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I Don't Understand It, They're Not Even Competitive Right Now.


ORIOLE33

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3 hours ago, bpilktree67 said:

Every team has 2 or 3 below average hitters in their regular lineups and our bottom of the order is better than most other teams.  Urias is ops + is 98 that is league average in the 9 hole.   Mateo is 93 slightly below average.  Mullins at 74 is the only one really below league average.   

But not every team has Colton Cowser, Heston Kjerstad, Kyle Stowers, Connor Norby, and Coby Mayo ready to replace those bad hitters at any moment from the minors or from the major league bench. You're just making excuses for a problem that has clear solutions. 

And Mike Elias needs to be called out for not making changes to a roster with flawed veteran players when he has a surplus of prospects that is unprecedented. Not just for the Orioles, but for any team in the modern era.

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3 hours ago, bpilktree67 said:

Players batting average  on first pitch this season.  
Henderson .310 
Rutschman .462

Santander .275 

Mounty .441

Westy .327

Mullins .295

O’Hearn .245

Cowser .545

Mateo .343

They are hitting much better on first pitch average and ops then they are when taking a few pitches.  If the first pitch is good swing at it and do damage.  

 

 

 

 


 

Theres a dual reason though, for NOT swinging at the first pitch.And that's pitch count. The other day we had Cole in trouble with pitch count, but then we had two consecutive 9 pitch innings and got him off the hook. Maybe the stats say those guys hit well on the first pitch, but remember pitch count matters too. We simply dont have many good at bats right now. Too anxious, and maybe too swing happy, or maybe just not reading the pitchers well.

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Hard to believe an entire team of 30 people can simultaneously become so inept.

What would a hospital do if all 30 surgeons in the emergency room came in on a busy Monday morning going, "What's a scalpel? Uh.... try wiping it with a Kleenex? I dunno..." That's the level of sheer incompetence the O's are consistently displaying.

It's like the coaches arranged a team meeting and went, "Everything you've learned about baseball? Throw it away. Forget it. I'm teaching you something new. The goal of the game is to lose -- here's how you do it."

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6 hours ago, Brooks The Great said:

When you start awful hitters like Jorge Mateo, Ramon Urias, and Cedric Mullins regularly in your lineup, you wind up paying for it. Especially when your best hitters (Gunnar, Adley) go into a slump as well.

Agreed, which takes me to the trade deadline. All three players should be available in trade talks. It's time to start making room for the pipeline of talent we have in the minors. 

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5 hours ago, ThomasTomasz said:

We just had a stretch where we played 30 games in 31 days, had a day off, and then promptly went on a west coast trip. 

Then, we get a home-stand, and just happened to luck into playing against 

Jameson Taillon (pitching like a #1-2 this year) 
Shoto Imanaga 
Justin Steele
Gerrit Cole 
Luis Gil 

The pitching has 100% been a let down this week, but I can’t fault the offense.  It is hard to get going when you’ve got five TORP’s in a row, heading into a break no less.  

Baseball is 162 games.  We will be fine.  And even if not……the window is open for a ridiculously long time.  

100% agree with this take and am not part of the sky is falling crowd. When I saw the pitching for this week I thought it might be a tough week. 

But the OP isn't wrong. During this streak they've never led and have been losing by at least the 3rd inning of every game and usually a sooner. A very frustrating week of baseball for sure. 

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13 hours ago, ORIOLE33 said:

I know, "it's baseball." But how can a team that was so good, become so bad over night? They're not even hitting HR's right now. I never thought that we desperately needed to make a move, but something needs to be done. The Yankees were slumping as bad as were were and we have literally turned their season around. 
 

This team needs to get their s**t together. 

And how can a team that looked so bad that they could be piece together two 7 game losing streaks, and immediately after the second one, used their next 7 losses to win 30 games (30 out of 37), not to mention some other stuff that happened in 1983. Its  baseball.

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Hypothetical. Burnes goes down with an injury. Where is our season? Has a season's hopes rested so firmly upon one player's shoulders like it does with Burnes and the Orioles right now?

This exercise is very telling about our pitching depth/quality.

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Just now, ScGO's said:

Hypothetical. Burnes goes down with an injury. Where is our season? Has a season's hopes rested so firmly upon one player's shoulders like it does with Burnes and the Orioles right now?

This exercise is very telling about our pitching depth/quality.

Sure, Barnes going down would be a huge blow. But regarding your last sentence  I don't know many teams that could withstand losing 4 SPs for the season along with their top RP last year. 

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11 minutes ago, ScGO's said:

Hypothetical. Burnes goes down with an injury. Where is our season? Has a season's hopes rested so firmly upon one player's shoulders like it does with Burnes and the Orioles right now?

This exercise is very telling about our pitching depth/quality.

Yes , but only because of all the injuries, If Burnes goes down , might as well punt the season. Only so much you can put back together at the deadline.

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12 hours ago, Orioles0615 said:

I wonder when then can finally admit dual hitting coaches and an offensive strategy coordinator is a bad idea

Wasn’t a bad idea when they were the best offense in baseball very recently.

They’re slumping. Everybody is pressing. It happens.

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12 hours ago, ledzepp8 said:

Exactly right. People need to step off the ledge. They're 57-38. After 95 games in 2023, they were 58-37. 

Are they having a tough time right now? Sure. But c'mon, some people need to have a little perspective.

And... last year the O's were 6.5 games back of the Rays on July 1 and won the division. @DrungoHazewood has also noted that the 1983 team had 2 separate 7-game losing streaks. They were 3 games back on July 16 and won the AL East by 6 games.

Time is an ally here. If they're playing like doo doo in September I'll really worry

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Feels like the right time to pull out the cliche that you’re never as good as you look when you’re winning, or as bad as you look when you’re losing.  Long way to go to know what kind of team we will be this season.

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13 hours ago, bpilktree67 said:

Players batting average  on first pitch this season.  
Henderson .310 
Rutschman .462

Santander .275 

Mounty .441

Westy .327

Mullins .295

O’Hearn .245

Cowser .545

Mateo .343

They are hitting much better on first pitch average and ops then they are when taking a few pitches.  If the first pitch is good swing at it and do damage. 

Yes, but this is an easy adjustment point we can be countered on if the other teams in the league figure it out... which they were bound to do in the age of analytics.  They're not stupid.

So now opposing pitchers have gone from throwing a hittable, get-me-over strike one pitch that our guys can clobber, to very often throwing stuff that "looks-hittable-but-is-actually-moving-junk" on that pitch.  And because the guys haven't shifted gears, they're falling for it and making poor contact. 

When they adjust, you have to adjust back. 

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10 minutes ago, Morgan423 said:

Yes, but this is an easy adjustment point we can be countered on if the other teams in the league figure it out... which they were bound to do in the age of analytics.  They're not stupid.

So now opposing pitchers have gone from throwing a hittable, get-me-over strike one pitch that our guys can clobber, to very often throwing stuff that "looks-hittable-but-is-actually-moving-junk" on that pitch.  And because the guys haven't shifted gears, they're falling for it and making poor contact. 

When they adjust, you have to adjust back. 

They are 6-19 on the first pitch the last 5 games.  So if the teams are making adjustments it isn’t helping them any.   

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  • Posts

    • dWAR is just the run value for defense added with the defensive adjustment.  Corner OF spots have a -7.5 run adjustment, while CF has a +2.5 adjustment over 150 games.    Since Cowser played both CF and the corners they pro-rate his time at each to calculate his defensive adjustment. 
    • Just to be clear, though, fWAR also includes a substantial adjustment for position, including a negative one for Cowser.  For a clearer example on that front, as the chart posted higher on this page indicates, Carlos Santana had a +14 OAA — which is the source data that fWAR’s defensive component is based on. That 14 outs above average equates to 11-12 (they use different values on this for some reason) runs better than the average 1B.  So does Santana have a 12.0 defensive value, per fWAR? He does not. That’s because they adjust his defensive value downward to reflect that he’s playing a less difficult/valuable position. In this case, that adjustment comes out to -11.0 runs, as you can see here:   So despite apparently having a bona fide Gold Glove season, Santana’s Fielding Runs value (FanGraphs’ equivalent to dWAR) is barely above average, at 1.1 runs.    Any good WAR calculation is going to adjust for position. Being a good 1B just isn’t worth as much as being an average SS or catcher. Just as being a good LF isn’t worth as much as being an average CF. Every outfielder can play LF — only the best outfielders can play CF.  Where the nuance/context shows up here is with Cowser’s unique situation. Playing LF in OPACY, with all that ground to cover, is not the same as playing LF at Fenway or Yankee Stadium. Treating Cowser’s “position” as equivalent to Tyler O’Neill’s, for example, is not fair. The degree of difficulty is much, much higher at OPACY’s LF, and so the adjustment seems out of whack for him. That’s the one place where I’d say the bWAR value is “unfair” to Cowser.
    • Wait a second here, the reason he's -0.1 in bb-ref dwar is because they're using drs to track his defensive run value.  He's worth 6.6 runs in defense according to fangraphs, which includes adjustments for position, which would give him a fangraphs defensive war of +0.7.
    • A little funny to have provided descriptions of the hits (“weak” single; “500 foot” HR). FIP doesn’t care about any of that either, so it’s kind of an odd thing to add in an effort to make ERA look bad.  Come in, strike out the first hitter, then give up three 108 MPH rocket doubles off the wall. FIP thinks you were absolutely outstanding, and it’s a shame your pathetic defense and/or sheer bad luck let you down. Next time you’ll (probably) get the outcomes you deserve. They’re both flawed. So is xFIP. So is SIERA. So is RA/9. So is WPA. So is xERA. None of them are perfect measures of how a pitcher’s actual performance was, because there’s way too much context and too many variables for any one metric to really encompass.  But when I’m thinking about awards, for me at least, it ends up having to be about the actual outcomes. I don’t really care what a hitter’s xWOBA is when I’m thinking about MVP, and the same is true for pitchers. Did you get the outs? Did the runs score? That’s the “value” that translates to the scoreboard and, ultimately, to the standings. So I think the B-R side of it is more sensible for awards.  I definitely take into account the types of factors that you (and other pitching fWAR advocates) reference as flaws. So if a guy plays in front of a particular bad defense or had a particularly high percentage of inherited runners score, I’d absolutely adjust my take to incorporate that info. And I also 100% go to Fangraphs first when I’m trying to figure out which pitchers we should acquire (i.e., for forward looking purposes).  But I just can’t bring myself say that my Cy Young is just whichever guy had the best ratio of Ks to BBs to HRs over a threshold number of innings. As @Frobby said, it just distills out too much of what actually happened.
    • We were all a lot younger in 2005.  No one wanted to believe Canseco cause he’s a smarmy guy. Like I said, he was the only one telling the truth. It wasn’t a leap of faith to see McGwire up there and Sosa up there and think “yeah, those guys were juicing” but then suddenly look at Raffy and think he was completely innocent.  It’s a sad story. The guy should be in Hall of Fame yet 500 homers and 3,000 hits are gone like a fart in the wind cause his legacy is wagging his finger and thinking he couldn’t get caught.  Don’t fly too close to the sun.  
    • I think if we get the fun sprinkler loving Gunnar that was in the dugout yesterday, I don’t think we have to worry about him pressing. He seemed loose and feeling good with the other guys he was with, like Kremer.
    • I was a lot younger back then, but that betrayal hit really hard because he had been painting himself as literally holier than thou, and shook his finger to a congressional committee and then barely 2 weeks later failed the test.
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