Jonathan Mayo interview with Kent Qualls

[Frobby]

Interesting article on the O’s from Jonathan Mayo, featuring several quotes from Kent Qualls.    A few tidbits:

- O’s will be teaching shift defenses even at the lowest level of the minors; previously did this only at AA and AAA.

- Says O’s probably signed more Dominican talent since Koby Pérez was brought over than we did all of last year.

- Dean Kremer will probably stay in extended spring training due to his oblique injury.    

https://www.mlb.com/orioles/news/orioles-prospects-at-spring-training?t=mlb-pipeline-coverage

[HowAboutThat]

What is Kremer’s Big League ETA?

[Frobby]

3 minutes ago, Philip said:

What is Kremer’s Big League ETA?

I’d say next year sometime.   

[SteveA]

2 minutes ago, Philip said:

What is Kremer’s Big League ETA?

How can you answer a question like that when:

1) He is currently recovering from an oblique injury, which can often be a slow recovery.

2) Our new regime shows that they will keep guys in the minors as long as they feel they need more development.

We just don't know how long it will take guys to reach the majors with the O's at this point, even when they don't have an injury which has a hard to determine recovery time.

[Enjoy Terror]

Hunter Harvey might even show up some day.

[Luke-OH]

Regarding Kremer, I’m glad he’s adjusted his slider.

The old slider was like a harder, more shallow curveball, it wasn’t very good and didn’t give hitters another significantly different look.

[jtschrei]

15 hours ago, Frobby said:

Interesting article on the O’s from Jonathan Mayo, featuring several quotes from Kent Qualls.    A few tidbits:

- O’s will be teaching shift defenses even at the lowest level of the minors; previously did this only at AA and AAA.

- Says O’s probably signed more Dominican talent since Koby Pérez was brought over than we did all of last year.

- Dean Kremer will probably stay in extended spring training due to his oblique injury.    

https://www.mlb.com/orioles/news/orioles-prospects-at-spring-training?t=mlb-pipeline-coverage

I like to hear that! 

[interloper]

Cool article. There's been a huge increase in articles like this since Elias took over. There's just more to talk/write about. Even old warehouse holdovers like Kent Qualls seem energized by what's happening. 

I love it! 

[interloper]

When you read stuff like this...

“It will be top down, all the way down to the Dominican Summer League. Our focus in the past had been Double-A and Triple-A with the shifts. It’s going to be top to bottom now, organization-wide.”

...it all seems so obvious. Why wasn't this done previously? Silly.

[LookinUp]

I saw this yesterday and was about to start a thread on this because I didn't notice Frobby's. This quote was written for Can of Corn.

Quote

“Already, since January 1, when Koby came aboard, we’ve probably signed more players and more talent in Latin America in that two-month period than we did all of last year,” Qualls said. “I’ve already seen it myself when I was down there in February. We all know what kind of impact that can have. A third of all the talent in baseball comes from the international market. That was an area that was not a huge focus. Now that it is a focus, we’re excited about that talent coming into the organization. It will take a while before it shows up here in the United States, but this summer we certainly expect to see it with our Dominican Summer League team.”

 

[Frobby]

52 minutes ago, interloper said:

When you read stuff like this...

“It will be top down, all the way down to the Dominican Summer League. Our focus in the past had been Double-A and Triple-A with the shifts. It’s going to be top to bottom now, organization-wide.”

...it all seems so obvious. Why wasn't this done previously? Silly.

I will try to defend it.    They probably felt that they wanted to focus on more fundamental things at the lower levels and not overload the players by moving them around on top of everything else they were learning.    And they probably thought like a year or two of working on shifts at the upper levels would be enough to prepare the player for the majors.    I don’t think that’s necessarily the wrong approach, though it’s not necessarily right, either.