What a difference a couple players make

[Tony-OH]

3 minutes ago, ChuckS said:

Hopefully they are able to shorten some of these playoff games with Suarez in the pen (at least for the WC round) and not needing a fifth starter.  That should lessen the burden of the pen.  Akin is a guy I'd like to see in two inning stints.  That could be another advantage to avoid over exposure. 

Akin and Suarez will be those guys that will come in if the starting pitcher is not sharp in the playoffs. They have to eat those two innings to give the team a chance. Akin is a very under rated part of the bullpen this season and has turned into a guy that you feel will get the job done more times than not, whether that be multiple innings or to get some lefties out in leverage. Just keep him out of the 9th (even if he did shut it down last night).

[Bemorewins]

4 minutes ago, ChuckS said:

Hopefully they are able to shorten some of these playoff games with Suarez in the pen (at least for the WC round) and not needing a fifth starter.  That should lessen the burden of the pen.  Akin is a guy I'd like to see in two inning stints.  That could be another advantage to avoid over exposure. 

I don’t think Suarez out of the pen is some kind of instant eraser. We never saw any kind of uptick in stuff when he threw out of the pen during the season. To me he appeared to be relatively the same guy.

Maybe Kremer’s stuff/profile would play better out of the pen then Suarez?

[dzorange]

22 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

There is plenty of reason to doubt the team in October, namely the pen. I don’t trust one guy in the pen with maybe the exception of DC and even that, he is still rusty.

But having those questions is extremely different than the mindless drivel that was being posted on here and all of Os social media and no, it wasn’t really any better here than the other formats.

 

I found this forum pretty unbearable for the past few weeks. To the point where I had to stop coming around. Not because of the team’s poor performance, but the content on here.

[HowAboutThat]

48 minutes ago, Frobby said:

Or, maybe we just bludgeoned the Yankees to the extent that the mistakes didn’t matter.  Actually, when it was 3-1 I was still frosty about not scoring more runs in the first due up Santander’s mistake and a poor slide by O’Hearn.  

I agree things weren’t perfect, but the point is that the feeling towards the team was no longer an expectation that a bad play would snowball into a catastrophe, but would be overcome.

Maybe it’s just me, but I feel a lot better about the team, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised by a win today.

[Frobby]

42 minutes ago, Tony-OH said:

But the poor fundamentals and relief pitching remain a concern and until I see this team hit consistently with RISP or get guys in from 3rd with less than two outs I'll still have concerns over their clutchness.

Guess which two Orioles players have the highest OPS with RISP?   It’s Westburg (.942) and Urias (.837).   So that helps.  Oddly, neither has been that good at bringing in runners from 3B with less than 2 out, with Westburg at 50% and Urias at 33% (league average 51%).   

I’m in the camp that believes clutchness for the most part isn’t a trait and it’s subject to a lot of random variation.   Let’s look and our players in 2024 vs. 2023, OPS with RISP:

Westburg .942/.745

Urias .837/.797

Henderson .836/.935

Rutschman .812/.797

Mountcastle .748/.941

Santander .797/.919

O’Hearn .708/.891

Mullins .706/1.025

McCann .565/.672

Did Henderson, Mountcastle, Santander, O’Hearn, Mullins and McCann just forget how to hit in the clutch between last year and this one?  Is their approach radically different than before?  I’d say emphatically no.   It just hasn’t gone as well, for whatever random reason. 

Now, what I didn’t post above are the players who were on the 2023 team but not this year, or the ones on the team this year but not last year (or who played very little).   And there I’d note: Hicks (.980) and Frazier (.932) were among our best RISP hitters last year, and Cowser (.643) is our worst RISP hitter this year among those with significant playing time.  And I don’t think Cowser’s performance is pure randomness.   He seems to tense up in those situations.  But over his career I expect him to get over that.  

 

[HowAboutThat]

All the issues mentioned remain to an extant, but the point of the post is that they no longer seem to crush the team. We had starting/relief pitching, defense and base running flubs yesterday, but they neither cost the game nor affected my personal optimism. Even when Bowman gave up four runs, I wasn’t worried.

(And I was delighted when Webb came out for a second inning, too)

my complaint all year was that the team wasn’t playing good fundamental baseball, and the sloppy play was not just from the replacements, but from the remaining regulars(You can’t blame a scrub for playing like a scrub, after all)

Its possible that the enthusiasm is just because the Os beat the Yankees twice, but I honestly think it is more then that, and more then just getting some key players back.

I expect to do well today, and if the NY club wins, it will be because they by golly earned it, and not because the Os go all Three Stooges.

 

 

[HowAboutThat]

3 hours ago, Moose Milligan said:

I’ve been told that the injuries shouldn’t have been an excuse for poor performance. That some of these guys were still playing when the poor performance started. That Elias should have been able to replace them no matter what. 
 

 

An injury to Westburg is not an excuse for sloppy play by Henderson. That should go without saying.

[Moose Milligan]

10 minutes ago, HowAboutThat said:

An injury to Westburg is not an excuse for sloppy play by Henderson. That should go without saying.

Wrong.

Henderson is who he is at this point.  There's a lot of talent, but it needs to be refined.  Henderson was the guy who took a lot of the playing time when Westburg went down and he wasn't up for the task which is why the injury to Westburg really hurt this team...the replacement players couldn't provide half of what the starters were doing.

It's not excuse making, it just is what it is.   

[Fiver6565]

3 hours ago, Moose Milligan said:

Wrong.

Henderson is who he is at this point.  There's a lot of talent, but it needs to be refined.  Henderson was the guy who took a lot of the playing time when Westburg went down and he wasn't up for the task which is why the injury to Westburg really hurt this team...the replacement players couldn't provide half of what the starters were doing.

It's not excuse making, it just is what it is.   

What do you mean he took a lot of the playing time?  Henderson's PT wasn't affected at all by Westburg.  Maybe he was pressing w/ Jordan out, but even that seems like a stretch.

[Moose Milligan]

9 minutes ago, Fiver6565 said:

What do you mean he took a lot of the playing time?  Henderson's PT wasn't affected at all by Westburg.  Maybe he was pressing w/ Jordan out, but even that seems like a stretch.

You don't think Henderson would have had the playing time he had with Westburg out?

[Sports Guy]

7 minutes ago, Moose Milligan said:

You don't think Henderson would have had the playing time he had with Westburg out?

Are you meaning to say Henderson?  He is going to be a 160ish game guy.

[Fiver6565]

8 minutes ago, Moose Milligan said:

You don't think Henderson would have had the playing time he had with Westburg out?

Do you mean Holliday big guy?  But you've typed Henderson more than once LOL

[Moose Milligan]

2 minutes ago, Fiver6565 said:

Do you mean Holliday big guy?  But you've typed Henderson more than once LOL

 

3 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

Are you meaning to say Henderson?  He is going to be a 160ish game guy.

So much for trying to type while on a conference call and trying to pay attention.  You jerks knew what I meant  

Holliday doesn't play as much if Westburg isn't on the DL.  It's not so much that Westburg was gone, it was who he was replaced with....and Holliday was a negative WAR player.  That was a big hit.

[Too Tall]

I believe, injuries do matter. Sometime psycologically. Gunnar's rough patch also seemed to begin soon after Mateo's injury. I may be the only one, but I wonder how much that affected Gunnar. And then on top of that, Westy is out and Holliday is up - a new double play partner. Not Westy or then Urais. Gunnar is a young guy and I've watched that play where Mateo is injured several times. I'm not putting fault anywhere because it was two guys going all out, but one was ultimately out for the year - maybe career. That's hard to shake. It took till September for Gunnar to get over all this in my opinion and in doing so he has shown the fortitude that will make him a super star. Sometimes it's more than just guys getting hurt. This is after all a very mental game. Now, cept for Mateo, we are whole again. In the infield anyway.

[Fiver6565]

29 minutes ago, Moose Milligan said:

 

So much for trying to type while on a conference call and trying to pay attention.  You jerks knew what I meant  

Holliday doesn't play as much if Westburg isn't on the DL.  It's not so much that Westburg was gone, it was who he was replaced with....and Holliday was a negative WAR player.  That was a big hit.

Agree with that, certainly.  Holliday's first game back was the game Westburg got hit in the hand, so it didn't affect his roster spot, but it certainly affected his PT, no doubt he would not have seen lefties much at the very least had Westburb been around.