Orioles 2-0 over Pirates (observations)

[RZNJ]

1. Westburg is standing more upright at the plate, no longer in the deep crouch.  I noticed last year at Norfolk he would start in the crouch but straighten up when swinging.   In the majors, he seemed to stay in the crouch from setup all through the swing.  I think, hopefully, this will get him to the power/home run stroke he showed in AAA.  
 

2.  I know they mentioned Cowser being bigger.  He definitely looks thicker in the legs.  Had good AB’s today (2 walks) and solid contact on an F8.   On defense, had a good read on a low liner, broke in quickly, and made it look easy.

3.  Cole Irvin was 92-93 but touched 94-95 and looked good.

4. Bryan Baker looks like a different, not sure better, pitcher.   The delivery is smoother, not max effort, and it looks like the release isn’t quite as high.   His changeup looked smoothed out and his control of it looked good today.  I didn’t notice his velocity but I  wonder if he’s sacrificing there to gain better command of all 3 pitches.

5. Bradfield is as fast as advertised.  Fisted a liner over the pitchers head hit the grass behind the mound.  Cruz attempted the play but there was no chance.   At plate he showed the good eye and contact capability.   Tough to tell much else.  The swing does look flat (not a bad thing) and he definitely has room to add some muscle if they decide it would help.   He played LF and made one play exciting but made a nice adjustment and made the catch.

6.  Ryan Long was 96-97 his first inning with a nice looking changeup.  He was down to 93-94 with some 95s in his second inning.  
 

7. Kjerstad (hit the ball hard but on the ground) and Westburg (beat on high fastball) not quite there yet.

8. Mayo might be the most impressive hitter I saw all day.  Aggressive swings on anything in the zone but showed great strike zone awareness.  I think he made contact on every swing and perhaps didn’t take one strike while also not swinging at anything that was clearly out of the zone.  Lined a foul down the RF that had home run distance.

9. Not much else stood out to me.

10. One more thing.  Mateo.  He didn’t look like 2023 April Mateo but he also didn’t look like the May-October Mateo.  When he keeps his weight back, like he did today, he can impact the ball.  Had one hard hit and looked pretty good at the plate even with a K on a tough slider.

 

Edited February 25 by RZNJ

[interloper]

Agreed on everything. I'll also add... Wandisson Charles looked pretty good. Still had a walk but it wasn't like he threw 4 balls wildly out of the zone. Throws 99. Looks like another Cano if we can just figure him out. Longshot but I'm glad they brought him back. 

[cboemmeljr]

Here is today's RECAP

[Billy F-Face3]

Wandisson Charles is a guy Ibwas looking forward to seeing in Spring Training. Hope there’s more televised games to make that possible.

[HbgOsFan]

2 hours ago, RZNJ said:

1. Westburg is standing more upright at the plate, no longer in the deep crouch.  I noticed last year at Norfolk he would start in the crouch but straighten up when swinging.   In the majors, he seemed to stay in the crouch from setup all through the swing.  I think, hopefully, this will get him to the power/home run stroke he showed in AAA.  
 

2.  I know they mentioned Cowser being bigger.  He definitely looks thicker in the legs.  Had good AB’s today (2 walks) and solid contact on an F8.   On defense, had a good read on a low liner, broke in quickly, and made it look easy.

3.  Cole Irvin was 92-93 but touched 94-95 and looked good.

4. Bryan Baker looks like a different, not sure better, pitcher.   The delivery is smoother, not max effort, and it looks like the release isn’t quite as high.   His changeup looked smoothed out and his control of it looked good today.  I didn’t notice his velocity but I  wonder if he’s sacrificing there to gain better command of all 3 pitches.

5. Bradfield is as fast as advertised.  Fisted a liner over the pitchers head hit the grass behind the mound.  Cruz attempted the play but there was no chance.   At plate he showed the good eye and contact capability.   Tough to tell much else.  The swing does look flat (not a bad thing) and he definitely has room to add some muscle if they decide it would help.   He played LF and made one play exciting but made a nice adjustment and made the catch.

6.  Ryan Long was 96-97 his first inning with a nice looking changeup.  He was down to 93-94 with some 95s in his second inning.  
 

7. Kjerstad (hit the ball hard but on the ground) and Westburg (beat on high fastball) not quite there yet.

8. Mayo might be the most impressive hitter I saw all day.  Aggressive swings on anything in the zone but showed great strike zone awareness.  I think he made contact on every swing and perhaps didn’t take one strike while also not swinging at anything that was clearly out of the zone.  Lined a foul down the RF that had home run distance.

9. Not much else stood out to me.

10. One more thing.  Mateo.  He didn’t look like 2023 April Mateo but he also didn’t look like the May-October Mateo.  When he keeps his weight back, like he did today, he can impact the ball.  Had one hard hit and looked pretty good at the plate even with a K on a tough slider.

 

RZNJ, this is good stuff.  Why I love Orioles Hangout

[Frobby]

Thanks for the report!  I listened to the first 4 innings on radio and it seemed like Irvin was very sharp.  He got through two innings in 28 pitches and threw a lot of strikes.  

[Sanity Check]

I had to chuckle when I saw your description of Bradfield's play on a fly ball.  Couldn't help but think, he's supposed to make exciting plays look routine, not make routine plays look exciting 

Thanks for the entire post.  

[RZNJ]

30 minutes ago, Frobby said:

Thanks for the report!  I listened to the first 4 innings on radio and it seemed like Irvin was very sharp.  He got through two innings in 28 pitches and threw a lot of strikes.  

Yes.  Very good command of his fastball.  Saw some cutters (87-88).  Some of those looked like cutters and some looked like sliders but I assume all were cutters.  Only saw a few changeups.  He likes to use the curve (76-79) against LH hitters.  Command was an 8 on the 1-10 scale.  He probably threw more 95s than 92s.  Fair to say he was consistently 92-95 on the TV gun.  The hitters swung and took like those numbers were accurate.   

[RZNJ]

28 minutes ago, Sanity Check said:

I had to chuckle when I saw your description of Bradfield's play on a fly ball.  Couldn't help but think, he's supposed to make exciting plays look routine, not make routine plays look exciting 

Thanks for the entire post.  

I assume the wind was blowing in.  There were a few shots off the bat that looked gone off the bat but didn’t come that close.  Looked like he had a beat on that one and at the last second had to come in another 10 feet and make a diving catch.   Impressive recovery and catch.

[RZNJ]

1 hour ago, Billy F-Face3 said:

Wandisson Charles is a guy Ibwas looking forward to seeing in Spring Training. Hope there’s more televised games to make that possible.

His fastball was showing 98-99 but hitters did not look over powered by it.  His slider has a lot of break as well.  No doubt he has a great arm.

[CaptainRedbeard]

One fun tidbit from the Statcast tracking (we got it this game because the Pirates have it in their stadium) - Luis Gonzalez has CRAZY spin rate on his fastball. Averaging nearly 2600 RPM. He would have been in the 99th percentile among pitchers last year. 

He has bad velo and didn’t have similarly impressive spin on the slider, so not saying anything will come of it, but this explains why a 32 year old who was horrible in AAA and hasn’t pitched in the U.S. got a MiL deal and NRI for Spring Training. Could be an interesting candidate in AAA.

He did get 6 whiffs on 13 pitches, so even though I was hardly paying attention when he was pitching that’s pretty impressive.

[Tony-OH]

42 minutes ago, Sanity Check said:

I had to chuckle when I saw your description of Bradfield's play on a fly ball.  Couldn't help but think, he's supposed to make exciting plays look routine, not make routine plays look exciting 

Thanks for the entire post.  

Well on the ball hit to the fence, he made that looks routine but it had a .925 xBA on the hit. I think that counts as making an exciting play routine. As for the other, Bradenton is known a a very hard place to track fly balls and winds can be tricky, so I'm not too concerned on him coming in that one ball and then having to dive a bit for it.

[Tony-OH]

26 minutes ago, RZNJ said:

His fastball was showing 98-99 but hitters did not look over powered by it.  His slider has a lot of break as well.  No doubt he has a great arm.

Good batters never look very uncomfortable against him despite the velocity. It's a very low spin 97-99 MPH fastball. It looks like he's gone to a cutter (according to statcast) but I always thought it was more of a bad slider. 

Who knows? Can't teach that velocity, but the command goes pretty quick and he still throws too many uncompetitive pitches. 

[Too Tall]

Great recap. Watched game on Pirates Network (MLBTV). Just to add from watching first two games, Cowser looks like a different player (in a good sense) to me. Was also really impressed with Irwin today. 

[RZNJ]

Watched Baker’s inning again.   He only threw a few fastballs.  I saw two at 95.  Reynolds, batting LH, sent Kjerstad back against the wall (not a great play but he looked good going back).  Another was hit sharply to Baker and he made a nice play on it for the last out.  Bakers control of everything looked good but especially the changeup which he’s always had trouble locating.   Slider looked ok but he did throw it for strikes.   Going to be interesting to see if the new look produces more good results.  Remember Irvin, Akin, Baker, and even Davidson (didn’t impress) all faced the first string.