The most baffling disappointment so far for me is...

[Sports Guy]

3 minutes ago, wildcard said:

Somehow Armstrong got into your heart.  And you have stood up for him many times as you do now.   Its good to see.  

I don't know how this will turn out for him.  It could go either way.  But he has one fan leading the cheers.  That can not be a bad thing.

He was on my radar back when he was in the Cle system.  I wanted to target him in a trade.

There is a lot to like...there is also a lot to not like but giving up on him right now is just dumb.  He has had bad defense behind him, just had a kid and was put in a bad spot in his first outing.  He isn't without blame of course but there are issues that are out of his hands as well.

[sportsfan8703]

I saw that he his newborn son is named(middle name) “Cutter”. It would be really unfortunate if he had to scrap that pitch. 

Edited April 13, 2021 by sportsfan8703

[DrungoHazewood]

8 hours ago, Sports Guy said:

I get why people think Armstrong is just a dime a dozen guy.  He is "old", has very little ML track record and could potentially be easily replaced.  I disagree with that somewhat.

I have mentioned this before but Armstrong was a pretty stellar minor league pitcher.  He appeared in 302 games in the minors (1 start) and covered 350 IP.  His career ERA was 2.26 and its not like he didn't perform well at each level at the proper ages either.  In those 350 IP, he struck out 478 batters (12.2 K rate) and gave up only 13 homers.  He also only gave up 254 hits.  Hitters only batted 203 vs him in the minors.  His issue was his walk rate.  His BB rate was 4.42 in the minors.(more on this later)

In the majors, he only has 133 IP.   As Frobby mentioned, his ERA is 4.40, which is obviously nothing special.  What isn't mentioned there is how small of a sample size this is being based off of and how a few bad outings can really skew the stats.  Take, for example, 3 outings in 2019.  He pitched 3.2 innings and gave up 11 runs in 3 appearances.  Take those away and all of a sudden, his career ERA is 3.76.

I have no problem giving a chance to Armstrong.  To a large degree I don't care how old a pitcher is.  Unlike non-pitchers they don't usually have a clean curve upward as they approach 27 and a nice, linear decline afterwards.  It's more random.

Also, I think most pitchers, especially relievers, give up a significant percentage of their runs in just a few outings.  Randomly picking... 1979 Tippy Martinez.  Allowed 16 runs in 8.2 innings in his worst five games.  Outside of that his ERA was 1.17.  Gregg Olson in 1990.  His worst four games he allowed 12 runs in four innings.  The rest of the year he had a 1.02 ERA.  2013 Darren O'Day, allowed six runs in 2.1 innings in his worst three games.  Rest of the season he had a 1.37 ERA.  Donnie Hart, 2017, worst four games he allowed nine earned in 3.1.  Rest of the year he allowed nine runs in 40.1 and he had a 2.00.  Literally those were the first four random names/years I picked out of a hat.  I think Armstrong is completely typical in allowing most of his runs in a small fraction of his games.

 

[Sports Guy]

19 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

I have no problem giving a chance to Armstrong.  To a large degree I don't care how old a pitcher is.  Unlike non-pitchers they don't usually have a clean curve upward as they approach 27 and a nice, linear decline afterwards.  It's more random.

Also, I think most pitchers, especially relievers, give up a significant percentage of their runs in just a few outings.  Randomly picking... 1979 Tippy Martinez.  Allowed 16 runs in 8.2 innings in his worst five games.  Outside of that his ERA was 1.17.  Gregg Olson in 1990.  His worst four games he allowed 12 runs in four innings.  The rest of the year he had a 1.02 ERA.  2013 Darren O'Day, allowed six runs in 2.1 innings in his worst three games.  Rest of the season he had a 1.37 ERA.  Donnie Hart, 2017, worst four games he allowed nine earned in 3.1.  Rest of the year he allowed nine runs in 40.1 and he had a 2.00.  Literally those were the first four random names/years I picked out of a hat.  I think Armstrong is completely typical in allowing most of his runs in a small fraction of his games.

 

Absolutely, which is also why I think randomly just mentioning his ERA without the context of any other numbers is wrong.

[sportsfan8703]

The bullpen so far has been the most disappointing part of the team. Not only has it been terrible, but it’s affecting other areas of our team, like the bench. 
 

Right now, it seems we’re in the first wave of seeing what we have with the guys that have zero options. Whether they are rule 5 guys or vets we signed to eat innings. 
 

Once we get to the point where we have some guys with some options out in the pen, it’ll be more of a produce, or get sent down type of thing. We’ll get to see more of our traditional “relief” pitchers, instead of just being so concerned about eating innings. This will also help the bench and defense, because we’ll be able to get back to a 4 man bench(unless Davis is back).  
 

Once we can start rotating through the Sulsers and Hanholds of the world, we’ll be able to do things like have the luxury to match up Valaika vs LHP. Hays coming back from the IL will fix the OF defense. 

[Frobby]

1 hour ago, sportsfan8703 said:

The bullpen so far has been the most disappointing part of the team. Not only has it been terrible, but it’s affecting other areas of our team, like the bench. 

I’m not going to sit here and say our relief pitching has been good, but far:

Starter ERA 5.40, 11th in the AL

Reliever ERA 4.62, 11th in the AL

Batter OPS+ 82, 13th in the AL

The O’s are not terrible in runs scored per game (4.44, 9th in the AL), but that’s because they scored a total of 20 runs in two games.   They’ve only scored 20 in the other seven games combined.

 

 

[Moose Milligan]

45 minutes ago, Frobby said:

I’m not going to sit here and say our relief pitching has been good, but far:

Starter ERA 5.40, 11th in the AL

Reliever ERA 4.62, 11th in the AL

Batter OPS+ 82, 13th in the AL

The O’s are not terrible in runs scored per game (4.44, 9th in the AL), but that’s because they scored a total of 20 runs in two games.   They’ve only scored 20 in the other seven games combined.

 

 

But I think that's been par for the course for this offense for a few years now.  Low OBP team, high strikeouts...they can go on a tear for a few games, bash some homers and score some runs...but if they're not hitting homers, they're probably not scoring runs.  It's always been an offense that's prone to long slumps.  

IMO, that's about what I expected this year from this group.  

[LTO's]

4 hours ago, Frobby said:

The O’s are not terrible in runs scored per game (4.44, 9th in the AL), but that’s because they scored a total of 20 runs in two games.   They’ve only scored 20 in the other seven games combined.

They were downright terrible against NY. Cole was a big part of that but the Yankees also have an incredible bullpen. In the six games against Boston I think they performed admirably. Home opener was rough but Saturday night they had 8 hits and 5 walks and ran into some bad BABIP luck. Severino had a 106 mph line drive get caught with the bases loaded and Santander had two 100+ mph groundballs get hit right at guys. The production Sunday should be enough to win a game comfortably. The strikeouts are a concern but I have little doubt that this team is going to hit for a lot of power. Consistency isn't going to be there though.