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Keith Law on O's Day 2


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Just some short blurbs about each club. Here's what he thinks about the O's:

The O's didn't have a second-round pick due to the signing of Mike Gonzalez, but did grab a strong reliever in the third round with UCLA's Dan Klein, a right-hander with the repertoire to start but who has only pitched in relief in college due to a prior shoulder injury. I had sixth-rounder Dixon Anderson in my top 100 because of his ability to sink his fastball and the fact that he was in the mid-90s as a reliever last summer, while seventh-rounder Matt Bywater could be a fifth starter due to his above-average change.

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    • Regarding the overall league offensive environment, I think it’s less injuries/depth and more to do with putridness of CWS and MIA offenses, with COL not much better.  Those three are wRC+ of 62, 67, 75 respectively. Most years shake out with the worst team around 80. FYI the Os are currently 127 wRC+ only trailing the LAD 128.  Also note that Os are second in BSR, only trailing CIN, with CIN, Os, KCR significantly better than rest of league. 
    • Yeah, I was looking at our OPS numbers last night. Updated for today, we have two guys over 1.000, four guys over .900, and eight guys .736 (116 OPS+) or higher. So almost our entire lineup is above average or better with four guys producing at an elite level.  Cowser 1.139/232 Gunnar 1.022/199 Westburg .941/176 O'Hearn .938/175 Mountcastle .866/157 Rutschman .786/135 Santander .741/118 Mullins .736/116 We also have Mateo off the bench at .746/120 and McCann .667/96, slightly below average but not too shabby for a backup C.  Whenever I get the road announcers, they are always talking up our offense. Even when we are down, whenever we get a couple runners they say "here comes that Orioles offense again, they are relentless and they are never out of a game."
    • The Orioles have a wRC+ as a team of 128, which is better than the wRC+ for any single Orioles hitter last year - Adley was 127 and Gunnar 123 (although Hicks was 129 in his ~200 ABs). That’s the second best in baseball, behind only Atlanta at 128, and a good bit ahead of the Dodgers at 122, who are both riding unsustainably high BABIPs (.340 and .328; by comparison, league average is .290 and the Orioles are .294).  Despite walking at a very low rate as a team, the Orioles are doing it by being by far the best power hitting team in baseball. Their .199 ISO is far ahead of the Braves second at .184, and the league average is .143. I think power numbers usually go up as weather gets warmer too, so that should only increase. The top team wRC+ last year were the Braves at 125, and then 4 teams between 112 and 118. So the Orioles will almost certainly cool off to some degree. But I also think we could see the walk rate tick up as the scouting reports adjust - Gunnar, Westburg and Cowser in particular have been hitting for huge power at low walk rates (for Cowser, until 3 walks last night), so I could see there being a trade off of walks for less power if pitchers are more careful pitching in-zone to them going forward. 
    • But when Santander gets hot or Adley goes on a power run someone else might start slumping. Cowser is not going to have a 1.139 OPS forever, nor will Mountcastle likely end the year with a .385 OBP. I think this offense is about as good as anyone could have hoped for.
    • It's been well noted that Kimbrel isn't great at holding runners and can be run on.  Given Adell's 91% sprint speed (yes, I know stolen base technique is something else altogether) I thought letting him run wasn't a bad move. He had a hell of a jump, I was surprised that the play was as close as it was.
    • I'd like to see him promoted soon to see how his limited # of bullets perform this year against better competition.  
    • Unless we cannot sign Gunnar/Adley/Holliday whatsoever (because they are simply uninterested at any dollar amount), I don’t want to tie any significant dollar amount that could be going to them in future years on a player like Mullins (good not great).
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