much more than that. It's pretty safe to say that Reynolds will not be offered arbitration.

Under the new CBA, the arbitration system has been totally revamped. Now, any offer of arbitration to a free agent must be in an amount of the average annual salary of the top 125 MLB players (or top 20 percent). This currently comes out to roughly $12 million per season.

So, under the new system, teams will weigh whether or not their free agents are worth at least $12 million a season. If a player thinks he can get more on the open market, he will decline arbitration and gamble on a better pay day elsewhere. So, the only teams that offer their free agents that $12 million in arbitration will be eligible for a compensation pick from the signing team, if their free agent declines arbitration to sign elsewhere.

http://blog.seattlepi.com/marinersfanblog/2011/12/21/cba-part-3-arbitration/

I don't believe Reynolds is a FA.

[nate22]

I don't believe Reynolds is a FA.

If we decline his option he will be.

[CA-ORIOLE]

I don't believe Reynolds is a FA.

Right. He's not. Not sure if he's affected by the new CBA or not.

[CA-ORIOLE]

If we decline his option he will be.

That's not true. We can still offer him arbitration and he'd be under team control next year.

[nate22]

That's not true. We can still offer him arbitration and he'd be under team control next year.

You're right. My mistake, I stand corrected.

[CA-ORIOLE]

You're right. My mistake, I stand corrected.

No problem. It is kind of a funny contract.

[Va Beach O's fan]

Honestly, I'm not that big a fan. But it ticks me off when people totally ignore the value of getting on base via a walk. We won a game today because Reynolds got on base that way.

And it ticks me off when people totally ignore the negative of a strikeout.

When you strikeout with less than two outs with runners on base and continually fail to move runners over or have productive outs, it has a negative effect on a team.

When you are unable to even make contact or put the ball in play, again, it has a negative effect. And don't even say "well at least he isn't hitting into double plays" because guess what, he is doing that too.

He is VASTLY overpaid and vastly underperforming. There is absolutely no other way you can look at the numbers and come to any other conclusion.

The excuse making for this bum has gotten nauseating. Again, he draws walks, great, we get it. He also strikeouts more than any player in baseball history so guess what, failing to have productive outs takes away the value of some of those extra walks.

The low HR totals, failure to hit in the "clutch" (and I define clutch as a tight ballgame where a hit is badly needed with men on base, not just any old RISP AB) and the horrible batting average combined with the poor fielding at 3b (his natural position) have made him a detriment to this team.

So he picks it alright at 1b. Whoopdy Doo. He's nothing special there either and he is hurting this team more than helping it and anyone who tries to argue otherwise is doing so in a vain attempt to try and look smarter than everyone else by justifying his crap season as "better than it really is".

[Frobby]

And it ticks me off when people totally ignore the negative of a strikeout.

When you strikeout with less than two outs with runners on base and continually fail to move runners over or have productive outs' date=' it has a negative effect on a team.

When you are unable to even make contact or put the ball in play, again, it has a negative effect. And don't even say "well at least he isn't hitting into double plays" because guess what, he is doing that too.[/quote']

I have made numerous posts quantifying exactly how Reynolds has done in situations where runners could have been advanced, and how many runs it likely cost us. The effect was measurable but not very large. The major league average for advancing runners at 3B with less than 2 out or from 2B and nobody out is just a hair over 50%. Reynolds has been in those situations 23 times, so an average player would have succeeded 12 times. Reynolds has succeeded 6 times (5 for 14 in the former situation, 1 for 9 in the latter). So, this issue has cost the Orioles six runs or less.

Reynolds has done better in those situations in previous years, including last year, while striking out more often.

I'm not going to ignore this issue, but the bigger issue is that Reynolds isn't hitting the long ball.

The low HR totals' date=' [b']failure to hit in the "clutch" (and I define clutch as a tight ballgame where a hit is badly needed with men on base, not just any old RISP AB)[/b] and the horrible batting average combined with the poor fielding at 3b (his natural position) have made him a detriment to this team.

I'd like to know what evidence you have that Reynolds has failed to hit in the situations you are defining as "clutch." According to BB-ref, Reynolds is hitting .294/.438/.412 in high leverage situations, which by definition are those situations that are most likely to impact the outcome of the game. They have a statistic called "clutch" that measures performance in high leverage vs. low leverage situations, and Reynolds has the highest "clutch" score on the team.

I just want to make it clear that I am not really disputing your argument that Reynolds has not been a good overall player for the Orioles this year. I am simply disputing the parts of your argument that are not well supported, and also pointing out that the Reynolds detractors seem unwilling to acknowledge that his ability to get on base via a walk amerliorates his low batting average to a large extent.

[wildcard]

This is Mahoney's first year at AAA. He needed time to adjust. He hit for over a 900 OPS in July. If he does something similar in August I expect that Buck will evaluate him by giving him playing time at 1B in September.

[waroriole]

I don't understand why Reynolds is still on the team. It's time to bring up Joe Mahoney and put him at 1B. He bats LH, but his stats show he hits LH pitching as well as RH, and he is excellent defensively. He can do better that Reynolds.

Mahoney has a .715 OPS in AAA. He can't hit anything. Did you know what he's hitting before you brought him up?

[FanSince88]

I would bring up Mahoney at this time and start platooning him with Reynolds at 1B.

Davis should be our full time DH at this point unless Thome returns. If Thome returns, go with a Davis/Reynolds platoon at 1B.

Whatever else happens, don't expect Reynolds to ever be cut/demoted this year. The fact that he's a RH batter with potential for power and a respectable OBP is going to be reason enough for the O's to keep him. There's not enough quality RH bats to go around on the O's, and there hasn't been for years.

Can't believe I'm saying this, but it would be nice to have Nick Johnson as an option on the team right now. Wonder how his recovery is going?

[DrungoHazewood]

And it ticks me off when people totally ignore the negative of a strikeout.

When you strikeout with less than two outs with runners on base and continually fail to move runners over or have productive outs' date=' it has a negative effect on a team.

When you are unable to even make contact or put the ball in play, again, it has a negative effect. And don't even say "well at least he isn't hitting into double plays" because guess what, he is doing that too.[/quote']

If you're going to drill way, way, way down into the noise and gig Reynolds for not contributing tenths of runs with productive outs you could do us all a favor and look up the numbers for the situations you claim he's killing the team and, as Frobby noted, see that he's doing better there than in so-called non-clutch situations.

[DrungoHazewood]

I would bring up Mahoney at this time and start platooning him with Reynolds at 1B.

I fail to see how promoting a 25-year-old with the 7th-best OPS on a mediocre Norfolk team is going to improve anything. I have to think it's much more likely that Reynolds starts hitting to his career mark that it is Mahoney contributes in the majors.

[Brendan25]

This is Mahoney's first year at AAA. He needed time to adjust. He hit for over a 900 OPS in July. If he does something similar in August I expect that Buck will evaluate him by giving him playing time at 1B in September.

Rep given.

[Frobby]

This is Mahoney's first year at AAA. He needed time to adjust. He hit for over a 900 OPS in July. If he does something similar in August I expect that Buck will evaluate him by giving him playing time at 1B in September.

Count me as a skeptic. I'm glad he had a good July but to me his track record is mediocre. I think there is a decent chance he gets called up in September no matter how he does in August, by the way. Whether he'll get many at bats is another story.