What grade do you give Hyde on his usage of pitchers so far this year?

[Can_of_corn]

1 minute ago, Moose Milligan said:

Yeah, but they're good tricks.  High powered offense brings out the casual fan.  

 

I hear other sports have success with actually marketing their players.

[Sports Guy]

50 minutes ago, Going Underground said:

You would think with the universal DH that hitting would be up slightly. Runs and homers are down but we shall see what happens when the weather gets warmer.

It appears that the hitters were effected more by the lockout.  Things will even out.

[Can_of_corn]

1 minute ago, Sports Guy said:

It appears that the hitters were effected more by the lockout.  Things will even out.

They will even out but the overall trend toward less offense has been pretty obvious if you take out the juiced ball.

[bpilktree]

Pitching has been much more dominant throughout the league this year.  It makes you wonder how many other teams were "cheating"  with letting the hitters know what pitch was coming.  I have a feeling it was everywhere but just like steroid error they brushed it under the rug but had to use a few guys/teams to pretend like they cared to save the  culture of the game.  

[oriolediehard]

I think Hyde is lucky.  I sure hope he don't use Laskins !!

[Aristotelian]

I can't isolate any specific decisions he has made other than perhaps Lopez as closer and Akin the bullpen. I assume those were also sanctioned by Elias. The new rules really prevent unusual matchup moves so everything Hyde has done has generally been by the book. He has done a good job of not leaving guys in too long. I would say N/A but can't argue with the results.

[Frobby]

16 minutes ago, bpilktree said:

Pitching has been much more dominant throughout the league this year.  It makes you wonder how many other teams were "cheating"  with letting the hitters know what pitch was coming.  I have a feeling it was everywhere but just like steroid error they brushed it under the rug but had to use a few guys/teams to pretend like they cared to save the  culture of the game.  

It seems to me that the pitchers always fare well in April.   That may be especially true this year with the short spring training and two extra players for the month (probably at least one extra pitcher and two for some teams).   If the numbers still look skewed in May I will think more of it.  

[bpilktree]

I am pretty sure he wont use Laskins in a game.   

[Aristotelian]

7 minutes ago, Frobby said:

It seems to me that the pitchers always fare well in April.   That may be especially true this year with the short spring training and two extra players for the month (probably at least one extra pitcher and two for some teams).   If the numbers still look skewed in May I will think more of it.  

That may be true but every other team should be benefitting from the "April effect". The O's are #5 in MLB with 2.57 ERA. I am not saying it will last but if there is a cause (including random luck) it has got to be more than the April effect.

[Frobby]

29 minutes ago, Aristotelian said:

That may be true but every other team should be benefitting from the "April effect". The O's are #5 in MLB with 2.57 ERA. I am not saying it will last but if there is a cause (including random luck) it has got to be more than the April effect.

I was responding to bpilktree’s comment, which had to do with leaguewide pitching being dominant this year, and possible reasons for that.   I wasn’t discussing reasons why the O’s have done well relative to the league.   

As to the O’s pitching, my feeling is the sample is too small to draw any conclusions.  They are off to a really good start, just like the hitters are off to a really terrible start.  I expect both trends to reverse at some point.   It does seem like the underlying metrics give us hope that the good pitching results are less fluky than the bad hitting results.   Time will tell the tale.  
 

[Il BuonO]

Hyde is a genius, WS here we come!

[yark14]

2 hours ago, Moose Milligan said:

Yeah, but they're good tricks.  High powered offense brings out the casual fan.  

 

Chicks dig the long ball...

 

[Morgan423]

3 hours ago, Moose Milligan said:

Yeah, MLB won't let this go on for long.  They'll release a batch of rabbit balls they've got stored somewhere, I suspect.

I'm surprised that they don't just default begin play with the rabbit balls in April, when it's actually an issue, and pull them back out of play once it warms up.

If they are trying to keep home runs balanced in the league, that would be the smart solution.  Then again, we are talking about MLB here.

[Moose Milligan]

3 minutes ago, Morgan423 said:

I'm surprised that they don't just default begin play with the rabbit balls in April, when it's actually an issue, and pull them back out of play once it warms up.

If they are trying to keep home runs balanced in the league, that would be the smart solution.  Then again, we are talking about MLB here.

 

True.  But also, I'm not sure what "balanced" home runs would mean to them.  It seems like there's always an onslaught of them...just too many homers.  Or in this particular case, not enough.  I'm not sure what the sweet spot is and I'm not sure if MLB can rig the game to hit that sweet spot if they knew it themselves.