Do we really understand our team's strengths and weaknesses?

[Frobby]

Position player WAR: 17.6, 11th in the AL

Pitcher WAR: 20.5, 2nd in the AL

OPS+: 99, 9th in the AL

ERA+: 105, 4th in the AL

dWAR: -1.9, 12th in the AL

oWAR: 19.4, 10th in the AL

Rtot: -12, 12th in the AL

Rdrs: -29, 12th in the AL

If you buy this, it's the pitching (mostly the bullpen, of course) that's the strength of our team, masked by a hitter-friendly home ballpark and poor defensive support (coming from the outfield). The offense is slightly below average but the hitter-friendly environment in which they compete makes the offense look considerably better than it is.

[crissfan172]

I don't know if I would say that our ballpark makes our offense look better. I think we've built a flawed offense that is suited to our ballpark. We have a ton of power, which is very useful in Camden Yards, but we don't get on base at a very high clip, which tends to get exposed more often on the road. 

If you look at the team closer, I'd say our strengths and weaknesses are as followed. 

Strengths: 

Bullpen: 5.5 rWAR (3rd in AL)

Power: .188 ISO (1st in MLB) and .443 SLG (2nd in AL)

Infield defense: 

Davis - 8 DRS (1st in AL) 

Schoop - (-1) DRS (7th in AL)

Hardy - 6 DRS (4th in AL)

Machado - 13 DRS (3rd in AL)

 

Weaknesses: 

Starting Pitching: 9.6 rWAR (9th in AL)

Getting on base: .317 OBP (10th in AL)

Outfield defense: -51 DRS (30th in MLB)

 

I know you mostly hit on all of this in the OP, but if we can just turn those weaknesses into just moderate negatives, we could have a very good team this year. 

I've kind of been in the Michael Saunders camp, but I'm starting to think signing a guy like Revere to play RF and Encarnacion to DH would be a better fit. Of course, that may not be financially feasible. 

[Frobby]

Revere doesn't have the arm to play RF.   He has one of the worst arms in MLB.   

[backwardsk]

I assume that you used Fangraphs?  When I looked up our main nine guys, we were close to 20.

 

[Frobby]

27 minutes ago, backwardsk said:

I assume that you used Fangraphs?  When I looked up our main nine guys, we were close to 20.

 

BB-ref.    And the guys after the main often have negative numbers.

[Moondoggie]

29 minutes ago, Frobby said:

Revere doesn't have the arm to play RF.   He has one of the worst arms in MLB.   

Which is why I'd like to see them sign Revere to play left and lead off, move Kim to DH and sign somebody else for right field. You could keep Kim's high-OBP bat in the lineup and improve the team's defense and speed.

I don't know anything about WAR (I'm a peace guy myself), but the Orioles still have plenty of guys to hit home runs. What they could use is more guys on base ahead of the homers and less striking out and stranding those runners.

[hoosiers]

The issue with the pitching, and perhaps other teams have similar splits, is that the WAR is concentrated in Tillman, Gausmand and Britton (each over 4 WAR per Baseball Ref).  Bundy was on a 3.5 WAR pace with 30 starts.  That production was countered in 2015 by 48 games started by Jimenez/Gallardo with a WAR of .3 at a $20M cost and two high draft picks.  That felt like we were throwing away two out of five starts and putting heavy pressure on our good starters and bp.  It would be nice to have a 1 WAR fourth starter - and DD invested perhaps for just that, but Jimenez and Ubaldo were poor last year.  Maybe the White Sox recently signed Derek Holland could is that 1 WAR guy.

IMO, the issue with the position players is the poor performance in the corner OF spots and DH after Trumbo.  And Manny covers up a lot of other shortfalls. Again, here also, DD tried to find guys for the corner OF spots, but things didn't pan out.

And, as the major league tryouts of some acquired players haven't worked out, there is little on the farm to supplement the wholes - especially relative to other teams.   

[crissfan172]

1 hour ago, Frobby said:

Revere doesn't have the arm to play RF.   He has one of the worst arms in MLB.   

Fair enough. I'm not married to the idea of Revere on the team. I just want someone that can give us good defense with mediocre offense, and he was the first name that came to mind. 

[Aristotelian]

My critique of our team last year is that the overall numbers mask our weaknesses. Our offense is one dimensional--low OBP, high K's, but tons of power. We were #1 in MLB in HR, but only #12 in runs scored. We are built to feast on bad pitching but we do not match up well with good pitching. If we need to scratch out a run to win a tight ballgame, it just doesn't happen. My other worry is that so much of our offense came early in the year. Post-All Star Break, our team OBP fell to .298, #25 in MLB. Really, we had an extremely hot June (.357 OBP, #1 MLB) but mediocre to poor the rest of the season, particularly the second half. That is a significant amount of time, trending in the wrong direction.

Our overall ERA is decent, and the bullpen is strong. But we had to play from behind a lot because of the weak starting pitching. As important as bullpens are, especially in the playoffs, you look at the elite teams and their starting just destroys ours. 

Our D was good at fundamentals and limiting errors, but aside from Manny every single one of our guys has average or worse range.

[backwardsk]

51 minutes ago, hoosiers said:

The issue with the pitching, and perhaps other teams have similar splits, is that the WAR is concentrated in Tillman, Gausmand and Britton (each over 4 WAR per Baseball Ref).  Bundy was on a 3.5 WAR pace with 30 starts.  That production was countered in 2015 by 48 games started by Jimenez/Gallardo with a WAR of .3 at a $20M cost and two high draft picks.  That felt like we were throwing away two out of five starts and putting heavy pressure on our good starters and bp.  It would be nice to have a 1 WAR fourth starter - and DD invested perhaps for just that, but Jimenez and Ubaldo were poor last year.  Maybe the White Sox recently signed Derek Holland could is that 1 WAR guy.

IMO, the issue with the position players is the poor performance in the corner OF spots and DH after Trumbo.  And Manny covers up a lot of other shortfalls. Again, here also, DD tried to find guys for the corner OF spots, but things didn't pan out.

And, as the major league tryouts of some acquired players haven't worked out, there is little on the farm to supplement the wholes - especially relative to other teams.   

I don't think it's too much to expect Miley to be a 1+ WAR guy at number 4.

[hoosiers]

1 hour ago, Aristotelian said:

We were #1 in MLB in HR, but only #12 in runs scored. 

Very telling.  Very disappointing that DD has struggled to find a quality obp bat of a decent fielder for years - even at the corner OF positions.. 

[sportsfan8703]

4 hours ago, Frobby said:

Position player WAR: 17.6, 11th in the AL

Pitcher WAR: 20.5, 2nd in the AL

OPS+: 99, 9th in the AL

ERA+: 105, 4th in the AL

dWAR: -1.9, 12th in the AL

oWAR: 19.4, 10th in the AL

Rtot: -12, 12th in the AL

Rdrs: -29, 12th in the AL

If you buy this, it's the pitching (mostly the bullpen, of course) that's the strength of our team, masked by a hitter-friendly home ballpark and poor defensive support (coming from the outfield). The offense is slightly below average but the hitter-friendly environment in which they compete makes the offense look considerably better than it is.

Good post.  I'd like to see us sign Edwin Encarnacion to DH and then pick up a RF like Bourn.  See where we're at come deadline time and pick up a SP.  Those things could happen now if we weren't stuck with Ubaldo/Miley/Gallardo.  

If we were serious about winning a WS we would realize that we should go for it these next two years and go over budget knowing that we have to have some low budget years in 2019 and 2020.  I don't think our owner is up for that.  This team is real close though.  

[Frobby]

12 hours ago, Aristotelian said:

My critique of our team last year is that the overall numbers mask our weaknesses. Our offense is one dimensional--low OBP, high K's, but tons of power. We were #1 in MLB in HR, but only #12 in runs scored. We are built to feast on bad pitching but we do not match up well with good pitching.

Do you have any evidence that a homer-driven offense is less effective against good pitching than a "scratch it out" offense?    I feel like I hear this theory all the time, but nobody ever backs it up.    About two-thirds of the way through last season, I did an analysis of how the O's had done against the top 10 pitchers in the league, and concluded that they outperformed the rest of the league against that group.  http://forum.orioleshangout.com/forums/index.php?/topic/26010-myth-the-orioles-cant-hit-good-pitchers/#comment-1985357

Don't get me wrong, I think our offense tends to be overrated, as I indicated in the OP.    But if you give the proposition, "two teams score an equal number of runs per game on average, but one is very dependent on home runs and the other one isn't.    Which one does better against the better pitchers in the league?", I don't know of any evidence to say that the less homer-dependent team does better.

 

[Tony-OH]

13 hours ago, hoosiers said:

The issue with the pitching, and perhaps other teams have similar splits, is that the WAR is concentrated in Tillman, Gausmand and Britton (each over 4 WAR per Baseball Ref).  Bundy was on a 3.5 WAR pace with 30 starts.  That production was countered in 2015 by 48 games started by Jimenez/Gallardo with a WAR of .3 at a $20M cost and two high draft picks.  That felt like we were throwing away two out of five starts and putting heavy pressure on our good starters and bp.  It would be nice to have a 1 WAR fourth starter - and DD invested perhaps for just that, but Jimenez and Ubaldo were poor last year.  Maybe the White Sox recently signed Derek Holland could is that 1 WAR guy.

IMO, the issue with the position players is the poor performance in the corner OF spots and DH after Trumbo.  And Manny covers up a lot of other shortfalls. Again, here also, DD tried to find guys for the corner OF spots, but things didn't pan out.

And, as the major league tryouts of some acquired players haven't worked out, there is little on the farm to supplement the wholes - especially relative to other teams.   

Good analysis, but i think their is little doubt that Duquette is going into 2017 with Miley, Gallardo and Jimenez competing for two rotation spots and hoping they will be better then in 2016. My guess is that Miley and Jimenez win the 4th and 5th spots with Miley ending up the 3rd starter between Gausman and Bundy. Gallardo will go to the pen as the long guy unless a trade is made.

[Tony-OH]

4 minutes ago, Frobby said:

Do you have any evidence that a homer-driven offense is less effective against good pitching than a "scratch it out" offense?    I feel like I hear this theory all the time, but nobody ever backs it up.    About two-thirds of the way through last season, I did an analysis of how the O's had done against the top 10 pitchers in the league, and concluded that they outperformed the rest of the league against that group.  http://forum.orioleshangout.com/forums/index.php?/topic/26010-myth-the-orioles-cant-hit-good-pitchers/#comment-1985357

Don't get me wrong, I think our offense tends to be overrated, as I indicated in the OP.    But if you give the proposition, "two teams score an equal number of runs per game on average, but one is very dependent on home runs and the other one isn't.    Which one does better against the better pitchers in the league?", I don't know of any evidence to say that the less homer-dependent team does better.

 

I think there is very little doubt that an offense that gets on base is a more consistent offense than the low OBP, big power offenses the Orioles have employed. One of my biggest critics of Duquette is that he built a one-dimensional offense and that is why the teams has long dry spells with the offense and that makes them tough to watch at times.