Mike Yastrzemski

[DrungoHazewood]

5 hours ago, Can_of_corn said:

So you think a 688 OPS (2015) counts.as.hitting?

His OPS in the majors is seventy points higher than his minor league numbers.

 

His AA/AAA OPS is about .760 in 2300 PAs.  He's 30. Dwight Smith Jr has a AA/AAA OPS of about .750 and he's two years younger.

It's nice that Little Yaz is having his moment, but there are a million corner outfielders who can OPS .750 in AAA.

[TommyPickles]

Happy for young Yaz.  My friend who's a Giants fan says he one of the few bright spots on that team now, especially with Posey gone.

[wildcard]

39 minutes ago, milbest77 said:

I’m thinking most folks are still hung up on Arrieta. But, I agree about change of scenery. It’s just that Yaz was never given a chance here. That would be on the previous regime more than the current one, I suppose. 

I guess you could blame Duquette for not calling up in Sept of 2018 but it was Yaz 3rd try at AAA.

Yaz had a 680 OPS in 2016 at AAA.   He had a 739 OPS at AAA in 2017.    By the time he put up a 801 OPS in 2018 and might have gotten a Sept call up he was 28.  I thought he deserved to be in 2019 ST and he was there but didn't hit well compared to other O's outfielders that were ahead of him and younger.

 

[makoman]

8 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

His AA/AAA OPS is about .760 in 2300 PAs.  He's 30. Dwight Smith Jr has a AA/AAA OPS of about .750 and he's two years younger.

It's nice that Little Yaz is having his moment, but there are a million corner outfielders who can OPS .750 in AAA.

It's hard to complain a guy didn't get a shot when he starts his age 27 year hitting .202 at Bowie. 

I wonder if he's a guy who is abnormally helped by the ball changes. A warning track power type of guy where suddenly he has an 18% HR/FB rate in the majors after being under 10% for the vast majority of his minor league career.

A funny thing, if the CBA doesn't change things he won't become a FA until he's 35. We often wonder if Mancini will be on the next winning O's team, and he's 1.5 years younger than Yaz.

[DrungoHazewood]

49 minutes ago, makoman said:

It's hard to complain a guy didn't get a shot when he starts his age 27 year hitting .202 at Bowie. 

I wonder if he's a guy who is abnormally helped by the ball changes. A warning track power type of guy where suddenly he has an 18% HR/FB rate in the majors after being under 10% for the vast majority of his minor league career.

A funny thing, if the CBA doesn't change things he won't become a FA until he's 35. We often wonder if Mancini will be on the next winning O's team, and he's 1.5 years younger than Yaz.

I assume that's the case about the ball, maybe with a helping of swing plane changes.  Any time the game shifts in some way there are players who are impacted in non-linear ways. When they change the strike zone some people hugely benefit, some don't even notice it happened.

I've become convinced that baseball needs to modify its rules so that players become free agents at a set age like 28, instead of basing it on MLB service time.  Yaz will be 35 before he has any say about where he plays, and most players' careers are over by then. Carlos Ruiz was like that.  And the current rules are why players like Ryan Mountcastle wasn't in the majors a year or more ago.

[JimGinSP]

2 things regarding Mike Yaz.

1. I never quite reconciled the fact that Dan, given his past connection with the Red Sox and presumably some connection with Mike’s HOF grandfather, didn’t throw the kid a bone down the stretch in 2018. 

2. Being that baseball players are famously superstitious, when you go 3 for 3 and 2 for 4 when you kneel before a game do you keep kneeling?  

[Moose Milligan]

3 hours ago, wildcard said:

Its easy to say that you would like to have Mike Yastrzemski now.   What were you saying in the off season of 2018-2019?

Mike Elias did not make a mistake in trading Yaz.    He had Mancini, Hays, Santander, Stewart, plus Dwight Smith had a 1400 OPS in ST last year.  Yaz was 28, did not hit in the little time he got on 2019 ST and Elias decided rather then option a 28 year old that was not part of the O's next contending team to AAA , he would trade him.   

There are moves that Elias has made that I disagree with  and I did support Yaz getting a chance.   But I am not questioning if Elias made the right decision to trade him.  Good for Yaz for making good on his opportunity with the Giants.

There was nothing to support that Dwight Smith Jr. could ever keep hitting as well as he did.  I get that he wanted to keep Santander and Stewart, rightfully so.  But DSJR was an odd person to bring in at the time and IIRC everyone here was puzzled by it at the time.  

[HowAboutThat]

I do not second-guess the decision to get rid of Yaz. At least at the moment, it appears to have been incorrect, but that’s OK. The decision itself was logical.
I am absolutely infuriated, even now, that Buck and/or Dan decided not to let the guy play the last game of a 47 wins season in Fenway park.

there was absolutely no reason not to let the guy have that moment, especially because at that time it looked like he was not going to have any kind of a baseball career at all.

[murph]

Saw the box score this morning and figured there would be a thread like this on here today.  I hope Yaz has a great career, it just goes to show you how incredibly difficult it is to project what a player truly is capable of.  If the Giants were not so desperate for OF help last year, Yaz may have never even gotten a shot anywhere.   

[Ruzious]

I'm happy for l'l Yaz, but I don't feel his success should be called a fail for the O's.  If anyone thought he'd do as well as he did, kudo's to them.  Nostradamus didn't predict it.  Heck, even Ruztradamus thought he was just a more athletic smaller version of Pete Rose, Jr.  Good for him - it's nice to see an underdog like him succeed.       

[interloper]

17 minutes ago, Philip said:

I do not second-guess the decision to get rid of Yaz. At least at the moment, it appears to have been incorrect, but that’s OK. The decision itself was logical.
I am absolutely infuriated, even now, that Buck and/or Dan decided not to let the guy play the last game of a 47 wins season in Fenway park.

there was absolutely no reason not to let the guy have that moment, especially because at that time it looked like he was not going to have any kind of a baseball career at all.

I wouldn't say I'm infuriated, but I do agree that was weird and needlessly cold. 

[HowAboutThat]

42 minutes ago, interloper said:

I wouldn't say I'm infuriated, but I do agree that was weird and needlessly cold. 

Yeah I would really like to know the reasoning behind it. I cannot think of any legitimate reason other than logistics, which would’ve been easy to get around, or petulance. But even if Dan is annoyed with the Red Sox for past grievances, or Showalter doesn’t like the kid, that’s really not a reason. Well it is a reason, but it’s a very shallow reason.

We will never see either of them again, so we will never know, but they were both experts at not answering questions and the journalists who cover the Orioles are Experts at not pushing back, so even if we did ask we probably would never know.

[weams]

4 hours ago, jtschrei said:

Don't forget Mullins. It always struck me as short sighted. Always. The numbers were never great, but they weren't bad either. The guy can do alot of things. Oh well... 

Other than hitting and throwing. If you are gonna be a two tool guy speed and running to the ball aren't it. 

[jtschrei]

10 hours ago, weams said:

Other than hitting and throwing. If you are gonna be a two tool guy speed and running to the ball aren't it. 

Whatever. I meant that he's average at just about everything. Average speed, average bat, average arm. You can play hit and run with him both at the plate and on the bases. He knows how to play the game. Hate if you want, but I think he can help a team in a bunch of different ways. It was always odd to me that Buck could never find a spot for him. Nothing to lose sleep over. No need to be nasty if you were. 

[PeteCanes]

who cares?