O's lead the AL in fielding percentage (.989)

[wildcard]

4 hours ago, Aglets said:

We are essentially tied with Boston for 2nd best offense in the division too. 

We are scoring about 5 runs per game this year so far........compared to 4.16 per game in 2022.   That's a significant improvement.  (we had the 4th best offense in the division last year)

.84 runs per game is a significant increase.   I think you found the difference.   Thanks.

[deward]

1 hour ago, Sports Guy said:

Right..and we don’t have 102 of them.

Of course not, it's June 16th. What they do have is enough wins in the bank that they could go .500 the rest of the way and still end up at 90 wins, which was more than enough to secure a playoff spot last year. Based on the pace they've played at so far, they've put themselves in a strong position to end up in the post-season. That seems like it means something.

They could, of course, go all 2005 on us the rest of the way, but that doesn't seem too likely.

[deward]

This thread seems like the appropriate place to link this article, which has a fun breakdown of the O's nailing Whit Merrifield at the plate the other night.

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/five-things-i-liked-or-didnt-like-this-week-june-16/

[Hallas]

5 hours ago, Aristotelian said:

I have been consistently surprised at this since we were average last year and have essentially the same team. Was Odor worth that much at 2B?  Or is Gunnar that bad? I don't think so. 

Some other metrics have us better... RTot has us #7, Fielding Bible DRS #19, BIS-DRS #17. I honestly have no idea which is the best but the eye test says we are around average. I do not think we are a bad defensive team. 

Gunnar had the yips a bit, Odor was a better fielder than Frazier is, Rutschman is having a fielding slump.

 

The consensus among analysts seems to be that OAA is the best defensive metric publicly available.  It has its flaws like anything else, but the other defensive scores don't incorporate batted ball data the way OAA does.

Edited June 16, 2023 by Hallas

[Hallas]

6 hours ago, Sports Guy said:

The BP, especially Bautista and Cano, is the biggest factor imo.

Its like the mid 2010s again

Are you not buying our offense?  We only have like 1 guy overperforming (Hays) and until Gunnar's recent heater we had at least 3 regulars underperforming (Gunnar, Mount, Rutsch) and we're still 7th in the league in wRC+, pretty big improvement from last year when we were 17th.  There's nothing in our statcast expected stats that suggests that we're getting lucky on BIP.

[Sports Guy]

13 minutes ago, Hallas said:

Are you not buying our offense?  We only have like 1 guy overperforming (Hays) and until Gunnar's recent heater we had at least 3 regulars underperforming (Gunnar, Mount, Rutsch) and we're still 7th in the league in wRC+, pretty big improvement from last year when we were 17th.  There's nothing in our statcast expected stats that suggests that we're getting lucky on BIP.

I think the offense is a middling or maybe slightly better offense. I don’t think it trumps those 2 as the biggest reason the team is where it is.

[Aristotelian]

2 hours ago, Hallas said:

Gunnar had the yips a bit, Odor was a better fielder than Frazier is, Rutschman is having a fielding slump.

 

The consensus among analysts seems to be that OAA is the best defensive metric publicly available.  It has its flaws like anything else, but the other defensive scores don't incorporate batted ball data the way OAA does.

So you think we are the third worst defensive team?

[Hallas]

13 minutes ago, Aristotelian said:

So you think we are the third worst defensive team?

I mean, even if OAA is the best, the error bars on defensive stats have only marginally decreased. players can have defensive slumps just like they can have offensive slumps, etc.

We're not as good as last year.  Frazier is a downgrade, Urias missed some time this year, Henderson (and Rutschman too) have had the yips as I mentioned, and Hays has been on the downslide defensively for a while.  Is that enough to be called 3rd worst?  My first thought is probably not, but I wouldn't necessarily say they're super far off.

Edited June 16, 2023 by Hallas

[Frobby]

Fielding % says we are best

OAA says we are 3rd worst

UZR says we are 4th best

Fangraphs defense says we are 23rd

Rtot says we are 9th

Rdrs says we are 19th

Talk about a Rorschach test!   You can believe anything you want about the Orioles’ defense.   I’m going with average to slightly below.  They don’t make many blatant errors but there are some things they don’t do very well.