keggy

With the extra bullpen spot, there is a ton of opportunity for roster abuse if Atkins wants to go in that direction. Across Merryweather, Pop, Thornton, Gage, and Saucedo, you can basically call up a fresh arm or play matchups for every series for the rest of the season.

Peacock only I think. The announcers are absolute cowboys but you can tell they know baseball.

Pinch hit when down, keep the better defender when up.

Tony LaRussa used to do stuff like this in the 90s. When Mark McGwire was injured, he would start him at 2B on the road to get him a guaranteed AB and then replace him with Placido Polanco in the bottom of the inning. This could actually work. For home games I would start Zimmer in CF and bat him 9th so he's guaranteed to play in the field. Leave him in until his first AB. Don't let him hit even once. The downside is that you lose your fastest baserunner and best outfielder for the late innings, but you still have tons of speed on the bench with Biggio, Merrifield, and Tapia. We don't really have the personnel to do this though. Tapia, Merrifield, and Bradley are bad hitters even with the platoon advantage. The only one who can actually hit is Biggio, so the exercise just becomes "get Biggio as many ABs as possible without hurting the defence too much".

The team shifts so much I don't know what to do with infielder defensive metrics. He still looks great.

I'm pretty sure Pop isn't eligible to come back until Friday or Saturday. I'm guessing they'll option Lawrence back down after 1 day.

Saucedo is back to abusing AAA hitters. If he's healthy he might be a better fit for September than Merryweather or Pop.

The Blue Jays have a clear advantage in MLB performance this year. I would honestly be surprised if Toronto didn't make the playoffs, and equally surprised if Baltimore did. In terms of short term org health, one huge factor is financial flexibility. Baltimore could add $100 million in salary per year and still have a lower payroll than Toronto. Is Baltimore still a worse team if they spend $100 million? Is Toronto still a better team if they dump $100 million? On the other hand, Toronto has a huge market advantage. Angelos historically has had no problem spending on a contending team, but Baltimore is a relatively small market that has direct overlap with the Nationals and the million other sports teams in that geographical region. Rogers' market is basically the entire nation of Canada and some of the northern US states. His biggest rivals are playing different sports. I would personally rather be in Shapiro's position than Angelos, but if Baltimore starts spending money wisely we need to mentally prepare for another major hurdle to overcome in the division.

Basically this season Berrios is garbage in about a third of his starts. One or two starts have been masterpieces. The rest of the starts he's about league average. Do we even need to roster Berrios in a 3 game wildcard series? White has experience as a long man. I don't know if Berrios has even appeared as a reliever in his career.

It's worth debating whether the Orioles have surpassed the Blue Jays for the coming competitive cycle. The Blue Jays current MLB performance is clearly better, but not by a huge margin. Moving forward, the young position player cores are comparable with huge controllable talents on both teams. Baltimore's starting rotation is awful, but our starting pitchers make more than their entire team combined. The farm systems are not comparable. Long term payroll commitments are not comparable. Which organization would you take for the next five years?

Stripling 2nd and 3rd time through the order has pitched better than Berrios any time through the order.

If you minimize his PAs Zimmer can provide some value. He is one of the fastest players in baseball and plays excellent defense. Call up both Moreno and Zimmer so you can aggressively pinch run for guys like Kirk and Gurriel. Get lazy Teoscar off the field in the late innings as an added bonus. Unfortunately this plan requires dumping one of Tapia or Bradley Jr. which seems highly unlikely.

The pecking order for me is Pop > Merryweather > Saucedo. As far as I'm concerned Pearson is out for the season with mono until proven otherwise.

Schneider looks like he banged a line of coke before the game.

Guerrero is going 5 for 5 against this IF defence. Throw Tapia in there too.

Gibby is a savage.

Yes. With the new rule that you can't carry more than 13 pitchers, we absolutely have the roster space to carry a pure pinch runner/defensive replacement. What do you think the run probability difference is when you pinch run Hamilton for Kirk late in the game? Probably huge. I would love to carry a 3rd catcher again so we can do this often. It gives Kirk some innings off his feet as well. With Biggio and Merrifield covering the outfield I would love to dump Bradley Jr. and Tapia for Hamilton and Collins. The front office has a boner for Tapia so this would never happen.

Manoah has also been insanely consistent all year, which counts. Basically there has never been a single game where he has f***ed us over. Gausman is unhittable most of the time but occasionally will pitch like Kikuchi.

Last night he needed work. Tonight he was fully warmed up when they extended the lead. If Cimber gets into any trouble Romano's has to come in anyways. Bass can close tomorrow. I would've gone with Cimber but going with Romano wasn't that stupid.

Schneider looks like he's gonna have a stroke.

I like Cimber with the 4 run lead and the matchups but I can see why they went with Romano.

Hamilton has 15 PA and 7 SBs lol.

Purely going by eye test Biggio looks very good in the OF and 1B. Merrifield looks better at 2B. I wish they would play Biggio in CF. He can really run and he can't be worse than Tapia.

Someone should give Tapia steroids so we can finally stop playing him.

There's no one to option for Gage except Thornton, who is the only guy with length. Gage is basically a 1 inning guy. With Kikuchi and Berrios making 40% of your starts, you're guaranteed to have an occasional bullpen abuse day.