Jon Shepherd

OldMuppet

Keeping the man down

Will he also find a treasure map of your hard drives?

And it will come down to what mattered most last season...

The young core has to perform.

Is Bassitt a great fit for Camden Yards? Not really. He is susceptible to lefty power. He will probably be better on the road.

The positive is that he has a prolonged history of health and success. The bottom end of the rotation needs that.

With the nature of the current market, I think Chris Bassitt was the best plan C (or is it D). Should be a solid short term fix with a better performance profile than somewhat like Zac Gallen. And a better chance to give positive outcomes than Giolito.

Cease and Valdes were the two gets and...nope.

Death to Smoochy (2002)

Orioles are about 10 million over what they were last year with respect to the luxury tax numbers. They probabky will get one more player. Maybe.

Can we all agree Orioles fans that we are projecting our anger about the closing of Brewers Art onto Blaze Alexander?

And yeah, I totally would have chosen Valdez over Alonso, but I might well be wrong.

The Orioles really haven't failed at free agency. I think the failure has been to create a minor league system that churns out useful baseline players. A top of the rotation arm is great when the gods smile on you. A team that stands long term is one that avoids negative replacement production.

I think the playoff solution is getting Valdez. I think SP value is much greater in postseason play.

I think the regular season value is shoring up the lineup and the bullpen.

So if you ask me what problems the Orioles have, I would say SP, bullpen, corner outfield bats, and a reasonable DH.

I wonder whether Marcel Ozuna and Justin Wilson (assuming both are healthy) would do more for this roster than Framber.

I think one of the reasons why I stopped blogging was because it became less about what you had to say, particularly with a new universally competent group of organizations, and it became more about how you said it (branding). And, that bored me.

One of the wildest things I was told back around 2012 was that what I wrote in Camden Depot was regularly printed out in a daily packet of other stat writers and given to the GM. That is a wild way to run an organization.

As in, you see value in it, but are not capable of investing what you need.

Like 15 years ago, Duquette probabky would have signed Patrick Corbin to a 2 year deal.

It was a more fascinating time where there was a chance you might know more than someone in a front office.

For instance, it seems the Orioles have failed at getting sufficient top end starting pitching talent. A lot of folks are upset. And I am just like eh I get it why they wouldn't go to that price point.

What I have difficulty with now is how moves will happen or not happen and people go nuts. I just am here, with a long ago accepted benchmark for competency, thinking eh I disagree, but I get it.

I think the golden age of sports blogging was around 2007-2013. It was a time where enough people realized how useful thoughtful baseball analysis was while there still were organizations who just didn't quite get it or famously pushed back.

1/3 of the Washington Post staff is gone.

I have no idea what kind of husk of a paper it will be. Maybe just another national news paper with a lot of wire work.

I think even if the tariffs went away, the impact that AI data centers are having won't.

Mega is supposed to be 28 oz

I say this every year, but if I still did the Depot I would write a column on how well early free agent signings compare to expectations to late free agent signings.

I see a lot of assumptions bandied about each year about how signing the last guy at a tier is buying the least wanted player.

You can probably use a Snow Joe and it do a good enough job. Also get a fitbit or somewhere wearable heartrate device. Pace yourself.

You would still have teams going big on role players, but the star players would be more dispersed through the league.

Who knows what the solution is? This is probably a bad idea. But I wonder how a two stage salary cap would work in baseball. Like if everyone paid an amount into a pot, MLB handed out 120 million for teams to spend on 3 players. And all the rest on a roster cannot individually be paid more than 20M.

Briscoe County Jr

Stand down.