Grade the Gausman Deal

[esmd]

If Gausman turns into a much better pitcher for the Braves then he was here, then the Orioles need to clean house in their entire baseball operation on the pitching coaching and development personnel.  I think some uptick can be expected with the change in leagues, facing the pitcher instead of a DH, etc.  And even with advanced scouting, he's still going through the league the first time.  We'll see how his performance measures up after teams get a multiple looks at him and the scouting report matures.  But, after all that, if he becomes an All Star level pitcher, then that's a pretty severe indictment, especially coming on the heels of Arrieta.  I gave them a mulligan for that one, but if Gausman realizes his potential elsewhere....

[atomic]

1 minute ago, esmd said:

If Gausman turns into a much better pitcher for the Braves then he was here, then the Orioles need to clean house in their entire baseball operation on the pitching coaching and development personnel.  I think some uptick can be expected with the change in leagues, facing the pitcher instead of a DH, etc.  And even with advanced scouting, he's still going through the league the first time.  We'll see how his performance measures up after teams get a multiple looks at him and the scouting report matures.  But, after all that, if he becomes an All Star level pitcher, then that's a pretty severe indictment, especially coming on the heels of Arrieta.  I gave them a mulligan for that one, but if Gausman realizes his potential elsewhere....

We need to clean house anyway.  Gausman was our best trade chip and all we got was saving O'Day's salary out of it.  We are the worst team in the majors.  The worst team in team history.  And we have traded all our prospects and have no future star players in the minors.  Time to re-set and get rid of everyone who had anything to do with the mess we are in.  The owners are nowhere to be seen.  They are just trying to save as much money as possible.  New Ownership hopefully will happen soon.

[jtschrei]

5 hours ago, Luke-OH said:

How good or bad Gausman is in Atlanta shouldn’t have any effect on the assessment of the trade.

Maybe an indictment of the McDowell or player development, but Gausman didn’t just develop overnight on the flight to Georgia. Maybe they are calling pitches with a different strategy or a different pitch mix. Maybe Gausman is just pitching better in a more optimistic clubhouse situation. Maybe it’s a more pitcher friendly park, NL competition, and pitchers batting. Maybe it’s a good group of starts. 

Exactly. 

By the way, I watched Gausman's start last night -- free MLB.tv game of the day. He's pitching completely out of the stretch. I know folks have already mentioned that as an adjustment the Braves made based on the data showing Gausman was much more effective out of the stretch. To me, Gausman's mechanics do seem simpler obviously. The heater was coming in 93-94. Maybe the control was a little better but I'd have to look at the data.

Still, he looked like the same guy. He got into a little trouble after the Braves staked him to some leads. Seemed like wanted to cough up the lead a few times, but he didn't. It was a combination of things. The Pirates have been in a funk at the plate (this according to the Pirates announcers who were calling the game). The Braves defense seemed superior to the O's. I mean, there were some hard hit balls. It's not like Gausman went out there and mowed folks down completely. There were a couple of very nice running catches made in the OF. Swanson made a nice play at SS. Still, Gausman looks better out of the stretch and confidence is obviously a huge thing. 

 

 

 

[LC_O's_87]

11 minutes ago, esmd said:

If Gausman turns into a much better pitcher for the Braves then he was here, then the Orioles need to clean house in their entire baseball operation on the pitching coaching and development personnel.  I think some uptick can be expected with the change in leagues, facing the pitcher instead of a DH, etc.  And even with advanced scouting, he's still going through the league the first time.  We'll see how his performance measures up after teams get a multiple looks at him and the scouting report matures.  But, after all that, if he becomes an All Star level pitcher, then that's a pretty severe indictment, especially coming on the heels of Arrieta.  I gave them a mulligan for that one, but if Gausman realizes his potential elsewhere....

(1) Gausman's always been a second half pitcher.  He's gone on the same runs with the O's.

(2) His biggest problem has always been the lack of a 3rd pitch.  When he's pinpoint with his heater it doesn't matter, but he throws in too many clunkers b/c of the lack of a consistent 3rd pitch.

(3) Let's see how he does in the first half of 2019 before we call him an Arrieta.  and really, they aren't even comparable.  Arrieta was a flame-out here.  Gausman was a consistent 3-4 starter with #2 stuff, fringe #1 stuff.

[Aristotelian]

9 minutes ago, atomic said:

We need to clean house anyway.  Gausman was our best trade chip and all we got was saving O'Day's salary out of it.  We are the worst team in the majors.  The worst team in team history.  And we have traded all our prospects and have no future star players in the minors.  Time to re-set and get rid of everyone who had anything to do with the mess we are in.  The owners are nowhere to be seen.  They are just trying to save as much money as possible.  New Ownership hopefully will happen soon.

What prospect was known to be on the market that we could have gotten for Gausman? Unfortunately, there was no Gleybar out there. All of the top prospects are on non-contenders that would have had no use for Gausman. Maybe we get Meadows, but is he really an upgrade over Mullins/Hays etc? I don't love the deal, but Cumberland and Zimmerman could be interesting, and we got the international money.

Nobody likes salary dumping, but we will have $10M more to spend in the future. That's not nothing. The next Nelson Cruz we bring in five years from now will in part be due to dumping O'Day even though the trade will have been forgotten by then.

[Ruzious]

3 hours ago, POR said:

Yes the Braves have a lot of pitching prospects. No he was not below all these other pitching prospects three weeks ago around the time he was promoted  to AAA at 20 years old.  Pitchers get injured and some prospects don't make it.  The Braves are keeping their top pitching prospects and assuming some will make it and some won't.

I first became familiar with Bryse Wilson from this podcast at the beginning of the year.  Around the 50 minute mark, the prediction is that Wilson is the Braves best pitching prospect by the end of the year.

http://www.inthisleague.com/fantasybaseball/episode-63-prospect-bold-predictions-with-james-anderson-ralph-lifshitz-and-eddy-almaguer/

Are you trying to be funny?  You're talking about one fantasy baseball "bold prediction".  To be clear, nobody's saying Bryce Wilson wasn't an excellent prospect.  What I'm saying is the Braves had an amazing group of pitching prospects to go with him, and it was very reasonable to assume they could have been convinced to trade him even up for Gausman at the time Gausman was traded for 4 prospects.  I don't think you understand how good that group of young pitchers are - even with Allard sliding down because he's lost a few MPH's on his fastball.    

[Ruzious]

1 hour ago, LC_O's_87 said:

(1) Gausman's always been a second half pitcher.  He's gone on the same runs with the O's.

(2) His biggest problem has always been the lack of a 3rd pitch.  When he's pinpoint with his heater it doesn't matter, but he throws in too many clunkers b/c of the lack of a consistent 3rd pitch.

(3) Let's see how he does in the first half of 2019 before we call him an Arrieta.  and really, they aren't even comparable.  Arrieta was a flame-out here.  Gausman was a consistent 3-4 starter with #2 stuff, fringe #1 stuff.

That point number 1 made it unsurprising that he's started off well with the Braves.  Lifetime, his ERA is 4.77 before the all-star break and 3.52 after.  And now he's gone from pitching in the toughest division to pitching against the easiest.  And he's gone from a very poor defensive team with terrible fielding range to a good defensive team with good range.  He was exactly the kind of player a playoff contender should have targeted.  And that should have factored in the price in prospects the O's were able to get.     

[Moose Milligan]

Looks like he had a good outing last night.  

https://www.ajc.com/sports/baseball/braves-already-won-trade-deadline-with-kevin-gausman/Hr0KFtXGeLZHPzigDAxrML/

[Frobby]

10 minutes ago, Moose Milligan said:

Looks like he had a good outing last night.  

https://www.ajc.com/sports/baseball/braves-already-won-trade-deadline-with-kevin-gausman/Hr0KFtXGeLZHPzigDAxrML/

Meanwhile, Archer was pulled after 4 innings on Monday after hurting his leg while batting.    

[osfan83]

4 hours ago, atomic said:

We need to clean house anyway.  Gausman was our best trade chip and all we got was saving O'Day's salary out of it.  We are the worst team in the majors.  The worst team in team history.  And we have traded all our prospects and have no future star players in the minors.  Time to re-set and get rid of everyone who had anything to do with the mess we are in.  The owners are nowhere to be seen.  They are just trying to save as much money as possible.  New Ownership hopefully will happen soon.

We should just fold as a franchise, wait 10 years, then start again as an expansion team. 

[Ruzious]

5 minutes ago, osfan83 said:

We should just fold as a franchise, wait 10 years, then start again as an expansion team. 

But let's keep a few Dominican farm clubs and sign a few dozen 16 year old "international prospects" so the best will be ready by the time the expansion team refreshes.   

[weams]

The grade just went up since the Orioles did not include David Hess in the transaction. 

[weams]

2 hours ago, Frobby said:

Meanwhile, Archer was pulled after 4 innings on Monday after hurting his leg while batting.    

Yes he did. 

[bobmc]

2 hours ago, Frobby said:

Meanwhile, Archer was pulled after 4 innings on Monday after hurting his leg while batting.    

And Gausman hasn't exactly done much offensively - batting .038, which includes his first MLB hit, and K'd once in three AB's last night.  

[Hallas]

1 hour ago, bobmc said:

And Gausman hasn't exactly done much offensively - batting .038, which includes his first MLB hit, and K'd once in three AB's last night.  

Still waiting for Gausman to pull a Zach Britton and go 5/8 with a HR and an OPS of 1.75.