Sisco optioned to Norfolk

[bobmc]

3 hours ago, POR said:

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.       

Agreed on all points but let's see how it plays out.  Will he return quickly to replace Wynns?  Doubtful.   Will he return when his 60 days expire in August?

[Tony-OH]

16 hours ago, Hallas said:

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.

I'm mainly discussing his hitting which is why I focused on that for the most part. As for his contact rate being far from the worse regular when it comes to zone-contact, could you give me a few examples of worse players. I honestly didn't look outside of Davis and Machado since i thought taking the best and worse hitter would be good for comparison sakes. Not calling you a liar or anything, just interested for my own awareness.

As whether he should be here or not, I really don't have an issue either way. I wasn't calling for his demotion, nor as much as I like and admire Caleb Joseph do I think he's the catcher of the future either at his age. You can build a case either way for Sisco to keep learning on the job here or trying to work on some things in AAA. I'm sure we both agree everything about the orioles this year should be about the future.

My concern, as I listed above, is that I'm not sure Sisco is going to be the catcher of the future without some serious adjustments because his contact rate is awful. I haven't looked it up, but I would be interested to see what players in the major leaguee history had struck out at his rate over his first 141 PA and how their careers turned out. Might be an interesting drill for someone to run through baseball reference index.

Maybe we'll find out this is not all the concerning, but that K rate with his lack of power, and the fact that his K rate his spiked after AA is concerning to me. Doesn't mean I'm ready to release him or anything, just concerned.

[Hallas]

1 hour ago, Tony-OH said:

I'm mainly discussing his hitting which is why I focused on that for the most part. As for his contact rate being far from the worse regular when it comes to zone-contact, could you give me a few examples of worse players. I honestly didn't look outside of Davis and Machado since i thought taking the best and worse hitter would be good for comparison sakes. Not calling you a liar or anything, just interested for my own awareness.

As whether he should be here or not, I really don't have an issue either way. I wasn't calling for his demotion, nor as much as I like and admire Caleb Joseph do I think he's the catcher of the future either at his age. You can build a case either way for Sisco to keep learning on the job here or trying to work on some things in AAA. I'm sure we both agree everything about the orioles this year should be about the future.

My concern, as I listed above, is that I'm not sure Sisco is going to be the catcher of the future without some serious adjustments because his contact rate is awful. I haven't looked it up, but I would be interested to see what players in the major leaguee history had struck out at his rate over his first 141 PA and how their careers turned out. Might be an interesting drill for someone to run through baseball reference index.

Maybe we'll find out this is not all the concerning, but that K rate with his lack of power, and the fact that his K rate his spiked after AA is concerning to me. Doesn't mean I'm ready to release him or anything, just concerned.

 

#	Name	Team	O-Swing%	Z-Swing%	Swing%	O-Contact%	Z-Contact%	Contact%	SwStr%	BB%	K%	ISO	WAR
1	Ian Happ	Cubs	25.5 %	71.0 %	44.7 %	42.6 %	68.8 %	60.2 %	17.8 %	15.2 %	39.7 %	.215	0.7
2	Matt Olson	Athletics	25.8 %	70.2 %	44.5 %	65.1 %	71.8 %	69.6 %	13.5 %	8.5 %	28.5 %	.205	0.9
3	Franchy Cordero	Padres	31.8 %	69.3 %	47.3 %	54.3 %	71.9 %	65.0 %	16.5 %	9.1 %	35.7 %	.201	0.1
4	Cody Bellinger	Dodgers	25.3 %	66.1 %	43.4 %	60.6 %	72.5 %	68.7 %	13.6 %	12.0 %	26.4 %	.220	1.4
5	Jorge Alfaro	Phillies	46.5 %	81.1 %	61.6 %	38.4 %	73.8 %	58.8 %	25.4 %	4.2 %	39.2 %	.140	0.7
6	Joey Gallo	Rangers	33.6 %	72.6 %	48.5 %	45.2 %	74.5 %	61.9 %	18.5 %	10.7 %	37.6 %	.250	0.5
7	Mike Zunino	Mariners	35.9 %	72.5 %	51.3 %	45.2 %	74.5 %	62.6 %	19.2 %	5.0 %	40.6 %	.234	0.9
8	Robinson Chirinos	Rangers	31.2 %	65.5 %	45.5 %	46.8 %	74.7 %	63.5 %	16.6 %	10.1 %	40.1 %	.182	0.6
9	Chance Sisco	Orioles	24.0 %	71.3 %	45.8 %	38.7 %	75.1 %	64.8 %	16.1 %	8.5 %	35.5 %	.109	0.5
10	Josh Donaldson	Blue Jays	27.3 %	66.8 %	43.3 %	52.4 %	75.7 %	67.0 %	14.3 %	13.2 %	27.7 %	.190	0.7

 

This isn't a great list, but there are some productive players here.  The best comparable here is probably Jorge Alfaro, since he's a catcher, and has the next lowest ISO in this list, and trades his increased power for 4% more K's, way worse plate discipline, and even more swings and misses.  Going back several years, there have been a couple players with productive years while having a zone contact less than or comparable to Sisco, including 2013 Napoli, 2017 Joey Gallo, and 2015 Kris Bryant.  While he gets a bit of a pass because he can play catcher serviceably, you're right that it's the combination of no power + contact rate that's a problem.  There is no one with his ISO or less that has a contact rate less than about 85%, and the vast majority of them are over 90%.  However, I'd probably argue that learning how to hit the ball with authority is something that can be trained to a greater degree than improving contact rate.  Especially since he looks like he could fill out a bit.

Alternatively, he could try and go to the Caleb Joseph school of pitch framing and accrue value by fooling umpires.

[Tony-OH]

1 hour ago, Tony-OH said:

My concern, as I listed above, is that I'm not sure Sisco is going to be the catcher of the future without some serious adjustments because his contact rate is awful. I haven't looked it up, but I would be interested to see what players in the major league history had struck out at his rate over his first 163 PA and how their careers turned out. Might be an interesting drill for someone to run through baseball reference index.

Maybe we'll find out this is not all the concerning, but that K rate with his lack of power, and the fact that his K rate his spiked after AA is concerning to me. Doesn't mean I'm ready to release him or anything, just concerned.

Well I signed back up for the play index because this made me interested (sorry to quote myself, but I did it to provide context).

In the history of baseball, only the immortal Luis Medina (60) struck out more times than Chance Sisco (57)among non-pitchers in his first 163 major league PAs in the major leagues. If that's not concerning in in of itself, the tale of Brett Jackson should be of some concern. If you don't remember Jackson he was once a top prospect on all of baseball topping out at #32 in the preseason 2012 prospect list. A former first round pick out of High School, let's take a look at Jackson's stats compared to Sisco at AAA-MAJ levels at similar ages.

Jackson, 22 yrs old (AAA) -  .297/.388/.551/.939 13 2B, 2 3B, 10 HR, 28 BB (13%), 64 K, 215 PA (29.7%) playing in PCL League in at Iowa (split AA)
Sisco, 22 yrs old      (AAA) -  .267/.340/.395/.736 23 2B, 0 3B, 7 HR, 32 BB (8.2%), 99K (25.6%), 388 PA playing in INTL League at Norfolk

Obviously Jackson had more power, but he also walked a higher rate both had high K% at AAA, though Jackson's came with power and speed.

Jackson, 23-years old (MAJ) - .175/.303/.342/.644 6 2B, 1 3B, 4 HR, 22 BB (15.5%), 59 K (41.5%), 142 PA with Cubs in 2014
Sisco, 23-years old       MAJ) - .218/.340/.328/.668  7 2B, 0 3B, 2 HR, 12 BB (  8.5%), 50 K (35.5%), 141 PA with Orioles in 2017

Jackson walked a better clip and struck out a little more while showing more power while Sisco hit for a higher average and showed the ability to get by a pitch (usually not repeatable) to plus up his OBP. 

Now clearly they play two different position with Sisco playing the harder position at catcher, and I'm not necessarily Sisco will have the same career path (I don't because left-handed hitting catchers who can hold their own defensively will continue to get chances), but Jackson ended up with 5 more plate appearances over his career and was out of baseball by age 27.

At the end of the day, the only two guys with similar starts to their career as Sisco when it comes to striking out were Luis Medina and Brett Anderson. Now strikeouts are becoming more and more prevalent and players like Tom Murphy of the Rockies and Johnny Field of the Rays are also striking out at high clips though they also bring power to their games unlike Sisco. 

It remains to be seen what the future will hold for Sisco, but he will have ti become the exemption vs the rule if he's going to become  successful big league hitter if his stats at AAA and the major leagues are any indicator.

[Tony-OH]

49 minutes ago, Hallas said:

 

#	Name	Team	O-Swing%	Z-Swing%	Swing%	O-Contact%	Z-Contact%	Contact%	SwStr%	BB%	K%	ISO	WAR
1	Ian Happ	Cubs	25.5 %	71.0 %	44.7 %	42.6 %	68.8 %	60.2 %	17.8 %	15.2 %	39.7 %	.215	0.7
2	Matt Olson	Athletics	25.8 %	70.2 %	44.5 %	65.1 %	71.8 %	69.6 %	13.5 %	8.5 %	28.5 %	.205	0.9
3	Franchy Cordero	Padres	31.8 %	69.3 %	47.3 %	54.3 %	71.9 %	65.0 %	16.5 %	9.1 %	35.7 %	.201	0.1
4	Cody Bellinger	Dodgers	25.3 %	66.1 %	43.4 %	60.6 %	72.5 %	68.7 %	13.6 %	12.0 %	26.4 %	.220	1.4
5	Jorge Alfaro	Phillies	46.5 %	81.1 %	61.6 %	38.4 %	73.8 %	58.8 %	25.4 %	4.2 %	39.2 %	.140	0.7
6	Joey Gallo	Rangers	33.6 %	72.6 %	48.5 %	45.2 %	74.5 %	61.9 %	18.5 %	10.7 %	37.6 %	.250	0.5
7	Mike Zunino	Mariners	35.9 %	72.5 %	51.3 %	45.2 %	74.5 %	62.6 %	19.2 %	5.0 %	40.6 %	.234	0.9
8	Robinson Chirinos	Rangers	31.2 %	65.5 %	45.5 %	46.8 %	74.7 %	63.5 %	16.6 %	10.1 %	40.1 %	.182	0.6
9	Chance Sisco	Orioles	24.0 %	71.3 %	45.8 %	38.7 %	75.1 %	64.8 %	16.1 %	8.5 %	35.5 %	.109	0.5
10	Josh Donaldson	Blue Jays	27.3 %	66.8 %	43.3 %	52.4 %	75.7 %	67.0 %	14.3 %	13.2 %	27.7 %	.190	0.7

 

This isn't a great list, but there are some productive players here.  Going back several years, there have been a couple players with productive years while having a zone contact less than or comparable to Sisco, including 2013 Napoli, 2017 Joey Gallo, and 2015 Kris Bryant.  While he gets a bit of a pass because he can play catcher serviceably, you're right that it's the combination of no power + contact rate that's a problem.  There is no one with his ISO or less that has a contact rate less than about 85%, and the vast majority of them are over 90%.  However, I'd probably argue that learning how to hit the ball with authority is something that can be trained to a greater degree than improving contact rate.  Especially since he looks like he could fill out a bit.

It's rare, especially for non PED players to suddenly increase their power significantly after the age of 23. Sisco has a career .117 ISO at all levels throughout the minor and majors. His best hitting is when he's going gap to gap and hitting for average and trying to work walks, but his lack of contact rate is allowing pitchers to pitch him in the zone which is going to significantly decrease his walk ability. 

[glenn__davis]

Hasn't played in either of Norfolk's games since being demoted.  Andrew Susac and Stuart Levy have started the games.

[Legend_Of_Joey]

2 minutes ago, glenn__davis said:

Hasn't played in either of Norfolk's games since being demoted.  Andrew Susac and Stuart Levy have started the games.

He wasn't activated until today. Could still be sick.

[atomic]

42 minutes ago, Legend_Of_Joey said:

He wasn't activated until today. Could still be sick.

Could be stress.  Buck said he hadn't slept in a few days. 

[Legend_Of_Joey]

16 minutes ago, atomic said:

Could be stress.  Buck said he hadn't slept in a few days. 

Maybe he got a bad case of crabs?