Low hanging fruit

[PaulFolk]

1 hour ago, OsEatAlEast said:

I had the idea last season of getting the best defensive player at every position. Then acquiring a handful of ground ball starting pitchers to bridge the gap until the minors league pipeline starts going.

It went over like a lead balloon though.

Getting the best defensive players from where? And where/how are you acquiring all these ground ball pitchers? I'm not sure I understand the idea or how it would be implemented.

[Philip]

27 minutes ago, thezeroes said:

 

It was already there if you had read the entire first three sentences.

 

You’re exactly right and I did read that it just didn’t register. My bad.

[Can_of_corn]

2 minutes ago, PaulFolk said:

Getting the best defensive players from where? And where/how are you acquiring all these ground ball pitchers? I'm not sure I understand the idea or how it would be implemented.

In his defense with the launch angle revolution going on ground ball pitchers' value is at an all time low.

[sportsfan8703]

Mountcastle should help offset the loss of Villar’s offense. 

The pitching is the big unknown. I think we’re going to just go with a bunch of relievers that can go 2-3 innings every couple of games versus having 1 IP relievers. The days of a SP even going 5IP are done with us for now. I could see pitchers going 3-2-2-1-1 every game. We also will only have to cover 8 IP on road losses which should be 55+.

[wildcard]

50 minutes ago, sportsfan8703 said:

Mountcastle should help offset the loss of Villar’s offense. 

The pitching is the big unknown. I think we’re going to just go with a bunch of relievers that can go 2-3 innings every couple of games versus having 1 IP relievers. The days of a SP even going 5IP are done with us for now. I could see pitchers going 3-2-2-1-1 every game. We also will only have to cover 8 IP on road losses which should be 55+.

Clearly, the O's are trying to develop a group of starters for the future that include  Means, Rodriguez, Hall, Kremer, Baumann and Lowther.      The O's are short on starter depth for the first half of the 2020 season which depending on development could extend into all for the 2020 season.

[Just Regular]

Early season deployment will be interesting to watch.  I think Means and Cobb will open with latitude to face >18 batters, but if Stewart, Bailey and Akin don't get hit out of games, I'm not sure what to expect from Hyde managing their exits on his terms.  Wojo's kind of the gray area one, and then for the developing starters will we open so that Batters 19-23 get toggled to the bottom half of the order.

[TheOtherRipken]

I’ve been pretty underwhelmed at efforts to rebuild the bullpen thus far. Say what you want about DD, he was good at grabbing random bullpen gems out of thin air. 

[DrungoHazewood]

On 1/18/2020 at 9:23 AM, Frobby said:

First, the bullpen.    They literally had a 50% save rate last year, in 54 chances.    That’s really pathetic.    Even the really crappy teams we had from 1998-2011 always managed 55-60%; league average is 67%.    The bullpen ERA of 5.79 was .72 runs worse than the next worse team and 1.35 runs worse than league average.    Givens, Castro and Bleier were all far worse than their career norms and nobody else stepped up.   I think our bullpen this year can still be lousy and yet be considerably better than last year.   We could pick up 3-6 wins with relatively modest improvement there. 

I mentioned this multiple times over the year, but the 2019 Orioles had the 6th-worst bullpen ERA since WWII.  And they had way more innings pitched than the top five.  Their 449 runs allowed is the all time record, although I should note that four of the top five and 8 of the top 15 totals of all time were set in 2019.

Bit of trivia: the 2019 Orioles' pen allowed 19 more runs than the 1972 Orioles.  The whole '72 Orioles pitching staff.  Now, that was a strike year with only 154 games and it was a rather extreme pitcher's season.  The AL allowed just 3.47 runs/game, compared to 4.88 in 2019.

[Philip]

I don’t know the ranking of the next guys to the mound, and I don’t know when their “service time” requirements will allow them to be promoted, but I cannot imagine that the five guys that end the season wont be superior-and about 80% different-from the five that start the season. 

If Means deserves his spot all season, and we dump the other four warm bodies for four real pitchers, out win total will be happier and our present will begin to look like our future.

[wildcard]

16 minutes ago, TheOtherRipken said:

I’ve been pretty underwhelmed at efforts to rebuild the bullpen thus far. Say what you want about DD, he was good at grabbing random bullpen gems out of thin air. 

I think its hard to judge how well Elias has done with the pen.  Kohl Stewart, Rucker, Bailey, Sulser, Hunter Cervenka have all been added from outside the O's organization.   It will take time to know if they are good additions to Harvey, Givens, Bleier.   There are a lot of pitchers in the high minors that may turn out to help the pen in time Including Lowther, Zimmerman, Wells, Alvarado, Muckenhirn Kimek   and Sedlock.    And that does not count Tate and Kline who may still need for AAA development.

If the O's organization has really figured out how to develop pitchers it could be a major part of the rebuild.

[OsEatAlEast]

22 hours ago, PaulFolk said:

Getting the best defensive players from where? And where/how are you acquiring all these ground ball pitchers? I'm not sure I understand the idea or how it would be implemented.

Just meant the best defensive players and ground ball pitchers available at any given time. Whether it be from the minors, minor trades, or free agency. Nothing that would set the team back very much. For a short period of two to three years. While the rebuilding plan takes hold.

[Aristotelian]

If Harvey is for real and can close, I think that could have a positive ripple effect. That would allow Givens to be used in his natural role as a matchup reliever vs RHB. Castro had a terrible April-May but was pretty solid after that. Not sure what to expect from Bleier but maybe Tanner Scott steps up. Carroll has been too good in the minors to be this bad in the majors. I think he gets healthy and is solid. Yeah, bullpen is a major area for improvement and I can see a few realistic scenarios where we improve without any major additions.

Getting Mancini out of the outfield is another. Would be great if we could find a 3B cheap to pick up a few wins of production.

[tntoriole]

It is going to be a horrible starting rotation even with a healthy Cobb...if he turns up not healthy, we may not win 50 games. 

[Can_of_corn]

4 minutes ago, tntoriole said:

It is going to be a horrible starting rotation even with a healthy Cobb...if he turns up not healthy, we may not win 50 games. 

Like I said last year right around this same time.  It is really hard to lose that many games.  Especially when you have other teams actively tanking.

[LA2]

8 hours ago, TheOtherRipken said:

I’ve been pretty underwhelmed at efforts to rebuild the bullpen thus far. Say what you want about DD, he was good at grabbing random bullpen gems out of thin air. 

He definitely was.