MLB.com's Five Best 2nd-Basemen in O's History

[Can_of_corn]

12 minutes ago, Moose Milligan said:

Yeah, I'd posted that before clicking the link.  Me mentioning Craig Worthington was kind of a joke.  

3B might be the biggest gap between 1st place and 2nd place in terms of these positional rankings....It's really Brooks way far out in front and then...everyone else.

Machado was a most excellent player for the O's.

[Tx Oriole]

On 4/13/2020 at 12:00 PM, DrungoHazewood said:

Gleason is listed at 5' 7", 158, and from 1890-1894 he threw 506, 418, 400, 380, and 230 innings.  They switched to allowing overhand pitching in '84.  It took a while for folks to catch on to the idea that 55 starts, 500 innings wasn't going to work so well throwing overhand, even if it wasn't max-effort like today.  The record for innings pitched is very dependent on when you draw the back line.  Bill Hutchison*, Amos Rusie, Sadie McMahon, and Gleason were the last of the 500 inning pitchers, none of them hit that mark after they moved the pitching distance to 60' 6".

The 1800s were an era of continuous transitions, and there were a lot of pitchers whose careers never made it to 30.  Some not to 25.

Gleason hurt his arm in '95 with the Orioles, and he transitioned straightaway to second base.  Thing was he wasn't really any good as a position player.  Career OPS+ of 78, and was at best an average fielder.  He hit .300 a couple times, but with no power and few walks.  From 120+ years away it's kind of hard to see why he was a regular for 12+ years after he quit pitching, he was a 0-to-2 win player almost every year. 

* I need to read up on Hutchison.  He apparently didn't throw a pro pitch until 24, didn't have a season of more than a couple starts until 27, then threw 300-625 innings a year for almost a decade.  Once had a minor league season where he allowed 271 runs in 305 innings.  In 1892 he faced 2639 batters, which is more than twice Jim Palmer's highest total.  By Tom Tango's basic pitch count estimator he threw almost 10,000 pitches.  Or roughly three times what a modern ace does.

I enjoy reading about players that played back on those days. Baseball history is very interesting to me. 

[atomic]

On 4/13/2020 at 12:56 PM, Aristotelian said:

I would go with Alomar #2 over Roberts. His only strike against is that he only played three years, but during that time he was more productive than Roberts and he played a key role on two playoff teams. Had more GG's and All Star teams with the O's than Roberts had his whole career. If I had to choose, I would rather keep Alomar on the 96-97 O's than Roberts on the 2001-13 O's. 

I wouldn’t consider Alomar an Oriole.  He was only here three years plus the spitting incident equals not an Oriole to me.

Grinch. is better known as an Angel.

Billy Ripken not being mentioned at all is strange. Spent 7 years with the club.

 

[backwardsk]

3 hours ago, Moose Milligan said:

Yeah, I'd posted that before clicking the link.  Me mentioning Craig Worthington was kind of a joke.  

3B might be the biggest gap between 1st place and 2nd place in terms of these positional rankings....It's really Brooks way far out in front and then...everyone else.

Garrett Atkins would like a word.

[DrungoHazewood]

12 hours ago, Can_of_corn said:

Machado was a most excellent player for the O's.

He's talking career value, I would assume.  But even considering a shorter peak, Brooks' best was better than Manny's. At least if you put trust in the retroactive defensive metrics.  Manny had a +27 and +20 season by more modern metrics and some people were skeptical.  Brooks was over +30 a couple times by DRS.

[DrungoHazewood]

12 hours ago, LA2 said:

He's at the end of their "Honorable Mentions": "Craig Worthington placed fourth in AL Rookie of the Year Award voting in 1989." And Drungo doesn't think much of him. Craig had one good season and was gone from the major leagues faster than anyone had expected after his International League MVP season, for sure.

How long should a player last in the majors after a AAA season where he hit .244/.303/.419?  In a normal context if you showed someone that line the response would be "well, he might keep his job next year if he can really field." 

I've mentioned before that the weakest MLB MVP of all time might be Roger Peckinpaugh in '24, and he got a ton of extra credit for being the WS winner's captain.  Peckinpaugh out-hit Worthington's IL MVP year.