Gunnar Henderson 2021

[Frobby]

5 minutes ago, NCRaven said:

Rodriquez made 5 starts in A+.  Not 10 or 20, but 5.  I don't think that they are slow rolling him.  It will be interesting to see how many starts he gets in AA.  Or how many more DL Hall gets at that level.  Hall is at 5 now.  If Hall is as good as he has been for his next 2-3 starts, I think he'll be Norfolk bound.  And, damn I'm old, started to type Rochester.

The thing that makes this year unique is that there was no MiL season last year and Rodriguez did pitch at the alternate site last year against batters well above A+ level.   So, you could have argued for skipping A+ entirely.   In a different year, if he’d just gone straight from A to A+, I might have expected the O’s to be slower to pull the trigger on a promotion.   But in this situation, I think the way they handled it makes sense.   

[Jammer7]

51 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

You hit all the cliches here and I don’t think anyone disagrees.  The difference is what those benchmarks are and how long it takes to pass them.

Personally, like Grayson, I don’t think he should have started at the level he did, so when I see him Dominating, that just re-affirms my belief that he should be moved up.

Rob, most people agree that some of these guys were started conservatively. Elias and Blood are being cautious, certainly. That is who they are, even without COVID. How have the top prospects suffered by starting a level lower and moving up in 4-8 weeks? 

Like i wrote last night, Gunnar should get 1,000 at bats or more, like Tatis. There is time. 

[Sports Guy]

13 minutes ago, Jammer7 said:

Rob, most people agree that some of these guys were started conservatively. Elias and Blood are being cautious, certainly. That is who they are, even without COVID. How have the top prospects suffered by starting a level lower and moving up in 4-8 weeks? 

Like i wrote last night, Gunnar should get 1,000 at bats or more, like Tatis. There is time. 

Just because they haven’t suffered doesn’t mean they wouldn’t have benefited from starting off at a higher level.

I believe that a player should be at a level that challenges them.  Henderson isn’t challenged right now.  It’s that simple for me.

[Just Regular]

Seeing the ESPN McDaniel story suggesting the Orioles are the Mayer (another tall lefty hitting SS) floor if he drops, it got me to thinking tall lefty preps and then to Corey Seager.    Seager was 1-18 (14th biggest bonus) the same year the Astros did the Correa/McCullers/Rio Ruiz thing (Correa and McCullers got 2nd and 12th biggest bonuses respectively).    Would be curious to hear those with more scouting chops on if Gunnar Glass Half Full might be able to threaten Seager's range.

Minor league track wise, Seager played three full seasons and got the September 2015 cup of coffee after the third one for the full month when minors ended.   His fellow High School Class of 2012 SS Correa beat him up by three full months as the Astros went more for the 6.7 seasons of control deal.

B-Ref has both Correa and Seager at $27M in MLB earnings through this year, though in 2018 Correa got "all the way" to $1M instead of the MLB minimum.   I'm not sure if that was Super Two or Houston voluntarily putting a few hundred K extra on a young star to show love.

[seak05]

I also wonder if they'd like to see him improve upon his BB/K ratio. Right now he only has 11 walks on the year compared to 24 K. That plus he can play SS everyday, and defensive development also matters. 

Especially when looking at defense, I'm not sure that playing a month longer at Delmarva and playing SS daily is actually worse for his overall development then playing up half a level at Aberdeen. :Deep breathe: 

[Jammer7]

4 hours ago, Sports Guy said:

Just because they haven’t suffered doesn’t mean they wouldn’t have benefited from starting off at a higher level.

I believe that a player should be at a level that challenges them.  Henderson isn’t challenged right now.  It’s that simple for me.

Ok, opinions vary. I would say that we know some things about Gunnar now that we did not know a month ago. He has shown some things against actual competition. Before now, it was solely about projection. 

Because of the way they travel now, Gunnar has played what, 4 of the other 11 teams in his league. Maybe there are some arms Elias and Blood want him to see. Perhaps they promote him tomorrow. I do not know. I am just not worried, and I do think it will not be long before he moves up. 

[Jammer7]

5 hours ago, glenn__davis said:

I think we're largely on the same page.  I would disagree about the "terrible development of players not named Machado" line.  I think the team has largely been adequate at developing position players.  They have been horrendous at developing pitchers, like almost impossibly bad.

I do think myself and others (certainly Can of Corn leading the charge) feel that the team has been too conservative with the placement of their prospects, and that this is unnecessarily delaying the next competitive window.  I say that with the full understanding that we don't have all of the pieces to the puzzle.  But they essentially acted as if last year didn't happen at all and that no development took place, which is a mistake IMO.  We heard that Gunnar was extremely impressive at the camp site last year.  Mostly against older more experienced players.  Could have been just hype but certainly doesn't look that way right now.

In his case - I'm not interested in "rushing" him.  I am interested in him becoming an asset to the big league club as quickly as possible.  I think we understate the fact that players develop at the big league level also.  So, is a timeline arrival of 2023 a good timeline for him?  I guess...but if he gets decent time at AA this year, why not push to start him at AAA next year and starting getting his feet wet in the majors next year?  Again, with assumption (not at all a foregone conclusion) that he'll continue to have success.

I mostly like Elias, but I do think he's intentionally slow-playing some of these guys.

I think we are largely on the same page. This regime is very different than what we were used to in Baltimore. The current group is very very respected throughout the industry. People are watching what is happening and others will try to emulate them. Quite a switch from a few years ago when we were in the Stone Age. 

The previous regime was terrible in development. Everyone in baseball knew that. They rushed Machado, but his talent kept his head above water until his offense caught up two years later. He was there for the defense to help in a playoff run. They had no other choice but to rush him up with very little time in AA. 

Schoop was rushed and his overall offensive game suffered for it. Solid 2B, great arm, one dimensional offensive player. There was a lot more there to develop. Instead, he had two decent years. That was really it. 

Dave Wallace saved Zack Britton at the MLB level. 

Sisco was handled terribly by DD and Buck. That is why he is where is right now. He is absolutely terrible right now. 

Hays was rushed to Baltimore, way before he was ready. Jury is still out on my favorite player because he cannot stay healthy. Learning how to condition yourself and workout and stretch and nutrition is all part of the development cycle. 

There are so many things we cannot take for granted after the COVID cancellation of 2020. The Alternate Site can only accomplish so much. They cannot replace game experience against true competition. Yes, the powers that be extolled his improvement, and rightfully so. But that means nothing until he does it against competition. He has begun to do just that. It will not be long. 

 

[Sports Guy]

Schoop wasn’t rushed.  

Hays wasn’t rushed either.

 

[survivedc]

2 hours ago, Jammer7 said:

I think we are largely on the same page. This regime is very different than what we were used to in Baltimore. The current group is very very respected throughout the industry. People are watching what is happening and others will try to emulate them. Quite a switch from a few years ago when we were in the Stone Age. 

The previous regime was terrible in development. Everyone in baseball knew that. They rushed Machado, but his talent kept his head above water until his offense caught up two years later. He was there for the defense to help in a playoff run. They had no other choice but to rush him up with very little time in AA. 

Schoop was rushed and his overall offensive game suffered for it. Solid 2B, great arm, one dimensional offensive player. There was a lot more there to develop. Instead, he had two decent years. That was really it. 

Dave Wallace saved Zack Britton at the MLB level. 

Sisco was handled terribly by DD and Buck. That is why he is where is right now. He is absolutely terrible right now. 

Hays was rushed to Baltimore, way before he was ready. Jury is still out on my favorite player because he cannot stay healthy. Learning how to condition yourself and workout and stretch and nutrition is all part of the development cycle. 

There are so many things we cannot take for granted after the COVID cancellation of 2020. The Alternate Site can only accomplish so much. They cannot replace game experience against true competition. Yes, the powers that be extolled his improvement, and rightfully so. But that means nothing until he does it against competition. He has begun to do just that. It will not be long. 

 

This is starting to border on the absurd. Schoop had like 1700 minor league AB’s. Britton pitched in the minors for 5 seasons. Sisco was a quality minor league batter with over 1500 MiLB AB’s, but it isn’t like there weren’t questions about whether his game would translate.

Some guys just are what they are, and no amount of development was going to turn Schoop into Roberto Alomar or Bobby Doerr.

[sportsfan8703]

Gunnar wasn’t just sitting around during the 2020 COVID Season eating bon bons. I’m sure the dude played at our alternate site or in some sort of simulated games.

What about HS Kids that play in like 30 games a year for 4 years?  
 

Bottom line is that there shouldn’t be some arbitrary number on games played or PAs. A player should be at a level that is indicative of his skills. A ball just isn’t right now. 
 

If Elias and company cares about player development like they say, well then develop the darn player. Not just hold him back because of some trajectory of hitting service clock time. Ridiculous 

[glenn__davis]

10 hours ago, Jammer7 said:

IThe previous regime was terrible in development. Everyone in baseball knew that. They rushed Machado, but his talent kept his head above water until his offense caught up two years later. He was there for the defense to help in a playoff run. They had no other choice but to rush him up with very little time in AA. 

I don't think that's true at all.

The previous regime was terrible at developing pitchers.  They developed some pretty decent position players despite the fact that they used very few high picks on them.  

You mentioned guys like Schoop and Sisco - neither of those guys were blue chip prospects.  And sometimes even blue chip prospects fail at the MLB level.  You're making a lot of assumptions that if these guys had just stayed in the minors longer then they would have been better MLB players.  I don't think that's true at all.  As survivedc mentions, some guys just are who they are.  That's not to say the development means nothing because certainly it does, but as mentioned I think the previous regime did just fine with position players.

[Sports Guy]

16 minutes ago, glenn__davis said:

I don't think that's true at all.

The previous regime was terrible at developing pitchers.  They developed some pretty decent position players despite the fact that they used very few high picks on them.  

You mentioned guys like Schoop and Sisco - neither of those guys were blue chip prospects.  And sometimes even blue chip prospects fail at the MLB level.  You're making a lot of assumptions that if these guys had just stayed in the minors longer then they would have been better MLB players.  I don't think that's true at all.  As survivedc mentions, some guys just are who they are.  That's not to say the development means nothing because certainly it does, but as mentioned I think the previous regime did just fine with position players.

Yea, the assumption that Jammer is making (or seems to be making??) is that you can only develop in the minors.  That’s horrible imo.

Yes, his first full year was poor but the next 3 years were anything from respectable to very good offensively.

He had a 7.3 fWAR from 2015-2017.  He had a cannon for an arm and was average-ish defensively.

He was definitely the best option at second base for the team at the time and he made no money doing it.

He was never going to be a high walk guy and that is really where he has even held back.  But he has tremendous power, hit for a decent average throughout his career (especially by today’s standards) and by all accounts was an excellent teammate.

Does getting a few hundred more at bats in the minors change any of that?  No way.  The only thing it would have changed was the service time and quite frankly, Schoop wasn’t a guy you cared as much about service time.  He was always going to have a limited ceiling and guys with limited ceilings are replaceable players as they start to get expensive, so you just let them go anyway.

[Can_of_corn]

8 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

Yea, the assumption that Jammer is making (or seems to be making??) is that you can only develop in the minors.  That’s horrible imo.

Yes, his first full year was poor but the next 3 years were anything from respectable to very good offensively.

He had a 7.3 fWAR from 2015-2017.  He had a cannon for an arm and was average-ish defensively.

He was definitely the best option at second base for the team at the time and he made no money doing it.

He was never going to be a high walk guy and that is really where he has even held back.  But he has tremendous power, hit for a decent average throughout his career (especially by today’s standards) and by all accounts was an excellent teammate.

Does getting a few hundred more at bats in the minors change any of that?  No way.  The only thing it would have changed was the service time and quite frankly, Schoop wasn’t a guy you cared as much about service time.  He was always going to have a limited ceiling and guys with limited ceilings are replaceable players as they start to get expensive, so you just let them go anyway.

The part I find funny is that Schoop had a 111 OPS+ in 2015 and a 124 OPS+ in 2017.  So at 23 and 25 he could hit.  How are the struggles he's had since then a product of him reaching the majors at 21? 

He's basically been a league average hitter (99 OPS+) for his career. 

[Sports Guy]

7 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

The part I find funny is that Schoop had a 111 OPS+ in 2015 and a 124 OPS+ in 2017.  So at 23 and 25 he could hit.  How are the struggles he's had since then a product of him reaching the majors at 21? 

He's basically been a league average hitter (99 OPS+) for his career. 

Well apparently, if he had stayed in the minors longer, he would have learned more plate  discipline and would have been a better player in his career.

I believe that’s what Jammer is saying.  Do I have that correct Jammer?  (I don’t want to put words in your mouth but that’s how I’m reading your post)

[glenn__davis]

10 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

The part I find funny is that Schoop had a 111 OPS+ in 2015 and a 124 OPS+ in 2017.  So at 23 and 25 he could hit.  How are the struggles he's had since then a product of him reaching the majors at 21? 

He's basically been a league average hitter (99 OPS+) for his career. 

Right.  Schoop was a pretty good player on some good teams.  If he's an example of poor development, I'll take that result just about every time.