Holliday or Skenes. Who would you rather have?

[interloper]

19 minutes ago, Frobby said:

The fact that Holliday has a major leaguer for a father and can sleep next door to a batting cage with very sophisticated equipment all winter is a double-edged sword.  It makes him extremely advanced for his age due to his upbringing and opportunity, but arguably limits his upward mobility since he has less to learn at the major league level than most players.  

I'm not sure I agree with this. Yes, Holliday is a more refined player than Gunnar was at his age, maybe because of his upbringing, etc, but I'm not sure that has any effect on his upside. Each player will have to learn how to play in the big leagues and ultimately it's just their pure talent that will determine how far they go. I guess it depends on how someone measures upside. He's a 1:1 shortstop and the only tool Gunnar will definitely outshine him on going forward is the arm. The rest is TBD. In 2 years, will Holliday be cranking balls out of the park like Gunnar is now? I mean, probably? I don't see any reason to not think that's the case, or why his proximity to home equipment has anything to do with it. 

Edited March 20 by interloper

[Moose Milligan]

Yeah, I don't agree with it either, especially given that his dad was an outfielder and JH is playing somewhere on the dirt.

I would assume that the things that he's picked up along the way are things that are perhaps more off the field related/maturity wise.  Growing up in and around major league clubhouses probably takes the shine off it for him and that's a big help.  There's less to get acclimated to.

I don't think sleeping next to a batting cage has helped JH more than anyone else.   

[ChosenOne21]

3 minutes ago, Moose Milligan said:

I really don't think that it is.  

More and more pitchers are going down with TJ, especially when we're in an age where it's max effort guys that are throwing 100 mph every time out.  As we're seeing with Means, it takes more than a year to come back from it.  

They are injury risks, to pretend that they're not would be intentionally obtuse.  But say if you have a guy like Skenes and Holliday come up on the same day and you've got them for the first six years of their career, the odds favorite Skenes as the guy who is going to miss significant time with an injury.  If Holliday has a significant injury, it's probably going to be an ACL or an Achilles and he can make it back into the lineup faster, most likely.

It's about maximizing value for the amount of time you have the player and if a guy has TJ for a good chunk of the time you have him, well, that's not maximizing value.  

You do need good pitchers to win, you are correct about that.  However, making sure they're all healthy in order to make a run is almost getting lucky...like, having a guy like Grayson, Burnes, Bradish together for a year without one going down is having all the stars aligned in your favor and we're already holding our breath about Bradish.  Let's not mention Felix and how our bullpen looks without him.  

All I'm saying is if the "new normal" is that a pitcher will undergo TJ while under club control, it doesn't make sense to knock a pitcher for being likely to undergo TJ.

Does the focus on max-effort throwing create enough new top-of-the-line pitchers to offset or surpass the years lost to TJ? I dunno.

But if it doesn't, I'd argue that this makes pitchers more valuable because now there are fewer years of top pitching to fill demand.

Maybe the shotgun approach works better than targeting top talent. The Orioles have done the shotgun approach decently well. But it's incredibly unlikely to get someone like Skenes that way.

Granted, I'm assuming the game is 50% hitting/fielding and 50% pitching, but it more or less is, isn't it? And if it is, then I don't think it's necessarily a bad idea to trade a top position player talent for a top pitching talent.

If you think Jackson Holliday is more talented as a position player than Paul Skenes is as a pitcher, that's fine. You can make that case. They look pretty similar to me, we're rich in position player talent, and we need starting pitching. 

[Aristotelian]

Gunnar and Holliday both have future MVP upside. I don't know how you could evaluate which is higher. Gunnar appears to have the stronger arm and a bit more power, but Holliday has elite hit tool. Either one could turn in an 8-win season at some point. 

[Moose Milligan]

3 minutes ago, ChosenOne21 said:

All I'm saying is if the "new normal" is that a pitcher will undergo TJ while under club control, it doesn't make sense to knock a pitcher for being likely to undergo TJ.

 

Okay, explain.  Because if they're not on the mound, they're not providing value.  And while that's the new normal, it still doesn't excuse the fact that they're not out there producing value while under club control. 

If the new normal includes looking at max effort guys that throw 102 like Skenes does and going "well, he's going to need TJ one day" is indeed the new normal...well, it is what it is.  That has to be taken into account and you're just hoping that he doesn't need TJ when you're on the march to a World Series...or that he has TJ when you've had him for his prime years and he's pitching for the Yankees on a 5 year, 200 million contract.

I don't disagree that we need pitching, but most clubs do.  

[ChosenOne21]

11 minutes ago, Moose Milligan said:

Okay, explain.  Because if they're not on the mound, they're not providing value.  And while that's the new normal, it still doesn't excuse the fact that they're not out there producing value while under club control. 

If the new normal includes looking at max effort guys that throw 102 like Skenes does and going "well, he's going to need TJ one day" is indeed the new normal...well, it is what it is.  That has to be taken into account and you're just hoping that he doesn't need TJ when you're on the march to a World Series...or that he has TJ when you've had him for his prime years and he's pitching for the Yankees on a 5 year, 200 million contract.

I don't disagree that we need pitching, but most clubs do.  

My point is that if every pitcher or most pitchers aren't producing value for 1-1.5 years of club control, and you still need the same amount of innings pitched, you need more pitchers than you used to which is going to make pitchers, especially the top ones, more valuable. Demand definitely increases as injuries increase, but whether or not throwing max-effort increases the supply of top pitchers enough to compensate is a question mark.

I guess you could argue that each individual pitcher is filling less of his team's pitching needs than a 2B is filling his team's position player needs. And it might be the more stable route to try to somewhat make up for pitcher injuries by maxing out on position player talent. The Orioles are likely doing exactly this to great success! But if you want to max out the pitching side, you're going to need more players to do that than you would position players. Which, I'm saying, implies a top pitcher has more value than a top position player, assuming no significant differences in talent.

Edited March 20 by ChosenOne21

[Moose Milligan]

8 minutes ago, ChosenOne21 said:

My point is that if every pitcher or most pitchers aren't producing value for 1-1.5 years of club control, and you still need the same amount of innings pitched, you need more pitchers than you used to which is going to make pitchers, especially the top ones, more valuable. Demand definitely increases as injuries increase, but whether or not throwing max-effort increases the supply of top pitchers enough to compensate is a question mark.

I guess you could argue that each individual pitcher is filling less of his team's pitching needs than a 2B is filling his team's position player needs. And it might be the more stable route to try to somewhat make up for pitcher injuries by maxing out on position player talent. The Orioles are likely doing exactly this to great success! But if you want to max out the pitching side, you're going to need more players to do that than you would position players. Which, I'm saying, implies a top pitcher has more value than a top position player, assuming no significant differences in talent.

I understand where you're coming from.  I don't totally agree, but I understand the point.

[Sports Guy]

1 hour ago, Frobby said:

How do you know what the O’s think about who has more upside between Holliday and Gunnar?  Have you spoken to Elias recently?   Hard to argue the “more advanced at the same age” point, but that’s got nothing to do with upside.  Both players have a lot of it.

Something I was recently told by someone close to the team.

[ChosenOne21]

Another thing to consider. Let's say Jackson Holliday becomes a star 2B. Then, one year, he gets injured in Spring Training and has to miss the entire season.

I'd argue you're less likely to go out and trade for another star 2B than you would be if we were talking about a starting pitcher.

If you trade for another 2B, what happens next year? You have two 2Bmen, but only one spot for them. Maybe there's some positional flexibility and you can swing it, but likely not.

But if you lose a star starting pitcher to injury and go out and trade for another one, he can always replace your #5 starter next year or cover for some other starting pitcher's injury.

This implies that teams are more likely to try to trade for starting pitching which increases the value of starting pitchers.

[Frobby]

8 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

Something I was recently told by someone close to the team.

OK, I’ll accept that as a reasonable basis for your statement, despite not knowing who your source is or exactly what they said.  At least you have something to back it up.

[baltfan]

2 hours ago, Sports Guy said:

I can tell you for sure the Os disagree with that and he is more advanced than Gunnar was at the same age.

How can you know for sure they disagree?  It is pretty obvious that Gunnar is the better fielding shortstop with a better arm.  As for the bat, he appears to have more power while Holliday has superior bat to ball skills.  Yes, Holliday moved faster than Gunnar, but Gunnar also was slowed some by COVID.  I am not saying it is obvious that Gunnar will be the better player or saying that many maybe even most would disagree, but it seems pretty close and a SS is more valuable than a 2B.

[now]

1 hour ago, dystopia said:

Amazing how the “grow the arms, buy the bats” philosophy has been turned on its head. Not that I disagree with that, but it’s amazing how things can change so quickly. 

True it's been a complete 180 on philosophy, thank goodness. Not sure the transition has been "quick" though, since we're talking what, 10-15 years and 2-3 regimes ago when the previous mantra was floating around? (Can't remember whether it was coined by Flanagan/Beattie or MacPhail). 

[RZNJ]

36 minutes ago, Frobby said:

OK, I’ll accept that as a reasonable basis for your statement, despite not knowing who your source is or exactly what they said.  At least you have something to back it up.

"Something by someone"?    

[Sports Guy]

44 minutes ago, baltfan said:

How can you know for sure they disagree?  It is pretty obvious that Gunnar is the better fielding shortstop with a better arm.  As for the bat, he appears to have more power while Holliday has superior bat to ball skills.  Yes, Holliday moved faster than Gunnar, but Gunnar also was slowed some by COVID.  I am not saying it is obvious that Gunnar will be the better player or saying that many maybe even most would disagree, but it seems pretty close and a SS is more valuable than a 2B.

At 20 years old, Gunnar wasn’t the player or talent he is today.  
 

I was not surprised at all to hear something that seemed to me to be a very obvious thought.

[Moose Milligan]

20 minutes ago, RZNJ said:

"Something by someone"?    

I know you like to hammer SG at every given opportunity but I don't think it's out of the realm of possibilities.  SG is a lot of things, I don't believe he's a liar or just wanting to make something up to impress us.