Colton Cowser 2024

[gamiliel]

1 hour ago, interloper said:

He should absolutely be optioned after the break for either Kjerstad, Mayo, or Holliday. Stowers is the better offensive player right now.

Anyone saying otherwise is basically in full denial. The guy is an absolute mess at the plate right now. Enough already. 

Hard to argue with this....especially given the guys knocking on the door. It is one thing when you don't have other options, but we have options. 

[Hank Scorpio]

1 hour ago, interloper said:

He should absolutely be optioned after the break for either Kjerstad, Mayo, or Holliday. Stowers is the better offensive player right now.

Anyone saying otherwise is basically in full denial. The guy is an absolute mess at the plate right now. Enough already. 

How do you arrive at the conclusion that Stowers is the better offensive player right now?

I presume your answer will be something along the lines of "how could he be worse?" 

Right?

[Sports Guy]

1 minute ago, Hank Scorpio said:

How do you arrive at the conclusion that Stowers is the better offensive player right now?

I presume your answer will be something along the lines of "how could he be worse?" 

Right?

Because his keen scouting eye sees that Cowser is lost.  Duh!!

[LGOrioles]

1 hour ago, interloper said:

OPS by month:

April: 1.004

May: .580

June: .679

July: .443

Bleh. He's barely above replacement and deserves to be demoted. Don't care about the red on his statcast if he clearly shows atrocious swing decisions.. He's a defense only player and we have that in Mullins.

Mullins:

April: .688 

May: .344

June: .849

July .462

His chase rate is second best on the team behind Gunnar so if you’re complaining about his swing decisions then let’s complain about the whole team (which is probably valid right now). He is also a better hitter (and fielder) than Mullins. If I am playing a defense first player, I’d prefer playing the actual better fielder who happens to be the better hitter too, which is Cowser. He is driving this board mad. 

[interloper]

5 minutes ago, LGOrioles said:

Mullins:

April: .688 

May: .344

June: .849

July .462

His chase rate is second best on the team behind Gunnar so if you’re complaining about his swing decisions then let’s complain about the whole team (which is probably valid right now). He is also a better hitter (and fielder) than Mullins. If I am playing a defense first player, I’d prefer playing the actual better fielder who happens to be the better hitter too, which is Cowser. He is driving this board mad. 

Eh. He's just not good enough. He's a #5 overall pick who has had 1 good month in the ML. Mullins at least has a track record of a few years of solid play. 

Not saying he won't be good at some point, but we don't have time for this kind of thing. Time to try other players for awhile. 

[interloper]

25 minutes ago, Hank Scorpio said:

How do you arrive at the conclusion that Stowers is the better offensive player right now?

I presume your answer will be something along the lines of "how could he be worse?" 

Right?

It's just time to try other players for awhile. He's had 3 months to try and figure out a way to approach what he did in April and has not done it. I'm not excited about running out a .500-.600 OPS outfielder who hasn't made adjustments in 3 months in the middle of a pennant race, are you? We have one already in Mullins. If a player can't make adjustments, and has options, we should utilize those options. 

Edited July 15 by interloper

[Sports Guy]

Just now, interloper said:

It's just time to try other players for awhile. He's had 3 months to try and figure out away to approach what he did in April and has not done it. I'm not excited about running out a .500-.600 OPS outfielder who hasn't made adjustments in 3 months in the middle of a pennant race, are you? We have one already in Mullins. 

So after you try those guys out and they have a period of adjustment where they struggle, do you go back to the guy you haven’t given recent changes to and hope he found something in the minors even though what’s he needs to improve on can’t be improved on in the minors?

[interloper]

Just now, Sports Guy said:

So after you try those guys out and they have a period of adjustment where they struggle, do you go back to the guy you haven’t given recent changes to and hope he found something in the minors even though what’s he needs to improve on can’t be improved on in the minors?

I don't know. Maybe? Elias optioned Kjerstad after a rough start and some bad defense, tried Stowers, then brought Kjerstad back, then Stowers again after the injury. Not sure why Cowser is any different. Cycle them all until one of them sticks or at least gets hot for a month. 

The other thing is they've been benching Cowser lately, so you might as well get him every day ABs at AAA and emphasize that he needs to make adjustments. If he doesn't, well, you have a decent defensive CFer I guess, but that's still extremely disappointing. 

[LGOrioles]

4 minutes ago, interloper said:

Eh. He's just not good enough. He's a #5 overall pick who has had 1 good month in the ML. Mullins at least has a track record of a few years of solid play. 

Not saying he won't be good at some point, but we don't have time for this kind of thing. Time to try other players for awhile. 

Mullins had one good season and has been worth 6.1 WAR in 1835 PA’s besides that. That’s a 2 WAR pace per 600 PA’s and he has been trending the wrong direction since that 2021 season. Since the ASB last year he has a .253 OBP, .631 OPS, and has been worth 0.4 fWAR (which includes negative defensive value according to Fangraphs). 

This isn’t 2021 and his good season is getting further and further away. I would love for him to figure it out and be a valuable player again but saying “we don’t have time” for a guy who has been worth nearly 2 WAR more than Mullins so far this season, in order to play a guy who has been a replacement level player the past calendar year is borderline absurd. That’s not even taking into account that one is a rookie whose quality of contact is in the top 10 percentile while the other is clearly declining and is in the bottom 5 percentile in quality of contact. 

[Just Regular]

I believe the Kjerstad concussion IL stint takes a little short term pressure off Cowser.    He gets to enjoy the All-Star break reset a little bit more, he'll get steadier at-bats for about a week opening up the 2nd half, and we'll see how the flailing looks.

A good development in the first half is Cowser-Kjerstad both continuing growing towards players you want to mostly have in the lineup, at least through early Arb.

I don't know if Cowser's a long term CF but I think we can forecast from here he's serviceable for October 2024, and that capability throws Mullins into the pool with Hays and Santander trying to hold jobs for Team Old against the rising tide of Team Young.

I don't think we've yet seen the fiercest Kjerstad-Cowser-Santander alignment against RHP but it might be what Pablo Lopez or Gerrit Cole see this fall.

[Sports Guy]

19 minutes ago, LGOrioles said:

Mullins had one good season and has been worth 6.1 WAR in 1835 PA’s besides that. That’s a 2 WAR pace per 600 PA’s and he has been trending the wrong direction since that 2021 season. Since the ASB last year he has a .253 OBP, .631 OPS, and has been worth 0.4 fWAR (which includes negative defensive value according to Fangraphs). 

This isn’t 2021 and his good season is getting further and further away. I would love for him to figure it out and be a valuable player again but saying “we don’t have time” for a guy who has been worth nearly 2 WAR more than Mullins so far this season, in order to play a guy who has been a replacement level player the past calendar year is borderline absurd. That’s not even taking into account that one is a rookie whose quality of contact is in the top 10 percentile while the other is clearly declining and is in the bottom 5 percentile in quality of contact. 

At this point, no amount of good posts will get these people to see what they don’t want to see.  

[Sports Guy]

18 minutes ago, Just Regular said:

I believe the Kjerstad concussion IL stint takes a little short term pressure off Cowser.    He gets to enjoy the All-Star break reset a little bit more, he'll get steadier at-bats for about a week opening up the 2nd half, and we'll see how the flailing looks.

A good development in the first half is Cowser-Kjerstad both continuing growing towards players you want to mostly have in the lineup, at least through early Arb.

I don't know if Cowser's a long term CF but I think we can forecast from here he's serviceable for October 2024, and that capability throws Mullins into the pool with Hays and Santander trying to hold jobs for Team Old against the rising tide of Team Young.

I don't think we've yet seen the fiercest Kjerstad-Cowser-Santander alignment against RHP but it might be what Pablo Lopez or Gerrit Cole see this fall.

Well Kjerstad could be back for the weekend.

[interloper]

3 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

At this point, no amount of good posts will get these people to see what they don’t want to see.  

I'm just trying to find a way to get fewer poor-hitting outfielders on the team at the same time. The team isn't releasing or trading Mullins or Hays, so the other path is using Cowser's option in order to try and find some offense.

I mean, are you seeing anything positive when you watch his ABs? Or do you just pull up his statcast page during his ABs to make yourself feel better about what you're seeing in the games? 

Edited July 15 by interloper

[banks703]

No doubt he is struggling but as we saw with the O's last year with Gunnar, the year before with AR, when a guy is brought up to the big club for good they haven't demonstrated an inclination to demote him. CC has nothing left to prove in the minors. If they believe that he is a part of their franchise long-term, they are going to allow him to struggle at the highest level. His struggles at the plate haven't necessarily been why they have struggled as a team the last three weeks or so. Almost the entire team at some point has hit a wall. Gunnar, Adley, Ant, ROH, etc... all struggled through the Cubs series and it seemed to have carried over into the Yankee series. Personally, I think the All-Star bullshit got in their heads. I also think that they're just gassed. It's the dog days of summer in 100 degree Baltimore with humidity levels that are miserable. They played the toughest stretch of schedule of any team in all of baseball in those 30 games in 31 days and I just think that they are gassed. CC is not the problem. 

CC can't get better at hitting Major League pitching if he's playing against minor league pitchers. That's just the reality. I don't think that he's a .300 hitter at the ML level but he's also not a .220 hitter either. I can go back and rattle off an AB of his or a batted ball in every series this year that with inches of a difference, he's on base. This is true of every hitter in the game but he's had some really poor calls go against him, he's hit a lot of stuff hard that haven't seemed to find a hole and while I believe do believe in the luck factor, the book on him is pretty clear right now. He can't hit off-speed stuff, he doesn't hit great in pitcher's counts and he's not using the whole field like he was in April. These are things that he either improves or he doesn't but he cannot do that at Norfolk and with a team that prioritizes defense so much, I just don't see them demoting him, even if it may be justified.

I'm as big of a fan of CC that there is on this board. I was the only person defending his ability to play CF last year when he struggled mightily in the games that he logged. I'm defending his offensive ability now. It's very easy to forget that he is still a rookie by status and aside from Cedric, he's the only other guy in the system right now that has proven average defense or better in CF at the ML level. Unless ME and company deviate from what they have shown us these last six years, I don't see them shipping CC to Norfolk. Again, not that I don't think that it could do him some good to have a reset but all of the above factors make it (in my eyes) not very likely. 

[interloper]

Just now, banks703 said:

No doubt he is struggling but as we saw with the O's last year with Gunnar, the year before with AR, when a guy is brought up to the big club for good they haven't demonstrated an inclination to demote him. CC has nothing left to prove in the minors. If they believe that he is a part of their franchise long-term, they are going to allow him to struggle at the highest level. His struggles at the plate haven't necessarily been why they have struggled as a team the last three weeks or so. Almost the entire team at some point has hit a wall. Gunnar, Adley, Ant, ROH, etc... all struggled through the Cubs series and it seemed to have carried over into the Yankee series. Personally, I think the All-Star bullshit got in their heads. I also think that they're just gassed. It's the dog days of summer in 100 degree Baltimore with humidity levels that are miserable. They played the toughest stretch of schedule of any team in all of baseball in those 30 games in 31 days and I just think that they are gassed. CC is not the problem. 

CC can't get better at hitting Major League pitching if he's playing against minor league pitchers. That's just the reality. I don't think that he's a .300 hitter at the ML level but he's also not a .220 hitter either. I can go back and rattle off an AB of his or a batted ball in every series this year that with inches of a difference, he's on base. This is true of every hitter in the game but he's had some really poor calls go against him, he's hit a lot of stuff hard that haven't seemed to find a hole and while I believe do believe in the luck factor, the book on him is pretty clear right now. He can't hit off-speed stuff, he doesn't hit great in pitcher's counts and he's not using the whole field like he was in April. These are things that he either improves or he doesn't but he cannot do that at Norfolk and with a team that prioritizes defense so much, I just don't see them demoting him, even if it may be justified.

I'm as big of a fan of CC that there is on this board. I was the only person defending his ability to play CF last year when he struggled mightily in the games that he logged. I'm defending his offensive ability now. It's very easy to forget that he is still a rookie by status and aside from Cedric, he's the only other guy in the system right now that has proven average defense or better in CF at the ML level. Unless ME and company deviate from what they have shown us these last six years, I don't see them shipping CC to Norfolk. Again, not that I don't think that it could do him some good to have a reset but all of the above factors make it (in my eyes) not very likely. 

It's not about him going back down to develop. Obviously he's got nothing else to learn down there.

It's about hiding him for awhile and having him really work on adjustments with every day ABs (which he's not getting right now), and seeing if someone else can get hot in the meantime. It's about doing anything you can to win games. If Stowers or whomever can get hot for a week or two, that's more important right now than continuing to run a guy out there who looks lost.