The Kjerstad/Cowser spring competition

[Frobby]

6 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

Welcome to the board Mr Surhoff.

When you have guys who are 2+ WAR players, you can’t assume a rookie will outperform them, unless it’s an Adley or Gunnar level player.   Maybe Cowser and/or Kjerstad will be better than that someday, maybe they won’t.  For this year, the odds are against them.  Could happen, but that’s not where the smart money is.  

Edited February 29 by Frobby

[Bahama O's Fan]

But, but spring stats mean nothing 

[Sports Guy]

11 minutes ago, Frobby said:

When you have guys who are 2+ WAR players, you can’t assume a rookie will outperform them, unless it’s an Adley or Gunnar level player.   Maybe Cowser and/or Kjerstad will be better than that someday, maybe they won’t.  For this year, the odds are against them.  Could happen, but that’s not where the smart money is.  

Well Mateo isn’t a 2 WAR player. Urias was .8 fWAR last year.

So, I’m not worried about that.

It is possible that Cowser and/or Kjerstad won’t be better than any of the other 3 but it’s also not a high bar.

I think we will be fine with those 4 young players getting 1500-2000 at bats. 

None of the guys we are talking about trading are high OBP guys either and these 4 easily could be.

Edited February 29 by Sports Guy

[Aristotelian]

1 hour ago, Sports Guy said:

With all the talk about depth…

Let’s talk a hypothetical.

Let’s say tomorrow that one of Mountcastle, Santander or Hays, along with one of Urias or Mateo are traded.

The Os then decide to keep all 4 young players on the team…The 2 OFers, Mayo and Holliday.

The position Player roster is this:

Mayo, Holliday, Westburg, Henderson, Cowser, Kjerstad, Adley, McCann, Urias/Mateo, Mullins, 2 of RM/AS/Hays and OHearn.

Those 13 make the team.

Stowers, Norby, Wong (if he accepts the assignment and doesn’t opt out), Maton, McKenna (assuming he makes it through waivers), etc…are depth.

Are we really saying that the team is hurt by trading 2 of those guys and that we now lack depth?

I can definitely see getting rid of one from that list. I would have traded Urias a long time ago, personally. I would lose zero sleep if we lose Mateo or O'Hearn. However, if you trade multiple guys it does start to affect your depth. You might still have a really good starting 9-10, but then your next man up is Norby instead of Mayo, etc. I also remember how bad Cowser was. I think it is good to have some redundancy in place in case of injuries or guys not performing as we hope. Elias's MO throughout his tenure has been to keep control of as many guys as possible for as long as possible, and that approach has worked well for us. 

I think both Cowser and Kjerstad will end up with 300 AB's when it's all said and done, maybe more. They will get a chance to contribute without the team relying on them to be successful right away. Now, if Mountcastle has a .290 OBP playing every day in July that will be frustrating as hell. 

[RVAOsFan]

An outfield defense of Cowser, Mullins and Hays would cover some serious ground and in my opinion has the potential to be a really good defensive outfield. 
Games that Santander starts in the OF Cowser could come in late as a defensive replacement. 

[DirtyBird]

13 minutes ago, RVAOsFan said:

Games that Santander starts in the OF Cowser could come in late as a defensive replacement. 

Or starting in LF or CF, keeping Hays and Mullins at 125-130 starts, where they should be.

[e16bball]

4 hours ago, sportsfan8703 said:

Yup. Like having Kjerstad take O’Hearn’s spot and free up that $3.5 million for one of Lorenzen/Clevinger. Also, as a current “payroll challenged” team, do we really have the luxury of an $8.3 million bench when we need a SP?

I have to say, if we’re still at a point where signing some SP5 has to be contingent in any way on dumping $3.5M of Ryan O’Hearn — that would be so very disheartening. 

I get why folks want to see Kjerstad over O’Hearn. We all want to see Kjerstad. We all want to see the very exciting all-homegrown-prospect lineups we’ve been pontificating about ad nauseum for years now. 

But we’re trying to win it all this season, and O’Hearn had a higher wRC+ in the bigs last year than Kjerstad did in AAA. Just dumping a guy who was a critical part of the lineup last year on blind faith seems a bit rash. And unnecessary. 

Maybe O’Hearn regresses to his pre-2023 form. Maybe Kjerstad absolutely rakes. The nice thing is, we have the luxury of letting it all play out. It’s a very long season. If O’Hearn hits his way off the team — or Kjerstad hits his way onto it — then great. That’s a miscalculation we can easily (and happily) correct. But if you ship O’Hearn out and then Kjerstad can’t hack it (or gets hurt, that’s much tougher to un-do. 

[Billy F-Face3]

Let's look at the roster requirements.  The active MLB roster allows 26 players. Now do we have 4 outfielders or 5? I would assume we keep at least 13 pitchers with 8 of those in the bullpen. So that would leave 13 position players at best. 2 Catchers, 2 1Bmen, + Gunnar/Mateo/Urias/Westburg as IF utility. So that's 8 infielders all practically guaranteed to make the team from seniority on 2 winning Orioles teams, plus the 3 starting outfielders in Hays/Mullins/Santander.

What we have are likely 2 outfield positions, with one of those possibly being another infield uitlity player, but maybe not probable.

If they have 2 bench outfielders then at least one of those is probably preferred to be a left handed batter and the other probably to be a right handed batter. They might also want someone who has the skills to play centerfield, unless the scenario that either Mateo or Hays is thought to be the primary backup center-fielder. Which could be a very good idea in order to allow a corner outfielder on the roster.

[DirtyBird]

2 minutes ago, Billy F-Face3 said:

Let's look at the roster requirements.  The active MLB roster allows 26 players. Now do we have 4 outfielders or 5? I would assume we keep at least 13 pitchers with 8 of those in the bullpen. So that would leave 13 position players at best. 2 Catchers, 2 1Bmen, + Gunnar/Mateo/Urias/Westburg as IF utility. So that's 8 infielders all practically guaranteed to make the team from seniority on 2 winning Orioles teams, plus the 3 starting outfielders in Hays/Mullins/Santander.

What we have are likely 2 outfield positions, with one of those possibly being another infield uitlity player, but maybe not probable.

If they have 2 bench outfielders then at least one of those is probably preferred to be a left handed batter and the other probably to be a right handed batter. They might also want someone who has the skills to play centerfield, unless the scenario that either Mateo or Hays is thought to be the primary backup center-fielder. Which could be a very good idea in order to allow a corner outfielder on the roster.

Just add Mayo and Cowser to your list and the roster makes sense.

[sportsfan8703]

12 minutes ago, e16bball said:

I have to say, if we’re still at a point where signing some SP5 has to be contingent in any way on dumping $3.5M of Ryan O’Hearn — that would be so very disheartening. 

I get why folks want to see Kjerstad over O’Hearn. We all want to see Kjerstad. We all want to see the very exciting all-homegrown-prospect lineups we’ve been pontificating about ad nauseum for years now. 

But we’re trying to win it all this season, and O’Hearn had a higher wRC+ in the bigs last year than Kjerstad did in AAA. Just dumping a guy who was a critical part of the lineup last year on blind faith seems a bit rash. And unnecessary. 

Maybe O’Hearn regresses to his pre-2023 form. Maybe Kjerstad absolutely rakes. The nice thing is, we have the luxury of letting it all play out. It’s a very long season. If O’Hearn hits his way off the team — or Kjerstad hits his way onto it — then great. That’s a miscalculation we can easily (and happily) correct. But if you ship O’Hearn out and then Kjerstad can’t hack it (or gets hurt, that’s much tougher to un-do. 

True, but O’Hearn could be a bench player. So is Urias and Mateo. So that’s $8.3 million on the bench for a team that should add one of Clevinger/Lorenzen. Whether we like it or not, JA is still the owner, we have no idea what the budget is, but Elias could re-allocate some money to the rotation and away from the bench. 

Currently as I see it for OD

- Cowser makes the team and starts

- Holliday makes the team

- Mayo comes up after 10 days 

26 man roster

5 - Burnes, GR, Kremer, Irvin, Wells

8 - Kimbrel, Cano, Coloumbe, Webb, Perez, Tate, Baumann, Zimmerman

1. Holliday L 2B

2. Adley S C

3. Gunnar L SS

4. Santa S DH

5. Mountcastle R 1B

6. Mullins L CF

7. Hays R LF

8. Cowser L RF

9. Westburg R 3B

Bench - McCann, Urias, Mateo, O’Hearn

That’s an expensive bench. Mayo, Wong, and Kjerstad/Mckenna, can replace them if need be. 

[MGH5208]

4 hours ago, Can_of_corn said:

I think that while the window is open the smart play is to play the best players.

While I agree in principle, please clarify. 

What if my "best players" are C, SS, 2B, 8 OF and 15 P?   How do I fill the rest of the roster?

There are plenty of teams who keep a backup C and U infielder who may not be their "best" players

How long is your window?  What if I can extend that window by playing some service time games and keep my number 15 - 25 "best" players in the system a few more years.  

 

[jrobb21613]

It's likely Mckenna gets released and Holiday doesn't break camp with the team. That opens up roster spots for both Cowser and Kjerstad.

[Hallas]

5 hours ago, RVAOsFan said:

An outfield defense of Cowser, Mullins and Hays would cover some serious ground and in my opinion has the potential to be a really good defensive outfield. 
Games that Santander starts in the OF Cowser could come in late as a defensive replacement. 

Hays has lost a step in the outfield and I never got the sense that range was Cowser's strength.  He's got a cannon, though.

[Orioles0615]

I still say platoon Hays and Cowser. It gets boring watching Hays ground out to short over and over against righties 

[Since1984]

15 hours ago, DirtyBird said:

I think most importantly is that Cowser has started in CF twice.

Ultimately, I think he and Santander split time at RF, with Santander DH'ing more this season than he did last.

The only thing I do not like about Santander DH’ing is his OPS drops .100 in that role, in 2023.