Spenser Watkins gets the start tonight

[Legend_Of_Joey]

Watkins gets another start, which I think lines him up against the White Sox. He did really good holding a very formidable lineup in check through 5.

[HowAboutThat]

46 minutes ago, Frobby said:

Never heard that.  Read this;

https://www.orioleshangout.com/2019/11/15/orioles-20-prospect-bruce-zimmermann-lhp/

Well bummer…

Ummmm how does that compare with what we’ve seen from Kremer and Akin so far? Zimmermann is 4-4 this Season with a respectable ERA, and although I hope to see more of each one, he’s shown the best of the three so far.

[HowAboutThat]

58 minutes ago, Moose Milligan said:

No.  

Man, for someone who professes to pay close attention, you certainly seem to have a lot of questions.  

Anybody who pays attention to my comments would know that I don’t follow the minor leagues much. I try but there’s a whole Lotta names and a whole Lotta teams.

[eddie83]

The Orioles are due for some good news. Hope Watkins can be serviceable for awhile. The entire staff needs it. Happy for him   

[LA2]

9 hours ago, Tony-OH said:

Good for the young man to have a great night on his first start. The results were certainly as much as anyone could have hoped for. I don't think his stuff plays long term at the major league level, but he certainly earned himself another start. The good news on his 90 MPH fastball is that he gets pretty good spin in it for the velocity so plays up a bit. Still, he needs to have his command going for him for it all to work since there's not a lot of room for error.

 

Even with that amount of spin (if it was there last night), Watkins wasn't successful with his fastball in the first inning and ditched it for the rest of the game, replacing it mainly with a high-80s cutter. I wonder what the strategy will be his next start. Will he be encouraged to return to his fastball or not?

[LA2]

9 hours ago, Philip said:

Anybody who pays attention to my comments would know that I don’t follow the minor leagues much. I try but there’s a whole Lotta names and a whole Lotta teams.

And yet you are always clamoring for the team to call up as many players as possible.

[Moose Milligan]

10 hours ago, Philip said:

Anybody who pays attention to my comments would know that I don’t follow the minor leagues much. I try but there’s a whole Lotta names and a whole Lotta teams.

Yeah, except there's not.  All the information you really need to know is right here on this board.  

[Frobby]

10 hours ago, Philip said:

Well bummer…

Ummmm how does that compare with what we’ve seen from Kremer and Akin so far? Zimmermann is 4-4 this Season with a respectable ERA, and although I hope to see more of each one, he’s shown the best of the three so far.

Both Akin and Kremer have always been ranked above Zimmermann, both on OH and pretty much everywhere else.   I think this is a case where Zimmermann has met or slightly exceeded his expectations to date, whereas Akin and Kremer have been huge disappointments.   I doubt Zimmermann can do much better than he’s done already, and I just hope he can resume doing what he’s done so far when he comes off the IL.   Kremer is in free fall right now - he got bombed in AAA yesterday and was removed after 1.2 innings.   No idea what’s going on with him.   When I watched Akin the other night, it seemed he got to two strikes on many batters but couldn’t put anyone away.   Really discouraging stuff from those two.  The road to being a successful pitcher is a very difficult one and there’s all kinds of off-ramps along the way.   When a pitcher actually has some success, it feels like a small miracle.  

[Camden_yardbird]

1 hour ago, Frobby said:

Both Akin and Kremer have always been ranked above Zimmermann, both on OH and pretty much everywhere else.   I think this is a case where Zimmermann has met or slightly exceeded his expectations to date, whereas Akin and Kremer have been huge disappointments.   I doubt Zimmermann can do much better than he’s done already, and I just hope he can resume doing what he’s done so far when he comes off the IL.   Kremer is in free fall right now - he got bombed in AAA yesterday and was removed after 1.2 innings.   No idea what’s going on with him.   When I watched Akin the other night, it seemed he got to two strikes on many batters but couldn’t put anyone away.   Really discouraging stuff from those two.  The road to being a successful pitcher is a very difficult one and there’s all kinds of off-ramps along the way.   When a pitcher actually has some success, it feels like a small miracle.  

This is right.  Even looking at baseball savant Kremer and Akin have better stuff (underlying statistics) than Zimmerman in the pros this year, they should theoretically have a bigger margin for error.  It will be really interesting to see if they can make the adjustments and whether the organization, which over the last 20 years has largely been unable to squeeze serviceability out of middle of the road prospects (with few exceptions), can reverse course and start teaching their pitchers how to be successful at the MLB level while making adjustments.

[BohKnowsBmore]

12 hours ago, Philip said:

Anybody who pays attention to my comments would know that I don’t follow the minor leagues much. I try but there’s a whole Lotta names and a whole Lotta teams.

So others should closely follow your comments in order to know what you do or do not closely follow?

[Tony-OH]

4 hours ago, LA2 said:

Even with that amount of spin (if it was there last night), Watkins wasn't successful with his fastball in the first inning and ditched it for the rest of the game, replacing it mainly with a high-80s cutter. I wonder what the strategy will be his next start. Will he be encouraged to return to his fastball or not?

To the Baseball savant for the answer.. lol

https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/gamefeed?date=7/6/2021&gamePk=633413&chartType=pitch&legendType=pitchName&playerType=pitcher&inning=&count=&pitchHand=&batSide=&descFilter=&ptFilter=&resultFilter=&hf=pitchVelocity#633413

Seems to me he kept using his fastball through the outing though it did get harder than his other offerings. His cutter was the more effective pitch though you wonder of it was because of the 4-seam fastball setting it up? 

It will be interesting to see is tries to go cutter heavy over the fastball in the future of the fastball continues to get hit hard.

[HowAboutThat]

4 hours ago, LA2 said:

And yet you are always clamoring for the team to call up as many players as possible.

Yes you are exactly right, and Spencer Watkins is exactly the guy we should call up, and I’m glad we did.

As I said I don’t know the minor leagues very well, but as I also have said, let’s dump Harvey and others, and when people say, “for whom?” I replied, “with anybody”

And then I follow that with the comment that if they’re non-prospects, they deserve a day or two in the sun, and if they are prospects but not elite, didn’t bring them up and give them an audition, and Mr. Watkins definitely fits the bill.

[interloper]

4 hours ago, Frobby said:

Both Akin and Kremer have always been ranked above Zimmermann, both on OH and pretty much everywhere else.   I think this is a case where Zimmermann has met or slightly exceeded his expectations to date, whereas Akin and Kremer have been huge disappointments.   I doubt Zimmermann can do much better than he’s done already, and I just hope he can resume doing what he’s done so far when he comes off the IL.   Kremer is in free fall right now - he got bombed in AAA yesterday and was removed after 1.2 innings.   No idea what’s going on with him.   When I watched Akin the other night, it seemed he got to two strikes on many batters but couldn’t put anyone away.   Really discouraging stuff from those two.  The road to being a successful pitcher is a very difficult one and there’s all kinds of off-ramps along the way.   When a pitcher actually has some success, it feels like a small miracle.  

This is just a flippant comment not to be taken seriously, but sometimes it's like... is it??? Is it really that difficult?? When you're already that close and have so much experience pitching in the minor leagues? To even just toss 5 innings and allow a few runs at the big league level? 

Apparently it is, because we've been having this discussion about our pitching prospects for about 20 years on this board. It's maddening. 

Zimmermann is the perfect example of like, why can't everyone just do that? Be decently mediocre out there. We're not asking everyone to be Means. 

[Frobby]

14 minutes ago, interloper said:

This is just a flippant comment not to be taken seriously, but sometimes it's like... is it??? Is it really that difficult?? When you're already that close and have so much experience pitching in the minor leagues? To even just toss 5 innings and allow a few runs at the big league level? 

Apparently it is, because we've been having this discussion about our pitching prospects for about 20 years on this board. It's maddening. 

Zimmermann is the perfect example of like, why can't everyone just do that? Be decently mediocre out there. We're not asking everyone to be Means. 

Well, I know what you mean.   Clearly our track record with pitching prospects has been poor over the years.   Even some of the ones who ultimately had some success for us had multiple struggles before finally succeeding (Tillman, Britton).   Was hoping to see some smoother entries under the new regime, but so far, not so much.  

[OsFanSinceThe80s]

3 minutes ago, Frobby said:

Well, I know what you mean.   Clearly our track record with pitching prospects has been poor over the years.   Even some of the ones who ultimately had some success for us had multiple struggles before finally succeeding (Tillman, Britton).   Was hoping to see some smoother entries under the new regime, but so far, not so much.  

If Grayson Rodriguez and DL Hall have rough transitions to MLB, then I'll be more worried about pitching development. Akin is a player I had higher hopes for, but him struggling isn't unexpected. 

For me, it's going to be if the top pitching prospects washout that will be the cause for concern.