McGregor on Rutschman: "They're throwing it (fastballs) by him right now"

[Tony-OH]

8 minutes ago, LookinUp said:

If AR turns out to have the same exact career as Wieters, I will be disappointed, just like I am with Wieters' career.

That doesn't mean I think Wieters sucked. I just thought he'd be better.

That's fair. At 1-1 and the highest bonus ever given to an amateur, the expectation should be rightfully much higher than Wieters' career.

[Sports Guy]

2 minutes ago, Tony-OH said:

That's fair. At 1-1 and the highest bonus ever given to an amateur, the expectation should be rightfully much higher than Wieters' career.

No doubt...1st overall picks usually hit and hit pretty big.  If he ends up with Wieters career, that’s a far bigger disappointment than what Wieters accomplished.

[Frobby]

29 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

No doubt...1st overall picks usually hit and hit pretty big.  If he ends up with Wieters career, that’s a far bigger disappointment than what Wieters accomplished.

There have been 55 no. 1 overall picks and if Wieters were one of them, he’d rank 25th in career rWAR, solidly in the middle of the pack.   (You do have to take into account that the last 13 no. 1 picks have had less time to accumulate rWAR than Wieters.)

So in that sense, if Rutschman were a clone of Wieters than would be an averagish outcome.   But it would still be very disappointing for two reasons:

1.   Rutschman wasn’t seen as an average 1:1 pick, but quite possibly the best 1:1 to come along in a decade.   

2.   This franchise can’t afford for him to be an averagish 1:1.    We absolutely need him to be significantly better than that.  
 

[Can_of_corn]

4 minutes ago, Frobby said:

There have been 55 no. 1 overall picks and if Wieters were one of them, he’d rank 25th in career rWAR, solidly in the middle of the pack.   (You do have to take into account that the last 13 no. 1 picks have had less time to accumulate rWAR than Wieters.)

So in that sense, if Rutschman were a clone of Wieters than would be an averagish outcome.   But it would still be very disappointing for two reasons:

1.   Rutschman wasn’t seen as an average 1:1 pick, but quite possibly the best 1:1 to come along in a decade.   

2.   This franchise can’t afford for him to be an averagish 1:1.    We absolutely need him to be significantly better than that.  
 

Just means that Kjerstad needs to pick up the slack.

That shouldn't be an issue.

[eddie83]

I respect Scott but we are talking about a handful of at bats in spring training. Like Tony said getting behind in counts hasn’t helped. Scott basically said he needs to play as well. 
 

The biggest thing for everyone obviously is to see him play for an extended period against real competition. That hasn’t really happened at the pro level yet.

 

Not just Rutschman but all these prospects need a real season. 

[now]

While it may be fair (and fairly unpleasant) to label Rutschman as Wieters 2.0, the more galling and pertinent comp would be Witt. Though again, it's way early to pass judgment.

[Frobby]

6 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

Just means that Kjerstad needs to pick up the slack.

That shouldn't be an issue.

Yeah I suppose if Kjerstad were Reggie Jackson we might get away with Rutschman being Wieters.    

To give an actual example, Ben McDonald didn’t live up to his hype, but we drafted Mike Mussina the following year at 1:20 and he vastly exceeded his.    As a duo, that was a really good outcome, just not structured the way we expected.   

And yes, I realize you were being tongue in cheek about Kjerstad, given that he has yet to play in a pro uniform in any capacity.  

 

[Frobby]

4 minutes ago, now said:

While it may be fair (and fairly unpleasant) to label Rutschman as Wieters 2.0, the more galling and pertinent comp would be Witt. Though again, it's way early to pass judgment.

I’ve always felt that I care whether the player we drafted performs well, and won’t lose sleep if some other player we could have drafted performs better.    If Rutschman has a 40 WAR career and Witt is a 60+, so be it.

[camdencrush]

I think this report is the exception to the rule, not the rule, and should be treated as such.  Don't get all worried so easily

[LTO's]

This season cannot get here soon enough. This is the third thread in the past few weeks analyzing whether Adley Rutschman can hit. Here's what we know in 2021 (which isn't a lot):  He's had 15 ML spring training PA and has an .817 OPS. In his last two games, he was about a foot away from hitting a home run off a major league reliever against Toronto and hit a nuke off a solid MLB pitcher in Daniel Norris that almost took the third baseman's head off. Per Meoli, he's done well in minor league games and the one he scouted, he went 1-3 with his last ab being a robbed double. He's also walked 3 times and is pretty consistently working counts. 

Now, he's struck out 6 times which is the blemish here. How much of this can be attributed to small sample noise, pressing (as Hyde mentioned) or not being able to catch up to upper 90s fastballs remains to be seen. At the end of the day, he's clearly been able to hold his own and perform pretty well so really the only disappointment I see so far is that the Orioles aren't giving him the at bats that other teams are giving some of their prospects. I think if he had his current statline after 35 ABs we'd all be relatively pleased given the mini freakout over his Delmarva numbers. 

[Moose Milligan]

I was hoping he'd have more at bats this spring.  

[Oriole1940]

Hell, I would go so far as to say, during ST I would have him lead off some. Every AB in the Spring MLB curve is one less AB  in the MLB curve, when

  it really counts.  ST is when a person can try things outside the box, not just talk about things,  when it really does not count anyway.  

[OriolesMagic83]

23 minutes ago, LTO's said:

This season cannot get here soon enough. This is the third thread in the past few weeks analyzing whether Adley Rutschman can hit. Here's what we know in 2021 (which isn't a lot):  He's had 15 ML spring training PA and has an .817 OPS. In his last two games, he was about a foot away from hitting a home run off a major league reliever against Toronto and hit a nuke off a solid MLB pitcher in Daniel Norris that almost took the third baseman's head off. Per Meoli, he's done well in minor league games and the one he scouted, he went 1-3 with his last ab being a robbed double. He's also walked 3 times and is pretty consistently working counts. 

Now, he's struck out 6 times which is the blemish here. How much of this can be attributed to small sample noise, pressing (as Hyde mentioned) or not being able to catch up to upper 90s fastballs remains to be seen. At the end of the day, he's clearly been able to hold his own and perform pretty well so really the only disappointment I see so far is that the Orioles aren't giving him the at bats that other teams are giving some of their prospects. I think if he had his current statline after 35 ABs we'd all be relatively pleased given the mini freakout over his Delmarva numbers. 

I'm not sure how a .817 OPS is a disappointment.  I know, extremely small sample size.  If he hits 3 HR in his next 15 AB, posters will be calling him the second coming of Johnny Bench.  I was afraid he would stuggle to hit major league pitching, since his last experience against other teams, he struggled against single A pitching.  It just seems it is best if he spends most of the season in AA, with maybe a late season callup to AAA and even the majors. 

[Frobby]

6 minutes ago, Moose Milligan said:

I was hoping he'd have more at bats this spring.  

Yeah, me too.    Not gonna flip out about it, however.    

[LTO's]

6 minutes ago, OriolesMagic83 said:

I'm not sure how a .817 OPS is a disappointment.

It's not unless you have unrealistic expectations. Also his numbers could be better if not for fluky baseball stuff. As I mentioned in my previous post, if the wall in Toronto's stadium was the size of the wall in Ed Smith or OPACY,  he'd have had a home run. The ball he hit against Detroit was struck better than either of Mountcastle's doubles that day but it was hit right to where the 3B was standing. I'm going to keep banging the drum that this is the stuff that scouts see when they watch him which is why they keep ranking him in the top 3 in all of baseball. The angst on this board stems from the pressure Rutschman is under to help this franchise which is understandable.