Lurking: Ryan Flaherty?

[LA2]

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You do realize that Oday has given up 19 homers to lefties in 440 ABs versus 13 homers in 752 ABs against righties. Lefties are hitting .292 off ODay versus .179 against righties. In 2013 lefties hit .309 against ODay and 5 homers in 81 ABs and .154 and 3 homers in 152 ABs against righties. The numbers dont lie and the numbers conclude that ODay isnt very good agaisnt lefties.

No Buck didnt throw the pitch but I dont know why he left ODay in to face a lefty.

As many of us can recall, O'Day was effective against both LHB and RHB in 2012, a season that you've obscured in your profile of him. I would think that Buck is hoping he can return to that type of prowess and probably believes it's too early to give up on the possibility. I do question why he would rather go with O'Day vs. Chisenhall, who is murdering RHP this season, rather than Matusz vs. Raburn. In any case, it was too early to bring in Britton and I would not forget to give credit to O'Day for striking out the next two batters to finish out the inning, which earned Palmer's expressed admiration.

[Jonesy10]

Flaherty needs to be the everyday starter against RHP's. He now has a higher OBP, OPS, and wRC+ than Schoop. He has an .800 OPS this month while Schoop has a .500 OPS this month. Flaherty has started slow 3 years in a row, but really turned it on about midway through the season. He's turned it around earlier this year, and has shown he can be very good when he's on, so he should play every day as long as he keeps hitting. Send Schoop down. He obviously is not ready to be a starter on any team that plans on being even a .500 team. Bring up Weeks to improve team OBP and speed and platoon him with Flash.

[CA-ORIOLE]

Flaherty needs to be the everyday starter against RHP's. He now has a higher OBP, OPS, and wRC+ than Schoop. He has an .800 OPS this month while Schoop has a .500 OPS this month. Flaherty has started slow 3 years in a row, but really turned it on about midway through the season. He's turned it around earlier this year, and has shown he can be very good when he's on, so he should play every day as long as he keeps hitting. Send Schoop down. He obviously is not ready to be a starter on any team that plans on being even a .500 team. Bring up Weeks to improve team OBP and speed and platoon him with Flash.

What is it with you incoherent and irrational Flaherty supporters? Will you never quit?

[MrOrange82]

What is it with you incoherent and irrational Flaherty supporters? Will you never quit?

Flaherty has a .798 OPS in May...........in six games...in 23 ABs.

[Jonesy10]

What is it with you incoherent and irrational Flaherty supporters? Will you never quit?

Don't know if you're being sarcastic or not but Flaherty's overall numbers are now better than Schoop's, and he's been hitting much better lately.

[24fps]

Flaherty needs to be the everyday starter against RHP's. He now has a higher OBP, OPS, and wRC+ than Schoop. He has an .800 OPS this month while Schoop has a .500 OPS this month. Flaherty has started slow 3 years in a row, but really turned it on about midway through the season. He's turned it around earlier this year, and has shown he can be very good when he's on, so he should play every day as long as he keeps hitting. Send Schoop down. He obviously is not ready to be a starter on any team that plans on being even a .500 team. Bring up Weeks to improve team OBP and speed and platoon him with Flash.

Is this an argument to start Flaherty every day beginning now, or ignore him until after the AS break? It works either way. Here's an idea - let's give Scoop until the AS break before declaring the investment at risk.

[Oldorioles]

Don't know if you're being sarcastic or not but Flaherty's overall numbers are now better than Schoop's, and he's been hitting much better lately.

This is simply not true at all. If you make a statement like this, back it up factually. Let's look at the numbers:

OPS: Flaherty 580, Schoop 610

OPS+: Flaherty 61, Schoop 68

SLG: Flaherty 299, Schoop 344

AVG: Flaherty .207, Schoop 221

rWAR: Flaherty -0.4, Schoop +0.2

The numbers are what they are. If anything, Schoop's are slightly better than Flaherty's and since he's more than five years younger than Flaherty with less MLB experience I'll go with the kid who has better numbers and a clearly higher ceiling. Flaherty has played almost 200 MLB games over parts of the last three year and his numbers say he clearly should not be a starter in the Majors.

[MrOrange82]

This is simply not true at all. If you make a statement like this, back it up factually. Let's look at the numbers:

OPS: Flaherty 580, Schoop 610

OPS+: Flaherty 61, Schoop 68

SLG: Flaherty 299, Schoop 344

AVG: Flaherty .207, Schoop 221

rWAR: Flaherty -0.4, Schoop +0.2

The numbers are what they are. If anything, Schoop's are slightly better than Flaherty's and since he's more than five years younger than Flaherty with less MLB experience I'll go with the kid who has better numbers and a clearly higher ceiling. Flaherty has played almost 200 MLB games over parts of the last three year and his numbers say he clearly should not be a starter in the Majors.

I don't think those numbers include stats from tonight's game. Flaherty's OPS is .590 vs. Schoop's .588 (because Schoop has an abysmal OBP of .257, he's lost that edge to Flaherty despite an advantage in SLG). Also, Flaherty's BA is .211 vs. Schoop's .213. Again, not a significant difference.

The fact remains, though, that Flaherty is a 28 year old who's struggling to put up numbers that compete directly with a 22 year old playing in his first ML season. I haven't been happy with Schoop's production to this point, but, as 24fps said, if the O's have decided to make the investment, they should give Schoop more time to establish himself. Flaherty's already established over multiple seasons that he's not very good.

[Flash- bd]

Is this an argument to start Flaherty every day beginning now, or ignore him until after the AS break? It works either way. Here's an idea - let's give Scoop until the AS break before declaring the investment at risk.

It only works one way really, unless you are arguing that some kind of special alchemy takes place for Flaherty during the exact 4 day stretch of the AS break. (sorry if this sounds snarky )

Flaherty has played almost 200 MLB games over parts of the last three year and his numbers say he clearly should not be a starter in the Majors.

That's quite a disingenuous way of putting it. A much more objective way of putting it would be to say he has 534 PA's in 3 seasons; that is, less PA's than Nick Markakis had in his rookie season.

Of course, Nick was given an extended chance in his rookie season. Flaherty has never really got that--you don't have only 534 PAs in 3 seasons if you're not spending most of the time on the bench, and getting regular ABs--those 534 PAs will tell us a more muddled story than Nick's first 542.

[MrOrange82]

That's quite a disingenuous way of putting it. A much more objective way of putting it would be to say he has 534 PA's in 3 seasons; that is, less PA's than Nick Markakis had in his rookie season.

Of course, Nick was given an extended chance in his rookie season. Flaherty has never really got that--you don't have only 534 PAs in 3 seasons if you're not spending most of the time on the bench, and getting regular ABs--those 534 PAs will tell us a more muddled story than Nick's first 542.

More or less disingenuous than reigniting the argument by pointing out that Flaherty has an .800 OPS in May (when it's really .798), but neglecting to mention that the OPS is based on a grand total of 23 ABs?

[Jonesy10]

This is simply not true at all. If you make a statement like this, back it up factually. Let's look at the numbers:

OPS: Flaherty 580, Schoop 610

OPS+: Flaherty 61, Schoop 68

SLG: Flaherty 299, Schoop 344

AVG: Flaherty .207, Schoop 221

rWAR: Flaherty -0.4, Schoop +0.2

The numbers are what they are. If anything, Schoop's are slightly better than Flaherty's and since he's more than five years younger than Flaherty with less MLB experience I'll go with the kid who has better numbers and a clearly higher ceiling. Flaherty has played almost 200 MLB games over parts of the last three year and his numbers say he clearly should not be a starter in the Majors.

See MrOrange's post. Flaherty has shown that he can be a quality mlb player (1.4 WAR in limited time last season). Schoop hasn't. His OPS in May is barely .500...might be below that after tonight. I like Schoop, but he is simply hurting the team right now. The bottom line is that right now Flaherty deserves to start more than Schoop does. Some people just don't want to hear it because they have an unconditional hate for Flash and man crush on Schoop.

Flaherty hits 3 run HR, makes 2 defensive miscues, bench him! Flaherty with a great bunt single, Kirby waves him to second only to be tagged out, Flash's fault.

Again, bottom line is that Flaherty has started slow every year and hit much better after that. If he's showing any signs of heating up there's no reason Flaherty shouldn't start because Schoop is terrible (right now) and doesn't belong in the big leagues at this point in time.

Anybody that can't see that has to have an unconditional hatred of Flaherty.

[El Gordo]

Flaherty is right on schedule. Career OPS by month:

April .457

May .560

June . 730

July .742

August .775

Sept. .923

Not so bad for someone who can't hit(in April and May).

[MrOrange82]

Flaherty is right on schedule. Career OPS by month:

April .457

May .560

June . 730

July .742

August .775

Sept. .923

Not so bad for someone who can't hit(in April and May).

Career ABs by month:

April: 139

May: 100

June: 107

July: 41

August: 43

Sept.: 56

And this is why I get irritated with Flaherty supporters. I'm fine with pointing out when the "anti" numbers are wrong, but posting monthly OPS figures as though they're representative, in equal measures, of Ryan's historical outputs is absurd.

[Flash- bd]

The Ryan Flaherty argument can basically be distilled into this: either you believe that a player simply cannot improve--not even in exceptional circumstances where he starts his minor league career very late and doesn't get his rookie chance until very late, despite performing well in the MiLs, and even then is not given a full chance--at the age of 27, or you believe that Ryan has shown some very nice tools, seems to have projection given his power and his relatively decent plate discipline, and can improve (or perhaps not even improve so much as allow us to see what his skills translate into over a substantial, continuous sample size) as he adds more than 534 ABs to his ML resume, and for once gets an extended chance.

The former stance is just far, far too inflexible and sterile for my liking. Statistics are very important, but they must be tempered with context and common sense. And as I've said to you, C_o_C (forgive me, but I might as well name the first stance after you, thus I'll address you), the age factor--that you put so much weight on and wield as a kind of weapon of mass destruction against any pro-Flaherty argument--is derived from correlative studies, thus it is hardly free from exceptions. Unless Drungo can come in here and tell me that in the history of baseball almost no one has improved decently (because mind, it wouldn't have to be a massive improvement: he had something like a .665 OPS coming into this season, in those first 450 PAs, which if you add .50 OPS points to, considering his defense, makes a quite decent 2B) over his first 450 PAs from age 25-26 to his 450 at age 27+.

Mind--and I say this with all the respect in the world, because the following are obviously two of the best posters here--Drungo and (I think) C_o_C were two of the people that were probably most pessimistic on Chris Davis in August of 2012, I remember this because your arguments struck me as quite convincing, and I came to believe during that time that Chris Davis was little more than a mediocre DH/1B, around replacement level, partly on the strength of your arguments. I say this to illustrate the point that sometimes a bit more context--a bit less rigidity--and a bit of common sense doesn't go amiss. Not always, but in the Flaherty case it strikes me, and always has struck me, as if it wouldn't.

[El Gordo]

Career ABs by month:

April: 139

May: 100

June: 107

July: 41

August: 43

Sept.: 56

And this is why I get irritated with Flaherty supporters. I'm fine with pointing out when the "anti" numbers are wrong, but posting monthly OPS figures as though they're representative, in equal measures, of Ryan's historical outputs is absurd.

Bottom line, the more pitches he sees into the season, the better he hits. He has potential, he has never been given an extended chance. It's harder to hit well with sporadic AB than it is with regular ones. My guess we will be seeing more of Ryan as the season progresses.