Ray

Orelvis Martinez: April 6th - May 9th: 22 games, .089/.169/.266, .434 OPS, 24% K-rate, 9% BB-rate. May 10th - present: 46 games, .307/.432/.621, 1.053 OPS, 16% K-rate, 17% BB-rate. What an insane turnaround. His BABIP during this hot streak isn’t absurdly high (.307), he’s cut his k-rate basically in half from past seasons, and he’s walking more than he’s striking out.

Padres are in free-fall. Just got swept by the Pirates. They’re at 37-44 now, 11 games behind on the division and 8 of the wildcard.

Elias is actually from the area, and they could probably retain him by promoting him to President of Baseball Ops + giving him a pay bump. But I'm sure smart people like Eve Rosenbaum and Sig Mejdal have aspirations of running their own teams one day. Could easily be major brain drain in that org when they've established success with the O's. Fact of the matter is, the O's financial situation makes them much more prone to boom-bust cycles. Even though their front office is staffed with sharp Astros execs, it's not like the Astro's could sustain their competitive window on farm system production alone. They've been running $200M+ payrolls for a while now. I'm doubtful the O's will.

Not Mike Elias, no. But it's fair to evaluate ownership, and the O's ownership has a long track record of being absolutely dogshit at decision-making that interferes with baseball operations. First off, the O's owners are the rich persons equivalent of being house poor. They actually need the O's to operate at break-even or be profitable since their net worth is entirely tied up in their stake of the Orioles, so they can't bankroll the team themselves really without taking loans against their equity. The vast majority of owners have billion-dollar net worths + strong income streams independent of their baseball teams (you basically have to in order to own a team this day and age), but the Angelos family income stream IS the Orioles, more or less. The Peter Angelos law-firm isn't exactly thriving in the metropolitan sprawl known as Baltimore. Second, there's also the MASN dispute which could mandate them paying a massive lump-sump to the Nats for right fees and put and insane dent into what they can pay for free agents + extensions. All these things matter when you're cash-strapped and not Steve Cohen. They could easily mess up their competitive window by cheaping out and not going after good free agents, or cutting internal player dev infrastructure or analytics teams etc. They COULD be the Rays and operate on nothing, but let's not assume that after they just started being good due to half a decade worth of straight up tanking. Let's see how long they can keep this going when they're picking at the lower end of the draft with less of a draft budget + maybe no big free agent signings + probably not retaining internal guys like Gunnar Henderson (Boras client) and maybe even Rutschmann.

It's pretty grim. At this point you basically have to win almost every series + get some sweeps against AL East teams to even reach .500 against the division (not impossible, but they've dug themselves a hole).

Vlad's launch angle this year is the same as it was in his almost MVP season. Literally almost all his expected stats are close to what they were during 2021, except it's not translating into his actual stats. His issues this year are around horrible pitch selection and recently more whiffs/K's. He's getting pitches to hit, but just not completely capitalizing on them. It's painful to watch him underperform right now (relatively speaking), but I would not be surprised if he turns it around in the 2nd half and is one of the best hitters in baseball.

Jays offense is 5th in the MLB by wrC+, but they're 22nd in wRC+ with RISP. Clearly Guillermo Martinez is telling them to suck with RISP, which is known to have variation and noise. Like yeah, they suck at hitting with RISP, but they also sucked last year until the last couple months and it ended up normalizing. It's frustrating, but unless you truly believe hitting with RISP is skill based (it's not), firing the hitting coach will do nothing. The issue with scoring runs are a combination of some of our hitters not performing as expected (Vlad, Springer, Kirk), and general randomness.

Even the best front offices aren't perfect. They are consistently making decisions that are based on incomplete/bad info, where they are in their competitive window, appetite for risk etc. As a result, some trades looks really bad in hindsight even if at the time they were considered sensible: The team we traded Nick Frasso to traded away Yordan Alvarez and O'Neil Cruz for relievers. The Rays traded away Jake Cronenworth and the 11.1 WAR he's provided in his career for a slapdick prospect (who they ended up trading later) and 1 year of not good Hunter Renfroe. Nick Frasso was a 23-year-old in High-A coming off TJ, and we traded him for Mitch White, who was putting up solid numbers as a depth starter (which we desperately needed last season). He sucked, then got injured, but still has 4 more years of control after this so there's still more to the story. Frasso probably fulfilled his 10th percentile outcome by rocketing up the lists, but it's not he doesn't have major red flags as well. I would be shocked if he's a major league starter. He's averaging less than 4 innings a start this year.

Some good stories in our farm lately. Not superstars per se, but there are guys who have the chance to be regular contributors to the big league team soon-ish. Some particularly interesting names at the higher levels: Chad Dallas (RHP, 22 years old, A+/AA): 6IP, 2H, 1ER, 1BB, 5K today, dropping his season ERA to 2.20. Honestly may be the best pitching story in the system this year, even including Tiedemmen (just by virtue of him being injured really). His main issue has been limiting walks this year (also getting a little lucky suppressing home runs), but the stuff is fantastic. A fast-moving college arm is exactly what this system needs. Damiano Palmegiani (3B/1B, 23 years old, AA): 3-for-5 today, .292/.400/.482 slashline, 20.5% K-rate, 13.5% BB-rate. Athletic build, short compact swing, plus great raw exit velo numbers. I think the most encouraging part about him is how incredibly well he's adjusted to pro-ball despite coming from a Canadian baseball program, and going to Jr. College. The growth trajectory has been incredible. Could be in AAA very soon if he keeps this up. Paxton Schultz (RHP, 25 years old, AA/AAA): 5IP, 3H, 1ER, 2BB, 6K in his AAA debut after doing pretty well in AA. Sharp uptick in K-rate this year, albeit the WHIP is high due to the walks. Sits 94-95 mph with his fastball, great changeup. Was okay at AA last year, but seems to have taken step forward this year.

So Bo Bichette is at 0 outs-above-average at SS thus far this season, which essentially means he's been average defensively. You can tell he's been better simply by the eye test too.

Gausman is one of those guys that toys with elite hitters and makes them look foolish.

Last week, Manoah didn't post a 0.1 IP 6ER line lol

Astros lost Justin Verlander, and are missing Lance McCullers Jr., Luis Garcia, & Jose Urquidy, and still lead the AL in ERA. lol

Wonder if they phantom-IL him or straight-up demote him. Up until today, Manoah alternated between okay and bad starts, but you could somewhat justify throwing him out there to see if he figured it out. Today was eye-openingly bad for Manoah though. A move needs to be made.

That's some really good exit velo, and he hit it opposite field as well. Looks like he was a high school pick from 2017. Had pretty unspectacular years in the minors until 2021 when he started putting up .800+ OPS's. Pretty good combined slashline in the minors though. Still only 24.

Kloffenstein today: 6IP, 6H, 1ER, 2BB, 5K. Drops his season ERA in AA to 2.20.

Biggio has just been brutal this year

Absolutely crazy how easily everyone is laying off his slider this year. You can tell the hitters pick it up almost instantaneously.

Lourdes would look pretty good in the middle of this lineup right now. Would not be opposed to trading for him midseason if the DBacks are clearly out of it. Varsho has been so worth it for his defense and baserunning alone. Not to mention he’s been really good offensively this month after a slow start.

If that’s the case, he’s not gonna end up netting that much more than if he just signed what the Nats offered him last year (15 years $440M). Personally, I think that was a more than fair offer by the Nats and don’t see him getting that much more.

What an absolutely fantastic outing by Bassitt. Please don’t bring him back out. Should be easy to manage at this point. Swanson to Romano.

That was still some great baserunning by KK there. Worth taking a gamble when Strider is on the mound

Rough outing for Brandon Barriera in his 2nd start: 3 IP, 3 H, 4 ER, 3 BB, 4 K

Damiano Palmegiani has been one of the bright spots in AA: Slashing .253/.443/.392 with as many walks as K's (24). He was lauded for high exit velo's out of the College of Southern Nevada (same Jr. College as Bryce Harper), so it's nice to see him start well.

Looks like Mitch White has more of a sweeper with horizontal movement compared to a vertical slider this year. Also flashing a pretty decent look changeup actually