OT: Orioles Opening Day

[WNCRavensFan]

They definitely have Houston’s number. When they’re clicking like last night they’re as good as anyone. Just hope those recent letdown games against Tigers and Red Sox don’t end up mattering somehow. Winning season is pretty much guaranteed however. Good crowd last night also.

Intriguing since their execs come from the Houston system.

[Shas]

Agree about changing the dimensions being a smart move. It wasn’t working to their advantage the old way, and they won noticeably more games that would have been different before. Good point about it possibly being attractive to FA pitchers also.

I don't think this gets mentioned enough. Someone took a look at their farm system, their organizational philosophy and overall strategy and decided that moving the fences back was a good idea. That move possibly could have been the difference between 81 - 85 wins and not finishing above .500. Brilliant move.

Pitching may be part of it. But my belief is that the move was made to tailor the park to their philosophy on scouting and acquiring hitters. They seem to favor hitters who are selective at the plate and hit for contact. Rutschman and Henderson both fit this mold. They are not going to lead the league in homeruns, but they are going to put a lot of balls in play. You move the fence back and you're forcing the left side of the outfield to spread out, giving more room to dump balls into play, and let Henderson et al just keep on running. Meanwhile, yes, it does help your pitchers and hurt teams that rely on right handed hitters mashing homeruns.

[Terpsfan82]

Pitching may be part of it. But my belief is that the move was made to tailor the park to their philosophy on scouting and acquiring hitters. They seem to favor hitters who are selective at the plate and hit for contact. Rutschman and Henderson both fit this mold. They are not going to lead the league in homeruns, but they are going to put a lot of balls in play. You move the fence back and you're forcing the left side of the outfield to spread out, giving more room to dump balls into play, and let Henderson et al just keep on running. Meanwhile, yes, it does help your pitchers and hurt teams that rely on right handed hitters mashing homeruns.

My biggest issue with the Buck led Orioles was that their style of offense was not sustainable and didn't fare well in the postseason. It was feast or famine. When they were on it was great, like a slow pitch softball game. The problem was that they rarely made pitchers work to get through the at bat. The Jeter led Yankees were the opposite. Their batters would get down 0-2 and foul off 10 pitches before getting a hit or an out. Either way, they wore down the pitcher much sooner.

[Corvus Corax]

I hear you and like old school baseball too. But you're swimming upstream here against analytics. Analytics people will counter by pointing out you aren't counting the number of runs that would have come off the board by sacrificing an out to try to score a run. The math says that the runs gained by sacrificing is outweighed by the runs lost by giving up an out. Here is the chart that the analyticheads use...



I'll walk through an example of what this chart says by focusing on the blue boxes. With a runner on second and no outs the expected runs scored are 1.1. If you sacrifice-bunt to put him on third, with one out now, the expected runs decrease to .950. The chance of scoring a run actually increases by 4.6%, on the right set of data.

What that means is, yes, moving him to third by giving up a run does increase the chance that runner scores, very slightly, but it also sacrifices the chance for a big inning from scoring multiple runs. Better playing for that big inning, according to the math, than to slightly increase your odds of getting the one run across.

You can track other examples, shaded with other colors, and see a similar effect from giving up the out to chase the one run.

Although I mentioned being partial to old-school thinking, sabermetric managing isn't all that new, and in fact it was the Orioles' Earl Weaver who is credited as a pioneer in this approach. Earl abhorred the sac bunt, and from '72 on his teams bunted 27% less often than the rest of the league. The cliche about Weaver loving the three-run homer was born out in statistics, even back then.

Now, there are counter arguments you could make. It's situational. If you're down a run in the ninth, of course you'll give up the out to take the one run and live to keep playing.

And surely there are teams that pitch well and don't hit, so they may be prone to take the one run when they can get it rather than playing for the big inning. That graphic charts stats for all teams. You'd want to run it for an individual team. Of course, you'd also need enough data to make the stats meaningful, and that might take an entire season of trial and error to learn anything.

Shas,

Thank you, thank you for accumulating these numbers and the arguments. When I have more time, I’ll respond in detail.

CCx

[Shas]

Cool. And to be clear, I'm not putting down your point, and don't really have a view on all this, but I recalled finding this chart when I was curious how Weaver used actual statistics to form his pro-three-run HR, anti-sac-bunt philosophies.

[Eastern_Shore_Fan]

3 outs away from 80 wins and counting. Only 3 back if we hold this. So you’re telling me there’s a chance.

Who would think we could potentially be 5-1 against the Astros.

Ugh

[Section 120 Says]

What happened!!!!!!!

[Terpsfan82]

Tough loss. Oy vey

[Section 120 Says]

The O's are growing. Just look at what Cleveland has done with the youngest team in the MLB. Hang in there O's. Had a good crowd of 20,000 cheering them on today on a football Sunday.

[WrongBaldy]

https://www.baltimoresun.com/sports/...m8juVfLla6UWKs

[Desert Raven]

Come on already, they’ve been chasing win 81 for what feels like weeks

[Jam31]

Come on already, they’ve been chasing win 81 for what feels like weeks

Well since you asked...500!!!