Are the O's Running Adley into the Ground

[Sports Guy]

21 minutes ago, kidrock said:

What do you think is the optimal way to get max value?  More catching, but more days off (instead of DHing so much)?

Yes

[GoldGlove21]

5 minutes ago, MacAdoo said:

Agree. I think he’s going to be (and has been) much closer to Jason Varitek than Posey or Mauer. That would be a fine career but far from the hype. 

Mauer was worth 55.2 career WAR. Mauer only hit 134 homeruns and drove in 923 in his 15 season career. He was an on base machine who had an .827 career OPS. He was a league MVP once and he was a 6-time All Star. Adley is almost through year 3 and he is worth 12.6 WAR, has 50 career homeruns, 183 RBI, and a .794 career OPS. When it comes to offensive comps I believe Mauer to be Adley's comp. Also, I do not think that we have seen Adley's best offensive season as of yet.

[Sports Guy]

35 minutes ago, Moose Milligan said:

@Malikepointed out that he drilled a few balls yesterday, just right at defenders.

I think Adley's leadership means a lot to this club and he's certainly a face of the franchise.  He's still on the upswing of his career so there's still room to grow but I'm also coming around to the idea that he's probably not going to be the next Joe Mauer, Buster Posey, etc.

This is terrible and doesn't have anything to do with the thread.

I do think there is also a thought by Os fans that his offense is better than it actually is

[vab]

What I don't understand about Adley is he seems to have radically changed his whole hitting style. He went from a very patient, line drive hitter with occasional power to a very aggressive approach, going for more power. It has to be intentional and I don't know why he did it but he needs to go back to his original style. 

[GoldGlove21]

1 minute ago, GoldGlove21 said:

Mauer was worth 55.2 career WAR. Mauer only hit 134 homeruns and drove in 923 in his 15 season career. He was an on base machine who had an .827 career OPS. He was a league MVP once and he was a 6-time All Star. Adley is almost through year 3 and he is worth 12.6 WAR, has 50 career homeruns, 183 RBI, and a .794 career OPS. When it comes to offensive comps I believe Mauer to be Adley's comp. Also, I do not think that we have seen Adley's best offensive season as of yet.

The downside with Adley is that Mauer came up at 21 and Adley was 24. I think by the time 2027 hits we will know what Adley's best season looks like. I love him as a person and as a player, but I don't think this team signs both him and Gunnar to what will likely be $200M deals. If I had to pay out a big contract, I would do so for Gunnar who is 3 years younger and a perennial MVP candidate.

[GoldGlove21]

2 minutes ago, vab said:

What I don't understand about Adley is he seems to have radically changed his whole hitting style. He went from a very patient, line drive hitter with occasional power to a very aggressive approach, going for more power. It has to be intentional and I don't know why he did it but he needs to go back to his original style. 

I am going to guess that the Orioles wanted that from him.

[gtman55]

5 minutes ago, vab said:

What I don't understand about Adley is he seems to have radically changed his whole hitting style. He went from a very patient, line drive hitter with occasional power to a very aggressive approach, going for more power. It has to be intentional and I don't know why he did it but he needs to go back to his original style. 

This. 100%.

[LookitsPuck]

Adley OPS by month 2022-2024:

	2022	2023	2024
April		846	811
May	529	861	798
June	775	660	848
July	859	776	472
August	852	770
Sep/Oct	851	922

He had a similar swoon in June of last year, although July 2024 is clearly his worst OPS of his career. He's played in ~93% of games this year. Last year, that ended up being 95%. I'm not sure the workload is obscene, as he's caught 67 games this year (63%). Last year, he caught 67% of the games. So, his workload behind the dish has been less this year. 

I don't know if this is just noise, but his splits between C and DH are astronomical this year. He's only hitting 222 w/ an OPS of 644 as a catcher, but as a DH? 344 w/ an OPS of 982.

We'll see if he bounces back in August, but right now this all feels like an offensive swoon. 

 

[vab]

5 minutes ago, GoldGlove21 said:

I am going to guess that the Orioles wanted that from him.

Hope that's not true. 

[Moose Milligan]

12 minutes ago, GoldGlove21 said:

Mauer was worth 55.2 career WAR. Mauer only hit 134 homeruns and drove in 923 in his 15 season career. He was an on base machine who had an .827 career OPS. He was a league MVP once and he was a 6-time All Star. Adley is almost through year 3 and he is worth 12.6 WAR, has 50 career homeruns, 183 RBI, and a .794 career OPS. When it comes to offensive comps I believe Mauer to be Adley's comp. Also, I do not think that we have seen Adley's best offensive season as of yet.

This is nice, but I don't think WAR encapsulates some ballplayers.  

I know @DrungoHazewoodwould slap my hand for thinking batting titles mean something...and I don't care, they mean something.  If Adley ever won three batting titles, that would be huge.  That's a big part of the reason why Mauer was just inducted into the Hall of Fame, because batting titles by a catcher don't happen very often...let alone three times by one catcher.

No one here is saying that Adley's a bad player.  He's a very good player, but like the above post said, he might be more Jason Varitek than Joe Mauer...which is fine.

[LookitsPuck]

8 minutes ago, vab said:

What I don't understand about Adley is he seems to have radically changed his whole hitting style. He went from a very patient, line drive hitter with occasional power to a very aggressive approach, going for more power. It has to be intentional and I don't know why he did it but he needs to go back to his original style. 

Adley is striking out roughly 17% of PA. Last year was roughly 15%. So, there is definitely some give there in terms of SO. I'm not so sure concerned about that, but the walk rate has went down. ~13% of PA last year ended in a walk. This year? ~9%. So a slightly elevated SO rate coupled with a lower walk rate. I'm not sure why this happening, maybe things will normalize the rest of the year, but he's definitely is having a down year compared to last year. 

[Moose Milligan]

3 minutes ago, LookitsPuck said:

 

I don't know if this is just noise, but his splits between C and DH are astronomical this year. He's only hitting 222 w/ an OPS of 644 as a catcher, but as a DH? 344 w/ an OPS of 982.

 

Then they should continue to DH him and see if he continues to hit at that level...or at least until his hitting comes back to earth.

I remember Frank Thomas wanting to play 1st base because he thought that made him a complete ballplayer.  IIRC, the splits of him playing 1st base and hitting as a DH were pretty drastic.  I could be remembering that wrong, but there was a struggle to get him off the bag at first.  

If Adley OPS'd 982 the rest of the way as a DH, I think we'd all be fine with that.  

[LookitsPuck]

7 minutes ago, Moose Milligan said:

Then they should continue to DH him and see if he continues to hit at that level...or at least until his hitting comes back to earth.

I remember Frank Thomas wanting to play 1st base because he thought that made him a complete ballplayer.  IIRC, the splits of him playing 1st base and hitting as a DH were pretty drastic.  I could be remembering that wrong, but there was a struggle to get him off the bag at first.  

If Adley OPS'd 982 the rest of the way as a DH, I think we'd all be fine with that.  

It's interesting. We've seen the opposite with Santander for the last few years. He does better when he plays the field and hits vs. as a pure DH.

I'd be curious to see if there are any studies about this, but maybe it's purely individual and on year/year basis.

[Sports Guy]

Buster Posey never played in more than 150 games and he never started more than 143 games.

Mauer didn’t catch a game from 2014 until he retired.  In the 10 years prior to that, Mauer never played in more than 147 games and never started more than 144 games and that was a year towards the end of his catching career and he was playing a lot of first.

Last year, in Adley’s first year, he played in 154 games and started 149 of them.  His games at C were in line but a little less than what Mauer and Posey usually would be doing in their catching prime.

So far this year, Adley has played in 99 games, starting 97 of them. That means he has played in 92.5% of their games and started 90.6% of them.  That has him on pace to start 147 games and play in 150 games.  He is on pace to start about 112 games at C. He did 110 last year. 

Adley should be at 115-120 games at catcher and 20-25 games at DH. 

Somewhere in the 135-143 start area is where I think he should be, so I think he’s in the area of 7-15 starts than he should have imo.

[E-D-D-I-E]

24 minutes ago, vab said:

What I don't understand about Adley is he seems to have radically changed his whole hitting style. He went from a very patient, line drive hitter with occasional power to a very aggressive approach, going for more power. It has to be intentional and I don't know why he did it but he needs to go back to his original style. 

1) all the O's are pressing.

2) maybe he isn't walking as much because pitchers are not fearing him.