Mountcastle is heating up (August edition)

[Ridgway22]

Alexa!

Tell the O's Hangout to stop being silly!

 

 

[Pickles]

12 hours ago, Frobby said:

 

18 starts, 20 games.   I’m personally of the opinion that he’d improve if given more reps out there.   There simply wasn’t a good reason to do it with Hays and Santander manning the corners most days.   

I'd agree he would improve; it would be difficult to be worse.

I also agree that there's no good reason to do it, because that list goes a lot longer if you extend it to guys I would rather have in LF than Mountcastle in 2022 or 2023.  He, even with improvement, would always be a bad LF- at best.

You can win a lot of different ways, of course, but winning with the worst LFer in baseball, who is a good but not great offensive player, makes it more difficult.

[BohKnowsBmore]

18 hours ago, Pickles said:

I'd agree he would improve; it would be difficult to be worse.

I also agree that there's no good reason to do it, because that list goes a lot longer if you extend it to guys I would rather have in LF than Mountcastle in 2022 or 2023.  He, even with improvement, would always be a bad LF- at best.

You can win a lot of different ways, of course, but winning with the worst LFer in baseball, who is a good but not great offensive player, makes it more difficult.

I'm not convinced he's the worst LFer in baseball. He has decent enough range, I think his problem was reads. That matters because he's not Trumbo out there where it is a physical issue. I would add that his true offensive talent level is probably better than his season line indicates due to a really slow start (we will have to see how he finishes, though).

[Frobby]

1 hour ago, BohKnowsBmore said:

I'm not convinced he's the worst LFer in baseball. He has decent enough range, I think his problem was reads. That matters because he's not Trumbo out there where it is a physical issue. I would add that his true offensive talent level is probably better than his season line indicates due to a really slow start (we will have to see how he finishes, though).

I don’t expect rookies to realize their full offensive potential in their first full season.  Sometimes they do, but not often.  I expect Mountcastle to become a better hitter (and fielder) over time.   Hays too (hitting).    

[NCRaven]

Ryan Mountcastle will be a beast.

[Bahama O's Fan]

Did he get injured?

[Can_of_corn]

2 minutes ago, Bahama O's Fan said:

Did he get injured?

We don't know.  Blow to the head and he was pulled due to the concussion protocol.

Hopefully it's nothing.

[murph]

5 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

We don't know.  Blow to the head and he was pulled due to the concussion protocol.

Hopefully it's nothing.

HBP?  Or collided with someone?

[Pickles]

6 hours ago, BohKnowsBmore said:

I'm not convinced he's the worst LFer in baseball. He has decent enough range, I think his problem was reads. That matters because he's not Trumbo out there where it is a physical issue. I would add that his true offensive talent level is probably better than his season line indicates due to a really slow start (we will have to see how he finishes, though).

He has a weak arm.  He's fast for a big guy, but he's not fast, and he ain't getting faster.  He can't read the ball in the air.  A problem which manifested itself at firstbase against the Yankees this week.  He's just always- even granting he could improve- a bad LFer.  I don't want bad defenders.  Again, you can win a lot of ways; a good way though is to avoid playing bad defenders.

He'll hit.  He'll hit better than he has this year.  For reasons stated above, I don't think he'll ever be a great hitter.

[glenn__davis]

8 hours ago, murph said:

HBP?  Or collided with someone?

Was stealing 2nd and got tagged hard right on the head. 

[Frobby]

Despite the concussion interruption, Mountcastle is now on a ten-game hitting streak that has taken his OPS up to .794.  That’s his high water mark for the season so far.  His resurgence is one of the few bright spots for this team.   

[OriolesMagic83]

Could Mountcastle finish top 3 in ROY?  I know Azozarena is probably ahead of him and there's some guy in Texas who is having a good year.  Haven't really been following MLB much as a whole this year.  Hard enough to even follow the Os with how bad they have been.

[NCRaven]

April and July hurt his ROY argument.

[MurphDogg]

1 hour ago, OriolesMagic83 said:

Could Mountcastle finish top 3 in ROY?  I know Azozarena is probably ahead of him and there's some guy in Texas who is having a good year.  Haven't really been following MLB much as a whole this year.  Hard enough to even follow the Os with how bad they have been.

Nah, he is pretty far back.

Behind Adolis Garcia, Luis Garcia, Casey Mize, Arozarena, Eric Haase, among others.

[brvn52]

Zooming out, Mountcastle has now played in 138 career games.

 

Over 547 PA (500 AB's), he has a career line of .282/.329/.486 (.815 OPS) with 25 homers, 35 BB's, and 141 K's. 1.4 bWAR

 

Starts by position: 1B - 55, LF - 41, DH - 38

 

Overall, very happy with that for his roughly first season's worth of work. Plenty of room to grow, but we should be thrilled if this is roughly his floor.