196 replies to this topic

[Slidemaster]

These conversations could be made moot if they would just sign their top picks to long term deals.

[Mike in STL]

Service time manipulation sucks. You put GRod on the opening day roster if he makes the team better. Because the goal is to win ball games. I know that’s a concept we’re not accustomed to. If he wins rookie of the year, we should be so lucky because it means he’s winning us some games. If he’s winning is some games you don’t pull the plug in July/August because some made up crystal ball says limit his innings.

Or we can worry about 2029.

What has all these years of manipulating service time gotten the Os? Or any team? Has any team won something and they were like, you know, keeping that one guy down in the minors for six weeks, six years ago, helped get us here.

[BobPhelan]

Isn't Gunnar the odds-on favorite to win RoY? Do we expect the two best rookies in baseball are on the O's?

In the AL, yeah.

[TwentyThirtyFive]

These conversations could be made moot if they would just sign their top picks to long term deals.

Signing a young pitcher to a long term deal anytime  soon is just beyond stupid. Unless its super team friendly. Adley or Gunnar thats a different story. COmpletely different rules.

[BSLMikeLowe]

Service time manipulation sucks. You put GRod on the opening day roster if he makes the team better. Because the goal is to win ball games. I know that’s a concept we’re not accustomed to. If he wins rookie of the year, we should be so lucky because it means he’s winning us some games. If he’s winning is some games you don’t pull the plug in July/August because some made up crystal ball says limit his innings.

Or we can worry about 2029.

What has all these years of manipulating service time gotten the Os? Or any team? Has any team won something and they were like, you know, keeping that one guy down in the minors for six weeks, six years ago, helped get us here.

 

Like I said, I really don't think service time is the issue here. If they believed he was ready to pitch 150+ innings this season (and maybe they do, though I kinda doubt it) then he'd unquestionably be on the OD roster.

 

Does innings-managment ultimately matter for young pitchers? I have no idea. I don't know if anyone truly does. I'm sure you can find cases where some guys ramped up quickly and then they flamed out early, but that doesn't mean causation. And I'm sure there are exceptions too. I think the Orioles buy into the theory, which is why they may want to cap him at ~125. Keep in mind, over the previous three seasons he's pitched 76 (2022), 103 (2021) and zero (2020) innings.

 

So assuming he's gonna be capped, and that's that, what do you prefer? Have him start the season in Baltimore with no restrictions, then shut him down when he reaches 125, probably sometime in early August? Or start him in Norfolk, where you can pull him after 3-4 innings and not care about the results of the game, and bring him up at a point where you don't have to handle him with kid gloves for the rest of the season?

[BSLChrisStoner]

Innings are innings. You want his innings in the Majors. He should be good for 150.

[Mike B]

Potential RoY draft pick > additional service time that you may lose if he finishes top 2 in RoY anyway

I am not sure I agree.  If GRod  develops into an ace, I will take the extra year.  My reasons for waiting though remains having him available at the end of the year.  I would suck to see him shut down in September.

[BSLMikeLowe]

Innings are innings. You want his innings in the Majors. He should be good for 150.

 

I have no idea what the folks in the warehouse think in regard to the workload they are comfortable with Rodriguez assuming this season. But, IF you are capping him significantly short of what a typical MLB starter would log over the course of a full season, then saying that "innings are innings" is an oversimplification. You can pull him after throwing 3-4 scoreless in Norfolk and not really care. Different story in Baltimore....especially later in the season if you find yourself in the chase for the postseason.

 

The one possible wild card here is Means. Maybe they envision potentially swapping Rodriguez for Means in the rotation at some point in the latter third of the season. The addition of Irvin might make that more tenable, depending on how the likes of Bradish, Kremer, Wells, Voth, etc. are performing.

[BSLChrisStoner]

I have no idea what the folks in the warehouse think in regard to the workload they are comfortable with Rodriguez assuming this season. But, IF you are capping him significantly short of what a typical MLB starter would log over the course of a full season, then saying that "innings are innings" is an oversimplification. You can pull him after throwing 3-4 scoreless in Norfolk and not really care. Different story in Baltimore....especially later in the season if you find yourself in the chase for the postseason.

 

The one possible wild card here is Means. Maybe they envision potentially swapping Rodriguez for Means in the rotation at some point in the latter third of the season. The addition of Irvin might make that more tenable, depending on how the likes of Bradish, Kremer, Wells, Voth, etc. are performing.

They will limit him to 3-4 innings early, and they'll occasionally skip starts; but I don't envision them having to shut him down. 

[BSLSteveBirrer]

Wins in April are just as important as wins in September. They count exactly the same in the standings. I see both sides of this equation. If the FO thinks that they can manage GRods innings well enough in Baltimore that they wouldn't have to shut him down come late season then by all means put him on the OD roster.

 

But if they believe that they likely would have to shut him down if he started the season in Baltimore then for sure start him at AAA. Now IMO I don't see any way he goes 150 innings. The most he has ever thrown is 103 two years ago. Coming off an injury I just don't think they will be targeting much more than 125.

[Mackus]

GRod will literally throw 30 innings tops by the time his extra year kicks in.

Less than that, even. He's gotta be down for 21 days since he's on the 40-man. There are 18 games during the first 21 days of this coming season. So it's 3 starts max. 15-18 innings.

I'd still be fine with calling him up to begin, but really hard to argue that the first 3 starts of his career in 2023 are worth trading the entirety of 2029 (though acknowledging the risk that you lose that control if he gets credit for ROY).

Another possibility would be to consider optioning him for a few weeks around the ASB for the stated purpose of rest and managing workload. 4 or 5 days with no game, limits the impact of missing him for a bit.

[makoman]

We're getting OT, but I was curious the amount of innings a SP needs to get top 2 in ROY. In the past 10 years there's been 9 SP in the top 2 (I'm not counting Ohtani, he only had 51). 4 were in the 130-140 range, 5 were above 150. I think it will be tough for him to be ROY because going from 103 to 76 to 130 seems like close to the max. Even if you want to go higher, if you are planning to try and make the playoffs I'd like some of those innings to be in October, don't need a 2012 Strasberg situation.

 

Spencer Strider (2022 NL) 131.2

Luis Garcia (2021 AL) 155.1

Trevor Rogers (2021 NL) 133.0

John Means (2019 AL) 155.0

Mike Soroka (2019 NL) 174.2

Michael Fulmer (2016 AL) 159.0

Matt Shoemaker (2014 AL) 136.0

Jacob deGrom (2014 NL) 140.1

Jose Fernandez (2013 NL) 172.2

[BSLRoseKatz]

I think any sort of limited innings situation can be helped by using Tyler Wells as a...utility pitcher? Which isn't really a thing but he had 8 starts going over 80 pitches and 13 starts with at least 70 pitches where it feels like you can use him to fill in for any innings out of the bullpen, as an opener, whatever. 

[BSLRoseKatz]

I think any sort of limited innings situation can be helped by using Tyler Wells as a...utility pitcher? Which isn't really a thing but he had 8 starts going over 80 pitches and 13 starts with at least 70 pitches where it feels like you can use him to fill in for any innings out of the bullpen, as an opener, whatever. 

Also Austin Voth has shown he can go starter length if needed, I think any inning Grayson throws in the minors is wasted strain on his arm in a level he's already mastered and I think the front office can figure out some way to get him to the end of the season by using multiple innings out of the pen from Voth, Wells and I guess Keegan Akin too

[TwentyThirtyFive]

Less than that, even. He's gotta be down for 21 days since he's on the 40-man. There are 18 games during the first 21 days of this coming season. So it's 3 starts max. 15-18 innings.

I'd still be fine with calling him up to begin, but really hard to argue that the first 3 starts of his career in 2023 are worth trading the entirety of 2029 (though acknowledging the risk that you lose that control if he gets credit for ROY).

Another possibility would be to consider optioning him for a few weeks around the ASB for the stated purpose of rest and managing workload. 4 or 5 days with no game, limits the impact of missing him for a bit.

I appreciate you doing the math. I figured it wasnt 30 but I was being conservative.


Feel very strongly they need to keep him down for 21 days. This guy is gonna be a stud and as makoman points out above hes got an uphill climb to finish top 2 just based on expected innings. His performance would have to be terrific. Not just solid but great for him to be top 2

[dude]

Another possibility would be to consider optioning him for a few weeks around the ASB for the stated purpose of rest and managing workload. 4 or 5 days with no game, limits the impact of missing him for a bit.

 

I have no idea what they are going to do, but it's not like we've seen them execute any real plan with this so far.

 

Chris talks about controlling GRod innings, but they didn't really do it last year and (I'm less convinced he was on the verge of a callup than everyone else) if they had called him up, they were going to shut him down.  He wouldn't be a top prospect in that narrative today and they'd still be in a similar boat for 2023.

 

I don't know how MLB or the MLBPA would view the quoted.  Start the guy on the ML roster, use him for 4-5 starts, option hinm to the minors to pitch limited innings over the next 2+ weeks, back to the ML rotation and he's bumping back in forth with someone (like Hall later in the year) to limit.  That would be creative...I don't think I really like it, but I guess it's possible.  You can only send him back and forth 3 times.

[makoman]

What’s the MLBPA going to say, you can’t use options? They’d lose that worse than the Kris Bryant grievance.

Now, the player won’t like it if he’s not at all struggling, so I probably wouldn’t do it. It’s cleaner just to start in AAA if that’s the goal.

[dude]

What’s the MLBPA going to say, you can’t use options? They’d lose that worse than the Kris Bryant grievance.

Now, the player won’t like it if he’s not at all struggling, so I probably wouldn’t do it. It’s cleaner just to start in AAA if that’s the goal.

 

I'm not so much looking at it from some legal or grievance standpoint.  That never stops people from having issues.  The rules are the rules but the specific intent to create the opportunity to get the draft pick was to push your top prospects into the Majors.  Now you put them in the Majors from Day 1, they get a full year of service, but they are spending 5-7 weeks in the minors.  Teams will try and leverage the rules for whatever they want.  Now they'll have to add the word "consecutive" or something else into the language.  Then Teams will have to do something else and we'll need another rule to manage the next work-around.

[dude]

This could be in another thread, but Cole Irvin wants to get 30+ starts.  So does Gibson.  Wells, Bradish and Kremer all want to prove what they can do over 30+ starts.  You are limited to 13 pitchers.  The bullpen is already full.

 

Saying it's a good problem to have is fine, but you have to make decisions and I guarantee there are going to be players in whatever scenarios play out that are having money taken out of their pocket.  They care about everything else, until you start taking money out of their pocket, especially the younger guys looking to get their foothold.

 

You saw this last September too....everyone was excited for Gunnar and look at the OPS difference between whatever, so the team is 'better' but played worse.  This isn't fantasy baseball.

[Mashed Potatoes]

I felt very blah about this move until I learned that Cole's nickname is "Swirvin Irvin", now I love it.