Ryan Mountcastle no longer a prospect

[maybenxtyr]

10 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

No..I expect him to be a 780-850 OPS DH/first baseman throughout the best years of his career.  Those numbers, especially the first 4 years of your service time when you are cheap are great and have a ton of value.

Yes. He's just not the type of player that a GM should want to tie up big money on.

 

[Frobby]

8 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

No..I expect him to be a 780-850 OPS DH/first baseman throughout the best years of his career.  Those numbers, especially the first 4 years of your service time when you are cheap are great and have a ton of value.

That would make him a bit better than Trumbo, though not tremendously so.   

The comp I think of, which fits your profile pretty well, is Adam Jones without the defense.   
 

[Sports Guy]

6 minutes ago, Frobby said:

That would make him a bit better than Trumbo, though not tremendously so.   

The comp I think of, which fits your profile pretty well, is Adam Jones without the defense.   
 

Sure..Jones brought some other intangibles to the team as well but between the lines, I would agree with that.

Its also why, as we try to weed through the depth we have and figure out what to do, that I’m trading Mountcastle.  I have long been a proponent of that.  I really like his bat but the lack of walks and defense bother me.  I would look to package him and perhaps a guy like DL Hall and try and get Marquez.  He is exactly the type of pitcher we should be looking to add and I think that’s a deal Colorado would have to really consider.

[Moose Milligan]

Lol, SG you're a proponent of trading everyone.

[HowAboutThat]

2 minutes ago, Moose Milligan said:

Lol, SG you're a proponent of trading everyone.

In this case he’s right, the problem though, as I have pointed out, is that at the moment he has very little trade value and wouldn’t bring anything back. He has to have consistent success Before anybody will be interested in giving anything meaningful for him. 

[Sports Guy]

5 minutes ago, Moose Milligan said:

Lol, SG you're a proponent of trading everyone.

In some ways yes...but there are certain profiles I would look to get rid of first.  Mountcastle is a valuable player who is young and making no money and if we didn’t have the depth we do, I wouldn’t want to deal him for a while.  But right now, we have the depth and we have the need in other areas and he is a guy (assuming he starts hitting again) that will carry very good value to other teams, so I would be looking at moving him.

Teams aren’t going to allow 3 weeks to change their perception of him but if he still sucks in the 2-3 months, that’s an issue.

[Moose Milligan]

20 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

In some ways yes...but there are certain profiles I would look to get rid of first.  Mountcastle is a valuable player who is young and making no money and if we didn’t have the depth we do, I wouldn’t want to deal him for a while.  But right now, we have the depth and we have the need in other areas and he is a guy (assuming he starts hitting again) that will carry very good value to other teams, so I would be looking at moving him.

Teams aren’t going to allow 3 weeks to change their perception of him but if he still sucks in the 2-3 months, that’s an issue.

Even thought I was poking fun at you, I don't necessarily disagree here.  He's young, making very little and we have depth behind him....depth that can probably adequately play a corner outfield spot, too.

I don't even know if in 2-3 months of lackluster performance he'd still have enough stank on him to where people wouldn't want to deal for him because of what you mentioned...young, cheap, and he has upside.  And with the way teams are laying into analytics and advanced development, there's probably a team out there that thinks they can tease out better performance than what he's doing right now.  

[Frobby]

29 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

Sure..Jones brought some other intangibles to the team as well but between the lines, I would agree with that.

Yes, strictly speaking to his offense and in particular being an unselective hitter who nevertheless was a pretty successful one in the OPS range you mentioned during his best years.   

[jabba72]

27 minutes ago, Philip said:

In this case he’s right, the problem though, as I have pointed out, is that at the moment he has very little trade value and wouldn’t bring anything back. He has to have consistent success Before anybody will be interested in giving anything meaningful for him. 

I agree. Mountcastle's lack of position really hurts his trade value, IMO. Another question is how well the bat is regarded when he doesn't really draw walks. Mountcastle might end up like Adam Jones in that area, constantly chasing pitches instead of taking walks. But he's a 1B, emergency OF, not a CF.   

[Sports Guy]

11 minutes ago, Moose Milligan said:

Even thought I was poking fun at you, I don't necessarily disagree here.  He's young, making very little and we have depth behind him....depth that can probably adequately play a corner outfield spot, too.

I don't even know if in 2-3 months of lackluster performance he'd still have enough stank on him to where people wouldn't want to deal for him because of what you mentioned...young, cheap, and he has upside.  And with the way teams are laying into analytics and advanced development, there's probably a team out there that thinks they can tease out better performance than what he's doing right now.  

Well, I think if he has a poor first half, some of the shine has worn off of him and perhaps we would need to include more with him in a package than we would have to normally.  

[MurphDogg]

Dan Connolly has an interesting piece out today in The Athletic, arguing that the Orioles should consider demoting Mountcastle to AAA if he is still scuffling when Santander is ready to come back. He mentions how the Orioles were very close to demoting Markakis in May of 2006 before he righted the ship.

Mountcastle hasn't looked totally lost at the plate, he has hit a few to the warning track that could be homers when the weather heats up. He had an ugly swing at a pitch way out of the zone before his single last night. And his 27/4 K/BB ratio speaks for itself.

Another reason to send him down would be to get more reps in the corner outfield. His flame out there was pretty spectacular, it would be nice if he could do that where the spotlight isn't quite as bright. Would rather not have to wait until next spring to get him in-game reps in the outfield.

I'm not sure what the solution is, hopefully he goes on a tear over the next couple weeks and we don't have to think about it.

[Aristotelian]

19 minutes ago, MurphDogg said:

Dan Connolly has an interesting piece out today in The Athletic, arguing that the Orioles should consider demoting Mountcastle to AAA if he is still scuffling when Santander is ready to come back. He mentions how the Orioles were very close to demoting Markakis in May of 2006 before he righted the ship.

Mountcastle hasn't looked totally lost at the plate, he has hit a few to the warning track that could be homers when the weather heats up. He had an ugly swing at a pitch way out of the zone before his single last night. And his 27/4 K/BB ratio speaks for itself.

Another reason to send him down would be to get more reps in the corner outfield. His flame out there was pretty spectacular, it would be nice if he could do that where the spotlight isn't quite as bright. Would rather not have to wait until next spring to get him in-game reps in the outfield.

I'm not sure what the solution is, hopefully he goes on a tear over the next couple weeks and we don't have to think about it.

I wonder how Mountcastle would mentally handle a demotion. If I recall, he didn't take super well to Buck's advice about his walk rate in the minors and probably already views his MLB career as being held back by the organization.

[MurphDogg]

6 minutes ago, Aristotelian said:

I wonder how Mountcastle would mentally handle a demotion. If I recall, he didn't take super well to Buck's advice about his walk rate in the minors and probably already views his MLB career as being held back by the organization.

Mullins really seemed to take it personally, but he worked his way back up.

I think Mountcastle knows the results aren't there and at a certain point it isn't the team sending you down, it is your lack of production. 

I really do think he could turn the corner without a demotion, but it might be for the best long term if he was playing the corner outfield every day. I don't see Mancini getting traded at the deadline, so he is a DH and backup first baseman at this point and nothing more than an emergency outfielder on this team.

He has the athleticism to where he ought to at least be able to outplay Stewart defensively, if not Santander, but he doesn't yet have the reps.

[bpilktree]

5 minutes ago, Aristotelian said:

I wonder how Mountcastle would mentally handle a demotion. If I recall, he didn't take super well to Buck's advice about his walk rate in the minors and probably already views his MLB career as being held back by the organization.

I am not sure he didn’t handle the demotion well the media portrayed that some but I think that was like usual more overblown.  No one likes getting sent down so you should always be bit upset and if you were not I would be little more worried.  Last year he improved on the walk rate a good bit.  This year it has come back down but I think that just him pressing and not seeing it well.  He seems to be in between pitches off speed and fastball.  He has been behind the fastball and ahead of breaking stuff,  He has hit a few to the track but those were still not squared up and more of the end which kept them from being homers.  Last night he took two fastballs right down the middle which he never has done which tells me he is thinking to much and not just reacting and using his bat speed to help him.   

[DrungoHazewood]

3 hours ago, Frobby said:

The comp I think of, which fits your profile pretty well, is Adam Jones without the defense.  

The bar just goes up so high with a defensively limited player.  When you throw in that he's going to have to hit .300 to have a good OBP we're looking at a guy who'll likely be a 2-4 win player if things break his way.  Jones, as a pretty good CFer with an .800 OPS never had a five-win season. 

But, a 2, 3 win guy at pre-arb or even arb 1 or 2 rates is valuable.  Just not the kind of guy you sign into his 30s at free agent rates.