Is Grayson Rodriguez our no. 1 prospect now?

[Moose Milligan]

1 hour ago, wildcard said:

So 52 at bats is all it takes for Adley to lose his #1 status?  Really?  He was hitting well for two months up to June 30th.  

I hope he gets promoted to Norfolk today along with Grayson.

The king of the small sample size whining about 52 at bats.  

[interloper]

Yes. Only one of them is dominating their level, and that's Grayson. 

[Moose Milligan]

Just now, interloper said:

Yes. Only one of them is dominating their level, and that's Grayson. 

His highness SG brings up a good point though...he's only throwing 70 or so pitches per start.  Need to see how he handles a bigger workload.

That said, G-Rod is a big, strong kid.  I don't believe it'll be hard for him to ramp up.  

[interloper]

2 minutes ago, Moose Milligan said:

His highness SG brings up a good point though...he's only throwing 70 or so pitches per start.  Need to see how he handles a bigger workload.

That said, G-Rod is a big, strong kid.  I don't believe it'll be hard for him to ramp up.  

True, but I don't think those bigger workloads are coming until 2022 with how paranoid everyone is about throwing a lot of innings after the 2020 short season/no season. Even in the big leagues we're managing innings of the younger guys this year. But yeah, hard to say exactly what we have with Grayson until next year probably when they take the reigns off a bit. 

That said, I look for top prospect guys to dominate at their level. Adley has been extremely consistent and solid, and I'm not against promoting him to AAA, but right now Grayson looks like the highest impact prospect in the system. 

[Frobby]

5 minutes ago, Moose Milligan said:

His highness SG brings up a good point though...he's only throwing 70 or so pitches per start.  Need to see how he handles a bigger workload.

That said, G-Rod is a big, strong kid.  I don't believe it'll be hard for him to ramp up.  

Having watched him strike out the side in the 5th inning yesterday, I doubt he would have had difficulty pitching another inning or two.  But, he will have to prove it.  It’s worth noting that in 2019 the O’s let him throw 100 pitches once and 90+ two other times, so it’s not like he’s never done it.   The O’s are being super-careful with their pitchers this summer.   

[Moose Milligan]

22 minutes ago, interloper said:

True, but I don't think those bigger workloads are coming until 2022 with how paranoid everyone is about throwing a lot of innings after the 2020 short season/no season. Even in the big leagues we're managing innings of the younger guys this year. But yeah, hard to say exactly what we have with Grayson until next year probably when they take the reigns off a bit. 

That said, I look for top prospect guys to dominate at their level. Adley has been extremely consistent and solid, and I'm not against promoting him to AAA, but right now Grayson looks like the highest impact prospect in the system. 

I don't think those bigger workloads are coming until 2023.  I think we'll see G-Rod in Baltimore next summer but on a limited pitch/innings count for sure.  We won't see him pitch a full workload in the majors until 2023, IMO.  

[Just Regular]

Are we taking Witt for either today?   With Wander graduating, who will stop them making a run at 1-2 in the offseason lists?   Just perusing MLB's today:

Grayson just got the better of Torkelson

Kelenic will graduate

Julio Rodriguez will be tough competition, along with Witt

Gore and Pearson are not shining.   I don't know how CJ Abrams year is going except that no one has been trolling about him the last few weeks, so guessing he may be settling down some

Skimming MLB's 10-18 ahead of their #19 Grayson, my off the cuff was mostly the Buck trademark "Seriously?"

https://www.mlb.com/prospects

Agree with Tony's take that if Grayson were at Vanderbilt he'd have been the #1 guy and the 1-1 so no Henry Davis or Jack Leiter ascent to these kind of heights right away.

 

[wildcard]

1 hour ago, Moose Milligan said:

The king of the small sample size whining about 52 at bats.  

Hey if its true for me it applies to everyone else also.

[glenn__davis]

3 minutes ago, OrioleDog said:

 

Gore and Pearson are not shining.   I don't know how CJ Abrams year is going except that no one has been trolling about him the last few weeks, so guessing he may be settling down some

 

Abrams is hurt, out for the season. 

[Tony-OH]

10 hours ago, NCRaven said:

With the possibility of a work stoppage next year, there’s no way in hell I’d put a top prospect on the 40 man roster and make him a member of the MLBPA before a new CBA is agreed to.  If the majors are out, I want Rutschman playing every day that he can next year.

Also, Rodriguez didn’t pitch a single inning in 2020.  Limiting his innings this year makes sense.  You don’t purposely break fragile assets like future #1 starters.

I didn't even think of that angle but your right. Though I can't imagine with baseball as fragile as it is that they won't come up with some agreement that will avoid a work stoppage.

[Tony-OH]

2 hours ago, Sports Guy said:

I can’t put Grayson ahead of Adley for one big reason, which is mostly out of his control.

He is only throwing 70ish pitches per start.  He is dominating in those pitches but what does he look like throwing 75-100 pitches?  We don’t know that.  I’m guessing he will be fine but without knowing that, I can’t elevate him about Rutschman.

He's thrown 83 pitches three times this year, including yesteday and I didn't see any drop off of stuff from him in the 6th inning when he was over 70. We also have 15 starts in 2019 where he threw over 70 pitches. Sure, we don't know whether he can consistently throw 100+ pitches while keeping his stuff yet, but he's built like a guy who can maintain his stuff and I haven't seen any changes in stuff after 70 pitches this year.

The Orioles are limiting all minor league prospects pitches this year, plus, we don't know how he will spin the major league ball yet so those are two things that are unknowns. Saying that, Rutschman has some unknowns as well. Can he hit consistent high velocity? Can he hit major league breaking stuff? 

Rodriguez is doing better against AA competition than Rutschman is and Rutschman is two years older. Since they would both have the same pedigree had Rodriguez gone to college, I'd actually go with Rodriguez right now. Let's remember, when Rutschman was 21, he didn't even put up good numbers against Low-A competition.

Either way, regardless, I think they are 1a and 1b and I'm glad they are both in the organization.

[Just Regular]

I can't say I care enough to dive in to learn the by-laws, etc (sort it out and play baseball for our entertainment, please!), but seeing the perspective of the Union angle influencing Rutschman's opportunity for the official Austin Hays, Ryan Mountcastle 129.5 or less to protect April 2022 Norfolk reps, it seems batpoo crazy that say at Thanksgiving, as the Union is deliberating on whatever proposals are going back and forth, maybe Mickey Jannis gets to vote and Adley Rutschman doesn't.    I wonder if the voting cohort is exactly the same as who does/doesn't get protected from the Rule 5 draft?

We'd be good on that front if he still got his 129, but then we used an option year in 2021 to make sure he'd be insulated from a lockout, wouldn't we?   Unless of course we need to make sure we conserve Adley Rutschman options for 2023, 2024, etc.

 

[Tony-OH]

1 hour ago, Frobby said:

The season is now 11 weeks old.   In how many of those weeks has Rutschman hit .300+ for the week?   Two.   He’s hit two homers in the last five weeks.

I don’t mean for it to sound like I’m really down on Adley.   But he is underperforming my expectations and Grayson is exceeding them.   It’s that simple.   The season is more than half over.   
 

You don't judge a player by any hot or cold streak but how the numbers all shake out. At the end of the day, Rutschman is doing fine, but certainly not dominating with his .269/.394/.476/.869 at 23 years old in AA. He's also thrown out 33% of his runners (fine but not dominant) and while he's a very good receiver (I think he'll be a very good framer if that matters by the time he's in the majors) his blocking is average, but he's not a wall back there.

Overall I like what Rutschman has done, but I was hoping for more from him offensively. Matt Wieters slashed .288/.340/.412/.753 at the major league level after slashing .305/.387/.504/.891 in AAA at 23 years old. Yes, Rutschman has a lost season (though he did have Alternate camp time) but if he had dominated AA like Wieters did, he's be in AAA right now instead of trading water in AA.

You also want to see players get better at a level. Over Rutschman's last 28 days, he's slashed .225/.319/.375/.694 with two home runs in 92 PAs. These stats hardly scream out "I'm ready for promotion". I've been purposely trying to watch every Rutschman and Stowers PAs lately and Rutschman swings through a lot of very hittable low 90s fastballs. Now maybe he's just not seeing the ball well right now, but I don't see pitchers afraid to challenge him in we're talking AA pitchers with 90-92 MPH fastballs.

When he was hot and seeing the ball well from mid-May to mid-June when he slashed .337/.437/.582/1.019 with seven of his 12 homers, he was barreling the ball up well and was locked in, but he's really struggled to find that consistency since. They seem to be getting him with high fastballs and then changeups away when batting lefty where's he's slashed just .241/.365/.425/.790 against righties this season. 

He has a tremendous eye which gets him in trouble sometimes when umpires call balls that are probably just off the plate strikes occasionally. I swear I've never seen a guy who seems to bat with two strikes in every count whether it's because he takes very hittable pitches, fouls them off or swings through them. He swing rate is probably pretty good overall because he rarely swings at pitches out of the zone or gets totally fooled, which is a good thing, but he does swing and miss or foul off more than I would like with very hittable pitches in the zone.

Basically I see a guy who is very much still learning at the plate.

[NCRaven]

28 minutes ago, Tony-OH said:

I didn't even think of that angle but your right. Though I can't imagine with baseball as fragile as it is that they won't come up with some agreement that will avoid a work stoppage.

I hope you're right on a new CBA.  The level of distrust between the two seems to be pretty big.

[Tony-OH]

20 minutes ago, NCRaven said:

I hope you're right on a new CBA.  The level of distrust between the two seems to be pretty big.

And the level of stupidity between MLB leadership and the union leadership certainly does leave room for something awful to happen.