Bullpen 2024

[Sports Guy]

1 hour ago, waroriole said:

He obviously knew Means and Bradish weren’t going to be available to start the season and Wells and Irvin would have to start. Completely inexcusable to not do something to stabilize the bullpen which was already downgraded by going from Felix to Kimbrel. 

He 100% knew Bradish wasn’t going to be available and it was likely Means as well.  I mean, he had to believe there was a chance he wasn’t going to have Bradish AT ALL.

So let’s not pretend he didn’t know that.  That’s just foolish.

And even beyond that, you are still depending on waiver claims and rule 5 guys to build your pen. Every single pitcher in that pen had a big question mark outside of maybe Kimbrel and even with him, we know he’s a drop off from Bautista, so at the very least you have to bring in at least one more high leverage arm.

[wildcard]

With Irvin, Suarez and eventually Wells in the pen they can come in in the 7th and pitch the rest of the game eliminating the need for a closer.  I could throw Povich into the mix at some point.

O's are paying Kimbrel 12m this year.   They are not going to 60 IL him unless its completely necessary.    So some combination of  Kimbrel and Suarez to close games might be something to try.  Kimbrel might just need two days between outings.

[Sports Guy]

35 minutes ago, ChosenOne21 said:

Wells may not be high velocity with extreme K rate, but he should be a good reliever regardless. Not elite, but very good.

Yeah, Kimbrel is on the downswing, but I think it's more that we're riding him like a rented mule and he's getting too old for that.

We don’t know that he’s going to be “very good” (although that would be my expectation). We also don’t know that we will be able to rely on him to be available.

He has gotten better at missing bats and maybe that can tick up a little more in the pen but the homer is still an issue and he still has to show he can get more Ks and miss more bats in those high leverage situations.

 

[Sports Guy]

2 minutes ago, wildcard said:

With Irvin, Suarez and eventually Wells in the pen they can come in in the 7th and pitch the rest of the game eliminating the need for a closer.  I could throw Povich into the mix at some point.

O's are paying Kimbrel 12m this year.   They are not going to 60 IL him unless its completely necessary.    So some combination of  Kimbrel and Suarez to close games might be something to try.  Kimbrel might just need two days between outings.

Suarez may turn out to be something but for a team with WS aspirations, the idea that we are hoping to rely on a 34 year old pitcher who hasn’t even been in the majors in several years is pretty bad.

Whether it works out or not is irrelevant imo.  It shouldn’t happen. 

[clapdiddy]

Just now, Sports Guy said:

Suarez may turn out to be something but for a team with WS aspirations, the idea that we are hoping to rely on a 34 year old pitcher who hasn’t even been in the majors in several years is pretty bad.

Whether it works out or not is irrelevant imo.  It shouldn’t happen. 

Totally agree with your take on this.   We really needed to add a very solid setup man to complement Kimbrel.   Cano overachieved last season and should not have been expected to replicate that.   You've got guys like Norby and Stowers playing their 3rd season in AAA who could have been used to acquire some decent BP arms.    I don't see any help coming up from the minors for the bullpen, and quite frankly, I think this is Elias' Achilles heel.  He's great at scouting/developing position players, but the pitching in the minors seems lackluster.

[Bemorewins]

9 minutes ago, clapdiddy said:

Totally agree with your take on this.   We really needed to add a very solid setup man to complement Kimbrel.   Cano overachieved last season and should not have been expected to replicate that.   You've got guys like Norby and Stowers playing their 3rd season in AAA who could have been used to acquire some decent BP arms.    I don't see any help coming up from the minors for the bullpen, and quite frankly, I think this is Elias' Achilles heel.  He's great at scouting/developing position players, but the pitching in the minors seems lackluster.

I thought the plan all along (with never drafting any pitching with higher picks) was to take the excess positional player prospects and flip them for pitching.

Part of me wants to assign the lack of meaningful Major League additions over the past few years (Burnes aside) to the awfulness of the Angeloses. But another part says that could not be the case. I don’t think we will know until the deadline. If we have another series of meaningless/cheap additions like Flaherty and Fuji we will know what’s what.

Either way, these are the guys that we have for now. So Elias/Hyde are going to have to figure something out with what we have until we can get some better talent around the deadline.  

[Moose Milligan]

22 minutes ago, Bemorewins said:

 

Part of me wants to assign the lack of meaningful Major League additions over the past few years (Burnes aside) to the awfulness of the Angeloses. But another part says that could not be the case. I don’t think we will know until the deadline. If we have another series of meaningless/cheap additions like Flaherty and Fuji we will know what’s what.

 

I wonder if it's Elias being a little cocky about what he and Sig and the rest of the staff are able to do with some of these guys.

Like, they got a Cano and that worked out well.  Perez, great 2022, really good 2nd half of 2023.  Suarez, another scrap heap pickup who has turned some heads.  Bautista.  I'm forgetting about some others.

Maybe Elias thinks he can go to the scrap heap any time and he and Sig and the rest can turn some of these guys around and coax better performances out of them.

I hope that's not true, but I can't figure out other ways to explain how Elias ignored the bullpen outside of Kimbrel this past offseason.  Part of me thinks that Elias thinks he can get a guy or two and have them give a a Cano like performance, that it's that simple.  

And that's why he didn't part with any of his precious prospects this past offseason for bullpen help.  That's why he didn't sign a good bullpen arm or two in free agency.  He thinks he can just go out and get another Cano by trading lesser parts or finding a guy like Suarez on the scrap heap.  

[wildcard]

54 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

Suarez may turn out to be something but for a team with WS aspirations, the idea that we are hoping to rely on a 34 year old pitcher who hasn’t even been in the majors in several years is pretty bad.

Whether it works out or not is irrelevant imo.  It shouldn’t happen. 

There is a lot of movement on the pitching staff with Means, Bradish, Wells, Charles, Vespi and Povich yet to be seen how they impact the team.     I will wait to see how they do before pointing fingers at not acquiring other pitchers.

I do think the next four days could be pretty ugly but not the determining factor in the standing for the year.

Edited April 29 by wildcard

[LGOrioles]

41 minutes ago, clapdiddy said:

Totally agree with your take on this.   We really needed to add a very solid setup man to complement Kimbrel.   Cano overachieved last season and should not have been expected to replicate that.   You've got guys like Norby and Stowers playing their 3rd season in AAA who could have been used to acquire some decent BP arms.    I don't see any help coming up from the minors for the bullpen, and quite frankly, I think this is Elias' Achilles heel.  He's great at scouting/developing position players, but the pitching in the minors seems lackluster.

Cano’s peripherals are almost the same this year. He’s letting up a little more hard contact (with both home runs he’s given up being on his hardly thrown slider) and walking more batters, but he’s getting more K’s, chases, and a ton more swing and miss. He was in the 86th percentile in xERA last year and is in the 79th this year. He probably won’t put up the ERA he had last year and maybe is more of a 7th inning guy in a perfect scenario due to his good but not great K rate, but he’s still a very good reliever and perfectly fine set up man. 

[sportsfan8703]

5 minutes ago, Moose Milligan said:

I wonder if it's Elias being a little cocky about what he and Sig and the rest of the staff are able to do with some of these guys.

Like, they got a Cano and that worked out well.  Perez, great 2022, really good 2nd half of 2023.  Suarez, another scrap heap pickup who has turned some heads.  Bautista.  I'm forgetting about some others.

Maybe Elias thinks he can go to the scrap heap any time and he and Sig and the rest can turn some of these guys around and coax better performances out of them.

I hope that's not true, but I can't figure out other ways to explain how Elias ignored the bullpen outside of Kimbrel this past offseason.  Part of me thinks that Elias thinks he can get a guy or two and have them give a a Cano like performance, that it's that simple.  

And that's why he didn't part with any of his precious prospects this past offseason for bullpen help.  That's why he didn't sign a good bullpen arm or two in free agency.  He thinks he can just go out and get another Cano by trading lesser parts or finding a guy like Suarez on the scrap heap.  

I don't think Elias is being cocky.   I think it's only April.  Let's see how things shake out with everyone coming back.  Every contender wants to add an elite bullpen piece at the deadline.  

[eddie83]

1 hour ago, Sports Guy said:

He 100% knew Bradish wasn’t going to be available and it was likely Means as well.  I mean, he had to believe there was a chance he wasn’t going to have Bradish AT ALL.

So let’s not pretend he didn’t know that.  That’s just foolish.

And even beyond that, you are still depending on waiver claims and rule 5 guys to build your pen. Every single pitcher in that pen had a big question mark outside of maybe Kimbrel and even with him, we know he’s a drop off from Bautista, so at the very least you have to bring in at least one more high leverage arm.

Bradish didn’t have issues until January. 

[LGOrioles]

55 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

We don’t know that he’s going to be “very good” (although that would be my expectation). We also don’t know that we will be able to rely on him to be available.

He has gotten better at missing bats and maybe that can tick up a little more in the pen but the homer is still an issue and he still has to show he can get more Ks and miss more bats in those high leverage situations.

 

I think he would be pretty similar to Cano in that they’ll get a decent, but not elite, amount of K’s (around 25%) and not walk many batters, but Wells will give up more homers.

He didn’t let up a hit last year in 10 innings as a reliever while striking out 25% of the batters he faced, even though he was awful as a starter in the second half and didn’t look good in Norfolk either. 

I think Wells would be an upgrade on Webb and would certainly lengthen the pen. It would open up either he, Cano, or Coulombe to regularly pitch the 7th if needed and thereby push Webb/Akin to earlier in the game, which is better than Baumann/Tate/Ramirez. Even with Wells, they still need a lights out set up man that can strike guys out at an elite rate. 

[Roy Firestone]

15 hours ago, wildcard said:

Maybe the O's rely much less on a closer going forward.

They have 8 starters which will probably be 9 when Wells comes back in a week or two.

Burnes, GRod, Kremer, Bradish, Means.  They can go 5 to 7 innings per start.   Irvin, Suarez, Povich and Wells can piggyback with them and pitch the 6th or 7th through the ninth or tenth.    Use the other relievers for an inning when needed.

Its not written anywhere that a team has to have a closer.

This will not help for the Yankee series but by the time they get to Reds and going forward this may help.

I think the Orioles bullpen issues will kill them during the Yankee series. The Yankees will annihilate an overworked and injured Oriole pen.

[sportsfan8703]

1 minute ago, Roy Firestone said:

I think the Orioles bullpen issues will kill them during the Yankee series. The Yankees will annihilate an overworked and injured Oriole pen.

I think we're going to see someone get DFA'd today possibly that is out of options.  Like Baumann.  Whether that is for Baker or Vespi we will see.  

[OnlyOneOriole]

2 minutes ago, Roy Firestone said:

I think the Orioles bullpen issues will kill them during the Yankee series. The Yankees will annihilate an overworked and injured Oriole pen.

Reverse jinx lock.

 

BRB driving to Vegas and putting $5000 a game on the O's.  

 

Be back in 10 hours.   

 

Actually I am going Thursday to Sunday.