Posnanski Orioles Preview

[Moose Milligan]

Some selected highlights, from The Athletic:

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Stadium ranking out of 30: 6

Camden Yards is almost 30 years old, which is just more proof that time is broken and I’m never again going to be young enough to tell new songs apart. There is no doubt in my mind that Camden Yards is the most influential ballpark ever built; it changed the entire idea of what a baseball stadium could be. But, beyond that, it’s still a great place to watch a ballgame.

 

 

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Random player from history: Ken Dixon.

When Ken Dixon was in Double-A Charlotte, he was such a strikeout wizard that the organization would hand out K cards on the days he pitched.

 

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Reason to watch in 2021: Ryan Mountcastle showed a lot of promise in his short debut, and Anthony Santander hit 31 home runs in the 130 games he played in 2019 and 2020. Hey, it’s something.

Wait, he plays on this team?: Félix Hernández.

 

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I imagine that younger Orioles fans — and by “younger” I am now talking about anybody who is 40 years old or less — have heard more than they want to hear about how the team used to stand for something. They’ve heard enough about the Oriole Way and Earl Weaver and three-run homers and a group of players who always hit the cutoff man. Hell, it’s been 20 years since Cal Ripken retired, and even he didn’t get to play in the Oriole Way glory days. That Jim Palmer and Mark Belanger stuff, alas, is ancient history.

In its place, the Orioles became sort of shapeless, amorphous, usually bad, occasionally a contender, sometimes built around power, sometimes carried by their bullpen, sometimes just drifting with the wind. They would sometimes do something earth-shattering like draft Manny Machado or pick up a guy like Chris Davis at exactly the right time.

But they would follow this up by trading Machado for a group of prospects that have not panned out yet and signing Davis to a $161 million deal at precisely the wrong time.

I have a friend who is an Orioles fan, and he will talk about “Orioles moments.” I suppose the Jake Arrieta trade is the archetypal Orioles moment. The Orioles knew that Arrieta had talent. He was a top prospect. I mean, he started on Opening Day in 2011. But then he looked terrible and the Orioles had no idea how to fix him, so they traded him to Chicago where he quickly became one of the best pitchers in baseball and then became the best pitcher in baseball when he won the Cy Young Award, then was a force for the Cubs World Series winner.

Orioles moments like these seem to happen too often — not just the typical “bad trade,” but epic failures in which they screw up a talented player’s development, give up, and then watch helplessly as the player goes elsewhere and blossoms.

• Mike Yastrzemski kicked around in the Baltimore minor leagues for years and years and never showed the Orioles enough to get them to take a chance and bring him to the big leagues. They traded him to San Francisco for a minor-league lifer named Tyler Herb and watched him become a star.

• Dylan Bundy was the No. 2 prospect in all of baseball in 2013, the Orioles couldn’t figure out how to unlock him, and they traded him to the Angels, where in 2020 — short season, yes — he pitched really well, got a little Cy Young consideration, and he might be the Angels’ Opening Day starter in 2021.

• It isn’t clear that Kevin Gausman’s story will go the same way, but he too was one of the best pitching prospects in baseball, and the Orioles couldn’t figure out how to make him into an effective pitcher. After they traded him to Atlanta, he bounced to Cincinnati and then San Francisco, where he pitched quite well last season, striking out 79 in 59 innings. He has apparently added a changeup this spring. “Everybody’s been talking about it,” he told the San Jose Mercury News.

For Orioles fans, this stuff is too familiar and too heartbreaking.

 

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One thing about these letters from spring: I want there to be hope in them. What’s the point of Opening Day without hope? And for Baltimore right now, hope is a catcher named Adley Rutschman, the first pick in the 2019 draft. Baltimore fans would probably say that it is typical Orioles luck that the 2020 minor-league season was washed away because if they had played in 2020, Rutschman might have started this year in the big leagues. As it is, he will probably start the season in Double A and could conceivably be seen in the majors by year-end.

You know, when I was younger there was this glorious preview magazine that was called Bill Mazeroski’s Baseball. When I was in high school, we lived in an apartment complex that had an old-fashioned newsstand — it was even called “Newsstand International.” And every year, starting in late January, I would go there and look to see if Bill Mazeroski’s Baseball had arrived. I would go to the sports section of magazines, scan it, get yelled at by the woman who ran the place, (“No browsing!”) and then come back the next day.

And the reason I wanted to see it was not so much for the previews, though I did love them. No, in the back of the magazine they would list off the top three or four or five prospects for each team. This was in a time when minor-league news and prospect breakdowns were almost impossible to find. And when the magazine finally arrived, I’d tear it open (“Hey, no browsing!”) and look to see who were the prospects that would — someday soon, I was sure — make my team the best in baseball.

And so, if I’m an Orioles fan, I’m looking up every heavenly word that people are saying about Rutschman. “If he hits for enough average,” Keith Law writes, “he’s going to be a frequent MVP candidate.” MLB raves about his plus-plus defense and says he can drive the ball from both sides of the plate. Baseball America calls him a generational talent while adding that he has a reputation “as a fantastic teammate and tireless worker who elevates both himself and everyone around him with his approach to the game.”

Yes, pump this stuff straight into my bloodstream.

OK, yes, it’s true that if you are an Orioles fan you might be reminded that all this stuff and much more were once said about another switch-hitting Orioles catcher who was unanimously viewed as the best prospect in baseball: Matt Wieters. He was such a force for good that there used to be a website — probably still is since nothing on the internet is ever erased — called Matt Wieters Facts, which I loved and included these:

• Sliced bread is actually the best thing since Matt Wieters.

• Matt Wieters sometimes impatiently homers from the on-deck circle.

• Matt Wieters is the reason I comes before E except after C.

Wieters has had a fine career — he’s won a couple of Gold Gloves, made four All-Star teams — but it probably hasn’t been quite the career that Orioles fans dreamed about. Careers rarely turn out like dreams. But that’s not the point of spring training. The point is to have dreams. Adley Rutschman is unlimited now.

 

[milbest77]

Thanks for posting. I can handle the Bundy and Gausman heartbreaks, but Yaz really has me wound up. Why couldn’t we have at least given him one chance in the bigs?

[Explosivo]

Yeah I never understood that. Did he #@$% someone’s wife? Only explanation.

[Can_of_corn]

9 minutes ago, milbest77 said:

Thanks for posting. I can handle the Bundy and Gausman heartbreaks, but Yaz really has me wound up. Why couldn’t we have at least given him one chance in the bigs?

Why not give Ryan Ripken a chance in the bigs?

Yaz's ML OPS is over a hundred points higher than his career minor league OPS, despite him often being old for his level.  There was no reason to give him a chance. Other than his last name and the magic of hindsight that is.

You don't take guys that look and act like career minor leaguers and give them a shot in the bigs just to see if they magically morph into actual players at 28.

[BohKnowsBmore]

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But they would follow this up by trading Machado for a group of prospects that have not panned out yet

Not sure this part is fair. Technically true in that we don't know what they will be yet, but Kremer looked really promising in his 2020 MLB debut and Diaz is still a promising prospect who will likely get a call up this year. Putting it in the same line as the Chris Davis contract seems to promote a narrative that's not quite as clean as he's making it out to be here.

[ChosenOne21]

Gausman adding a change-up? Doesn't he already have two?

[Can_of_corn]

Just now, ChosenOne21 said:

Gausman adding a change-up? Doesn't he already have two?

Yep.

His issue has mostly been around him not being able to develop a good curve or slider and often switching between the two.

[Sports Guy]

Yawn

[DrungoHazewood]

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Random player from history: Ken Dixon.

When Ken Dixon was in Double-A Charlotte, he was such a strikeout wizard that the organization would hand out K cards on the days he pitched.

 

 

To show just how far we are from 1984, Ken Dixon pitched most of that year for AA Charlotte. He struck out 211 batters in 240 innings, which is 7.9 per nine, which would be considerably below average in the majors today.

And he had 20 complete games.  Only once in the past 35 years have the Orioles, as a team, had more than 20 complete games in a season.  Ken Dixon had more complete games in AA in 1984 than the Orioles did in the 2010s.  In retrospect it's not surprising that his arm imploded in 1987, he allowed 31 homers in 105 innings and never pitched another inning in the majors.  And I think I remember something about a grievance from the Mariners after they traded Mike Morgan for him and then found out he was hurt.  They could have just looked at the 20 complete games in '84 and his 6.43 ERA in '87.

[DrungoHazewood]

Also, I like Poz but don't have a lot of use for veneer-thin analyses of the local team by national writers.  He writes well, and some of it is reasonably connected to reality.  Weaving together six or seven years of Arrieta, Yaz, Bundy, and Gausman across multiple management teams into a Orioles cultural narrative is fun if you don't care too much if it's true or makes much sense.

[Can_of_corn]

2 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

Also, I like Poz but don't have a lot of use for veneer-thin analyses of the local team by national writers.  He writes well, and some of it is reasonably connected to reality.  Weaving together six or seven years of Arrieta, Yaz, Bundy, and Gausman across multiple management teams into a Orioles cultural narrative is fun if you don't care too much if it's true or makes much sense.

The Bundy and Gausman stuff is really thin. 

[DrungoHazewood]

1 minute ago, Can_of_corn said:

The Bundy and Gausman stuff is really thin. 

When hasn't a 10-start performance spike been a true indicator of lasting change?  Both Gausman and Bundy have pitched exactly like this over comparable stints in the past, but it's going to stick this time because Poz needs 4000 words on the Orioles.

[Sports Guy]

10 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

The Bundy and Gausman stuff is really thin. 

But it does get the casual member of the fan base riled up.

[LookinUp]

Yeah. The whole thing about Gausman coming out was that he had a great change up to go with the FB, but didn't have a average or better 3rd pitch (slider). 

I was always disappointed in his change/splitter junk. I think it went backwards with the O's, but it was his calling card for a little while. The idea that he just came up with it is weak sauce.

[interloper]

2 hours ago, Sports Guy said:

Yawn

I agree! This article is lame.