O's early guess at a playoff roster for first series...

[Three Run Homer]

I think Livan Soto is our starting second baseman until Westburg returns, and will be the utility infielder on the postseason roster.

On the other hand, I can't imagine them keeping Gregory Soto over Matt Bowman in the bullpen, especially if Coulombe is back.  

[MurphDogg]

10 minutes ago, Three Run Homer said:

On the other hand, I can't imagine them keeping Gregory Soto over Matt Bowman in the bullpen, especially if Coulombe is back.  

Soto gave up a homer on Sunday, but he had only given up a run in one of his last 13 appearances before that, dating back to August 8th. Bowman has been good since joining the O's on 8/22, but Soto has arguably been better.

Since 8/22 - 

Soto - 9 IP, 2 ER, 8 H, 2 BB, 12 K, 2.95 FIP

Bowman - 10.1 IP, 5 H, 1 ER, 6 BB, 9 K, 3.17 FIP

[Too Tall]

If Livan Soto starts tonight over Holliday, I think he is on the roster for the WC series unless he totally falls off the cliff over the next 12 games. SSS but I like what I see compared to Holliday. 

[Sports Guy]

Playoff rotation is Burnes, Eflin, Kremer and Suarez.

Grayson is a high leverage reliever, perhaps even the closer.

[HowAboutThat]

4 hours ago, MurphDogg said:

Soto gave up a homer on Sunday, but he had only given up a run in one of his last 13 appearances before that, dating back to August 8th. Bowman has been good since joining the O's on 8/22, but Soto has arguably been better.

Since 8/22 - 

Soto - 9 IP, 2 ER, 8 H, 2 BB, 12 K, 2.95 FIP

Bowman - 10.1 IP, 5 H, 1 ER, 6 BB, 9 K, 3.17 FIP

With the Orioles, Bowman hasn’t allowed any home runs at all, Soto has given up two. They each have allowed two inherited runners to score.

With the Os, in 10.1 innings, Bowman’s ERA is.87, his ERA+ is 450, his WHIP is 1.065, and his WAR with the Os is .4, which represents his entire 2024 WAR, which means he’s been much better with the Orioles than with his previous clubs.

With the Os in 13 innings, Soto’s ERA is 6.59, his ERA+ is 59, his WHIP is 1.756 and his WAR is -.3, which compared to his season WAR of zero and a season WHIP of 1.633, indicates Soto has been worse than Bowman, and worse with the Os than with his previous team.

They each have six walks, and Bowman’s came in three fewer innings, but three of those were in a 42- pitch outing. The first came in a 24-pitch B7th, the others came in the B8th, when he was obviously exhausted, and after Hyde finally pulled him, Akin gave up a sac fly. So that outing is on arguably on Hyde.

Overall, it sure seems that with the Orioles, Bowman has been more productive and dependable. Soto has 1+ K per inning, and Bowman a shade less than a K per inning, but Bowman should get the call over Soto if it comes down to one over the other.

Edited Tuesday at 21:14 by HowAboutThat

[Fiver6565]

Lets clinch the spot before we worry about the roster.  We act like that's inevitable, and certainly the math is in our favor.  But is it really crazy to think we could win just one game in each of the next four series?  Tigers are hot and just took 2 of 3; hard to imagine winning more than 1 in NY, and Twins will be fighting for their lives due to the aforementioned Tigers, in all likelihood.  I think we better take 2 of 3 from the Giants this week.

Will four wins be enough?

[Warehouse]

24 minutes ago, Fiver6565 said:

Will four wins be enough?

Yes, four wins will be enough.  If we finish with 88 wins, then Minnesota will need to finish 10-2 AND Detroit will need to finish 10-1 for the Orioles to miss the playoffs.  

Edited Tuesday at 21:57 by Warehouse

[Fiver6565]

24 minutes ago, Warehouse said:

Yes, four wins will be enough.  If we finish with 88 wins, then Minnesota will need to finish 10-2 AND Detroit will need to finish 10-1 for the Orioles to miss the playoffs.  

Ok. So that means 3 is probably enough too. Let’s just tank it and go in with as little momentum as possible to maximize the classic Baltimore ‘us against the world’ mentality. 
 

LOL. 
 

But in all seriousness, we do have work to do to ensure that WC series is a home game. The numbers for KC to catch us still favor us but it’s not overwhelming given how we’ve been playing. 

[Aristotelian]

4 hours ago, HowAboutThat said:

With the Orioles, Bowman hasn’t allowed any home runs at all, Soto has given up two. They each have allowed two inherited runners to score.

With the Os, in 10.1 innings, Bowman’s ERA is.87, his ERA+ is 450, his WHIP is 1.065, and his WAR with the Os is .4, which represents his entire 2024 WAR, which means he’s been much better with the Orioles than with his previous clubs.

With the Os in 13 innings, Soto’s ERA is 6.59, his ERA+ is 59, his WHIP is 1.756 and his WAR is -.3, which compared to his season WAR of zero and a season WHIP of 1.633, indicates Soto has been worse than Bowman, and worse with the Os than with his previous team.

They each have six walks, and Bowman’s came in three fewer innings, but three of those were in a 42- pitch outing. The first came in a 24-pitch B7th, the others came in the B8th, when he was obviously exhausted, and after Hyde finally pulled him, Akin gave up a sac fly. So that outing is on arguably on Hyde.

Overall, it sure seems that with the Orioles, Bowman has been more productive and dependable. Soto has 1+ K per inning, and Bowman a shade less than a K per inning, but Bowman should get the call over Soto if it comes down to one over the other.

It's cherry picking but if you ignore Soto's first 1.1 innings with us his numbers are quite solid. Soto's 11/4 K/BB is way better than Bowman's 8/5. Do you ignore Bowman's stuff or Soto's early meltdowns? Both are better than Kimbrel...

[terpoh]

Adley, McCann
O’Hearn
Holliday
Soto
Westy
Gunnar
Urias
Rivera
Cowser
Kjerstad
Mullins
Slater
Santander 

Burnes
Eflin
Kremer 
Suarez

Grayson, Soto, Coulombe, Webb, Dominguez, Cano, Perez, Akin

if Mountcastle is back then Rivera is off.

[Warehouse]

Key question is how to handle Mountcastle, O’Hearn, and Kjerstad in terms of playing time.  

My inclination would be to keep Kjerstad at DH and platoon Mountcastle and O’Hearn, with Mountcastle or another defensive replacement getting 7th inning and later when we have the lead.  

O’Hearn has outhit Mountcastle against righties over his full career, over 2024, and over the 2nd half of 2024. Mountcastle is the better defender, averaging ~14 runs better in DRS per 150 games over the last 3 years.  If you extrapolate out O’Hearn’s ~50 pt advantage in OPS vs righties this year, that works out to ~ 15 run advantage over 150 games. If you do the same for his 110 pt xOPS advantage, it is a little more than 30 run advantage over 150 games.  O’Hearn’s been in a slump the last few weeks, but may not be by the time the wildcard games start in a couple weeks.  Mountcastle was in a slump in August and will be coming back from a wrist injury.

Perhaps Hyde relegates Kjerstad to PH duty, but I hope not.

[Warehouse]

11 hours ago, terpoh said:

Adley, McCann
O’Hearn
Holliday
Soto
Westy
Gunnar
Urias
Rivera
Cowser
Kjerstad
Mullins
Slater
Santander 

Burnes
Eflin
Kremer 
Suarez

Grayson, Soto, Coulombe, Webb, Dominguez, Cano, Perez, Akin

if Mountcastle is back then Rivera is off.

Soto and Holliday are redundant.  

Soto has more versatility in terms of backing up SS and 3B but arguably this isn’t that important since we have Urias/Westburg (and maybe Rivera) for 3B and Henderson/Westburg for SS (if we need to replace Gunnar, it’s probably a lost cause anyway). 

Holliday is slightly faster in terms of pinch running value. 

Both are left-handed hitters.  Holliday has more pop; Soto makes more contact.  Overall, Holliday has much higher upside as a hitter, but he is slumping and Soto is seeing the ball well.

I’m not sure there is a wrong choice there.  I would keep Rivera as a late-game O’Hearn replacement.

If we’re facing the Royals, I would swap in Bowman for Soto because the Royals skew right-handed.  I think Akin has a lot of value as someone able to give you three innings without a huge platoon split.  His metrics are the best on the team; his clutch ratings are terrible so depends how much you attribute that to noise.  Then I would go with Perez over Soto simply because I think Hyde has more confidence in Perez in high leverage spots. I would likely bring Soto back for the ALDS.

[e16bball]

2 hours ago, Warehouse said:

If we’re facing the Royals, I would swap in Bowman for Soto because the Royals skew right-handed.

Interestingly, they are a fair amount better hitting RHP (101 wRC+) than LHP (93 wRC+) this season.

I think it probably requires getting more granular. For example, a lot of the difference of production between RHP and LHP consists of Bobby Witt destroying RHPs this year (174 wRC+ against RHPs compared to 138 against LHPs). As a manager, are you really going to play the one-year platoon splits and specifically target Witt with lefties? I can’t imagine anyone does that, and more importantly, why would you ever pitch to Witt in a short series unless you absolutely have to?

You can’t really justify using a LHP against Salvador Perez, and lately they’ve been going Pham-Witt-Perez at the top of the lineup, so that section of the lineup would probably scream out for a RHP, unless you’re really buying the 2024 Witt platoon split. Especially because they also seem to like to hit Renfroe 5th if he’s in the lineup. 

At the bottom of the lineup, it all seems very interchangeable. They seem to have ready platoon partners across the board — which is important for them, because most of their lefties are terrible against LHPs. 

In the IF, they have DeJong/Garcia as the righties and Massey/Frazier as the lefties. They will play any of them except Massey at 3B, which gives them sufficient flexibility. They seem to switch these guys in and out pretty regularly, so likely a good amount of platoon PH stuff. But realistically they should probably just roll with Massey and DeJong.

In the OF, both LF MJ Melendez (7 wRC+) and CF Kyle Isbel (32 wRC+) are terrible against lefties. Any time they’re in the game after the 6th inning or so, we should be targeting them with matchup lefties. Behind them, the options are Robbie Grossman (same as always) and Dairon Blanco. I think Blanco is an interesting piece of the puzzle for them, he’s a little bit like their Mateo. Elite speed, hits LHPs well, surprising pop. He concerns me a little.

All told, I think the decision is close enough based on the Royals roster that it comes back to ours. The wild card for me is how Hyde feels about using guys who are usually SPs out of the pen. They’ll be adding two of Kremer, Suarez, and GrayRod to the bullpen for this series, which would mean two more good RHPs on top of Cano and Dominguez. Will Hyde feel comfortable having them warm up mid-game and go get 5 big outs? I don’t know the answer to that. If yes, I think we keep Soto. If no, then I think it kinda has to be Bowman. But hopefully neither one of them has to pitch.