Jump to content

Roch: Orioles picked to finish fourth or fifth in AL East


weams

Recommended Posts

http://www.masnsports.com/school-of-roch/2016/12/orioles-primed-for-more-late-additions.html

Quote

The Orioles are picked to finish below .500 and in fourth or fifth place in their division in various December predictions. They’ve already lost the offseason, graded poorly for their inability to improve the roster while holes opened up in right field and at designated hitter. And the rotation doesn’t measure up, at least on paper.

DUQUETTE-jumbo.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 71
  • Created
  • Last Reply

It's The Most Wonderful Time of The Year.

It's that glorious week where the end of Christmas music is only days away and the traditional predictions of Orioles mediocrity begin to roll out guaranteeing another competitive year. 

Can spring training be far behind?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This annual preseason short sale on the Orioles by the pundits is getting tedious.  

I doubt they'll finish higher than 2nd in the AL East, but I also doubt that the Yanks, Rays, and Encarnacion-free Blue Jays are so overwhelmingly good that they'll all finish higher than the O's.  Meanwhile, we return everyone except Trumbo and Alvarez from a WC team last year -- and we're very likely to replace Trumbo and Alvarez considering the depressed sluggers FA market, or sign a real outfielder or two to bolster our weak OF defense and add a bit of speed/OBP.  

2nd or 3rd place for the O's seems likely.  Probably a 35% chance of a WC.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, FanSince88 said:

This annual preseason short sale on the Orioles by the pundits is getting tedious.  

I doubt they'll finish higher than 2nd in the AL East, but I also doubt that the Yanks, Rays, and Encarnacion-free Blue Jays are so overwhelmingly good that they'll all finish higher than the O's.  Meanwhile, we return everyone except Trumbo and Alvarez from a WC team last year -- and we're very likely to replace Trumbo and Alvarez considering the depressed sluggers FA market, or sign a real outfielder or two to bolster our weak OF defense and add a bit of speed/OBP.  

2nd or 3rd place for the O's seems likely.  Probably a 35% chance of a WC.  

The way it looks right now:

AL East - Boston, and it's not close

AL Central - Cleveland, and it's not close

AL West - Texas or Houston

WC 1 - Houston or Texas

WC 2 - [Baltimore, New York, Toronto, Detroit, Kansas City, Seattle]

Next Year - [Tampa Bay, Chicago, Minnesota, Los Angeles, Minnesota]

........

You look at that wild card mix and Baltimore compares favorably to take one of those two spots.  Get in, and like last year they'd need to win that one WC game and after that, who knows in a short playoff series.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

...also while Baltimore so far is losing Mark Trumbo and Pedro Alvarez (and Matt Wieters replaced by Wellington Castillo), let us not forget some of the other major losses from the competition:

Boston - loses their "leader" and "heart and soul" or whatever, but mainly their highest OPS player in David Ortiz and downgraded him to Mitch Moreland.  As good as they are, they will probably score less runs.

Toronto - loses their second highest OPS player in Edwin Encarnacion with a downgrade to Kendrys Morales... and potentially Jose Bautista and Michael Saunders.

New York - traded Brian McCann and trying to trade Chase Headley / Brett Gardner... Gary Sanchez is very promising but hit .225 in September/October.  Also no Andrew Miller or Carlos Beltran for 2/3 of the season.

Detroit - Cameron Maybin to Anthony Gose/Tyler Collins is a major downgrade, at least offensively.  Also if they trade J.D. Martinez... ouch.

Kansas City - Wade Davis is gone in favor of OF semi-prospect Jorge Soler and while Kelvin Herrera can close, the once-dominant bullpen is actually looking rather thin.

Texas - retained some pieces but lost Ian Desmond; we'll see what Carlos Gomez does, he really needs to stay hot for them.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

46 minutes ago, 25 Nuggets said:

...also while Baltimore so far is losing Mark Trumbo and Pedro Alvarez (and Matt Wieters replaced by Wellington Castillo), let us not forget some of the other major losses from the competition:

Boston - loses their "leader" and "heart and soul" or whatever, but mainly their highest OPS player in David Ortiz and downgraded him to Mitch Moreland.  As good as they are, they will probably score less runs.

Toronto - loses their second highest OPS player in Edwin Encarnacion with a downgrade to Kendrys Morales... and potentially Jose Bautista and Michael Saunders.

New York - traded Brian McCann and trying to trade Chase Headley / Brett Gardner... Gary Sanchez is very promising but hit .225 in September/October.  Also no Andrew Miller or Carlos Beltran for 2/3 of the season.

Detroit - Cameron Maybin to Anthony Gose/Tyler Collins is a major downgrade, at least offensively.  Also if they trade J.D. Martinez... ouch.

Kansas City - Wade Davis is gone in favor of OF semi-prospect Jorge Soler and while Kelvin Herrera can close, the once-dominant bullpen is actually looking rather thin.

Texas - retained some pieces but lost Ian Desmond; we'll see what Carlos Gomez does, he really needs to stay hot for them.

Yeah, I'm just not seeing who else is so clearly better than the Orioles outside of Cleveland and Boston.  And we seem to have Cleveland's number (*knocks on wood*) for some reason.  

We're going to replace Trumbo with somebody -- it may not be Trumbo himself and it may be someone with a different skill set, there will be some sort of replacement.  Kim/Mancini at DH can probably be a more than adequate replacement for Pedro A.  

Meanwhile, we get Bundy for a full season, a more seasoned Gausman, Jimenez who is dominant when he's hot, and maybe Miley settles in and is a passable 4.5 ERA guy.  Furthermore, our bullpen could end up even better from top to bottom -- Givens and O'Day should both improve, even if Britton isn't as insanely unhittable as last year.  

Sure, we could easily miss the WC next year -- especially if two of Bundy/Gausman/Tilly regress, or if >= 2 of our infielders suffer season-ending injuries -- but I have a hard time believing we'll get less than 78 wins.  Would say we're going to be somewhere between 78 and 95 wins.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, Frobby said:

The thread title is misleading, since Roch is not making a prediction, he's merely summarizing what some other sources have said.    Does Roch ever even make predictions?    I can't remember him ever doing it.  

I never though he was predicting.  It is the point of the article it seems. Unless he was burying the lede. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, 25 Nuggets said:

The way it looks right now:

AL East - Boston, and it's not close

AL Central - Cleveland, and it's not close

AL West - Texas or Houston

WC 1 - Houston or Texas

WC 2 - [Baltimore, New York, Toronto, Detroit, Kansas City, Seattle]

Next Year - [Tampa Bay, Chicago, Minnesota, Los Angeles, Minnesota]

........

You look at that wild card mix and Baltimore compares favorably to take one of those two spots.  Get in, and like last year they'd need to win that one WC game and after that, who knows in a short playoff series.

I remember it being the Angels, and not even close. Then the Brewers and Seattle. I remember it being the Red Sox when they finished last. And the Yankees when they finished fourth. I remember it being the Blue Jays year. After Year. And last year it was the Rays that were the best in the East. According to some predictors. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.




  • Posts

    • dWAR is just the run value for defense added with the defensive adjustment.  Corner OF spots have a -7.5 run adjustment, while CF has a +2.5 adjustment over 150 games.    Since Cowser played both CF and the corners they pro-rate his time at each to calculate his defensive adjustment. 
    • Just to be clear, though, fWAR also includes a substantial adjustment for position, including a negative one for Cowser.  For a clearer example on that front, as the chart posted higher on this page indicates, Carlos Santana had a +14 OAA — which is the source data that fWAR’s defensive component is based on. That 14 outs above average equates to 11-12 (they use different values on this for some reason) runs better than the average 1B.  So does Santana have a 12.0 defensive value, per fWAR? He does not. That’s because they adjust his defensive value downward to reflect that he’s playing a less difficult/valuable position. In this case, that adjustment comes out to -11.0 runs, as you can see here:   So despite apparently having a bona fide Gold Glove season, Santana’s Fielding Runs value (FanGraphs’ equivalent to dWAR) is barely above average, at 1.1 runs.    Any good WAR calculation is going to adjust for position. Being a good 1B just isn’t worth as much as being an average SS or catcher. Just as being a good LF isn’t worth as much as being an average CF. Every outfielder can play LF — only the best outfielders can play CF.  Where the nuance/context shows up here is with Cowser’s unique situation. Playing LF in OPACY, with all that ground to cover, is not the same as playing LF at Fenway or Yankee Stadium. Treating Cowser’s “position” as equivalent to Tyler O’Neill’s, for example, is not fair. The degree of difficulty is much, much higher at OPACY’s LF, and so the adjustment seems out of whack for him. That’s the one place where I’d say the bWAR value is “unfair” to Cowser.
    • Wait a second here, the reason he's -0.1 in bb-ref dwar is because they're using drs to track his defensive run value.  He's worth 6.6 runs in defense according to fangraphs, which includes adjustments for position, which would give him a fangraphs defensive war of +0.7.
    • A little funny to have provided descriptions of the hits (“weak” single; “500 foot” HR). FIP doesn’t care about any of that either, so it’s kind of an odd thing to add in an effort to make ERA look bad.  Come in, strike out the first hitter, then give up three 108 MPH rocket doubles off the wall. FIP thinks you were absolutely outstanding, and it’s a shame your pathetic defense and/or sheer bad luck let you down. Next time you’ll (probably) get the outcomes you deserve. They’re both flawed. So is xFIP. So is SIERA. So is RA/9. So is WPA. So is xERA. None of them are perfect measures of how a pitcher’s actual performance was, because there’s way too much context and too many variables for any one metric to really encompass.  But when I’m thinking about awards, for me at least, it ends up having to be about the actual outcomes. I don’t really care what a hitter’s xWOBA is when I’m thinking about MVP, and the same is true for pitchers. Did you get the outs? Did the runs score? That’s the “value” that translates to the scoreboard and, ultimately, to the standings. So I think the B-R side of it is more sensible for awards.  I definitely take into account the types of factors that you (and other pitching fWAR advocates) reference as flaws. So if a guy plays in front of a particular bad defense or had a particularly high percentage of inherited runners score, I’d absolutely adjust my take to incorporate that info. And I also 100% go to Fangraphs first when I’m trying to figure out which pitchers we should acquire (i.e., for forward looking purposes).  But I just can’t bring myself say that my Cy Young is just whichever guy had the best ratio of Ks to BBs to HRs over a threshold number of innings. As @Frobby said, it just distills out too much of what actually happened.
    • We were all a lot younger in 2005.  No one wanted to believe Canseco cause he’s a smarmy guy. Like I said, he was the only one telling the truth. It wasn’t a leap of faith to see McGwire up there and Sosa up there and think “yeah, those guys were juicing” but then suddenly look at Raffy and think he was completely innocent.  It’s a sad story. The guy should be in Hall of Fame yet 500 homers and 3,000 hits are gone like a fart in the wind cause his legacy is wagging his finger and thinking he couldn’t get caught.  Don’t fly too close to the sun.  
    • I think if we get the fun sprinkler loving Gunnar that was in the dugout yesterday, I don’t think we have to worry about him pressing. He seemed loose and feeling good with the other guys he was with, like Kremer.
    • I was a lot younger back then, but that betrayal hit really hard because he had been painting himself as literally holier than thou, and shook his finger to a congressional committee and then barely 2 weeks later failed the test.
  • Popular Contributors

×
×
  • Create New...