Orioles 2024 Season

[chillerdab]

Is it hyde? Is it the hitting coaches? The conditioning team?

All of the above?

The hitters strike out way too much, minor injuries linger, the bullpen’s been a mess all year, and all phases of the Orioles game got worse as the year progressed.

 

[hattersgonnahate]

Is it hyde? Is it the hitting coaches? The conditioning team?

All of the above?

The hitters strike out way too much, minor injuries linger, the bullpen’s been a mess all year, and all phases of the Orioles game got worse as the year progressed.

As much as I hate to go into "I told you so" mode... Given the benefit of hindsight, maybe the Orioles should have done the unthinkable by selling at the trade deadline based on the reasoning that "this isn't our year" due to the sheer number of injuries. That way, the second half of the season could have been used to give certain prospects more playing time as a form of "load management" (instead of being stuck in the situation where certain key players couldn't afford to take a day off and thus started regressing due to fatigue / injuries). Likewise, the pitching conundrum could have been addressed by using openers / relay teams on a regular basis (and if all else fails, "scheduled punt games").

If anything, this strategy actually worked for the Tigers-- and the Orioles could have sacrificed up to 4 wins as a side effect of the "in-season mini-rebuild" and still end up with the #1 wild card. Oh well, on to Game 2...

 

[chillerdab]

Would your strategy have made a lat strain for grayson take six weeks to not fully heal? Or Mounty’s strained wrist?

What about the hitting approach - last year the hitters were patient and working counts. This year they swing way too freely, struck out too much and had zero patience.

 

[hattersgonnahate]

Would your strategy have made a lat strain for grayson take six weeks to not fully heal? Or Mounty’s strained wrist?

What about the hitting approach - last year the hitters were patient and working counts. This year they swing way too freely, struck out too much and had zero patience.

I'd agree with all of your points here: Load management alone cannot prevent some injuries (certainly not those caused by freak accidents such as collisions or hits by pitches), and the coaching staff is likely partly to blame for the less-patient hitting approach. I am just trying to make the case that most of the regression in the second half of this season can be ultimately attributed to injuries in some manner via the following vicious cycle:

• When multiple key players are unavailable, other players would need to pick up the slack and thus ended up being overused. This results in additional fatigue, which leads to more injuries or at least under-performance at the individual level.
  
  
• Either way, this results in under-performance at the team level, which causes hitters to feel pressured to play "hero ball" by swinging for the fences. Unfortunately, the all-or-nothing "three true outcomes" approach reinforces itself: If you can't score without hitting home runs, you almost have to go for home runs every time (regardless of what the coaches are saying).
  
  
• Likewise, the bullpen being a mess probably has something to do with the fact that an entire rotation of starting pitchers was on the IL at one point.

Hence the argument for being willing to "lose a battle to win the war" by spreading the workload among a larger number of players: It's essentially a "player health above all else" strategy. After all, at some point fatigue and/or lingering injuries could cause a better player to perform worse than their backups. For example, consider the following cases of second-half drop-off:

• Adley Rutschman ended up hitting worse than James McCann
• Gunnar Henderson's errors in late July (remember the stretch of 4 consecutive games?)
• For the pitchers that stayed healthy all season, consider Albert Suárez (and even Corbin Burnes to a lesser extent)