I'm Ready for Mountcastle and Diaz: Mountcastle Up, Diaz Still Waiting

[Enjoy Terror]

I’m looking at the 2019 IL stats and I’ll tell ya, Ryan Mountcastle isn’t MVP because of his stats. I’m not sure why they decided on RM. Why not like, Bobby Bradley? Nate Lowe? Travis Demerritte? Jace Peterson.

[DrungoHazewood]

42 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

Most times General Managers promote players who are 22 and playing well in the IL.

 

40 minutes ago, VaBird1 said:

Probably a few.  BTW a lot of all stars and at least one HOF guy are on that list.

Use of minor leaguers has changed over time.  Many years ago GMs kind of respected the minor league teams and pennant races as real things.  Prospects would often spend an entire year (or two!) in AAA.  Now the teams are almost exclusively seen as vessels for the optimal development of prospects.  They're teams only in the sense that they wear common uniforms.  Today Wade Boggs would never have 1000+ PAs with a .322 average in the IL.  Today people would think you're on drugs if you sent Edgar Martinez back to AAA after two seasons where he hit .329 and .363, but that's what the Mariners did.

In 1982 there were eight teams in the IL and 52 players who played at least 100 games, or over six per team. 

In 2019 there were 14 teams and just 21 who played 100 or more games, or less than two per team.

A generation ago there was usually a pretty robust slate of candidates to choose from in a minor league MVP race.  Now 90% of the players who are performing well play at multiple levels and at AAA most play at least part of the year in the majors.  Mountcastle won the award because he was arguably the best young prospect in the league who spent almost the whole year there.

[eddie83]

2 hours ago, Sports Guy said:

...and Kremer, Lowther, Akin, Zimmerman, Wells, et al

 I keep hoping by September some of these guys will be here. They have to make 40 man decisions on some of these guys anyway. 

[eddie83]

1 hour ago, wildcard said:

Hope is about all we have when thinking about Mountcastle's defense.   Reality is it probably below average.

And if it is, it’s not going to get better in Bowie. 

No better way to experience LF than playing it at MLB level on a non contender. 

[MurphDogg]

Good article in The Sun about what Mountcastle has been working on in Bowie.

[Jagwar]

7 minutes ago, MurphDogg said:

Good article in The Sun about what Mountcastle has been working on in Bowie.

From the article:

Quote

 

The results, the coaches say, have been evident from the start. He’s among the leaders in their swing-decision rankings and production in the intrasquad games, and walked three times in their first game.

Britton said he’s been “terrorizing pitching” at the Bowie site.

“He’s been, offensively, just an animal,” he said. “Ball comes off his bat, and he’s hitting balls where the big boys hit balls.”

 

Encouraging, but hope we get to see that applied after a call up... soon. 

[Ohfan67]

12 hours ago, Lucky_13 said:

At this point the only explanation to me is Elias doesn't want to win too many games and not get a top pick. We've passed the service time deadline. 

It does seem like losing is a, if not the primary goal of the season. The competition to be worst, however, is very intense this year. Maybe even historically intense. It looks like there have been three years in the modern baseball era when two teams had winning percentages below .300 (1909, 1911, and 1939; Wikipedia so may not be a perfect list). The short season combined with several pathetic rosters built to lose might result in two or even three teams with records below .300. The Orioles are going to need more series like this last one to seriously compete for a top three or four pick. Unfortunately this seems very likely to happen.  

[Can_of_corn]

8 minutes ago, MurphDogg said:

Good article in The Sun about what Mountcastle has been working on in Bowie.

Quote

Trout, hitting coach Tom Eller said, is the best because he only swings at good pitches.

I think that's overly simplistic as well as simply not true (Trout was third in O-swing % in 2019, if you want to go with a five year sample he's 15th).  I guess telling a player to be like Tommy Pham doesn't have the same impact?

[eddie83]

21 minutes ago, MurphDogg said:

Good article in The Sun about what Mountcastle has been working on in Bowie.

Was a good article.

Meoli will be the next Sun writer to move on to bigger and better things at some point. 

I still want to see him up here....

That said unless the coaches were just doing PR for the Orioles doesn’t sound like he is struggling. 

[eddie83]

12 minutes ago, Ohfan67 said:

It does seem like losing is a, if not the primary goal of the season. The competition to be worst, however, is very intense this year. Maybe even historically intense. It looks like there have been three years in the modern baseball era when two teams had winning percentages below .300 (1909, 1911, and 1939; Wikipedia so may not be a perfect list). The short season combined with several pathetic rosters built to lose might result in two or even three teams with records below .300. The Orioles are going to need more series like this last one to seriously compete for a top three or four pick. Unfortunately this seems very likely to happen.  

 I don’t think they will have any issues getting a top 3/4 pick. 

I also think things don’t have to be as ugly as the last 4 games for that to happen. We can play better teams and play them better and still lose. 

[DrungoHazewood]

8 minutes ago, Ohfan67 said:

It does seem like losing is a, if not the primary goal of the season. The competition to be worst, however, is very intense this year. Maybe even historically intense. It looks like there have been three years in the modern baseball era when two teams had winning percentages below .300 (1909, 1911, and 1939; Wikipedia so may not be a perfect list). The short season combined with several pathetic rosters built to lose might result in two or even three teams with records below .300. The Orioles are going to need more series like this last one to seriously compete for a top three or four pick. Unfortunately this seems very likely to happen.  

For 130-140 years the standard deviation, the distance, between best and worst consistently shrunk.  In 1890 winning percentages went from .169 to .667.  In 1915 from .283 to .670.  In 1980 .364 to .636.  By 2012 the American League was only spread from .407 to .586.  There are individual seasons (example, around expansions) that violate this rule of thumb, but in general the spread shrunk over time.

But now, maybe for the first time, that's reversed a bit over a period of years.  The tanking teams are basically expansion teams.  Maybe with more resources for the future, but on the same level of play.  If we had a really strong metric for quality of play you might be seeing this dip over the last few years.

[DrungoHazewood]

14 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

I think that's overly simplistic as well as simply not true (Trout was third in O-swing % in 2019, if you want to go with a five year sample he's 15th).  I guess telling a player to be like Tommy Pham doesn't have the same impact?

It's human nature to round off "mostly" to "every single time".  If the coach was a politician or Sparky Anderson he might say that Mountcastle was the best at swinging at only at good pitches since Mays or Cobb.

[Can_of_corn]

1 minute ago, DrungoHazewood said:

It's human nature to round off "mostly" to "every single time".  If the coach was a politician or Sparky Anderson he might say that Mountcastle was the best at swinging at only at good pitches since Mays or Cobb.

It's more the other thing that bothers me actually.

You give Mountcastle the best strike zone judgement in the league and he still isn't Mike Trout.  He might however be Tommy Pham with a bit more power.

[eddie83]

4 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

For 130-140 years the standard deviation, the distance, between best and worst consistently shrunk.  In 1890 winning percentages went from .169 to .667.  In 1915 from .283 to .670.  In 1980 .364 to .636.  By 2012 the American League was only spread from .407 to .586.  There are individual seasons (example, around expansions) that violate this rule of thumb, but in general the spread shrunk over time.

But now, maybe for the first time, that's reversed a bit over a period of years.  The tanking teams are basically expansion teams.  Maybe with more resources for the future, but on the same level of play.  If we had a really strong metric for quality of play you might be seeing this dip over the last few years.

Would think this is directly related to the lack of WAR relative to older position players. 

Bad teams run their course and trade off whatever assets they have left to better teams, especially starting pitchers. They start over. 

If this trend of player production continues we should see a wider variety of teams cycling in and out of contention over the upcoming decade. Those players who are good now will age at some point as well.

[DrungoHazewood]

9 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

It's more the other thing that bothers me actually.

You give Mountcastle the best strike zone judgement in the league and he still isn't Mike Trout.  He might however be Tommy Pham with a bit more power.

Unfortunately he has the strike zone judgment of Jonathan Schoop.

Pham walked 81 times last year.  Mountcastle has walked 101 times in his professional life.