Anthony Santander 2023

[LTO's]

2 hours ago, Frobby said:

Some people.  Everyone has their players they rate too high or too low.  Mountcastle has always been a lightning rod for that.  (By the way, he has a significantly higher career OPS+ than Santander too.  I didn’t list him above because his peak is lower unless you include 2020.)

By your metric of significance, Santander has had a significantly higher wRC+ than Mountcastle for the past two years. In fact AS has been top 40 in all of baseball over the past two years. I find this idea that Santander is being "overrated" kinda laughable. The people saying that have been trying to trade him for years now. The fact is, it's highly unlikely anyone in the Os system could've come close to matching the offensive production from Santander this year. 

[Baltimorecuse]

A lot of people didn't understand my reference to Cowser fielding like Hector Lopez.  A couple of clicks and I found this reference in his bio.  

Baseball writer and Kansas City Athletics fan Bill James wrote that López was as bad a defensive player as you would ever want to see.[14] The authors of The Great American Baseball Card Flipping, Trading and Bubble Gum Book declared López "the all-time worst fielding major league ballplayer".[

They hadn't seen Cowser when that was written.  

Carry on

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Héctor_López

Edited August 30, 2023 by Baltimorecuse

[Sports Guy]

1 minute ago, Baltimorecuse said:

A lot of people didn't understand my reference to Cowser fielding like Hector Lopez.  A couple of clicks and I found this reference in his bio.  

Baseball writer and Kansas City Athletics fan Bill James wrote that López was as bad a defensive player as you would ever want to see.[14] The authors of The Great American Baseball Card Flipping, Trading and Bubble Gum Book declared López "the all-time worst fielding major league ballplayer".[

They hadn't seen Cowser when that was written.  

Carry on

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Héctor_López

I think you are giving yourself too much credit.

[Hallas]

2 hours ago, spleen1015 said:

I was a teenager when Hoiles was around and I wasn't too much into stats back then, but I can't believe Hoiles was that good.

 

Santander might be our best power bat right now but that doesn't mean he has to stay that way if we keep him. The team still needs players like him to have a complete roster. I think he needs to stick around long enough to see what we get from the prospects, another year or 2 at least.

Hoiles' 92 season always sticks out in my mind because commentators kind of made a big deal about how he somehow managed only 40 RBIs that year despite driving himself in 20 times and OPSing .890.  Obviously in 1992 OPS wasn't mainstream and people still cared about RBIs, so people assumed he was really unclutch (he was, a bit, but he also didn't get many opportunities with runners on.)

[Baltimorecuse]

2 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

I think you are giving yourself too much credit.

Coming from the "Master of a Small Universe" that's really rich.  

[Hallas]

1 hour ago, LTO's said:

By your metric of significance, Santander has had a significantly higher wRC+ than Mountcastle for the past two years. In fact AS has been top 40 in all of baseball over the past two years. I find this idea that Santander is being "overrated" kinda laughable. The people saying that have been trying to trade him for years now. The fact is, it's highly unlikely anyone in the Os system could've come close to matching the offensive production from Santander this year. 

I think it's reasonable to wonder if Kjerstad, Mayo, or Cowser can replace his production going forward, even if this year we couldn't have replaced his production.  He only has 1 year of team control left, and our window to compete with Adley, Gunnar, etc. is much longer than that.

 

We have to trade someone this offseason.  There's a pretty strong argument for trading the guys with less team control even if they're still effective.  (Hays comes to mind here for me.)

Edited August 30, 2023 by Hallas

[Frobby]

1 hour ago, baltimoriole said:

This board makes me laugh. Santander has been blistering hot lately. At times he's carried the team. He's consistent good, although not great. He's been a heart of the order batter all year on the best team in the AL. Seems like a huge culture guy, team leader, in his prime, yadda yadda. The only comments posters have about him is he's overrated, not that good, should be traded for a kyle stower type prospect. Cool. 

I don’t see a lot of comments saying those things.  He’s a valuable member of this team.  I think most people think that.  

[Sports Guy]

3 minutes ago, Hallas said:

I think it's reasonable to wonder if Kjerstad, Mayo, or Cowser can replace his production going forward, even if this year we couldn't have replaced his production.  He only has 1 year of team control left, and our window to compete with Adley, Gunnar, etc. is much longer than that.

 

We have to trade someone this offseason.  There's a pretty strong argument for trading the guys with less team control even if they're still effective.  (Hays comes to mind here for me.)

AS gets a lot of credit for becoming a lot more durable the last 2 years. This was an issue for him prior to 2022 and because he has been healthier and actually available, he had been worth a combined 5 fWAR between 2022 and so far this year.  He is showing a lot of power.

That said, he’s 29 in about 7 weeks. He’s going to start to make 8 figures and the defense and baserunning aren’t huge pluses and are likely more minuses at this point.  The BB rate is ok but nothing great and the BA is similar..totaled up and the OBP is meh although it is better than it used to be and that’s a good sign.

All in told, he’s overrated by some because there are fans out there (whether it’s on here or elsewhere) that act like if we lose him we can’t replace him.

Many teams over the years have lost far better players than Santander and turned out just fine the following year. With our system being what it is and with Elias being someone that has proven he can find players, I’m pretty sure we can make up 2.5ish WAR and field a team that can still contend in 2024.

And I’m not saying you have to trade him but we do have some players, both prospects and vets, that are going to have to be dealt sometime soon and he is in that group of guys who could go.

 

[Just Regular]

24 minutes ago, Hallas said:

Hoiles' 92 season always sticks out in my mind because commentators kind of made a big deal about how he somehow managed only 40 RBIs that year despite driving himself in 20 times and OPSing .890.  Obviously in 1992 OPS wasn't mainstream and people still cared about RBIs, so people assumed he was really unclutch (he was, a bit, but he also didn't get many opportunities with runners on.)

For me its 93.    One year later, the state of communications technology having been what it was shortly before my college equipped me with something called "an email account", I had to use a telephone.     After Hoiles' 1000 OPS 1993 he was a guest on the AM radio Orioles talk show and I remember calling in, getting on air and the substance of my (non) question was something like, "Did you realize you just had a 1000 ops as a catcher?    You are awesome, my man".

He got MVP-16, but B-Ref sees the year 6th in WAR tied with Randy Johnson.

[G54377]

48 minutes ago, Hallas said:

Hoiles' 92 season always sticks out in my mind because commentators kind of made a big deal about how he somehow managed only 40 RBIs that year despite driving himself in 20 times and OPSing .890.  Obviously in 1992 OPS wasn't mainstream and people still cared about RBIs, so people assumed he was really unclutch (he was, a bit, but he also didn't get many opportunities with runners on.)

I'm always enamored when someone has less than twice the amount of RBIs as their HRs. Especially when someone hits a lot. Like Schwarber had 30 HR and 59 RBI in 2017. It's just a strange thing to read in someone's stats. 

[Frobby]

2 hours ago, LTO's said:

I find this idea that Santander is being "overrated" kinda laughable. 

So you don’t think saying he’s our best hitter since Eddie Murray is overrating him?  LOL.

[Hallas]

1 hour ago, G54377 said:

I'm always enamored when someone has less than twice the amount of RBIs as their HRs. Especially when someone hits a lot. Like Schwarber had 30 HR and 59 RBI in 2017. It's just a strange thing to read in someone's stats. 

 

Schwarber hit leadoff sometimes, so that made some sense.  Hoiles batted between 5th and 8th.   (Why he batted 8th, who knows.)

 

This is super tangential to the topic but Fangraphs published an article recently about how TTO guys like Schwarber weren't the worst to bat leadoff, because there's no difference between a single and a walk when the bases are empty, and they walk a lot more than they hit bases-empty HRs.  This was in the context of putting Jorge Soler leadoff and Arraez 2nd even though Arraez a slap hitting OBP guy.  You get more value out of Arraez's singles if runners are on base.

[Tony-OH]

19 hours ago, Baltimorecuse said:

I remember the era well.  Hector was notorious.  There was a famous picture in SI, it may have been the cover, showing Hector holding his glove on his head because he'd lost the ball in the sun.  The caption was "Oh Hector, poor Hector."  

You guys are perfectly entitled to your opinion on Cowser.  I think you're wrong.  I don't have that opinion about any other O's player. I think you're in for a big disappointment unless you are happy with McKenna's slash line.  I didn't understand Frazier because he didn't fit the O's long term goals.  

I'd be shocked if Cowser turns into a McKenna at the major league level. Even while he was terrible at the major league level, he has a well above average walk rate and his hard hit percentage of 42.5% is well over the MLB average of 36.2%. His arm strength is at 92 percentile and he has above average speed. 

Defensively, this play, which statcast said should be caught 85% of the time hurt his OAA or he probably would have been a 0 OAA guy. When I look at his jump components his reaction time of -1.2 ft/sec is what stands out and a lot of that could be him adjusting to seeing balls out of the upper decks. I will bet those numbers will improve. He did make this nice 3-star catch.

Now, I have no idea whether you are going off gut feel or maybe just your own eye test from watching baseball for so long (which is fine), but I'd be willing to bet Cowser is going to end up a much better major league player than McKenna. 

Despite his struggles, he put up a .302 XWOBA (.315 MLB avg). Ryan McKenna is a career .274 XWOBA guy including a .277 this year. Cowser under perfomed his XWOBA by .080 points while McKenna has exceeded his XWOBA by .031 points making Cowser very unlucky and McKenna somewhat lucky this year. 

I'm going to double all of this in Cowser's post since this is Santander's.

[Baltimorecuse]

2 hours ago, Tony-OH said:

I'd be shocked if Cowser turns into a McKenna at the major league level. Even while he was terrible at the major league level, he has a well above average walk rate and his hard hit percentage of 42.5% is well over the MLB average of 36.2%. His arm strength is at 92 percentile and he has above average speed. 

Defensively, this play, which statcast said should be caught 85% of the time hurt his OAA or he probably would have been a 0 OAA guy. When I look at his jump components his reaction time of -1.2 ft/sec is what stands out and a lot of that could be him adjusting to seeing balls out of the upper decks. I will bet those numbers will improve. He did make this nice 3-star catch.

Now, I have no idea whether you are going off gut feel or maybe just your own eye test from watching baseball for so long (which is fine), but I'd be willing to bet Cowser is going to end up a much better major league player than McKenna. 

Despite his struggles, he put up a .302 XWOBA (.315 MLB avg). Ryan McKenna is a career .274 XWOBA guy including a .277 this year. Cowser under perfomed his XWOBA by .080 points while McKenna has exceeded his XWOBA by .031 points making Cowser very unlucky and McKenna somewhat lucky this year. 

I'm going to double all of this in Cowser's post since this is Santander's.

Some one flashed a lot of stats at me proving Santander couldn't possibly drive in a 100 which I predicted at the All Star break.  I watched Moneyball a half dozen times.  Movies aren't real.  

[Hallas]

1 hour ago, Baltimorecuse said:

Some one flashed a lot of stats at me proving Santander couldn't possibly drive in a 100 which I predicted at the All Star break.  I watched Moneyball a half dozen times.  Movies aren't real.  

You're really going to imply that Tony of all people is fixating on stats?  He probably does more in-person scouting of Orioles prospects and players than anyone not affiliated with a baseball club.