This offensive style is not sustainable

[Frobby]

27 minutes ago, emmett16 said:

 

wRC+ 114 this year vs. 105 last year.  Why are people complaining? Because it seems like we are being less patient?

 Very simply, they are complaining because the bats have been cold for 2 weeks or so.   Since April 29, .219/.284/.407, averaging 3.71 runs/game.   Before that, they were hitting .257/.314/.459, averaging 5.59 runs a game.  Nobody was complaining then, though the walk rate essentially was the same then (2.63 per game) than in this current cold streak (2.57).   Funny how that works!   

The good news here is that the team is 10-4 during this cold stretch, after going 17-10 when the bats were hotter.  
 

[Tony-OH]

30 minutes ago, emmett16 said:

Yea, there is no different approach.  Its a SSS in a long season.  

Their wOBA and ISO are up this year over last year.  Their OBP is down slightly but can be attributed to a .278 BABIP this year vs. a .305 last year.  The k% is almost identical and the BB % is off by -1.5%.   I'd wager that by the end of season, the BB% will be up and the numbers will be up across the board.  

wRC+ 114 this year vs. 105 last year.  Why are people complaining? Because it seems like we are being less patient?

Great post and I agree. I do think it's because the Orioles have not been scoring a ton of runs and have had some quick innings over the last week or so that some people get a little antsy.

The results have been better overall with scoring runs. I do think at times the team could be more patient in certain situations, but nobody ever complains about first pitch ambush home run, but they certainly complain about a first pitch pop up.

For me, it's about pitch selection and situation. If they pop up a perfect pitch down the middle, they just missed it. Now if they are chasing bad pitches early and getting out, that's an issue. Which I haven't seen a ton of but I haven't done the research on the team's chase%. 

[Can_of_corn]

This is from a Fangraphs piece I just posted elsewhere.

Quote

But one of the big breakthroughs in baseball analysis in the past year has been formalizing the idea of selective aggression: swinging at pitches you can do damage on and spitting on the others.

I think it's been going on for longer than a year but I guess maybe it's reached a tipping point?

[PeregrineT]

I mean, Ill be more concerned when this team isnt 4th in the league in scoring.  With the exact same runs per game as last season, in a year where all hitting is down.  With a bunch of young players learning.

Goes to show you even if you become the best team in baseball people will find something to complain about.

[now]

5 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

This is from a Fangraphs piece I just posted elsewhere.

['formalizing the idea of selective aggression: swinging at pitches you can do damage on and spitting on the others.']

I think it's been going on for longer than a year but I guess maybe it's reached a tipping point?

Agreed--longer, as in, it sounds an awful lot like what Ted Williams preached and practiced.

[TommyPickles]

We're 27-14 and our team OPS is up from this point last year?

I'm not too worried.

[sportsfan8703]

15 minutes ago, Frobby said:

 Very simply, they are complaining because the bats have been cold for 2 weeks or so.   Since April 29, .219/.284/.407, averaging 3.71 runs/game.   Before that, they were hitting .257/.314/.459, averaging 5.59 runs a game.  Nobody was complaining then, though the walk rate essentially was the same then (2.63 per game) than in this current cold streak (2.57).   Funny how that works!   

The good news here is that the team is 10-4 during this cold stretch, after going 17-10 when the bats were hotter.  
 

My math tells me that we've been better since the bats have went cold.  Is there a quick way to find opponents faced SP ERA?  We've been facing some of the top pitching in the league and it's not letting up in the SEA series.  

I suspect our offense will start to increase when the grind of 162 starts to wear teams down and there will be injury fill ins to rotations.  Plus, the warmer weather.  It's rained something like 16/20 days here and 15/19 weekends in 2024.  Bad weather in the Pitt series too.  

[emmett16]

3 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

This is from a Fangraphs piece I just posted elsewhere.

I think it's been going on for longer than a year but I guess maybe it's reached a tipping point?

I think it's a result of the shift and better more athletic defenders. It's been going on for a long time, but ever since Kyle Boddy disrupted player dev. in 2012 it's been a focus and has been expanded on.   See-ing eye singles aren't really a thing anymore.  Heck, defensive positioning rarely allows bloop hits anymore.  If you aren't putting the ball in play at 95mph+ with a launch angle of 8-25 degrees, your chance of getting a hit is slim to none.  And how can you achieve those results?  Sell out on balls you can handle, often times even with 2 strikes if the situation/pitcher warrant that approach.  I know some teams use a chart that shows the strike zone with a diamond in the middle of it, essentially eliminating all 4 corners.  You are dinged if you go after a pitch in those 4 quadrants with less than 2 strikes.  You're also dinged if you don't go after a pitch in the hot zone (regardless of count).  I'm sure it gets much more sophisticated and personalized than that.  

[Bemorewins]

1 hour ago, Aristotelian said:

It is public knowledge that the Orioles have a swing decisions app. Austin Hays talks about it in this piece. Sounds like a grading system to me. 

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/austin-hays-follows-the-numbers-and-trusts-the-process/

Laurila: Which of your data do you look at after games?

 

Hays: “We have an app that we use. All of the information goes in there after each game, and something I’ve tried to improve on this year is my swing-decision scores. Every pitch you swing at or take, every pitch thrown, we have a score for. It’s not a perfect metric, but I think it does a pretty good job of showing you what you’re doing at the plate.

“If you’re taking a strike with two strikes, that’s going to have the biggest negative score. And if you’re in a three-ball count and swing at a pitch that’s pretty far outside the strike zone, a clear ball, that’s going to get the most hurt as well. But if you take edgy pitches early in the count, or you take a close pitch for ball four, a pitch that is just outside the zone, that’s going to get the most points.

“That’s something I’ve been looking at every single day. It’s ‘OK, how was my plate discipline yesterday? How did I do?’ From that you can start to see, ‘Oh, wow, I’ve had a really good two weeks, I’ve have a lot of doubles, hit some home runs, and my batting average is really high.’ I’ll see that I’ve been making really good swing decisions, and that’s led me to me hitting the ball hard. Or let’s say I have a bad week. I can see if there is any correlation to the pitches I’ve been swinging at and if I’ve been chasing.”

Laurila: Valuable information, but as you said, not a perfect metric.

Hays: “Right. Much like you can’t be all in for exit velocity, you can’t be all in for swing decisions. You’re going to have days where you’re minus-50 and go 4-for-4, or you’ll have a day where you go 0-for-3 with three strikeouts and your score was plus-14. That does happen. So it’s not the end all be all. But over a long period of time, the guy that has a pretty high batting average or a really high on-base tends to have better scores.”

I don’t discount anything here. I’m simply stating that the data is used to inform players not to order them what to do/when to or not swing.

If Adley or Gunnar don’t grade well but continue on their career trajectory’s and make all-star teams, get silver slugger awards, etc; what will it mean to them? Are punitive actions going to be taken against them? I doubt it.

The app/data is there to inform players so that they can make the best decisions on the field that they can. But they are the ones out there playing the game and deciding what works best for them. 

[LGOrioles]

42 minutes ago, Tony-OH said:

So wait, are we really upset that Adley is not walking as much as last year when he's doing just about everything else better this year to include power?

OPS: Up .050
SLG: Up .074
AVG: UP .037
HH%: Up 9.9%
EV: Up 1.6 MPH
ISO: Up .037
OPS+: Up .021
HR: On pace for 16 more HRs

I mean, I get the idea that this team is being more aggressive, but I'll take 2024 Adley over 2023 Adley everyday of the week and twice on Sunday! 

Agreed he’s been a better hitter this year. I was just pointing out that a lot of the decrease in team walk rate can be contributed to him walking about 1/3rd less than last year. 

Imagine his current power and quality of contact with his more patient approach though! That’s a top 5 MVP guy if he isn’t already. 

[emmett16]

13 minutes ago, now said:

Agreed--longer, as in, it sounds an awful lot like what Ted Williams preached and practiced.

For sure.  He had his BA % for quadrants in the strike zone as well as the count.  It's pretty remarkable how far ahead of his time he was.  I really wish I could have seen him play.  The Science of Hitting is easily the best book out there on hitting.  

 

[Aristotelian]

7 minutes ago, Bemorewins said:

I don’t discount anything here. I’m simply stating that the data is used to inform players not to order them what to do/when to or not swing.

If Adley or Gunnar don’t grade well but continue on their career trajectory’s and make all-star teams, get silver slugger awards, etc; what will it mean to them? Are punitive actions going to be taken against them? I doubt it.

The app/data is there to inform players so that they can make the best decisions on the field that they can. But they are the ones out there playing the game and deciding what works best for them. 

OK, yes, I doubt they are getting penalized game checks or sent to the bench after a bad game. I would still call it a grading system but if you want to call it something else that's a semantic thing not worth arguing over.

[interloper]

16 minutes ago, TommyPickles said:

We're 27-14 and our team OPS is up from this point last year?

I'm not too worried.

The OPS is up due to a lot of home runs from a hot month of April. It feels like ages ago that Mullins hit 6 bombs in April. Likewise Cowser. So I'm saying things are not trending well right now. And relying on home runs is not sustainable. These guys have to get on base and string hits together. I'm relatively confident that they will, but if they don't, we're not going to win many games if our offense is just Gunnar and Adley popping home runs. 

[Frobby]

3 minutes ago, sportsfan8703 said:

My math tells me that we've been better since the bats have went cold.  Is there a quick way to find opponents faced SP ERA?  We've been facing some of the top pitching in the league and it's not letting up in the SEA series.  

I suspect our offense will start to increase when the grind of 162 starts to wear teams down and there will be injury fill ins to rotations.  Plus, the warmer weather.  It's rained something like 16/20 days here and 15/19 weekends in 2024.  Bad weather in the Pitt series too.  

I don’t know of a quick way to check quality of opposing pitchers, but I do think we’ve seen a lot of quality pitchers of late.  Just looking at the 14 game span:

NYY: Cortes 4.02, Rodon 3.31, Gil 2.51, Schmidt 2.95

CIN: Greene 3.27, Abbott 3.06, Lodolo 3.34

WSN: Williams 1.94, Parker 3.09

ARI: Pfaadt 4.17, Gallen 2.86, Nelson 5.33

TOR: Berrios 2.82, Kikuchi 2.60

League average starter ERA is 3.95, so 11 of the 14 starters we faced were above average by ERA.  If you just average out those 14 it comes to 3.23, considerably better than league average.  The bullpens we faced were less impressive: NYY  2.58, CIN 4.25, WSN 3.43, AZI 4.33, TOR 5.03.  Overall though I think it’s fair to say we’ve seen above average pitching in that 14 game stretch.   

 

 

[Spy Fox]

15 minutes ago, Frobby said:

I don’t know of a quick way to check quality of opposing pitchers, but I do think we’ve seen a lot of quality pitchers of late.  Just looking at the 14 game span:

NYY: Cortes 4.02, Rodon 3.31, Gil 2.51, Schmidt 2.95

CIN: Greene 3.27, Abbott 3.06, Lodolo 3.34

WSN: Williams 1.94, Parker 3.09

ARI: Pfaadt 4.17, Gallen 2.86, Nelson 5.33

TOR: Berrios 2.82, Kikuchi 2.60

League average starter ERA is 3.95, so 11 of the 14 starters we faced were above average by ERA.  If you just average out those 14 it comes to 3.23, considerably better than league average.  The bullpens we faced were less impressive: NYY  2.58, CIN 4.25, WSN 3.43, AZI 4.33, TOR 5.03.  Overall though I think it’s fair to say we’ve seen above average pitching in that 14 game stretch.   

And now we get Miller-Castillo-Kirby from Seattle.. can't get much tougher than that inside of any one series.