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Burnes certainly hasn't pitched like an ACE


Roy Firestone

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1 hour ago, emmett16 said:

5ip 5h 0 BB 4k 1 ER 

That’s a fantastic start and I’d sign up for that form every game the remainder of the season. 
 

Sure, not a lot of strikeouts and he didn’t “dominate like an Ave” but the emotional hyperbole is a bit much.   
 

Folks saying they’d rather have Suarez or Povich pitch a just win game need to get a grip. 

1 ER is being pretty kind.

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1 minute ago, Can_of_corn said:

Why would anyone wish ill on Joey Ortiz?

There you go again.   It’s a typical baseball fan reaction.   We traded Ortiz and Hall for one year of Burnes.   Burnes is beginning to disappoint.   If Ortiz was leading the league in hitting and DL Hall was having a CY Young season that would be like rubbing salt in the wound.

But go ahead with your typical sanctimonious act as if it’s a personal attack on Joey Ortiz.

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1 minute ago, RZNJ said:

There you go again.   It’s a typical baseball fan reaction.   We traded Ortiz and Hall for one year of Burnes.   Burnes is beginning to disappoint.   If Ortiz was leading the league in hitting and DL Hall was having a CY Young season that would be like rubbing salt in the wound.

But go ahead with your typical sanctimonious act as if it’s a personal attack on Joey Ortiz.

I don't think it's typical at all.

Ortiz has done nothing that I am aware of to cause baseball fans to root against him.

I honestly find it baffling. 

It's not as if Ortiz had any agency in the trade, I am not aware of him saying anything to disparage the team.

He's just going about his life, doing his job and someone is seemingly pleased he's not playing as well now as he was earlier in the year.

It's weird.

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He has also been pretty bad against good teams. He’s thrown 51 IP against current playoff teams this year. Below is his stat line:

51 IP, 55 H, 8 HR, 25 ER, 9 BB, 40 K

So his ERA is 4.41 against playoff teams, which is clearly not great. The BB/9 number is very strong, his problem is that he’s been extremely hittable, has given up a ton of HR’s (1.41 HR/9 would be 8th highest in the MLB among qualifiers), and his K rate is awful (7.06 K/9 would be 55th out of 64 qualifiers). 

They need a lot more out of him this last month than they’ve gotten recently. And he needs to miss more bats if he’s going to have success in the playoffs. 

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2 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

I don't think it's typical at all.

Ortiz has done nothing that I am aware of to cause baseball fans to root against him.

I honestly find it baffling. 

It's not as if Ortiz had any agency in the trade, I am not aware of him saying anything to disparage the team.

He's just going about his life, doing his job and someone is seemingly pleased he's not playing as well now as he was earlier in the year.

It's weird.

Do you want all of the NY Yankees to have career years this year?   I don’t.   I want  them to do badly.   Yet, they might all be great guys and they’ve never done anything personally to me.   Is that weird?

Now, when your team makes a trade, a baseball fan wants the feeling that the trade worked out in their favor.   Mets fans agonized over the Nolan Ryan trade.   Red Sox fans agonizing over the Jeff Bagwell trade and Oriole fans agonized over the Glenn Davis trade.

I hope Joey Ortiz has a very nice career.   I also hope he doesn’t turn into an MVP SS because then, I as a normal baseball fan, will be haunted by that trade, especially if Burnes doesn’t help us to advance in the post season.   I believe that’s a pretty typical reaction by the fan of a team.   You wouldn’t understand.

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26 minutes ago, RZNJ said:

Were you saying he wasn’t an ace before August or did he go from being an ace to a #2 in one month?

Let me be clear.   Burnes’ greatness this season has been in his consistency.   Besides his first start of the year, he’s never looked dominant to me.   Even before this bad stretch I never had a high degree of confidence that he was an “automatic” win in game one of a playoff series.

I just find it funny when I see “an ace doesn’t do this” comments.   So, if Burnes has a great September and playoff run you’ll just go back to calling him an ace again.  Cool.

Yes, he did go from an Ace to a #2 based on him wilting under the pressure of this stretch run. 

If he suddenly starts to pitch like he's capable in September, then maybe he can be considered an ace again.

Players do figure things out and Burnes has the stuff to do so, but he's doing things that aces don't do. Show me an Ace pitcher that wilted in August during a stretch run like Burnes has.

It's easy to just sit back and say, "Oh he's an ace" and don't question how small he's coming up, but this is exactly what a true ace does not do. they may have a bad outing here and there, but they don't put up an embarrassing month in August, right after the trade deadline when a team can do nothing else really. 

Eflin went down and it's like Burnes crapped his pants knowing he was now the guy-guy. It's sad because I expected more from him but he's showed us that he can't be trusted to give a good outing when the team needs one like Aces do.

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2 hours ago, Surhoffan17 said:

This is 100%. Moose gets out of these jams. Burnes doesn't have it and any team paying him will be foolish. 

You don’t win a Cy young one year and this year be one of the best starters in the league if you don’t have it.  Right now he is having trouble but a couple starts doesn’t outweighs a few years of data showing him to be at the top of the league.  

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1 minute ago, RZNJ said:

Do you want all of the NY Yankees to have career years this year?   I don’t.   I want  them to do badly.   Yet, they might all be great guys and they’ve never done anything personally to me.   Is that weird?

Now, when your team makes a trade, a baseball fan wants the feeling that the trade worked out in their favor.   Mets fans agonized over the Nolan Ryan trade.   Red Sox fans agonizing over the Jeff Bagwell trade and Oriole fans agonized over the Glenn Davis trade.

I hope Joey Ortiz has a very nice career.   I also hope he doesn’t turn into an MVP SS because then, I as a normal baseball fan, will be haunted by that trade, especially if Burnes doesn’t help us to advance in the post season.   I believe that’s a pretty typical reaction by the fan of a team.   You wouldn’t understand.

Are you telling me how I should feel as a baseball fan or insinuating that I'm not a baseball fan?

It was a good trade for the Orioles and the process was sound.

That doesn't change regardless of what type of season or career Ortiz has.

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Just now, bpilktree67 said:

You don’t win a Cy young one year and this year be one of the best starters in the league if you don’t have it.  Right now he is having trouble but a couple starts doesn’t outweighs a few years of data showing him to be at the top of the league.  

How many Cy Youngs did Moose win?  How many rings?

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Just now, Can_of_corn said:

Are you telling me how I should feel as a baseball fan or insinuating that I'm not a baseball fan?

It was a good trade for the Orioles and the process was sound.

That doesn't change regardless of what type of season or career Ortiz has.

I’m not telling you how you should feel as a baseball fan.  I’m telling you how a normal Oriole fan does feel.    A normal Oriole fan doesn’t want to think they traded two great players with 6 years of service time for a pitcher who, ultimately, didn’t deliver what they hoped.   It has nothing to do with personal animosity towards Joey Ortiz or DL Hall.    I hope they have nice careers but not to the point where I’m going to say it was one of the worst trades in Oriole history.

 

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Not interested in the debate of whether Burnes is an 'ace' or not, but I'll say this - I don't see any way he's getting the contract he's going to think he deserves from anybody, let alone the O's.  The lack of K's (which from what I understand is an ongoing, not just this year problem), the 'coming up small' as Tony noted above, and the complete inability to hold runners, who are running at will in every start now (which apparently IS a new problem this year), are plenty of reasons to not pony up the $200M+ contract he's going to want.  I think Burnes at this point is a very good, but not great, pitcher.

Here's a question - would anyone be upset if Eflin (assuming he returns in full) had to start game one instead of Burnes come the playoffs?  There's some natural recency bias if you pick Eflin there, but I don't think that makes it wrong.

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13 minutes ago, Tony-OH said:

Yes, he did go from an Ace to a #2 based on him wilting under the pressure of this stretch run. 

If he suddenly starts to pitch like he's capable in September, then maybe he can be considered an ace again.

Players do figure things out and Burnes has the stuff to do so, but he's doing things that aces don't do. Show me an Ace pitcher that wilted in August during a stretch run like Burnes has.

It's easy to just sit back and say, "Oh he's an ace" and don't question how small he's coming up, but this is exactly what a true ace does not do. they may have a bad outing here and there, but they don't put up an embarrassing month in August, right after the trade deadline when a team can do nothing else really. 

Eflin went down and it's like Burnes crapped his pants knowing he was now the guy-guy. It's sad because I expected more from him but he's showed us that he can't be trusted to give a good outing when the team needs one like Aces do.

Last year Burnes had a 3.98 ERA and 1.263 WHIP in August and a 2.51 ERA and a WHIP under 1 in September.    
 

Do you really think it’s about pressure?    I doubt that.   I think it’s fine to question if he is an ace or to say he’s not pitching like an ace.  Just don’t tell me he’s an ace in July, not one in August, and then an ace again in September.   Either you feel he’s an ace or you don’t.   Aces have slumps too.

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