Sisco optioned to Norfolk

[Frobby]

In a lost season, it will be nice for Caleb and Corban to be in the same lineup for a game or two.   A highlight of both of their careers, for sure.    

[Can_of_corn]

1 minute ago, Frobby said:

In a lost season, it will be nice for Caleb and Corban to be in the same lineup for a game or two.   A highlight of both of their careers, for sure.    

Let's sign Buck and Bobby to one day contracts and call up Sharlon.

[Frobby]

3 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

Let's sign Buck and Bobby to one day contracts and call up Sharlon.

Why the hell not.    Sign a midget and bat him cleanup.   Let the fans decide the lineup.    Nickel beer night.   

[Can_of_corn]

1 minute ago, Frobby said:

Why the hell not.    Sign a midget and bat him cleanup.   Let the fans decide the lineup.    Nickel beer night.   

Altuve is still under contract with the Astros.

[Frobby]

Just now, Can_of_corn said:

Altuve is still under contract with the Astros.

I hesitated to use the word midget.

[Moose Milligan]

2 minutes ago, Frobby said:

Why the hell not.    Sign a midget and bat him cleanup.   Let the fans decide the lineup.    Nickel beer night.   

Frobby, if there's a nickel beer night with midgets and letting the fans decide the lineup, I am buying you a ticket.

[Can_of_corn]

Just now, Frobby said:

I hesitated to use the word midget.

After being taken to task about making a joke about red heads I can see where you are coming from.

[Tony-OH]

Lots of interesting comments in this thread so here's my take.

First, I'm going to just come out and say it, "I have concerns about Sisco's bat speed and that he's a guess hitter." 

My eyes tell me he's cheating/guessing which is why he's either way early on inside fastballs or swinging and missing on offspeed pitches. 

But forget my scouting eyes, let's go to the data.

From Brooks Baseball:

Against Fastballs (329 seen), he has had a steady approach at the plate (0.03 c) with a disastrously high likelihood to swing and miss (32% whiff/swing).
 

Tony: He's batting .203 against four seamers with all four of his home runs against them (guessed right). It's a huge red flag for me though that he's swinging and missing so much at fastballs. There were concerns by some scouts in the minors that he didn't have good bat speed. His rise in strikeout percentage since AA is alarming"

2018 MAJ K rate: 34.5%
2017 AAA K rate: 27.8 %
2016 AA K rate: 17.1%

Against Breaking Pitches (163 seen), he has had a steady approach at the plate (0.08 c) with an exceptionally high likelihood to swing and miss (49% whiff/swing).

Against Offspeed Pitches (84 seen), he has had a steady approach at the plate (-0.21 c) with an above average likelihood to swing and miss (43% whiff/swing)

Manny Machado's Percenage of Whiffs per swing

Chris Davis Percentage Whiffs per swing

Let's forget about outside the zone at this point because that could just be the ability to not get fooled, but Sisco has an even worse percentage of WHIF per swing in the strike zone than Chris Davis. Let that sink in for a moment.

In 2018 WHIFF % per swing in the strike zone:

Sisco - 27.9% (48 whiff on 172 swings)
Davis - 19.5% (46 whiff on 236 swings)
Machado - 11.3% (32 whiff on 284 swings)

When you are swinging and missing more than Chris Davis in the strike zone you may have an issue. 

At the end of the day, I know some fans want to believe Sisco is the starting catcher here for many years to come, but I wish I could share that belief. This could be "growing pains," but the rise in K rate at AAA and now the horrendous Krate at the major league level are red flags for that future. On top of it, it's not like this K rate is coming with power, it's not.

Since May 1st, here are Sisco's stats:
PA: 86
K: 28
BB: 7
HBP: 7
Slashing: .194/.326/.292/.617
EXB: 5 (4 2b and 1HR)

Defensively he's caught 3 of 22 base runners (13.6 %)

Right now, his best ability offensive ability is doing the Rudi Stein of the Bad News Bears fame. He's been hit by 10 pitches in just 141 PA this year. 

Maybe some more AAA time will help him find a way to make more contact, but the reality is that Sisco, though just 23-years old, may not be the nugget we hoped he would be.

Hopefully they can send him down to AAA and have him play pretty much everyday to work on some things. Caleb Joseph may not be the future catcher here either, but he at least brings the intangibles and work ethic you want to see and will be a good mentor to Austin Wynns.

 

 

[Three Run Homer]

To me, the only question that matters in this case is, what is best for Chance Sisco's development?  

Clearly he is having issues making contact at the major league level, perhaps due to lack of bat speed as Tony documented in his excellent post.

The lack of bat speed may limit his ceiling, but he has enough other skills that in time he could be a productive regular catcher.  The O's aren't winning anything this season no matter who their catcher is, so they'd might as well do whatever is best for Sisco's long-term prospects.  So again, the only question that should matter is, will he have a higher likelihood of improving his contact skills more quickly playing at AAA, or taking his lumps and learning on the job at the major league level?  

[Tony-OH]

24 minutes ago, Three Run Homer said:

To me, the only question that matters in this case is, what is best for Chance Sisco's development?  

Clearly he is having issues making contact at the major league level, perhaps due to lack of bat speed as Tony documented in his excellent post.

The lack of bat speed may limit his ceiling, but he has enough other skills that in time he could be a productive regular catcher.  The O's aren't winning anything this season no matter who their catcher is, so they'd might as well do whatever is best for Sisco's long-term prospects.  So again, the only question that should matter is, will he have a higher likelihood of improving his contact skills more quickly playing at AAA, or taking his lumps and learning on the job at the major league level?  

I agree with this 100%. At the end of the day, I think it's probably better to send him to AAA for a bit, perhaps enough time see if he can work on cutting down on the miss. But at the end of the day, if you are missing a bunch in AAA, it's not going to get better in the majors.

[Camden_yardbird]

He's not the prospect we thought he was?  And we are basing this on his 141 at bats as a rookie catcher, getting irregular playing time?

The fact is offensively he was doing almost exactly what we thought he was, a low power, decent on base skills catcher.  He was striking out too much but I am not really going to start holding that against any hitter at <400 at bats.

[Hallas]

10 hours ago, Tony-OH said:

Lots of interesting comments in this thread so here's my take.

First, I'm going to just come out and say it, "I have concerns about Sisco's bat speed and that he's a guess hitter." 

My eyes tell me he's cheating/guessing which is why he's either way early on inside fastballs or swinging and missing on offspeed pitches. 

But forget my scouting eyes, let's go to the data.

From Brooks Baseball:

Against Fastballs (329 seen), he has had a steady approach at the plate (0.03 c) with a disastrously high likelihood to swing and miss (32% whiff/swing).
 

Tony: He's batting .203 against four seamers with all four of his home runs against them (guessed right). It's a huge red flag for me though that he's swinging and missing so much at fastballs. There were concerns by some scouts in the minors that he didn't have good bat speed. His rise in strikeout percentage since AA is alarming"

2018 MAJ K rate: 34.5%
2017 AAA K rate: 27.8 %
2016 AA K rate: 17.1%

Against Breaking Pitches (163 seen), he has had a steady approach at the plate (0.08 c) with an exceptionally high likelihood to swing and miss (49% whiff/swing).

Against Offspeed Pitches (84 seen), he has had a steady approach at the plate (-0.21 c) with an above average likelihood to swing and miss (43% whiff/swing)

Manny Machado's Percenage of Whiffs per swing

Chris Davis Percentage Whiffs per swing

Let's forget about outside the zone at this point because that could just be the ability to not get fooled, but Sisco has an even worse percentage of WHIF per swing in the strike zone than Chris Davis. Let that sink in for a moment.

In 2018 WHIFF % per swing in the strike zone:

Sisco - 27.9% (48 whiff on 172 swings)
Davis - 19.5% (46 whiff on 236 swings)
Machado - 11.3% (32 whiff on 284 swings)

When you are swinging and missing more than Chris Davis in the strike zone you may have an issue. 

At the end of the day, I know some fans want to believe Sisco is the starting catcher here for many years to come, but I wish I could share that belief. This could be "growing pains," but the rise in K rate at AAA and now the horrendous Krate at the major league level are red flags for that future. On top of it, it's not like this K rate is coming with power, it's not.

Since May 1st, here are Sisco's stats:
PA: 86
K: 28
BB: 7
HBP: 7
Slashing: .194/.326/.292/.617
EXB: 5 (4 2b and 1HR)

Defensively he's caught 3 of 22 base runners (13.6 %)

Right now, his best ability offensive ability is doing the Rudi Stein of the Bad News Bears fame. He's been hit by 10 pitches in just 141 PA this year. 

Maybe some more AAA time will help him find a way to make more contact, but the reality is that Sisco, though just 23-years old, may not be the nugget we hoped he would be.

Hopefully they can send him down to AAA and have him play pretty much everyday to work on some things. Caleb Joseph may not be the future catcher here either, but he at least brings the intangibles and work ethic you want to see and will be a good mentor to Austin Wynns.

 

 

I appreciate your insight, as always.  Are you harsher on him because his defense is a little lacking and has always been an issue for him?  As a hitter, he certainly has concerning holes in his swing, and we don't like that zone-contact rate (FWIW Fangraphs has 2 sources of zone-contact, presumably based on different interpretations of the strike zone, which show rates very similar to what you posted.)  However, there have been productive hitters with his batted ball profile.  He is far from the worst regular when it comes to zone-contact.  In addition to getting hit, he has a league-average walk rate, which is somewhat remarkable given that he's having trouble making hard contact.  He also is worth the 2nd most WAR among O's position players.  Unless you feel like he can't learn what he needs to learn at the big league level, or you're trying to manipulate his service time, I don't see how throwing him out there is going to hurt his development.

[MDtransplant757]

On 6/18/2018 at 10:24 AM, glenn__davis said:

If the team is actually playing service clock games here - that's fine, whatever. I don't think it's that critical, but in a lost season why not.

I've been slightly disappointed by the bat, mostly by the obscenely high strikeout rate, but he needs to play.  He's always had an adjustment period as he's climbed the ladder.  Buck's absolute refusal to start him against lefties meant that he rare played in more then 2 games in a row.  He was on pace to start just 76 games.  If sending him AAA gets him more consistent ABs to get the bat going again, fine.

Regarding defense - I tend to think there's a lot of confirmation bias on minor league defensive reports, so I tend to not put a ton of stock into them.  The arm is not the best but otherwise he looked fine (and even good at times) defensively.  But whatever, it is very clear at this point that Buck does not actually value defense as he says he does.

 

On 6/18/2018 at 12:54 PM, jtschrei said:

I think the O's have handled Sisco really poorly this year. Either he should have made the team out of ST and the team should be willing to let him learn on the job under the guidance of Jim Russell OR he should have stayed in the minors until he was really ready. 

I haven't seen anything from Sisco that is alarming to me. He's going through the growing pains of a rookie catcher who isn't that great defensively and needs time to adjust to ML pitching. I think he's going to be a solid player. But this has been handled poorly. Hopefully, Sisco doesn't let it bother him. Get down to Norfolk and get better. 

As for Buck, I think he's sending Sisco to the minors to make a point. I think there's something he doesn't quite like -- either his defense or his personality. I think this has nothing to do with Sisco's service time. The O's are that forward thinking. 

 

This is basically my 2 points here. It's stupid how Sisco hasn't gotten anything over Susac who is now a benchwarmer in Norfolk, Caleb who can't hit, and Wynns who should be the backup catcher. Sisco has always had a learning period in every level he's been to, and this season is done. Bring him up and keep starting him. 

[POR]

On 6/17/2018 at 6:17 PM, bobmc said:

Manager Buck Showalter indicated that Sisco was ill, but he stopped short of using the word.

“I’m afraid he’s coming down with ... He hasn’t slept in two or three days,” Showalter said. “A lot of our guys. And just talking to him before the game, his energy level. He was ready to go, just didn’t think it was in his best interest, with the off-day tomorrow. But we’ll see.

“A lot of factors. That was the principle one. He just hadn’t slept any. Hard enough to play this game when you have.”

http://www.masnsports.com/school-of-roch/2018/06/caleb-joseph-rejoining-orioles-with-chance-sisco-optioned.html

I am surprised that there have not been more comments about Buck's statement  which I think were unusually candid. Perhaps because I am reading this thread at 3:30 AM, two hours before I need to wake up which is pretty typical for me, it is easy for me to read between the lines.

I don't think the Orioles wanted to make this move.   I think they intended to slowly have Sisco play more and more as the season goes on.  However, it sounds like it was decided that it would be best to kind of give him a mental break for a while and hope that helps.

Obviously I don't know Sisco personally or where his head is at, so this is all speculation.  I do know that he is a young guy that has always been successful at baseball and is struggling at baseball probably for the first time in his life.

I know that I am much sharper and better at my office job when I have a good night sleep.  I can only imagine how much more difficult playing major league baseball, especially catcher is when you sleep poorly.       

[sportsfan8703]

Well I wasn’t worried abou Sisco until I read Tony’s comments. Worse than Davis with whiffing on strikes. That ain’t good. 

If only we had a hitting coach that could really help LH hitters out.