Gunnar/ Adley . Would Gunnar have been a good choice at 1-1?

[Frobby]

5 minutes ago, Philip said:

I think my question was clumsy, although I did have a disclaimer at the bottom, which several guys ignored. Oh well.

I suggested that taking one instead of the other would have been a valid pic, but I meant to suggest that Gunnar would have been a good 1-1, and that we made a steal.

I shouldn’t have phrased it in “either or” scenario. I should’ve just compared gunners first two years with the last 20 or so 1-1 picks.

Which I will now do…

Well, it’s clear that Gunnar has played better than most 1:1’s typically have at his stage of career.  Adley too.  

The median career for a 1:1 is about 15 rWAR.  Adley has a good chance to surpass that this year, after just three seasons.  

Gunnar already has the 5th-most rWAR of any player drafted at no. 42, and he’s got a pretty good chance to be the best 42nd pick ever.  (Dennis Leonard at 25.7 rWAR currently tops the list.)

 

[Billy F-Face3]

The fact that this thread exists is a huge credit to the scout in the Orioles Front Office that convinced Elias and the team to take him. 

I don't remember details, but this particular scout had been scouting Gunnar all throughout high school. He wanted the team to draft him and they finally did the 2nd time they had the opportunity in the 2019 draft.

[Can_of_corn]

10 minutes ago, Frobby said:

Well, it’s clear that Gunnar has played better than most 1:1’s typically have at his stage of career.  Adley too.  

The median career for a 1:1 is about 15 rWAR.  Adley has a good chance to surpass that this year, after just three seasons.  

Gunnar already has the 5th-most rWAR of any player drafted at no. 42, and he’s got a pretty good chance to be the best 42nd pick ever.  (Dennis Leonard at 25.7 rWAR currently tops the list.)

 

It's so easy to miss, even at the top of the draft.

Even at 1-1, if you look at the last decade

Skenes

Holliday

Davis

Torkelson

Rutschman

Mize

Lewis

Moniak

Swanson

Aiken

That's not a ton of stars, as of right now the only one close to Rutschman's success is Swanson.

 

 

[DrungoHazewood]

34 minutes ago, Philip said:

I think my question was clumsy, although I did have a disclaimer at the bottom, which several guys ignored. Oh well.

I suggested that taking one instead of the other would have been a valid pic, but I meant to suggest that Gunnar would have been a good 1-1, and that we made a steal.

I shouldn’t have phrased it in “either or” scenario. I should’ve just compared gunners first two years with the last 20 or so 1-1 picks.

Which I will now do…

The median #1 overall pick is worth about 15-17 wins. Phil Nevin. Jeff King. Pat Burrell. Something like that. 80th percentile #1 is something like 40 wins.

Gunnar is 208 games into his career and is 23 years old, and already more valuable than roughly 40% of all #1 overalls.

Since the 1994 draft (post-ARod) Joe Mauer is the only #1 overall to have reached 50 rWAR. At his career pace Gunnar will need 1190 games to get to 50 rWAR, or about 7.3 seasons.

So, yea, he would be doing fine if he'd been taken #1.

[Can_of_corn]

Just now, DrungoHazewood said:

The median #1 overall pick is worth about 15-17 wins. Phil Nevin. Jeff King. Pat Burrell. Something like that. 80th percentile #1 is something like 40 wins.

Gunnar is 208 games into his career and is 23 years old, and already more valuable than roughly 40% of all #1 overalls.

Since the 1994 draft (post-ARod) Joe Mauer is the only #1 overall to have reached 50 rWAR. At his career pace Gunnar will need 1190 games to get to 50 rWAR, or about 7.3 seasons.

So, yea, he would be doing fine if he'd been taken #1.

I just want to say that Harper is at 46.9

[DrungoHazewood]

11 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

I just want to say that Harper is at 46.9

Yep. It'll take him about 1650ish games to get there.

Not that I expect Gunnar to continue to post 6.9 WAR per 162, but for now he's almost 2 wins per full season ahead of Harper.

Harper is still an interesting case, where he has two actual MVP awards, but only one year where he was a no-doubt MVP. And a lot of seasons with injury or under-performance. Six seasons of less than three wins. More valuable in '15 than in '16-18 combined. 2021 he was certainly good, but arguably not as good as Gunnar's '23. Or 5-6 other NL players from '21.

Edited April 26 by DrungoHazewood

[DrungoHazewood]

Here's a trivia question nobody is going to get unless you have Stathead: Gunnar Henderson is 2nd in modern Orioles history ('54-present) in OPS in a player's first 208 career games. Can you name the other five in the top six?

If you need a hint or two, two are active, and none are in the Hall of Fame.

Side note: there have only been 62 players who started their career with the Orioles and played at least the next 208 games with the team.

[Frobby]

38 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

Here's a trivia question nobody is going to get unless you have Stathead: Gunnar Henderson is 2nd in modern Orioles history ('54-present) in OPS in a player's first 208 career games. Can you name the other five in the top six?

If you need a hint or two, two are active, and none are in the Hall of Fame.

Side note: there have only been 62 players who started their career with the Orioles and played at least the next 208 games with the team.

So I guess this question is limited to players who started their major league careers with the Orioles?

I’ll take a guess that Al Bumbry was one.  Maybe Jim Gentile.  Adley.  Markakis.  Boog.  Those are my guesses.  

[HowAboutThat]

2 hours ago, Frobby said:

Well, it’s clear that Gunnar has played better than most 1:1’s typically have at his stage of career.  Adley too.  

The median career for a 1:1 is about 15 rWAR.  Adley has a good chance to surpass that this year, after just three seasons.  

Gunnar already has the 5th-most rWAR of any player drafted at no. 42, and he’s got a pretty good chance to be the best 42nd pick ever.  (Dennis Leonard at 25.7 rWAR currently tops the list.)

 

Ha! I was intending to look at the #1 picks 1999-2019 and see how many had done so well in ~1100 ABs, and also look at all the 42nd picks and see how Gunnar ranks in that group. You just saved half my work!

Danke für deine Arbeit!

[HowAboutThat]

1 hour ago, DrungoHazewood said:

The median #1 overall pick is worth about 15-17 wins. Phil Nevin. Jeff King. Pat Burrell. Something like that. 80th percentile #1 is something like 40 wins.

Gunnar is 208 games into his career and is 23 years old, and already more valuable than roughly 40% of all #1 overalls.

Since the 1994 draft (post-ARod) Joe Mauer is the only #1 overall to have reached 50 rWAR. At his career pace Gunnar will need 1190 games to get to 50 rWAR, or about 7.3 seasons.

So, yea, he would be doing fine if he'd been taken #1.

So Frobby did half the job, and you did the rest! Gosh, with assistants like you guys I can spend the day at the beach!

[DrungoHazewood]

13 hours ago, Frobby said:

So I guess this question is limited to players who started their major league careers with the Orioles?

I’ll take a guess that Al Bumbry was one.  Maybe Jim Gentile.  Adley.  Markakis.  Boog.  Those are my guesses.  

You got Rutschman, he's 5th at .799.

Here, since nobody else took me up on it, this is the top 13 just becase Cal is 13th:

         
Rk              Player Team   Span Started     Span Ended  OPS  PA  AB   R   H  1B 2B 3B HR RBI SB CS  BB  SO   BA  OBP  SLG  OPS
1      Merv Rettenmund  BAL     1968-04-14     1971-04-28 .864 735 628  96 185 122 32  6 25  96 21 10  86 116 .295 .380 .484 .864
2     Gunnar Henderson  BAL     2022-08-31     2024-04-24 .836 864 773 132 203 111 39 13 40 120 16  4  79 219 .263 .334 .502 .836
3         Curt Blefary  BAL     1965-04-14     1966-06-29 .831 818 687 111 177 108 29  6 34 105  5  3 114 102 .258 .365 .466 .831
4         Larry Sheets  BAL     1984-09-18     1986-09-02 .812 680 628  82 174 114 24  1 35 108  2  1  44 101 .277 .326 .486 .812
5      Adley Rutschman  BAL     2022-05-21     2023-07-25 .799 896 763 118 199 120 52  1 26  84  4  1 124 152 .261 .365 .434 .799
6     Ryan Mountcastle  BAL     2020-08-21     2022-05-22 .797 851 780 101 210 135 31  1 43 129  6  4  57 222 .269 .320 .477 .797
7         Trey Mancini  BAL     2016-09-20     2018-06-05 .796 845 775  97 215 141 36  4 34 100  1  0  57 197 .277 .330 .466 .796
8        Nick Markakis  BAL     2006-04-05     2007-06-22 .789 864 783 112 223 150 45  3 25 104  9  1  67 122 .285 .343 .446 .789
9       Cedric Mullins  BAL     2018-08-10     2021-08-03 .787 864 773 106 212 137 41  9 25  64 30 12  67 169 .274 .339 .448 .787
10         Jay Gibbons  BAL     2001-04-06     2003-04-03 .783 798 729  99 178  94 40  1 43 106  1  4  59 106 .244 .305 .479 .783
11           Al Bumbry  BAL     1972-09-05     1975-05-31 .780 806 735 117 220 160 35 16  9  64 34 14  57 118 .299 .353 .427 .780
12        Eddie Murray  BAL     1977-04-07     1978-06-02 .779 878 806 101 222 148 38  3 33 113  0  3  62 130 .275 .326 .453 .779
13      Cal Ripken Jr.  BAL 1981-08-12 (2) 1983-05-17 (2) .778 853 779 116 206 126 41  6 33 115  3  3  62 126 .264 .318 .460 .778

 

Edited April 27 by DrungoHazewood

[Frobby]

2 minutes ago, DrungoHazewood said:

You got Rutschman, he's 5th at .799.

Here, since nobody else took me up on it, this is the top 13 just becase Cal is 13th:

         
Rk              Player Team   Span Started     Span Ended  OPS  PA  AB   R   H  1B 2B 3B HR RBI SB CS  BB  SO   BA  OBP  SLG  OPS
1      Merv Rettenmund  BAL     1968-04-14     1971-04-28 .864 735 628  96 185 122 32  6 25  96 21 10  86 116 .295 .380 .484 .864
2     Gunnar Henderson  BAL     2022-08-31     2024-04-24 .836 864 773 132 203 111 39 13 40 120 16  4  79 219 .263 .334 .502 .836
3         Curt Blefary  BAL     1965-04-14     1966-06-29 .831 818 687 111 177 108 29  6 34 105  5  3 114 102 .258 .365 .466 .831
4         Larry Sheets  BAL     1984-09-18     1986-09-02 .812 680 628  82 174 114 24  1 35 108  2  1  44 101 .277 .326 .486 .812
5      Adley Rutschman  BAL     2022-05-21     2023-07-25 .799 896 763 118 199 120 52  1 26  84  4  1 124 152 .261 .365 .434 .799
6     Ryan Mountcastle  BAL     2020-08-21     2022-05-22 .797 851 780 101 210 135 31  1 43 129  6  4  57 222 .269 .320 .477 .797
7         Trey Mancini  BAL     2016-09-20     2018-06-05 .796 845 775  97 215 141 36  4 34 100  1  0  57 197 .277 .330 .466 .796
8        Nick Markakis  BAL     2006-04-05     2007-06-22 .789 864 783 112 223 150 45  3 25 104  9  1  67 122 .285 .343 .446 .789
9       Cedric Mullins  BAL     2018-08-10     2021-08-03 .787 864 773 106 212 137 41  9 25  64 30 12  67 169 .274 .339 .448 .787
10         Jay Gibbons  BAL     2001-04-06     2003-04-03 .783 798 729  99 178  94 40  1 43 106  1  4  59 106 .244 .305 .479 .783
11           Al Bumbry  BAL     1972-09-05     1975-05-31 .780 806 735 117 220 160 35 16  9  64 34 14  57 118 .299 .353 .427 .780
12        Eddie Murray  BAL     1977-04-07     1978-06-02 .779 878 806 101 222 148 38  3 33 113  0  3  62 130 .275 .326 .453 .779
13      Cal Ripken Jr.  BAL 1981-08-12 (2) 1983-05-17 (2) .778 853 779 116 206 126 41  6 33 115  3  3  62 126 .264 .318 .460 .778

 

As an aside, I was shocked how bad Bumbry’s second full year was when I looked it up following my guesses.  .898 as a rookie, then .592.   I also forgot that Jim Gentile had a couple of cups of coffee in other orgs before his rookie year in Baltimore, so he didn’t qualify for the list.  

[DrungoHazewood]

My original goal was to see if anyone had more value than Gunner in his first 208 games as an Oriole at the start of his career. But the span finder in Stathead doesn't do WAR. Rettenmund hit better, but was worth 6.1 rWAR in his first 232 games. Blefary was an okay LFer, so no. Sheets was a essentially a DH.

Rutschman may have done it. His pace has been 7.7 rWAR per 208.

Cal was sort of close, but hurt by that start. Through 182 games he was sitting on 4.2. Eddie was held back by being a DH a lot in his first year or two.

So I'm pretty confident that the two most valuable Orioles through their first ~1.5 seasons are Henderson and Rutschman.

Edited April 27 by DrungoHazewood

[DrungoHazewood]

19 minutes ago, Frobby said:

As an aside, I was shocked how bad Bumbry’s second full year was when I looked it up following my guesses.  .898 as a rookie, then .592.   I also forgot that Jim Gentile had a couple of cups of coffee in other orgs before his rookie year in Baltimore, so he didn’t qualify for the list.  

Bumbry had wild swings in BABIP throughout his career. .375 in '73, then .274 in '74. .372 in '77 then .258 in '78. One of those guys who was really good if he hit about .300, but not so much if he hit .237.

Would be fun to see modern Statcast data for historical seasons to try to figure out what was going on there. Injuries? Bad luck? Just slumping?

Edited April 27 by DrungoHazewood

[Frobby]

1 hour ago, DrungoHazewood said:

 

So I'm pretty confident that the two most valuable Orioles through their first ~1.5 seasons are Henderson and Rutschman.

That’s pretty incredible to contemplate that we have both these guys playing simultaneously.