Thanks to Mother Nature and a scheduled day off, we’re faced with the prospect of no Orioles baseball for two consecutive days, something that should never, ever happen between the months of April and September unless of course it’s the All-Star break. Let’s try to kill the time with some O’s Links, shall we?
Is Manny Machado the Most Outstanding Fielder of Our Generation?
Tom Tango (who you’ll remember from our Fancy Stats for Dummies series as the creator of some #fancystats) uses a new stat he calls WOWY (With or Without You) to try to quantify Manny Machado’s awesomeness. How have pitchers who have tossed in front of Manny done with him compared to without him? Scroll down to the comments for Tango’s rankings, where Manny reigns supreme.
Nolan Reimold Making His Case for More Playing Time
Time for more #REIMTIME? Josh Sadlock of Baseball Essential makes the case. As an avid Reimold homer myself, I’d like to see it, especially with Pedro Alvarez giving the team not-very-much, and Mark Trumbo’s adventures in right field continuing. Let’s run ol’ Moldy out there and see if his injury issues are really behind him. Chances are he’ll produce until they pop up again, and if they don’t, even better.
In his weekly guest column over at MASN, our own Andrew Stetka expands on some points he touched on in his Word on the Street segment late last week. Saturday night was only one loss, but it could point to much bigger issues that the O’s will be dealing with for the foreseeable future. How can the team mask the weakness that is their starting five without completely gassing their bullpen before summer even gets here?
What Can We Learn About the Orioles from their Hot Start?
Sal Cacciatore of NumberFire throws some water on the Birds’ hot start (kinda the opposite of what you’d expect…more like NumberFireFighter, amritie?), saying that the hitters’ BABIP and the pitchers’ strand percentage are sitting at unsustainable rates. However, he closes out with some encouraging numbers on a couple of the Birds’ starters, so it’s not all bad. Still, their AL East predictions can get bent.
In his weekly Sunday Notes column, Fangraphs’ David Laurila has some quotes from Kevin Gausman, who can’t get here soon enough. Scroll about halfway down the page to read what Gausman has to say about trying to become more of a pitcher, and less of a thrower, and about some advice he got from Jason Hammel a few years back that he says is only now starting to make sense.
And in NFL news…
Favorite/Least Favorite Pick – Part 5
The Russell Street Report writers continue taking turns laying out the cases for their favorite and least favorite potential Ravens draft picks. Up this go round is Dev Panchwagh, who has been writing the great “Battle Plans” game previews at RSR for many years now. See who Dev wants to see in purple come draft day at the link.
