Dempsey is helping Austin Wynns

[weams]

7 hours ago, wildbillhiccup said:

That's a lot of Rick Dempsey personally autographed bats!

He's like Jerry Lewis. Big in France. 

[weams]

8 hours ago, Frobby said:

Those website quotes are pretty hilarious.  

Rick is pretty hilarious. I like him. 

[bobmc]

2 hours ago, Tony-OH said:

Not going to say I saw him as a future Cy Young award winner, but I know that I said several times that Arrieta had the best pure stuff of them all. My only question was his phyche and command, both of which he apparently found in Chicago.

Matusz still remains an enigma to me. When he was in the minors his changeup was a real weapon, a swing and miss pitch. His curveball was a good pitch as well and he did a great job of changing speed on his curveball and fastball to give different looks. He had the slider, but is was his fourth pitch in the minors. He pitched backwards in the minors, pitching off his offspeed pitches and spotting his fastball which touched 93-94 on occasion, but was fairly straight. The Orioles then had him mess with a sinker to give him some more movement.

When he showed up to the majors, Wieters used him like a fastball pitcher with him throwing either his 4-seamer or sinker mostly, with his change up being his most used off speed pitch. The sinker was never very good and got hit hard, but the curveball and slider were pretty effective his first go around.

In 2010, Matusz's best season as a starter, his fastball really played well (.247 BAVG) and his changeup was once again his most used offspeed pitch (18.61 WHIF percentage/.270 BAVG), but his slider was his best pitch even though he used it the least (17.54 WHIF/.153 BAVG). He was still using his curveball (.233 BAVG) but it wasn't missing bats (4.89 WHIF). He thankfully started to shelve his sinker which got hit at a 3.40 WHIF/.362 BAVG clip.

So it this point, Matusz looks like a left-handed starter that should have been a 4-seam fastball, slider guy with a 3rd pitch changeup and show me curveball. 

2011 comes around and the injury bug hits. He had a wart removed, was hit in the bicep during a scrimmage game, and then he gets an intercostal strain that puts him on the DL. I guess it's fair to say he never quite recovered from that strain because he was absolutely murdered in one of the worse seasons for a starter with more than 10 starts in major league history.

In 2012, Matusz comes back and was better then in 2011, but he was still struggling to find the consistency of his 2010 campaign. His best month as a starter in 2012 came when he dropped his fastball percentage (4-seam and sinker) to career low 54% while he upped his slider percentage to a career high 25%. He went back a little more fastball heavy in June and was shelled, leading to him getting demoted to AAA where he was then converted into a LOOGY. One thing of note, during a 8-start stretch between the end of April and early June, Matusz pitched to a 3.33 ERA holding batters to a .239/.291/.383/.674. The five starts after that stretch he went 0-5 with a 8.44 ERA with batters slashing .400/.465./710/1.175, ending his career as a starter in the major leagues.

He came back in August and was lights out as a mainly fastball-slider reliever cementing it in Buck Showalter's mind that Matusz was a left-handed reliever and nothing more. 

The question is, was Matusz' pitch selection part of his problem? If he was a 50-50, of even 40-60 fastball offspeed pitcher would he have succeeded as a starter? With modern analytics telling pitchers to throw more offspeed nowadays, it makes me wonder whether Matusz could have been more with better analytics. Should he have shelved that sinker for good, thrown the slider more along with the changeup giving him three looks?

Now, I don't know the answer to that, but I do know that Matusz struggled the more times he was faced and seemed to wear down in heat and throughout an outing, suggesting his best role probably was as a reliever. I also know he was not exactly a workout warrior in the off season (there were other rumors as well) and I'm sure that didn't help as well.

He's just an interesting case because it one point the stuff looked like it would work as a starter and certainly looked better than a future LOOGY when he was in the minor leagues or when he was drafted 4th overall. Either way, he remains a disappointment for a guy who was drafted 4th overall with Buster Posey being the pick afterwards.

 

 

 

 

Didn't Brady take Matusz under his "wing" and get him worked out during the offseason?  He came back in better shape and I remember him touting Brady's help.  It seemed like Brady took off after that also as the PT guru.

[weams]

3 minutes ago, bobmc said:

Didn't Brady take Matusz under his "wing" and get him worked out during the offseason?  He came back in better shape and I remember him touting Brady's help.  It seemed like Brady took off after that also as the PT guru.

Brady got Brian to stop surfing as his offseason regimen. The Year after Brian and Chris surfed for the winter. 

[Catch 8]

Too bad catchers can't block the plate anymore.  Dempsey was second to Mike Scioscia, IMO.

[DrungoHazewood]

9 hours ago, Catch 8 said:

Too bad catchers can't block the plate anymore.  Dempsey was second to Mike Scioscia, IMO.

I think they started enforcing the rules again after a game where Scioscia hired a contractor to actually put cinder block wall six foot up the line while the ball was rattling around the RF corner.

[Going Underground]

More Dempsey:

“It’s good to have the analytics because we actually had more of an analytical approach back in my day with all the guys that I worked with than we have now. I love the analytics. That’s fine. But it just proves that what we were doing was right back in our day.

Really? Don't buy this.

 

Dempsey is willing to offer instruction to anyone who wants it, as long as the Orioles give their approval. And he won’t accept that they’re destined to keep losing for the foreseeable future.

“I’ll work with anybody who wants to learn how to win baseball games,” he said.

“We’re in a position here that I truly believe that the kids ought to be really elated about. They were the worst team in baseball, but they have a chance to do something that no team has ever done, lose 115 and come back and win their division. I’d be pretty excited about that. And there’s a way to do it and it’s how to think your way through a ballgame.

http://www.masnsports.com/school-of-roch/2019/01/more-on-perez-maduro-and-expanded-interest-internationally.html

[interloper]

Dempsey continues to advertise himself and spout absolute nonsense in today's MASN blog. Please go away Rick.

[Frobby]

Dempsey is hilarious, unintentionally.    I guess when we win 55 games this year it will be because we didn’t listen to him.  

[interloper]

8 minutes ago, Frobby said:

Dempsey is hilarious, unintentionally.    I guess when we win 55 games this year it will be because we didn’t listen to him.  

Always. If we'd only just do it his way.

[sportsfan8703]

24 minutes ago, interloper said:

Dempsey continues to advertise himself and spout absolute nonsense in today's MASN blog. Please go away Rick.

It’s fun to have this though. It’s better than the cookie cutter stuff that the O’s controlled mouthpieces put out. 

Dempsey has gone rogue. Haha

Look at the staffs Dempsey worked with. You don’t think those guys talked about pitching?  Just because there wasn’t the technology to evaluate spin rate then doesn’t mean that they were clueless and just throwing cheese. 

[Frobby]

23 minutes ago, sportsfan8703 said:

It’s fun to have this though. It’s better than the cookie cutter stuff that the O’s controlled mouthpieces put out. 

Dempsey has gone rogue. Haha

Look at the staffs Dempsey worked with. You don’t think those guys talked about pitching?  Just because there wasn’t the technology to evaluate spin rate then doesn’t mean that they were clueless and just throwing cheese. 

Yes, but I think too many people give Dempsey the credit for all the 20-game winners he caught.    The O’s had a running 8-year streak of having at least one 20-game winner on the staff before Dempsey ever arrived here.    

[weams]

25 minutes ago, sportsfan8703 said:

It’s fun to have this though. It’s better than the cookie cutter stuff that the O’s controlled mouthpieces put out. 

Dempsey has gone rogue. Haha

Look at the staffs Dempsey worked with. You don’t think those guys talked about pitching?  Just because there wasn’t the technology to evaluate spin rate then doesn’t mean that they were clueless and just throwing cheese. 

Dempsey was always Rogue. Snitch. Four Flusher. Body Climber. A fun guy on the fringes. 

[Tx Oriole]

2 hours ago, interloper said:

Dempsey continues to advertise himself and spout absolute nonsense in today's MASN blog. Please go away Rick.

That'd be the best. 

[Going Underground]

On 1/3/2019 at 6:24 PM, weams said:

He's like Jerry Lewis. Big in France. 

Roch and Dempsey should go on the road together.Both are hilarious. Like Lewis and Martin and Hope and Crosby.I guess maybe have Dempsey and Wynns in every article The same Roch who used to argue with people on Twitter that the Orioles are not that far behind other organizations in analytics and scouts under the old regime.Now almost every article a dig at them.They are way behind other organizations in this or that.Melvin Mora would recommend a player and no one would listen.Funny how the tune changed pretty quickly. I guess you can tune a piano but you can't tuna fish .