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You might want to reboot Dan, nobody wants to go through that again.
That's kind of what they've done though isn't it? Mora was that type, Huff's that type, you can even argue that Guthrie and Scott are that type (though both long in the tooth). Plenty of counter-examples (Millar, Izturis) but hasn't the O's problem been as much that when those guys have their "breakout" season, the O's wrap them up long-term.
Anyway, Mora's still in the "you could do worse for a starting 3B" bracket and always nice to see a man with quints get a good paycheck. I guess most of the contenders are fairly well set at 3B so maybe not a surprise it's tough to move him. And Huff has even less defensive ability than Manny/Dunn/Burrell/etc. flotilla of corner bats on the market so no surprise he can't be moved although maybe somebody like Tampa would rather have him for 1-2 years than what they can get on the FA market.
Another fine collection of SS the O's have amassed this year. :-)
Not happening. Second basemen just aren't that valuable as trade commodities.
-- MWE
Sadly, for Wieters to come even close to the Jesus-like status I hold for him as Cal-Ripken-In-Catching-Gear (or, at the very least, an Uber-1993 Chris Hoiles), he'll need to hit .500 and have 60 HRs. Anything less, and he'll be a disappointment.
/Sarcasm- I think this projection is pretty good and accurate.
I don't understand why everyone is so down on Izturis. He was pretty close to league average last year, he's still under 30, and he's only making $2.5M. If his defense remains stellar this year, he'll be a multiple win upgrade over the below replacement level junk the orioles threw out there last year. Seems like a fine signing to me.
I know comps have very little if any predictive value, but still, that's a pretty sweet pair of comps.
Do you really think they'll win 80-85? Someone is going to have to stink in the AL East, right? Will it be the Jays instead?
Perhaps Walt has been misled into believing that Bynum, Castro, Cintron, Fahey, and Torres are in some way affiliated with the Orioles. Why do their projections appear here, anyway?
It's hard to watch Izturis hit; how the heck he homered in Petco has to be one of the mysteries of the 2008 season. He's not at all sound with the little ball stuff either. For that matter, aside from range (which I recognize is the most important thing), he's not particularly sound as a defender.
It would be awesome if the O's could fish a starting-quality 2B or 3B out of that Murphy-Waring-Moore-Costanzo-Turner soup that Andy has cooked up.
Next offseason is going to be interesting. Virtually all of their long-term contracts coming off the books (Roberts/Mora/Huff/Walker/Baez/Freel), but that also means there will be a lot of holes to fill.
How much money do the Orioles have to spend? This does seem to be the year to collect averagish SP on the cheap. It would take a series of unlikely events for the Orioles to contend even with a couple of averagish pitchers, but it seems like a gamble worth making.
You know what would make that easier? If they'd play them, rather than finding those "stopgaps" they always get.
It could happen. The Jays have a lot of early 30s hitters who could easily shift into full out crap mode (Overbay, Rolen, whoever gets the C job, whoever gets the 2B/SS spot not filled by Hill, most of the bench), and a starting staff of Halladay, Litsch, TBD, TBD, TBD. While I'm weirdly confident in JPs ability to put together a rotation from their random starter grab bag, the team could be a Wells/Halladay twin-injury away from a 65 win season.
What have the Orioles done this offseason? Replaced Daniel Cabrera with Mark Hendrickson, replaced a bunch of garbage with Cesar Izturis, and (optimistically speaking) replaced Ramon Hernandez with Matt Wieters. As much as I like Wieters, that doesn't add up to a 10-15 win improvement. While we can hope for/expect improvement from Markakis and Jones, this is not a young team offensively; the rest of the lineup (other than Wieters) is old. We ought to see a big falloff from Huff and Mora, and probably a small one from Roberts.
You can say that the pitching can't be that bad again -- but, really, it could. I repeat: Mark Hendrickson.
You're absolutely right. Promoting young players to the majors well before they are ready is a much sounder rebuilding strategy than letting them learn and improve in the minors. I'm surprised someone hasn't thought of this before.
They had a pythag of 73 wins last year, so that's a better starting point (just ask Bill Bavasi). But I agree that any improvements from Wieters, Izturis, and the young players will be largely or completely offset by regression from Huff, Roberts, Guthrie, and Mora. I'd peg the team as it stands today in the 70-75 win range.
Even with a league average rotation, I still think they'd be short of contention. Last year's rotation was about 10 wins below average (5.51 starter ERA vs 4.48 AL starter ERA), so I'd expect 80-85 wins with a league average rotation.
Whatever you think of stopgaps, the above projections make it abundantly clear that the Mark Hendrickson signing should improve the team for 2009.
The Orioles Pyth record was 73-88, so we're only really talking about a 5 win improvement to go from 73 to 78. That's reasonable to make up.
The upgrade from Hernandez to Wieters is worth 2-3 wins, conservatively. Replace Millar with Reimhold (with Huff playing 1B, Reimhold to DH) is worth another 1-2 wins. Even if Huff loses a little, Jones' improvement should balance that out. Expect more or less comparable production from Markakis, Roberts, and Scott. The only guy that might decline considerably is Mora.
As bad as Izturis is, it won't take much to improve on the offensive production that the Orioles got from SS last year: 50 OPS+ in 560 PA. Izturis also improves the defense quite a bit, so much so that his glove will be worth .5-1 win. Not only were Castro, Cintron, Bynum, et al terrible at the plate, they were also terrible defensively.
The bullpen will be a little better, the rotation possibly a little worse. With 3-4 league-average starting pitchers, the team could contend. Given the lack of any reasonable amount of talent outside Guthrie, the Orioles are looking at another mediocre season. But the offensive and defensive improvements give them an outside shot at a winning record, with something within a few games of .500 most likely.
With the current collection of talent 75 wins would be more realistic and that would take Markakis, Huff and Roberts having similar years to 2008 and this Wieters fellow meeting his projections which seem very optimistic given his lack of MLB experience.
As I type this note I'm trying to gigure where those 7 addidtioal wins are coming from....the rays and jays?
Bynum has signed with the Nats, Torres with the White Sox. Castro, Cintron, and Fahey are still available to last minute shoppers.
The O's collection of shortstops is Izturis, Murphy and in emergencies Freel, Salazar, or Mora. Which is not to say it's better than the one Dan lists, just different.
That's not a valid interpretation. What they say is that if everyone provides expected production, then Hendrickson is better than the alternatives. But if the team is to improve, it will be from one of their pitchers taking a big step forward, and Hendrickson is the least likely of all the alternatives to do that.
Nice to see a decent projection for Reimold. Hopefully he and Burke Badehop can make us Bowling Green alums proud.
I've never seen the guy play, but between the scouting reports and the numbers he put up last year, I can't find any reason to be bearish on him. Monster power, a bazillon walks, an acceptable strikeout rate, he's got it all.
It'd still be amazing if he lives up to that projection, but Wieters has been awesome so far.
Yes, and that is terrifying. If your staff is so bad that adding Mark Hendrickson improves it, you've got one bad staff.
A staff that bad needs to have two knuckleballers and a spitballer/scuffer. At least make the suckage entertaining.
Don't forget that he ranked number 2 in the minors in passed ball rate, and number 12 in caught stealing rate. He also has a great attitude by all accounts.
But I'm an Orioles fan, so I can always find a reason to be bearish.
There's a nonzero chance that 2008 was just a career year for Wieters. His college numbers were good, but they weren't otherworldly compared to his environment like his minor league numbers have been. Fellow 2007 draftee Danny Payne put up similar numbers at Georgia Tech and he hasn't exactly lit the minor leagues on fire.
Also, there is always a significant chance that injuries will derail his career, especially given the stresses of catching on such a large fram.
Wieters tailed off a bit in the Arizona Fall League, which could be an indicator of wear-and-tear, or a little evidence for my first concern. Or it could just be a blip.
I've posted this before, but Wieters has also been oddly consistent from year to year:
2005 GT age 19 .366/.470/.581
2006 GT age 20 .355/.480/.606
2007 GT age 21 .358/.480/.592
2008 A+ age 22 .345/.448/.576
AA age 22 .365/.460/.625
My question would be- what would a Moskos' projection for 2009 look like? a 9.00 ERA?
If you gave me 2-1 odds on Baltimore allowing over 900 runs in 09, I'd take it.
They didn't freak out with Markakis or Jones. I expect the same with Wieters. The interesting question is whether the O's will delay his arb clock before bringing him up.
Is Dallas McPherson available? He looks like an interesting stop gap guy at 1B.
The Garrett Olson and R. Liz projections are real bummers.
I don't think that's a homologous case. In comparison to the O's prospects (Tillman, Matsutz, Arrieta, Hernandez), Redding and Patterson had already cumulated quite a bit of major league service and Chico and O'Connor were a bit older. The O's are better off letting Olson, Liz, Albers, and Penn (or even Jim Johnson) fight for rotation spots rather than rushing Tillman et al. In terms of prospects, Patton is the guy who should get the first shot at the rotation.
Check out their ZiPS projections from last year. I count 19 starting pitchers projected to have an ERA+ of at least 80, for a total of 396 starts and 2494 IP.
Before Hendrickson signed, the 2009 Orioles had 4 pitchers projected to have an ERA+ of at least 80, for a total of 92 starts and 525 IP.
Out of those four 80 ERA+ pitchers, one will miss 2009 with shoulder surgery, one missed all of 2008with shoulder surgery, and one has never pitched above AA. I'm sure the Nationals have similar reasons to dismiss some of their 19, but the starting pitching depth they had last year was clearly leaps and bounds ahead of what the Orioles have now.
If you want to see what happens to a team with no above-replacement level starting pitching depth, just look at the 2008 Orioles. And that team at least had reason to believe it had three league averagish starters, while the 2009 Orioles have only one.
The four guys you mentioned (Redding, Chico, O'Connor and Patterson) had projected ERA+ of 83, 91, 92, and 110 respectively. Their clones would place 1st, 3rd, 4th, and 6th on the 2009 Orioles starting pitching depth chart.
Scott Moore: Man, has this guy fallen or what? He would have been the perfect guy to man 3B.
140 games for Wieters? How many of those games are at DH?
There's a nonzero chance that 2008 was just a career year for Wieters. His college numbers were good, but they weren't otherworldly compared to his environment like his minor league numbers have been. Fellow 2007 draftee Danny Payne put up similar numbers at Georgia Tech and he hasn't exactly lit the minor leagues on fire.
The only thing that is is a great argument for taking college stats with pounds and pounds of salt.
Also Payne, the consummate gamer, has dealt with injuries since his college (actually, HS I think) days and hasn't been close to healthy as a pro.
Still, it does seem odd to replace a 27 year old with a 37 year old just to save a few bucks, doesn't it?
Yup, precisely.
Yup, precisely.
Cabrera's SO/BB ratio declined quite a bit last season. I don't see him turning a corner. The move replaces one crappy player with a cheaper crappy player. So I don't find the move particularly odd since neither player has any upside.
According to Cots he's only got 2ish years of service time, so I think he's playing for the Marlins next year. And I think he's a lot more than a stop-gap. Dude is old (28), but he slugged .618 in AAA last year, with 42 homeruns. That kind of production just doesn't turn into a career minor leaguer anymore.
Question: I'm starting a keeper league (scoring R,RBI,HR,SB,OBP,SLG; 12 teams, mixed) that permits a team to keep any number of players who have less than six years of service time, and one additional player, regardless of service time. In what round ought I to draft Wieters?
Yeah, he looks like a player who could potentially turn into something more than a stop gap. I was hoping he was a minor league free agent.
And I noticed ZiPS ia a bit nicer to D. Cabrera in comparison to Hendrickson. Cabrera did go down with an elbow injury late in the season (I believe it was his elbow but I can't quite remember). That might have factored into their decision.
Second, the fact that it declined by itself isn't particularly important; after all, if it declined, that means it was better before, and it could just as easily be a one-year fluke. A multi-year decline is a trend; a single-year decline is just a bad year.
Third, once again: of course the odds of Cabrera ever developing at this point are very slim, but they're still better than Hendrickson's. The latter has no upside; the former has a remote chance of one. Seems like a team hard up would prefer the player with a chance of one to the player without one, especially given the fact that the money just isn't that big a deal. It's not like we're talking about taking on Andruw Jones's contract here.
Sure, but if we could quantify these odds as an percent, I think the odds of Cabrera turning into something is about 4% versus 2% for Hendrickson (I suppose it's theoretically possible that Hendrickson could be late bloomer like Jamie Moyer). ZiPS does project a better performance for Cabs in comparison to Hendrickson, but I'm not sure if that "upgrade" is worth the difference in money since both players, you know, suck.
It actually is a multi-year trend, since in 2006 he struck out more than one per inning. In addition, since 2005 he's lost almost 4 MPH on his FB, and more than 6 MPH on his slider. He's basically abandoned his curve ball and change-up (from almost 7% of pitches to 2.2%). He's basically become a two-pitch pitcher, and lost speed on both of those. That multi-year trend screams injury to me, which may explain the O's decision. Normally, I'd be ripping them at this point, but I wouldn't at all be surprised to see the Nats paying for a lot of DL time rather than IP.
Yeah, I could see them making the decision based on his reduced velocity and drastically lower strikeouts, which would reflect an injury. Still, I agree with Nieporent. Unless the injury was very serious, he still would have higher upside (though a remote chance of achieving it) than Hendrickson, who at 35 will probably soon fall off the cliff himself, if he hasn't already. With the alternatives that they have (i.e., none), what did they have to lose with Cabrera?
Exactly.
Hendrickson isn't really relevant to the Cabrera decision - the O's are woefully short of starters with or without Cabrera.
If the O's had legit medical and/or scouting reasons to believe that Cabrera has absolutely nothing left, then there was no reason to offer him arbitration and risk flushing $4MM down the drain.
Frankly, I was a little surprised by the decision to cut him, since Cabrera is worth the money if he can pitch to his projections and he has a smidgen of upside there if he's healthy. So I hope MacPhail's decision was driven by baseball reasons and not purely financial considerations.
In Albuquerque. With a huge home/road split (.700 SLG at home, .522 on the road) and 168 Ks in 448 ABs.
Basically, McPherson is a slightly better version of Rob Deer.
-- MWE
Seconded.
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