9/11 - Orioles vs. Red Sox - Never Forget

[baltfan]

Hyde said he was worried about Refsnyder if walked O’Neil.  That was after he had not been pinch hit when Perez was in there.  

[spiritof66]

8 minutes ago, bpilktree67 said:

As I have said for awhile with all the injuries we have very little wiggle room to win games.  An error here bad baserunning not getting runners in with less then two outs all are magnified because of it.  

Do you mean to say, "As I have said for a while with all the injuries and the subpar play of Rutschman, Holliday, Mayo, the replacement position players brought in by Elias, O'Hearn, Kimbrel and some others, we have very little wiggle room to win games.  An error here bad baserunning not getting runners in with less then two outs all are magnified because of it."

I am worried that the starters are going to melt down from the pressure of knowing, in almost every game, they can't give up more than 2 runs in their 5 to 7 innings.

[e16bball]

19 minutes ago, LookitsPuck said:

Oh, I’ll argue until the cows come home. Good pitchers don’t have a 2 cent head and fall apart there. Pick up your team. It’d be one thing if it was an RBI groundout or sac fly, but an abysmal pitch to add to an already dismal track record of poor performance with runners on and in high leverage situations.

You can’t trust Akin. Both things can be true: Jackson stunk, Akin lost it. 

I don’t disagree that you can’t really trust Akin. 

But I think the entire concept of using him in that spot hinges on having the ability to walk O’Neill. The dude just murders lefties…2nd best hitter in MLB against lefties this year (behind only Judge). An ISO of .417 against lefties, which is laughably dominant. No one who wasn’t actively on steroids has ever even approached a .417 ISO over the course of a full season.

Everything is unfolding according to plan. Dominates Devers, gets the ground ball right to a perfectly placed 2B. All you need is for everyone to make basic professional ballplayer plays. And the kid just couldn’t do it.

Obviously, you can’t just let Akin off the hook for giving up the bomb. They both failed, as you said. But the degree of difficulty for Akin there (get O’Neill out as a lefty) was just so much higher than it was for Jackson (field grounder right at you). And it was the error that directly caused the worst possible scenario for Akin — a scenario that was always destined for a high likelihood of failure.

[Baseball fandom]

Orioles lose and lose another series rinse and repeat.  I'm to the point I don't even care if they make the playoffs anymore. This team has just been bad since June. 

[LookitsPuck]

1 minute ago, e16bball said:

I don’t disagree that you can’t really trust Akin. 

But I think the entire concept of using him in that spot hinges on having the ability to walk O’Neill. The dude just murders lefties…2nd best hitter in MLB against lefties this year (behind only Judge). An ISO of .417 against lefties, which is laughably dominant. No one who wasn’t actively on steroids has ever even approached a .417 ISO over the course of a full season.

Everything is unfolding according to plan. Dominates Devers, gets the ground ball right to a perfectly placed 2B. All you need is for everyone to make basic professional ballplayer plays. And the kid just couldn’t do it.

Obviously, you can’t just let Akin off the hook for giving up the bomb. They both failed, as you said. But the degree of difficulty for Akin there (get O’Neill out as a lefty) was just so much higher than it was for Jackson (field grounder right at you). And it was the error that directly caused the worst possible scenario for Akin — a scenario that was always destined for a high likelihood of failure.

Right. Walk O’Neill, take your chances with Yoshida who is abysmal against lefties. 

[Baseball fandom]

Orioles lose and lose another series rinse and repeat.  I'm to the point I don't even care if they make the playoffs anymore. This team has just been bad since June. 

[Baseball fandom]

The other thing because this team can't hit worth a damn and get on base when they hit homers they are always solo shots 

[Uli2001]

Another loss snatched from the jaws of victory. Totally winnable game.

[Tony-OH]

10 hours ago, LookitsPuck said:

Before tonight, Akin had an 834 OPS against with RISP and an 810 OPS against in high leverage situations.

Right, he's not a guy you want in high leverage. He's better earlier in games. But again, Holliday makes a simple routing play and he's walking that guy and going after the two lefties. Everything was set up for this to be as successful as possible. Holliday just blew it up.

[Hardball]

With the worst defensive infield in baseball coupled with inability to beat mediocre teams, bird fans are in for a big disappointment again. The one thing the birds are consistent at. 

[Sports Guy]

2 hours ago, Tony-OH said:

Right, he's not a guy you want in high leverage. He's better earlier in games. But again, Holliday makes a simple routing play and he's walking that guy and going after the two lefties. Everything was set up for this to be as successful as possible. Holliday just blew it up.

They should have walked ONeill anyway.

Akin shouldn’t have put a ball anywhere near there.

Yes, Hollidays error was crucial but it was a dumb decision not to walk him and even worse pitch to throw.

[Tony-OH]

1 hour ago, Sports Guy said:

They should have walked ONeill anyway.

Akin shouldn’t have put a ball anywhere near there.

Yes, Hollidays error was crucial but it was a dumb decision not to walk him and even worse pitch to throw.

I really can't argue that overall, though it's really tough to put the winning run on 2nd base with one out. I think the problem with that is Masataka Yoshida was on deck, and while he struggled against lefties overall, he does do a good job of situational hitting. 

At the end of the day, I'd feel a lot better pitching to him with only the tying run on 3rd, not the winning run on 2B.

[Sports Guy]

16 minutes ago, Tony-OH said:

I really can't argue that overall, though it's really tough to put the winning run on 2nd base with one out. I think the problem with that is Masataka Yoshida was on deck, and while he struggled against lefties overall, he does do a good job of situational hitting. 

At the end of the day, I'd feel a lot better pitching to him with only the tying run on 3rd, not the winning run on 2B.

I don’t disagree…the Holliday error made the situation difficult. That said, when presented with 2 bad choices, I think you should choose the lesser of 2 evils and Akin facing the lefties that struggle may have been just that.