Jay Jaffe Dissects Rutschman’s impact on the O’s

[DrungoHazewood]

10 hours ago, Frobby said:

Jay Jaffe has an excellent article up on Fangraphs discussing Adley Rutschman’s impact on the Orioles.  Here’s a bit from it:

“Consider that Robinson Chirinos and Anthony Bemboom combined to “hit” .125/.233/.211 for a 32 wRC+ through May 20; Rutschman has replaced that by hitting a robust .251/.358/.442 for a 131 wRC+. A quick back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that the change in catchers alone (which includes Chirinos’ continued work as a backup) was worth about 0.44 runs per game on the offensive side: Chirinos and Bemboom combined to produce all of five Weighted Runs Created in 40 games (0.13 per game) where Rutschman and Chirinos have produced 51 in 90 games (0.57 per game). That’ll turn your season around.

“Rutschman has been a boon on the defensive side as well. The framing-inclusive version of Defensive Runs Saved, which Baseball Reference publishesbut does not use in its WAR calculations, credits the new guy with being 16 runs above average, second in the majors behind only Jose Trevino; Chirinos, at 10 runs below average, is third-worst (Bemboom is right at average). By Baseball Prospectus’ measure of catcher defense, Rutschman (7.3 runs) ranks 12th in the majors, and Chirinos (-15.0) is second-to-last, with Bemboom (0.1) right at average. FanGraphs’ measure of framing runs echos those two estimates: Rutschman fourth overall at 6.3 runs, Bemboom at 0.1, and Chirinos second-to-last at -12.8. Again using a back-of-the-envelope estimate, and assuming Chirinos has been uniformly subpar across the season (we don’t have defensive splits), the upgrade in catcher defense has been worth another 0.17 runs per game. That takes us to a swing of about a 0.61 runs per game by my admittedly rough estimate — and we haven’t even begun to discuss all of those Orioles pitchers outperforming their projections. That’s a story for another day.”

===

There’s a lot more good stuff in the article.  
 

 

So, more-or-less, adding Rutschman over Chirinos/Bemboom was like taking a replacement-level outfielder and plugging in Mike Trout.

[Can_of_corn]

4 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

Lemme guess... more than enough for you to shake your fist at Elias and scream "service time manipulation!!!!"?

He was certainly down longer than he needed to be to rehab.  If it had been say Mullins who was injured he wouldn't have had that "spring training" worth of at bats in Norfolk.

That's enough for me to question why.

Elias did have motive to keep him down.

[Frobby]

16 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

He was certainly down longer than he needed to be to rehab.  If it had been say Mullins who was injured he wouldn't have had that "spring training" worth of at bats in Norfolk.

That's enough for me to question why.

Elias did have motive to keep him down.

So they thought that a rookie who had never played in the majors and missed spring training with an injury needed more time to get ready than a veteran who had spent a couple of years in the majors?   Shocking!

[Can_of_corn]

7 minutes ago, Frobby said:

So they thought that a rookie who had never played in the majors and missed spring training with an injury needed more time to get ready than a veteran who had spent a couple of years in the majors?   Shocking!

Are you denying he had motive to keep him down?

[Hallas]

28 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

Are you denying he had motive to keep him down?

They had performance and experience-based reasons to keep him down, and they had service-time manipulation reasons to keep him down.  He wasn't down really much longer than he needed to be for either reason.  I think that saying that they kept him down for service-time reasons, while technically not wrong, is a bit disingenuous in the presence of other compelling reasons.  You could be right that their desire to get him a spring training's worth of at bats was 100% motivated by service time, but that's not really something that's knowable without being a psychic.

[Can_of_corn]

2 minutes ago, Hallas said:

They had performance and experience-based reasons to keep him down, and they had service-time manipulation reasons to keep him down.  He wasn't down really much longer than he needed to be for either reason.  I think that saying that they kept him down for service-time reasons, while technically not wrong, is a bit disingenuous in the presence of other compelling reasons.  You could be right that their desire to get him a spring training's worth of at bats was 100% motivated by service time, but that's not really something that's knowable without being a psychic.

Did I say it?

I say he had motive.

It's possible that Adley wasn't 100% physically when he started playing in Norfolk.  His throwing didn't look sharp when he was eventually promoted.

 

 

[Frobby]

2 hours ago, Can_of_corn said:

Are you denying he had motive to keep him down?

I very much doubt the timing of his debut was related to anything other than when they thought he had enough reps to be ready.   They didn’t wait long enough to be likely to avoid Super 2, or to ensure he wouldn’t get serious ROY consideration.  

[Hallas]

2 hours ago, Can_of_corn said:

Did I say it?

I say he had motive.

It's possible that Adley wasn't 100% physically when he started playing in Norfolk.  His throwing didn't look sharp when he was eventually promoted.

 

 

I mean, you wouldn't have kept mentioning the motive for keeping him down for extended rehab over the past month, if you didn't sincerely believe that the O's intentions were aligned with that motive...

[DrungoHazewood]

12 hours ago, Can_of_corn said:

Are you denying he had motive to keep him down?

Nah, you're right.  You've always been right. The evil seeps through this organization like the black oil in the X Files. It will never be cleansed, no matter what.

That's the final straw, I'm a Rockies fan now.  See ya!