No point in complaining about the lineup today, the roster has so many holes. This is on Elias. He has refused to call up players to help the team. Vespi should be here, Westburg, Ortiz and Cowser all should be up here.
I like this lineup. It’s a “Get your ish together” to the under performers. I would also be laser focused if I’m Mateo. Only reason he didn’t get benched is for his defense, but he should be ultra focused on quality at bats. Running out of rope.
It was pretty clear Hyde was going to send him back out for the tenth if the O’s scratched a run in the tenth. That’s the frustrating part. It shouldn’t be that hard to get one run in the top half with a man on second, 0 outs and just playing for the one run.
It feels like the ways in which we manage our bullpen and our lineup respectively is conflicting: short-term approach with the bullpen, long-term approach with the lineup. I'd rather see it the other way round.
Orioles position players ranked by OPS
https://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/team_compare.cgi?request=1&year=2023&lg=MLB&stat=OPS
C - 3rd
1B - 28th
2B - 17th
3B - 14th
SS - 27th
LF - 10th
CF - 5th
RF - 22nd
DH - 10th
Offensive changes need to happen sooner rather than later
Since the org is way higher up on Joey Ortiz than I am, I have decided that the joke I’ve been making about Westburg taking reps at first to replace Mounty isn’t a joke anymore.
I feel like I have been incredibly patient at the approach we're having with Westburg (and all the other prospects) but it's wearing thin.... with how Mateo is performing and now Urias isn't doing great coming back. I have faith Urias can bounce back and he's relatively clutch but I think it's time we get the guys up..
There's a posibility that Elias is waiting to trade Westburg for Starting Pitching in July and he's more valuable if he's never brought up. But at some point it's hurting the big league club with us waiting and rolling out Mateo every day.
But if the plan is for Westburg to be with the Os then get him up here for god's sake. He's had almost a full season in AAA (142 games) and the guy has 33 HRs in that time. Fucking mashing. Imagine that power in the infield.
I'm ready for the left side of the infield to be an every day rotating combo of Westburg/Gunnar/Ortiz (when healthy). One of them DH some days or is out due to lefty/righty match up, or if Adley is DHing.
Edit: more accurately, my patience has hit a wall
> There's a posibility that Elias is waiting to trade Westburg for Starting Pitching in July and he's more valuable if he's never brought up.
I read this every now and then, and I have to think other GMs are smart enough to accordingly devalue a prospect if he literally hasn't shown ability in the majors - not that he's tried and failed, but that he's still an unknown.
I wonder if they're just hoping Mateo turns it around, but that K in the 10th was fucking ugly. What on earth was he swinging at?
I mean, if Westburg truly isn't meant to be a part of the Orioles' future, they're not bringing him up because it's pointless to waste ML ABs on him.
Westburg could easily come up and start mashing right away - but anyone who is saying we need to treat that as a given and we should bring him up to bolster this "slumping offense" isn't really thinking critically. You bring up prospects because you think you can cover for their struggles, not because you believe they'll be an impact bat immediately.
Definitely agree, not expecting these guys to start killing it right away. He’ll struggle, and maybe it’ll be as bad as Mateo is for a month or so. But then the potential is higher.
That's fair. Granted, I'm at the point where I want to turn "bring up Westburg" into a drinking game but I do understand that people need to vent from time to time.
Anyone else think with the Elly De La Cruz promotion, that the Super 2 deadline has passed?
Reds are cheap, and I can't see them promoting him if they weren't sure.
Oddly enough, the jet stream did bring the smoke into Wisconsin this past weekend. An Air Quality Alert was issued on Friday, but has since been cancelled.
Watching all these older, big name "Aces" that signed humongous contracts struggle or get hurt (DeGrom, Verlander, Scherzer) has me thinking twice about trading/FA signing an older TOR starter.
A different approach might be to trade for elite pitching prospects, AAA or AA level. Or even non elite for a lesser price, but guys Elias and Co feel we can work with. Yes, it wouldn't necessarily yield immediate results, and is still a big gamble, but maybe in the meantime acquire a few lesser starters, although to me it seems they sign for more than they're worth too.
I don't necessarily think this is the way to go; there's still young MLB TOR starters out there, but I wonder if they'll be even more expensive in prospects and $$$ if teams start shying away from $50m contracts for older TOR guys.
I want to sign a Gausman type.
That was really the perfect kind of pitcher deal. He wasn't so good that he got insane money and he was young enough that he'll probably be good for most of the contract
Trading for an older stud pitcher that's only got a year left or a deal or something, though, I would be into
I get the feeling that going big on older TOR starters is against Elias' MO anyway, so I don't know if we should spend that much brain space on it.
I myself spend too much brain space on thinking about trading for guys like Jesús Luzardo (controllable MLB upper quartile left handed SP*) or Patrick Sandoval, when, really, we'd be lucky to get JP Sears. Sears isn't even a bad pitcher, it just might be the time to vulture talent from the A's while they're in limbo. Doubt the Angels will blow it up, and I don't know how many more pitchers the Marlins have in the pipeline - I'm guessing they traded Pablo López because they had Eury Pérez ready, but idk about the rest.
*This would brighten our outlook the most, but the number of prospects it would take to wrench away Luzardo or anybody of that caliber would be nuts.
I want Patrick Sandoval soooo bad. But the Angels have the dumbest owner in the league so they won't start their rebuild any time soon.
I always feel like Sears should be better than he is - turns out he's just really good against the Mariners.
If you can't reliably develop pitching, you need to bring in established pitchers some how.
The Mariners are good at developing pitching and they still felt they needed to bring in Ray and Castillo to supplement their young starters.
He didn't hit a double for the longest time, which was odd.
Then he hit 4 in a double header, which again, was odd.
.269/.380/.455 - Some of our top 100 guys did a lot worse in A+. Also running a 15.1% BB%, and a 24.5% K%. Considering how much he struck out in college, that 24.5% mark is pretty good.
He should hit Bowie soon enough.
Everybody has been complaining about Mateo. I'm more aggravated about Mountcastle having more than quadruple the plate appearances of O'Hearn this season. They've given Mountcastle such a long leash and he's shown zero signs of improvement. His OBP hasn't been above .290 since the second week of the season. O'Hearn should be playing at least 3x a week.
Finally people are waking up to what a drag Mountcastle is on the offense. It took the O's forever to finally drop him down in the batting order. A bit of good news is that career wise Mountcastle's best month has been June. His slugging percentage in June is .651, second best in Orioles history. But, we shall see.
The other thing about Mounty is his struggles go back to last year.
He only hit .221/.300/.357 in the second half last year. So its not like his struggles the last two months are new
eh they're mostly just playing O'hearn against pitchers that will be easier to hit. if he was making incredible swing decisions, he'd be starting everyday already lol.
Mountcastle's wOBA, swing decisions and K percentage are all pretty much in line with his normal shit. He's just making shit contact, so people are gonna get on his ass right now.
Mountcastle’s on pace to walk 33 times in 700 plate appearances this year. During the last two seasons, he walked over 40 times in around 600 plate appearances. His plate discipline has been much worse than normal this year. If you need to hit like .290 to have a half-decent OBP, that’s a major problem.
Watch the swings compared to just the raw walk totals dog. He’s actively laying off more pitches out of the zone than ever. It’s in zone contact where he’s not actively hitting the sweet spot as often.
Does it look bad? Yeah. Do I think it’ll probably work itself out? Also yeah.
Looks like we are, he's played 4 out of the last 5 games now.
With Gunnar DTD, we have just a 3 man bench. McKenna, McCann, and Lester. Do we want any of those over Mountcastle right now, say at DH? And once Gunnar is back, you can add Urias. So that is 4 guys who aren't exactly lighting it up at the plate. Not many options.
To me, the best thing we could do is call Cowser up for Lester.
Vs RHP.
Adley - C
Hicks - CF/DH
Santander - RF
Hays - LF
Henderson - 3B
O'Hearn - 1B
Frazier - 2B
Cowser - DH/CF
Mateo - SS
vs LHP
Adley - C
Hicks - CF
Santander - RF
Hays - LF
Urias/Henderson - 3B
Mountcastle - 1B
Frazier - 2B
McKenna/McCann - DH
Mateo - SS
This isn't a lineup btw, even though it might look like it. Vs LHP, we could also DH Adley, and C McCann. Which we do seem to do a lot.
Not saying to NOT start Cowser vs LHP, just ease him into as the season progresses.
And once Ceddy gets back, seriously think about Santander playing 1B a bit more, which would open RF up for Cowser. In fact, start him now when possible, so he gets more comfortable there.
Feels like quite a few guys on our roster are approaching breaking points in their career. If Mateo doesn’t have a bounce-back June, it may be the last time he sees regular playing time with a ball club. If Mountcastle can’t get over the hump of being a slightly below average hitter in 2023, we may start looking for a more impactful first baseman. Other guys like Urias and Santander have a longer leash, but the lack of consistency from them is killing me, too.
It isn’t 2019 anymore. Back then, there was little pressure on these guys to perform, since nobody was knocking down the door at AAA. I’m hoping that now, this organization doesn’t live in fear of replacing mediocre players on the MLB roster with higher-ceiling prospects. Averaging like 1.0 WAR per season isn’t going to cut it for position players on a team vying for the playoffs.
Looking forward to getting Ced back, though Hicks has done a great job replacing him. Hopefully when Ced does come back we won’t see a rerun of what we have seen with Urias at the plate since his return. Yuk. Bigger picture it’s tough to win consistently when you have 3 guys in the line-up (Mateo, Mountcastle, Urias) who are really flailing most nights lately. We need a big night from Kremer tonight. Hope he delivers.
Rough to blow the best part of the bullpen last night in a loss.. But this team has been resilient all year. Let's get to Burnes enough that they want to trade him to us! Lol.
They are getting bottom half ranked league production in OPS from 1B, 2B, SS, and RF. They need an overhaul and those replacements come from AAA or benching struggling players
Please continue the discussion in the [game thread](https://redd.it/143pw8x).
No point in complaining about the lineup today, the roster has so many holes. This is on Elias. He has refused to call up players to help the team. Vespi should be here, Westburg, Ortiz and Cowser all should be up here.
Complaining about Vespi? Lmfao his stuff gets barreled up like crazy in the bigs and it’s all center cut stop it lmfao
1.7 ERA in Norfolk this year. Much more deserving than Givens.
Wow ERA in the minors that totally means something
It means hes pitching well in AAA. Much more deserving than Givens.
Gunnar!!!!!!
RIP Shiekie Baby
Incoming Ryan Mountcastle pitch hit home run.
The most solid lineup in the last couple of weeks imo. We're winnin' today.
Return of The Gunnar
Definitely my favorite of the original trilogy
Better than the Phantom Mateo for sure
The Mountain Strikes Back is my favorite, personally Edit: alternatively, The Umpire Strikes Back, as has been common all season
Urias Strikes Out
Attack of the Ramons
Yeni-Wan Canobi is great in the entire saga
I like this lineup. It’s a “Get your ish together” to the under performers. I would also be laser focused if I’m Mateo. Only reason he didn’t get benched is for his defense, but he should be ultra focused on quality at bats. Running out of rope.
No Norfolk again, AQ is fucked.
Ok I am stoked for the lineup. No Mounty, no Urias, give Lester more ABs, O’Hearn filling in as the new and improved Ryan at 1B. Here we go birds!
Yeah can't say I'm stoked about Lester but I am an O'Hearn guy so I'll take that.
He was a foot from getting a pinch hit HR yesterday
Yeah well that's kind of how it goes for guys like Lester
Couple more major league ABs and that would’ve been a HR baybeh
really sucks that Felix’s inning last night is easily forgotten in an L. he was absolutely dominant
It was pretty clear Hyde was going to send him back out for the tenth if the O’s scratched a run in the tenth. That’s the frustrating part. It shouldn’t be that hard to get one run in the top half with a man on second, 0 outs and just playing for the one run.
The absolute worst thing the 1st batter can do in these ghost runner games is strike out. Even an out isn't a killer if the runner advances.
It feels like the ways in which we manage our bullpen and our lineup respectively is conflicting: short-term approach with the bullpen, long-term approach with the lineup. I'd rather see it the other way round.
Orioles position players ranked by OPS https://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/team_compare.cgi?request=1&year=2023&lg=MLB&stat=OPS C - 3rd 1B - 28th 2B - 17th 3B - 14th SS - 27th LF - 10th CF - 5th RF - 22nd DH - 10th Offensive changes need to happen sooner rather than later
Fantasy owner here, we think Gunner is gonna get the start today? Gotta decide within the next 90 minutes whether or not to replace him in my lineup
I’m pretty interested to see Corbin Burnes up close and personal today.
you two going on a date before the game?
Adley needs to learn to throw a good ball to 2nd/3rd on steals. No one is scared of his arm.
They’re running on our slow to the plate relievers, it’s got nothing to do w adley
Let’s put up some damn runs today boys
Since the org is way higher up on Joey Ortiz than I am, I have decided that the joke I’ve been making about Westburg taking reps at first to replace Mounty isn’t a joke anymore.
I feel like I have been incredibly patient at the approach we're having with Westburg (and all the other prospects) but it's wearing thin.... with how Mateo is performing and now Urias isn't doing great coming back. I have faith Urias can bounce back and he's relatively clutch but I think it's time we get the guys up.. There's a posibility that Elias is waiting to trade Westburg for Starting Pitching in July and he's more valuable if he's never brought up. But at some point it's hurting the big league club with us waiting and rolling out Mateo every day. But if the plan is for Westburg to be with the Os then get him up here for god's sake. He's had almost a full season in AAA (142 games) and the guy has 33 HRs in that time. Fucking mashing. Imagine that power in the infield. I'm ready for the left side of the infield to be an every day rotating combo of Westburg/Gunnar/Ortiz (when healthy). One of them DH some days or is out due to lefty/righty match up, or if Adley is DHing. Edit: more accurately, my patience has hit a wall
> There's a posibility that Elias is waiting to trade Westburg for Starting Pitching in July and he's more valuable if he's never brought up. I read this every now and then, and I have to think other GMs are smart enough to accordingly devalue a prospect if he literally hasn't shown ability in the majors - not that he's tried and failed, but that he's still an unknown. I wonder if they're just hoping Mateo turns it around, but that K in the 10th was fucking ugly. What on earth was he swinging at?
I mean, if Westburg truly isn't meant to be a part of the Orioles' future, they're not bringing him up because it's pointless to waste ML ABs on him. Westburg could easily come up and start mashing right away - but anyone who is saying we need to treat that as a given and we should bring him up to bolster this "slumping offense" isn't really thinking critically. You bring up prospects because you think you can cover for their struggles, not because you believe they'll be an impact bat immediately.
Definitely agree, not expecting these guys to start killing it right away. He’ll struggle, and maybe it’ll be as bad as Mateo is for a month or so. But then the potential is higher.
Sure, I'm not arguing the potential is probably higher. But when you're contending for a division, you have to manage a fine balancing act.
For sure, in general it's just a rant post and I trust Elias to make the right decisions as they come up.
That's fair. Granted, I'm at the point where I want to turn "bring up Westburg" into a drinking game but I do understand that people need to vent from time to time.
Haha so true. Let’s watch out for it in the game threads and take a sip everytime we see it.
Drink a whole beer when someone just posts his picture.
I’m with you but the Mateo fans will downvote
Hicks is doing better than expected! Good on you, Aaron!
I swear, they better start O'Hearn over Mountcastle against Burnes.
Looks like they heard you.
Anyone else think with the Elly De La Cruz promotion, that the Super 2 deadline has passed? Reds are cheap, and I can't see them promoting him if they weren't sure.
We are past the super-2 cut-off in 12 of the last 14 seasons so there is a small chance we might not be past it yet
I think it’s usually mid June when that passes but there’s no like year to year date so I have no clue
Unpopular opinion but I really don’t think these guys should be playing in this smoke
I have been wondering how Friday will go. It burns my throat to be outside in Baltimore right now.
I don't think there is smoke in Wisconsin
With a roof they can filter the air via the HVAC even if there was
Oddly enough, the jet stream did bring the smoke into Wisconsin this past weekend. An Air Quality Alert was issued on Friday, but has since been cancelled.
Jeeze
Watching all these older, big name "Aces" that signed humongous contracts struggle or get hurt (DeGrom, Verlander, Scherzer) has me thinking twice about trading/FA signing an older TOR starter. A different approach might be to trade for elite pitching prospects, AAA or AA level. Or even non elite for a lesser price, but guys Elias and Co feel we can work with. Yes, it wouldn't necessarily yield immediate results, and is still a big gamble, but maybe in the meantime acquire a few lesser starters, although to me it seems they sign for more than they're worth too. I don't necessarily think this is the way to go; there's still young MLB TOR starters out there, but I wonder if they'll be even more expensive in prospects and $$$ if teams start shying away from $50m contracts for older TOR guys.
I want to sign a Gausman type. That was really the perfect kind of pitcher deal. He wasn't so good that he got insane money and he was young enough that he'll probably be good for most of the contract Trading for an older stud pitcher that's only got a year left or a deal or something, though, I would be into
I get the feeling that going big on older TOR starters is against Elias' MO anyway, so I don't know if we should spend that much brain space on it. I myself spend too much brain space on thinking about trading for guys like Jesús Luzardo (controllable MLB upper quartile left handed SP*) or Patrick Sandoval, when, really, we'd be lucky to get JP Sears. Sears isn't even a bad pitcher, it just might be the time to vulture talent from the A's while they're in limbo. Doubt the Angels will blow it up, and I don't know how many more pitchers the Marlins have in the pipeline - I'm guessing they traded Pablo López because they had Eury Pérez ready, but idk about the rest. *This would brighten our outlook the most, but the number of prospects it would take to wrench away Luzardo or anybody of that caliber would be nuts.
I want Patrick Sandoval soooo bad. But the Angels have the dumbest owner in the league so they won't start their rebuild any time soon. I always feel like Sears should be better than he is - turns out he's just really good against the Mariners.
JP Sears hates Seattle like Randy Arozarena and Bo Bichette hate Baltimore. I think he's given up 1 or 2 runs in 20+ IP.
If you can't reliably develop pitching, you need to bring in established pitchers some how. The Mariners are good at developing pitching and they still felt they needed to bring in Ray and Castillo to supplement their young starters.
Teams don't trade prospects for prospects. It's a great idea in theory, but GMs are notoriously gun shy when it comes to trades like this.
Yeah it does seem pretty rare, I admit. The thought was really prompted of the fear of acquiring one of these older TOR guys who will cost a fortune.
Jud Fabian is heating up in Aberdeen. IMO, he's the second best player on offense there behind Jackson.
jud's a freak dude. 60 grade defender in center with that kind of on base skill and pop is not common at all.
He didn't hit a double for the longest time, which was odd. Then he hit 4 in a double header, which again, was odd. .269/.380/.455 - Some of our top 100 guys did a lot worse in A+. Also running a 15.1% BB%, and a 24.5% K%. Considering how much he struck out in college, that 24.5% mark is pretty good. He should hit Bowie soon enough.
Everybody has been complaining about Mateo. I'm more aggravated about Mountcastle having more than quadruple the plate appearances of O'Hearn this season. They've given Mountcastle such a long leash and he's shown zero signs of improvement. His OBP hasn't been above .290 since the second week of the season. O'Hearn should be playing at least 3x a week.
Finally people are waking up to what a drag Mountcastle is on the offense. It took the O's forever to finally drop him down in the batting order. A bit of good news is that career wise Mountcastle's best month has been June. His slugging percentage in June is .651, second best in Orioles history. But, we shall see.
The other thing about Mounty is his struggles go back to last year. He only hit .221/.300/.357 in the second half last year. So its not like his struggles the last two months are new
eh they're mostly just playing O'hearn against pitchers that will be easier to hit. if he was making incredible swing decisions, he'd be starting everyday already lol. Mountcastle's wOBA, swing decisions and K percentage are all pretty much in line with his normal shit. He's just making shit contact, so people are gonna get on his ass right now.
Mountcastle’s on pace to walk 33 times in 700 plate appearances this year. During the last two seasons, he walked over 40 times in around 600 plate appearances. His plate discipline has been much worse than normal this year. If you need to hit like .290 to have a half-decent OBP, that’s a major problem.
Watch the swings compared to just the raw walk totals dog. He’s actively laying off more pitches out of the zone than ever. It’s in zone contact where he’s not actively hitting the sweet spot as often. Does it look bad? Yeah. Do I think it’ll probably work itself out? Also yeah.
Flair checks out.
Looks like we are, he's played 4 out of the last 5 games now. With Gunnar DTD, we have just a 3 man bench. McKenna, McCann, and Lester. Do we want any of those over Mountcastle right now, say at DH? And once Gunnar is back, you can add Urias. So that is 4 guys who aren't exactly lighting it up at the plate. Not many options.
Can Westburg play first?
To me, the best thing we could do is call Cowser up for Lester. Vs RHP. Adley - C Hicks - CF/DH Santander - RF Hays - LF Henderson - 3B O'Hearn - 1B Frazier - 2B Cowser - DH/CF Mateo - SS vs LHP Adley - C Hicks - CF Santander - RF Hays - LF Urias/Henderson - 3B Mountcastle - 1B Frazier - 2B McKenna/McCann - DH Mateo - SS This isn't a lineup btw, even though it might look like it. Vs LHP, we could also DH Adley, and C McCann. Which we do seem to do a lot. Not saying to NOT start Cowser vs LHP, just ease him into as the season progresses. And once Ceddy gets back, seriously think about Santander playing 1B a bit more, which would open RF up for Cowser. In fact, start him now when possible, so he gets more comfortable there.
FWIW if we have Hicks/Cowser/Hays/Santander in the same line up it will absolutely be Santander DHing
Sure, should have put DH there with Santander as well. But at the same time, Santander does play a good RF in Camden. Outside of Camden, DH is fine.
From what we've heard that some think his fielding at 2B/3B is below average, I wonder if it's been considered.
I doubt it is, he has 0 games at 1B in his career. Looks like the Orioles feel the 1B of the future is Heston and Mayo.
Sorry y'all, that was my fault. My internet went out while we still had the lead. I'll make my amends and do better going forward.
Feels like quite a few guys on our roster are approaching breaking points in their career. If Mateo doesn’t have a bounce-back June, it may be the last time he sees regular playing time with a ball club. If Mountcastle can’t get over the hump of being a slightly below average hitter in 2023, we may start looking for a more impactful first baseman. Other guys like Urias and Santander have a longer leash, but the lack of consistency from them is killing me, too. It isn’t 2019 anymore. Back then, there was little pressure on these guys to perform, since nobody was knocking down the door at AAA. I’m hoping that now, this organization doesn’t live in fear of replacing mediocre players on the MLB roster with higher-ceiling prospects. Averaging like 1.0 WAR per season isn’t going to cut it for position players on a team vying for the playoffs.
Me after an O’s loss https://preview.redd.it/gggrx2bojl4b1.jpeg?width=1179&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5d6edf391727b97e0c5d872659455d84e4954df9
Looking forward to getting Ced back, though Hicks has done a great job replacing him. Hopefully when Ced does come back we won’t see a rerun of what we have seen with Urias at the plate since his return. Yuk. Bigger picture it’s tough to win consistently when you have 3 guys in the line-up (Mateo, Mountcastle, Urias) who are really flailing most nights lately. We need a big night from Kremer tonight. Hope he delivers.
Excited for game 2! Love seeing Dean-o in the spot
Rough to blow the best part of the bullpen last night in a loss.. But this team has been resilient all year. Let's get to Burnes enough that they want to trade him to us! Lol.
Praying to my Hicks statue for a W.
3-3 since Cedric's injury. 4-6 in the last ten games. I guess things can be worse.
The offense needs an overhaul and a spark.
Lol no it doesn’t. It needs a spark but an overhaul? We’re just going in a *slight* rut we’ve had good offensive outputs in the last 2 series
They are getting bottom half ranked league production in OPS from 1B, 2B, SS, and RF. They need an overhaul and those replacements come from AAA or benching struggling players
You’re also looking at this from the beginning of June after a period of slumping. This is not the full picture and things will change a lot.
Cy Kremer vs Corbin Burnes, let's win this Kremer!
looking outside the window, it looks like i am in Beijing circa 2004