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The Westburg and Cowser dilemma


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1 hour ago, Sports Guy said:

You won’t know this until next year.

Actually, we won’t know the cutoff for 2023 until after the 2025 season is complete.  But it’s never been less than 2 years, 115 days, and we are already below that.  Super 2 should not be any factor at this point. 

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People really want their to be some sort of conspiracy for Cowser and Westburg not being up. Honestly if Cowser hadn't been injured when Mullins went down, he probably comes up and the Orioles don't sign Hicks. But, the Orioles don't seem to want to recall prospects to be the 25th-26th man (the Lester role), and other then that, the team is 18 games above .500, O'Hearn is hitting, Frazier is hitting, Urias is hitting, Hicks is playing well. Why mess with something that's working? and bench guys that are playing well? 

I get that we don't think that some of those guys will keep that up, and we want to see the prospects we keep hearing about, and they're killing it at Triple-A...but the major league team goal is to win, and it's currently winning. You don't bench guys doing well. 

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Just now, Sports Guy said:

You aren’t completely taking anyone out..you are just taking away at bats from those who should have them taken away.  

Well by definition you are taking 2 of your field players off of the roster, and I don't think the Orioles are calling up Westburg and Cowser at this point in the season unless they plan to play them most days (now in August they seem to be more willing to do that). BTW Frazier has a .743 OPS against RHP, now he probably shouldn't be playing against LHP

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Really we should call Westburg up to replace the 3rd C on 6/15 because we're facing a LH SP.  However, I think we the off days, and we're only facing one LH SP in the Cubs series, I could see us playing it extra safe with the Super Two deadline and calling up Westburg on 6/22 for the home series versus the Mariners. 

Mountcastle needs some time off to get his vertigo straightened out then we should start him out in the FCL on a slow rehab. 

Cowser is a different story.  He needs to prove he's back 100% healthy and hitting.  Then I see him coming up and taking Mckenna's positon, with Santander moving into a 1B/DH role more.   

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9 minutes ago, seak05 said:

Well by definition you are taking 2 of your field players off of the roster, and I don't think the Orioles are calling up Westburg and Cowser at this point in the season unless they plan to play them most days (now in August they seem to be more willing to do that). BTW Frazier has a .743 OPS against RHP, now he probably shouldn't be playing against LHP

They can easily play them 4-5 days a week and taking off 2 players off the current roster is pretty easy.

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10 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

They can easily play them 4-5 days a week and taking off 2 players off the current roster is pretty easy.

Westburg should be playing 2B over Frazier versus LHP.  We could trot out an all RH lineup.  

vs LH SP

1. Hicks CF

2. Adley DH

3. Santa 1B

4. Hays LF

5. Westburg 2B

6. Urias  3B

7. McCann C

8. Mckenna RF

9. Mateo SS

Gunnar, Frazier, O'Hearn, Lester

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53 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

And Mateo

Trading Mateo is silly.  If he loses his job to one of the prospects fine but he is  absolutely perfect in a bench role on a team looking to contend.  Who wouldn't want to have his speed and defense available late in a game?

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3 minutes ago, RVAOsFan said:

Trading Mateo is silly.  If he loses his job to one of the prospects fine but he is  absolutely perfect in a bench role on a team looking to contend.  Who wouldn't want to have his speed and defense available late in a game?

Not trade..bench 

However, if he can be part of a package a starter, in trading him without hesitation.

 

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28 minutes ago, sportsfan8703 said:

Westburg should be playing 2B over Frazier versus LHP.  We could trot out an all RH lineup.  

vs LH SP

1. Hicks CF

2. Adley DH

3. Santa 1B

4. Hays LF

5. Westburg 2B

6. Urias  3B

7. McCann C

8. Mckenna RF

9. Mateo SS

Gunnar, Frazier, O'Hearn, Lester

I know that Gunnar struggled to hit LHP early on. But do you really want to make him a part time/platoon player, given what you have seen him do this past week? What I see is a budding player with star (maybe even) superstar potential figuring things out at this level. Is that something worth messing with?

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  • Posts

    • dWAR is just the run value for defense added with the defensive adjustment.  Corner OF spots have a -7.5 run adjustment, while CF has a +2.5 adjustment over 150 games.    Since Cowser played both CF and the corners they pro-rate his time at each to calculate his defensive adjustment. 
    • Just to be clear, though, fWAR also includes a substantial adjustment for position, including a negative one for Cowser.  For a clearer example on that front, as the chart posted higher on this page indicates, Carlos Santana had a +14 OAA — which is the source data that fWAR’s defensive component is based on. That 14 outs above average equates to 11-12 (they use different values on this for some reason) runs better than the average 1B.  So does Santana have a 12.0 defensive value, per fWAR? He does not. That’s because they adjust his defensive value downward to reflect that he’s playing a less difficult/valuable position. In this case, that adjustment comes out to -11.0 runs, as you can see here:   So despite apparently having a bona fide Gold Glove season, Santana’s Fielding Runs value (FanGraphs’ equivalent to dWAR) is barely above average, at 1.1 runs.    Any good WAR calculation is going to adjust for position. Being a good 1B just isn’t worth as much as being an average SS or catcher. Just as being a good LF isn’t worth as much as being an average CF. Every outfielder can play LF — only the best outfielders can play CF.  Where the nuance/context shows up here is with Cowser’s unique situation. Playing LF in OPACY, with all that ground to cover, is not the same as playing LF at Fenway or Yankee Stadium. Treating Cowser’s “position” as equivalent to Tyler O’Neill’s, for example, is not fair. The degree of difficulty is much, much higher at OPACY’s LF, and so the adjustment seems out of whack for him. That’s the one place where I’d say the bWAR value is “unfair” to Cowser.
    • Wait a second here, the reason he's -0.1 in bb-ref dwar is because they're using drs to track his defensive run value.  He's worth 6.6 runs in defense according to fangraphs, which includes adjustments for position, which would give him a fangraphs defensive war of +0.7.
    • A little funny to have provided descriptions of the hits (“weak” single; “500 foot” HR). FIP doesn’t care about any of that either, so it’s kind of an odd thing to add in an effort to make ERA look bad.  Come in, strike out the first hitter, then give up three 108 MPH rocket doubles off the wall. FIP thinks you were absolutely outstanding, and it’s a shame your pathetic defense and/or sheer bad luck let you down. Next time you’ll (probably) get the outcomes you deserve. They’re both flawed. So is xFIP. So is SIERA. So is RA/9. So is WPA. So is xERA. None of them are perfect measures of how a pitcher’s actual performance was, because there’s way too much context and too many variables for any one metric to really encompass.  But when I’m thinking about awards, for me at least, it ends up having to be about the actual outcomes. I don’t really care what a hitter’s xWOBA is when I’m thinking about MVP, and the same is true for pitchers. Did you get the outs? Did the runs score? That’s the “value” that translates to the scoreboard and, ultimately, to the standings. So I think the B-R side of it is more sensible for awards.  I definitely take into account the types of factors that you (and other pitching fWAR advocates) reference as flaws. So if a guy plays in front of a particular bad defense or had a particularly high percentage of inherited runners score, I’d absolutely adjust my take to incorporate that info. And I also 100% go to Fangraphs first when I’m trying to figure out which pitchers we should acquire (i.e., for forward looking purposes).  But I just can’t bring myself say that my Cy Young is just whichever guy had the best ratio of Ks to BBs to HRs over a threshold number of innings. As @Frobby said, it just distills out too much of what actually happened.
    • We were all a lot younger in 2005.  No one wanted to believe Canseco cause he’s a smarmy guy. Like I said, he was the only one telling the truth. It wasn’t a leap of faith to see McGwire up there and Sosa up there and think “yeah, those guys were juicing” but then suddenly look at Raffy and think he was completely innocent.  It’s a sad story. The guy should be in Hall of Fame yet 500 homers and 3,000 hits are gone like a fart in the wind cause his legacy is wagging his finger and thinking he couldn’t get caught.  Don’t fly too close to the sun.  
    • I think if we get the fun sprinkler loving Gunnar that was in the dugout yesterday, I don’t think we have to worry about him pressing. He seemed loose and feeling good with the other guys he was with, like Kremer.
    • I was a lot younger back then, but that betrayal hit really hard because he had been painting himself as literally holier than thou, and shook his finger to a congressional committee and then barely 2 weeks later failed the test.
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