Are the FA DH players better than the O's prospects?

[Aristotelian]

55 minutes ago, tabletop said:

The Orioles as a team last year were 20th in average, 22nd in OBP, and 20th in OPS. Those stats alone should tell you that there is a lot of room for improvement in the lineup.

Just to go based off the three that you mention:
Brantley - career .794 OPS
Abreu - career .860 OPS
Pederson - career .804 OPS

Orioles only had 3 players last season with an OPS over .750 and one of them was Gunnar Henderson who only played in 34 games.

Adding one or two of them to the mix would be a great addition and would allow the team to trade from their prospect pool and acquire better starting pitching. This is a team that was below average offensively last year and can use all the help it can get in the lineup. They should be signing 1 or 2 hitters as well as calling up prospects.

Going by OPS+ in a year that offense was down leaguewide, the O's had only two players under 100: Mateo and Odor. Odor will be gone.

For comparison, career OPS+: Brantley 117, Abreu 134, Pederson 116. If Stowers makes some incremental improvement he is probably in the conversation with Brantley. Abreu would definitely be an upgrade.

 

[Frobby]

21 minutes ago, wildcard said:

Mismanagement by the Manager of the Year? If that is true then every other manager was worse.

That’s silly.  Manager of the Year doesn’t mean Manager Who Was Perfect, or even Manager Who Was Best at Day to Day Lineup Construction.   

In any event, I’d rather be choosing between a young player and, say, Abreu than choosing between some young player and Odor.  
 

[wildcard]

23 minutes ago, Aristotelian said:

Going by OPS+ in a year that offense was down leaguewide, the O's had only two players under 100: Mateo and Odor. Odor will be gone.

For comparison, career OPS+: Brantley 117, Abreu 134, Pederson 116. If Stowers makes some incremental improvement he is probably in the conversation with Brantley. Abreu would definitely be an upgrade.

 

Because of age I would think that Brantley and Abreu are on the declining side of their career OPS+.

[wildcard]

16 minutes ago, Frobby said:

That’s silly.  Manager of the Year doesn’t mean Manager Who Was Perfect, or even Manager Who Was Best at Day to Day Lineup Construction.   

In any event, I’d rather be choosing between a young player and, say, Abreu than choosing between some young player and Odor.  
 

I don't think mismanagement is the right term for playing Hays and Mountcastle last year.   It was more of a lack of alternatives.

[Aristotelian]

2 minutes ago, wildcard said:

Because of age I would think that Brantley and Abreu are on the declining side of their career OPS+.

Well, last year all three hit their career average or better. Career numbers should be a fair expectation for a one year contract, maybe not beyond that. 

[OriolesMagic83]

3 hours ago, Aristotelian said:

I am not a fan of a DH only free agent. If you have a full time DH that just limits what you can do with the other positions to take advantage of matchups etc. We already have Adley for 1/3 of the DH AB's. I'd rather have versatile guys that can be mixed and matched depending on pitching matchup and whether Adley is catching.

We have a bunch of prospects who we need to evaluate both offensively and defensively. They probably aren't as good as a Jose Abreu but could be close at zero cost while also providing more defensive flexibility.

We also need to sign a good backup C. If that C can hit, you have a natural DH-C platoon with Adley. 

 

 

I agree, the O's need to add a hitter or two, but DH is not the spot.  Once Adley's DH at bats are accounted for, that's only 110-120 games left.  Then the O's will want to play a full time player occasionally in the DH spot to rest them, so say another 20 games.  I'm not interested in passing out a top free agent contract to a DH.  If the O's can get a DH for $5 mill or less, who mashes lefties, I will be in favor of signing him. 

[wildcard]

8 minutes ago, OriolesMagic83 said:

I agree, the O's need to add a hitter or two, but DH is not the spot.  Once Adley's DH at bats are accounted for, that's only 110-120 games left.  Then the O's will want to play a full time player occasionally in the DH spot to rest them, so say another 20 games.  I'm not interested in passing out a top free agent contract to a DH.  If the O's can get a DH for $5 mill or less, who mashes lefties, I will be in favor of signing him. 

So if you don't add at DH which positions do you upgrade?

[sevastras]

I think a lineup of:

Mullins-CF

Cowser-RF

Rutschman-C

Henderson-3B

Santander-DH

Westburg-1B

Hays-RF

Urias-2B

Mateo-SS

Is better than last years lineup. Odd man out is Mountcastle. 

[Yardball85]

My philosophy is simple.  Sign good bats because the team obviously needs better players to help them win.  If the bat DHs, you will find spots for the other players coming up during the season, whether through injuries, players struggling, matchups, etc.  But that should not preclude us from adding bats to help the team be better. 

[wildcard]

5 minutes ago, sevastras said:

I think a lineup of:

Mullins-CF

Cowser-RF

Rutschman-C

Henderson-3B

Santander-DH

Westburg-1B

Hays-RF

Urias-2B

Mateo-SS

Is better than last years lineup. Odd man out is Mountcastle. 

Do you think Cowser is major league ready?

[Just Regular]

Power rank how good are these ballplayers:

Jordan Lyles, Kyle Stowers, Austin Voth, Spenser Watkins, Jordan Westburg

If Elias has about $25mm to spend (just spitballing, though didn't exactly pluck from thin air as it is today's projected 2023 Opening Day payroll gap between 27th place TBR $70mm and 28th place BAL $45mm), I am hoping Acquisition1 is in the Eovaldi-Senga-Taillon range, and Acquistion2 at least around Kluber-Stripling range.     I don't think a pair of SP like that are passing $25mm by much if at all.

It is for me worse for the 2023 Orioles if Lyles and Watkins pitch for them than it is if Westburg and Stowers hit for them.   Westburg and Stowers fail, its Ortiz and Cowser.     Voth and Watkins fail, its....Zimmermann and Harvey?

Edited November 3, 2022 by Just Regular

[sevastras]

6 minutes ago, wildcard said:

Do you think Cowser is major league ready?

Probably not right out of the gate but by mid season, I would hope. I guess you could keep Mountcastle at first and Santander in RF and Westburg rotating infield and DH. Until the trade deadline. My point is, there isn’t any free agent available that I would want over our guys. 

[nvpacchi]

I was doing a bit of research today between barrels and homers, and I think that ties nicely into the reasoning that not just the Orioles but nearly all teams should be looking into Abreu this offseason.

The negatives - he just posted the highest GB rate of his career, the lowest max EV of his career, and the lowest barrel rate since 2018.  Yet, his barrel rate is still good for 63% in the league, and his max EV is still 90th percentile.  So while his numbers have gone down, they've merely gone down from elite to plus.

The positives- the sage is getting wiser with age.  This is Abreu's second consecutive season with a walk rate > 9% and he just posted the best K rate of his career at 16%.  That plays anywhere, and can be downright dangerous for a guy with power - especially one that has demonstrated the ability to elevate in the past.

 

 

How regarding the relationship between barrels and home runs.  A barrel doesn't necessarily mean you'll hit a HR, and not all HRs come from barrels.  In fact, when examining all players that had 250 PA, the median HR/Barrel ration was .538 - roughly one HR for every two barrels.

Jose Abreu this year - was 301st out of 318 names at .319, with Abreu's 47 barrels translating to only 15 homeruns!  In 2021 that ratio was .68 and in shortened 2020 it was .73.

Among players with at least 40 barrels, no one had a worse ratio.  If we just assume Abreu puts up the median ratio of .538 that's another 10 potential HRs he may have missed out on. Savant's xHR had him at 17.6 HRs - so there's a hard data point on savant suggesting that he was a bit unlucky, maybe not up to 10 HRs unlucky, but still trending in the same direction.

Which leads to the next point.... why did so few of his balls translate into HRs? Comiskey is a great place for righties to hit HRs, but the other 4 parks in his division are where right handed fly balls go to die, with Kauffman being worse than Camden this year even with the new wall.  That's 36 away games right there, that could be replaced with the friendlier confines of Rogers, Yankee Stadium, Fenway, and the Trop (although the Trop still isn't great).  Half of the home games at Camden is still an issue, so maybe he still underperforms on HR/Barrel ratio but not to the extreme measure he did last year.

Interestingly, even with the new wall in Camden, only one player that hit the PA requirement had a HR/Barrel ratio under 0.5 - Ryan Mountcastle (0.36)- probably unsurprising to most.  Righties Austin Hays, Jorge Mateo, and Ramon Urias did not suffer egregiously from the extreme LF wall in Camden.

 

So long story short, Abreu probably suffered a bit of bad luck on his barrels, and even if we expect him to rebound only to .5 as he's constricted by Camden, he should still be good for 23-27 HRs, with a newfound elite K rate and walk rate.  The skills may be diminishing a bit, but I think he's shown enough that he'll age more like Nelson Cruz rather than Chris Davis.  The problem is the O's probably will still be fighting too many teams for his services.  I wouldn't want to offer him 3 years, but I imagine one team ultimately does.  and to answer the question, yes I think Abreu is still a better option than the O's prospects, at least for one or two more years.

[Ohfan67]

11 minutes ago, Just Regular said:

Power rank how good are these ballplayers:

Jordan Lyles, Kyle Stowers, Austin Voth, Spenser Watkins, Jordan Westburg

If Elias has about $25mm to spend (just spitballing, though didn't exactly pluck from thin air as it is today's projected 2023 Opening Day payroll gap 27th place TBR $70mm and 28th place BAL $45mm), I am hoping Acquisition1 is in the Eovaldi-Senga-Taillon range, and Acquistion2 at least around Kluber-Stripling range.     I don't think a pair of SP like that are passing $25mm by much if at all.

It is for me worse for the 2023 Orioles if Lyles and Watkins pitch for them than it is if Westburg and Stowers hit for them.   Westburg and Stowers fail, its Ortiz and Cowser.     Lyles and Watkins fail, its....Zimmermann and Harvey?

If Elias only has 25 million to spend in free agency, then the Christmas stocking will not be stuffed with goodies. Two good starting pitchers and a hitter like Abreu could cost 50 million plus. Free agents are going to be very expensive. If Elias only has 25 million to spend, then he can maybe sign one pitcher during the "competitive" portion of FA and then Elias will have to bargain basement shop for an additional FA pitcher and maybe a hitter in the weeks right before spring training starts. I will be very disappointed if the Orioles payroll ends up being something like 27th in MLB. 

[tntoriole]

It is a bit unusual because the best FA bats are either not in our range, ie Judge, Ohtani

or at a position, shortstop, where we have a traffic jam already.. Turner, Correa, Boegarts

even 1b of Abreu or Rizzo or Mancini leads to well what do you do about Mountcastle

A Catcher/DH platoon might be ok for a Wilson Contreras 

or a very lower tier flier deal on say JD Martinez’s  health improving 

 

No, i think a bat may have to come via trade