O's offense, one of the best in baseball

[CaptDbog]

44 minutes ago, e16bball said:

In fairness to the original comment, he has a .647 OPS in the games other than the huge 9-RBI night. Good for about an 82 OPS+. I’m not sure what constitutes “pretty bad” for a 1B, but that can’t be far off. 

We can talk about the EV and the xWOBA and the bad luck and all the rest until we’re blue in the face. All still totally relevant in projecting Mountcastle going forward. But, just like last year, when we’re talking about actual production — it’s just not really there, outside of that one massive night. Which is what the original commenter said. 

Well yeah, if you take away his best game of the year his numbers would be worse.  The game counts and he has good underlying stats.  Every game counts, cherry picking to prove a point, doesn't prove the point. 

[Frobby]

1 hour ago, spleen1015 said:

Maybe someone else remembers this, but I thought I heard him say in an interview that he's not up there to walk. He wants to hit. I thought it was the post game interview after the 9 RBI game, but I watched it yesterday and he didn't say it. My mind tells me he said it, because I thought it was interesting at the time, but I can't find it now.

I think the broadcasters reported that he made a remark along those lines, during one of his at bats.  It may have been a day or two after the 9 RBI game.  He mentioned that he’d hit an RBI single on a pitch that was probably below the strike zone and wouldn’t have knocked in the run if he hadn’t been aggressive.  In my opinion, that kind of thinking leads to making a lot of unnecessary outs in the quest to occasionally knock in a run. But on the play in question, it really wasn’t a terrible pitch to hit, middle of the plate and just a couple of inches low.  

[Moose Milligan]

3 hours ago, spleen1015 said:

Maybe someone else remembers this, but I thought I heard him say in an interview that he's not up there to walk. He wants to hit. I thought it was the post game interview after the 9 RBI game, but I watched it yesterday and he didn't say it. My mind tells me he said it, because I thought it was interesting at the time, but I can't find it now.

That's fine.  But if he wants to hit, he should probably understand that his best chances to do so are at pitches in the zone.  And either he really thinks he can hit a low and outside slider or just has a terrible time picking up the spin.

It's like when Adam Jones would have some stretches where you could tell he'd lay off a slider and you just knew he'd had a meeting with the hitting coach and even though he was drooling all over it, he wouldn't pull the trigger and swing.  But it was REALLY REALLY hard for him to not swing.  And then after not long he'd go back to flailing away at them like he always did.  To @Hank Scorpio's point, if Jones could have identified a slider, I think he'd have been unstoppable.  And I think guys like Jones and Mountcastle get a hit off a slider every so often and in their minds that justified the 50 other times where they whiffed on it.  

It's not hyperbole when I say that I think Mountcastle could be an elite hitter, perhaps an all time great if he were more selective.  Most great hitters walk, it's that simple...unless you're like Tony Gwynn, Kirby Puckett or Ichiro that has no problem hitting .300 year in, year out and don't need to walk.  Either he doesn't believe that or understands it and ignores it.  

[Hank Scorpio]

When is the last time you saw Mountcastle slap a slider into right field when he was down in the count?

[Can_of_corn]

[RZNJ]

I'll say this for Mountcastle.   He's had very few AB's where he just starts swinging at everything.   I remember an AB from earlier in the year when he was down 0-2 or 1-2 and he started fouling off pitches and it was like he determined before the pitch was even thrown that he was swinging.   There was a pitch that might have hit him if he hadn't fouled it off.    Now, he had one game where he struck out about 4 times and continued to go for the low and away slider but again not too many of those.    He's been hitting a lot of balls to RF and CF and I'd say he barrels the ball as much as anyone on the team.   I've lost patience with him before but I like what I see so far this year.

[btdart20]

25 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

Awesome graph and so accurate!

[Just Regular]

Fun to be hanging in Tier 2 so far when you are more or less purposely giving 2/9ths of your PA to Terrin Vavra and Adam Frazier instead of whoever you like best from the Infield Shelf and the Outfield Shelf.

Adley and Mateo are over their skis, right?   

[Can_of_corn]

44 minutes ago, btdart20 said:

Awesome graph and so accurate!

Not my work, found it on Reddit.

[AnythingO's]

29 minutes ago, Just Regular said:

Fun to be hanging in Tier 2 so far when you are more or less purposely giving 2/9ths of your PA to Terrin Vavra and Adam Frazier instead of whoever you like best from the Infield Shelf and the Outfield Shelf. Adley and Mateo are over their skis, right?   

This may not be the right place but I have never started a thread so here I go. 

PLAY THE KIDS , those that came up thru the ranks and had the chance to build bonds. I was working and only casually following GRod's recent first IP on Gametracker, I remember thinking about Stowers comment, that after GRod gets knocked around he just bears down and locks in. Henderson, Mateo, Rutschman all play roles in clawing back, then winning the game. These guys have each others back and the mental aspect is real. Get Stowers up here, he is at least as good in RF as Santander and Vavra and he is dangerous. Drop O'Hearn. Stowers splits RF-DH with Santander to keep AS bat in lineup. Vavra backs up 2b, 3B, DH. Bring up Hall to be RP like last year, the BP needs a live arm, drop Gillaspie. After ASB, fish or cut bait (Santander/Stowers, Hall/Cano/Tate/Givens, Hays/Cowser, Vavra/Norby/Westberg). Let the dogs out!

[Frobby]

Here are the pitching staffs we’ve faced so far, followed by their average runs allowed per game against the league and against the Orioles:

BOS 5.24, 7.67

TEX 4.00, 3.67

NYY 3.06, 3.67

OAK 7.94, 7.25

CWS 6.06, 6.67

Overall, we are 7.4 runs above the average performance against those teams to date.  Not bad.  

[Bahama O's Fan]

The main thing contributing to our success, I believe, is that we don't have the black hole of 7-8-9 that we had last year of Odor, Chirinos and Mateo. That was basically 3 free outs given to the opposition. 

[sportsfan8703]

3-1 in our last 4. Also, 8-32 with RISP. The game we lost we were 1-14. There’s still room for improvement with this offense. 

[Ripken]

Pretty bad this week.

[foxfield]

2 minutes ago, Ripken said:

Pretty bad this week.

It's not always going to be great.  And it is still incredibly early.  But cooling off on offense and still going 10-3 is perfectly acceptable.  The Orioles are now 14-7 and in second place in the AL East.  The AL East is playing a combined .642 baseball (70-39 overall).  That is with Boston's game today not done.

One mark of good teams, is finding ways to win.  The Orioles are doing that early.  Another is to rack up wins against inferior teams.  The Orioles check that box so far as well...the game in Boston that shall not be named being an obvious exception.

Orioles complete a sweep today and even garner a win on Sunday.  I am pretty pleased with an awful lot so far.  

And back to your original point, yes, the Orioles can do better.  And will need to if they are to keep this pace.  

If 50 games is the first real marker to see where we are, we will be halfway to that point next week.  3 home games against Boston, then on the road for 4 @ Detroit and 3 @ Kansas City.  After that, the test goes up a notch with games @ Atlanta,  Then home games against Tampa, Pittsburgh, Angels.

There is work to be done for sure, but I am pretty happy with where we are today.