Orioles 2024 Season

[hattersgonnahate]

August 1 Transactions:

• Activated: Eloy Jiménez, Trevor Rogers, Austin Slater
• Recalled: Liván Soto
• Optioned: Keegan Akin, Heston Kjerstad
• To 10-day IL: Jordan Westburg
• DFA'ed: Cristian Pache

Based on these moves today, it appears that Eloy Jimémez is actually being treated as the stop-gap replacement for Kjerstad (which is understandable since Kjerstad's hitting has cooled down), while Austin Slater is presumably the backup outfielder. The interesting part is that they optioned Keegan Akin as opposed to Burch Smith, which might be a L/R or usage consideration?

 

[ThomasTomasz]

Based on these moves today, it appears that Eloy Jimémez is actually being treated as the stop-gap replacement for Kjerstad (which is understandable since Kjerstad's hitting has cooled down), while Austin Slater is presumably the backup outfielder. The interesting part is that they optioned Keegan Akin as opposed to Burch Smith, which might be a L/R or usage consideration?

With Irvin also off the roster, it leaves Suarez as your only multi-inning reliever/long guy as well.

 

[UVA_Guy81]

Based on these moves today, it appears that Eloy Jimémez is actually being treated as the stop-gap replacement for Kjerstad (which is understandable since Kjerstad's hitting has cooled down), while Austin Slater is presumably the backup outfielder. The interesting part is that they optioned Keegan Akin as opposed to Burch Smith, which might be a L/R or usage consideration?

Akin surprised me. But figured someone was going to have to bite the bullet with all the moves made. Baker didn’t surprise me either since he’s been up and down for the past couple of months.
Seeing Pache DFA’d and eventually wind up on the Marlins didn’t shock me. Didn’t ever really see the value of him since he’s never had much of a bat. And after the Marlins‘ fire sale, they were probably just looking for bodies at this point.

 

[UVA_Guy81]

Glad we were able to split the Cleveland series. Those first two games just looked like lost causes. Let’s hope they can continue the momentum from this series into Toronto instead of going back into a funk.

 

[ThomasTomasz]

Akin surprised me. But figured someone was going to have to bite the bullet with all the moves made. Baker didn’t surprise me either since he’s been up and down for the past couple of months.
Seeing Pache DFA’d and eventually wind up on the Marlins didn’t shock me. Didn’t ever really see the value of him since he’s never had much of a bat. And after the Marlins‘ fire sale, they were probably just looking for bodies at this point.

Marlins could bring up Connor Norby and Victor Mesa Jr instead of going with a retread like Pache. But bad franchises will bad franchise.

 

[UVA_Guy81]

Marlins could bring up Connor Norby and Victor Mesa Jr instead of going with a retread like Pache. But bad franchises will bad franchise.

I could see a September call up for Norby. I heard that they were trying to send them to their AAA team to try to learn third base. I feel like in the mean time, they'll throw Pache out there because they aren't trying to win this year and it'll save them from having to bring up yet another guy from their farm club.

 

[Dead2009]

I wonder if all the Orioles fans that were okay with the Rogers trade because and I quote "he hasnt given up more than 2 runs a game since May" and "his record only looks bad because he was on the Marlins" are still okay with it because their boy is ASS.

 

[ThomasTomasz]

I wonder if all the Orioles fans that were okay with the Rogers trade because and I quote "he hasnt given up more than 2 runs a game since May" and "his record only looks bad because he was on the Marlins" are still okay with it because their boy is ASS.

I sure hope not. He’s looked bad since 2022, and has regressed in an organization that started to develop great pitching at all levels starting in 2022.

 

[Dead2009]

I mean you cant really regress if you were never good to begin with.

 

[redskinsfan1963]

mlb report has them at 1 in its rankings.

 

[hattersgonnahate]

I wonder if all the Orioles fans that were okay with the Rogers trade because and I quote "he hasnt given up more than 2 runs a game since May" and "his record only looks bad because he was on the Marlins" are still okay with it because their boy is ASS.

I mean you cant really regress if you were never good to begin with.

To be fair, Rogers did have a good 2021 season on paper... but that looked like a one-year outlier in context. When the trade first happened, I viewed it as a low-risk / low-reward attempt at a marginal upgrade (thinking that the Orioles were probably treating Rogers as a reclamation project), but now it looks like a trade where both sides lost:

• Since joining the Orioles, Rogers saw his advanced stats further regress beyond that of Kremer's, which means that Rogers arguably isn't even an improvement for the #5 starter role anymore. At this point, they should consider sending Rogers back down to AAA (as he apparently still has options remaining) and giving Povich another chance, or at least demote Rogers to the long reliever / mop-up role once Rodriguez returns (since Suárez is now no worse than the #4 starter on this team).
  
  
• Stowers isn't hitting much for the Marlins either, while Norby returned to AAA and has since batted worse for the Marlins organization (the sample size is too small to tell whether this has anything to do with the fact that the Marlins are also trying to teach him 3B).

 

[hattersgonnahate]

Upon further inspection of the schedule, it looks like the Orioles can theoretically use the upcoming rest days to skip one start for Rogers while gradually aligning the rotation order for the 9/24-26 series against the Yankees. This does come at the cost of sacrificing several opportunities for getting an extra day of rest (especially for Eflin), though:

Sun	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri	Sat
				8/15: Eflin	8/16: Burnes	8/17: Suárez
8/18: Rogers	8/19: Kremer	8/20: Eflin	8/21: Burnes	8/22: Suárez	8/23: Rogers	8/24: Kremer
8/25: Eflin	8/26: Off	8/27: Burnes	8/28: Suárez	8/29: Kremer	8/30: Eflin	8/31: Rogers
9/1: Burnes	9/2: Suárez	9/3: Kremer	9/4: Eflin	9/5: Off	9/6: Burnes * Rogers skipped	9/7: Suárez
9/8: Kremer	9/9: Eflin	9/10: Rogers	9/11: Burnes	9/12: Off	9/13: Suárez	9/14: Eflin
9/15: Kremer	9/16: Off	9/17: Rogers	9/18: Burnes	9/19: Eflin	9/20: Suárez	9/21: Kremer
9/22: Rogers	9/23: Off	9/24: Burnes	9/25: Eflin	9/26: Suárez	9/27: Kremer	9/28: Rogers
9/29: Burnes

(Note that the #5 starter needs to be intentionally NOT skipped on 9/17 in order to make Burnes available for the Yankees series.)


Of course, this is assuming the worst-case scenario where Rodriguez is done for the season. If Rodriguez is able to return in about a month, something like the following would be a possibility:

Sun	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri	Sat
9/8: Kremer	9/9: Eflin	9/10: Rogers	9/11: Burnes	9/12: Off	9/13: Suárez	9/14: Rodriguez
9/15: Eflin	9/16: Off	9/17: Kremer	9/18: Burnes	9/19: Rodriguez	9/20: Eflin	9/21: Suárez
9/22: Kremer	9/23: Off	9/24: Burnes	9/25: Rodriguez	9/26: Eflin	9/27: Suárez	9/28: Kremer
9/29: Burnes

 

[Dead2009]

To be fair, Rogers did have a good 2021 season on paper... but that looked like a one-year outlier in context. When the trade first happened, I viewed it as a low-risk / low-reward attempt at a marginal upgrade (thinking that the Orioles were probably treating Rogers as a reclamation project), but now it looks like a trade where both sides lost:

• Since joining the Orioles, Rogers saw his advanced stats further regress beyond that of Kremer's, which means that Rogers arguably isn't even an improvement for the #5 starter role anymore. At this point, they should consider sending Rogers back down to AAA (as he apparently still has options remaining) and giving Povich another chance, or at least demote Rogers to the long reliever / mop-up role once Rodriguez returns (since Suárez is now no worse than the #4 starter on this team).
  
  
• Stowers isn't hitting much for the Marlins either, while Norby returned to AAA and has since batted worse for the Marlins organization (the sample size is too small to tell whether this has anything to do with the fact that the Marlins are also trying to teach him 3B).

I don't know if I even trust him in the long reliever role, considering what happened to Cole Irvin. It's like he fell off a cliff and then as soon as he went into the long reliever role he was driving the bus that went off.

I low-key wish they woulda went after James Paxton when the Dodgers just up and decided he was expendable....but then he went and got hurt. Then there's the obvious wild card nobody wants....Trevor Bauer. If the dude could help us get to that next step, I don't see why the risk isn't taken.

 

[hattersgonnahate]

I don't know if I even trust [Trevor Rogers] in the long reliever role, considering what happened to Cole Irvin. It's like he fell off a cliff and then as soon as he went into the long reliever role he was driving the bus that went off.

I low-key wish they woulda went after James Paxton when the Dodgers just up and decided he was expendable....but then he went and got hurt. Then there's the obvious wild card nobody wants....Trevor Bauer. If the dude could help us get to that next step, I don't see why the risk isn't taken.

That's why my preference is to send down Rogers and give Povich another chance, based on the assumption that the latter may have more upside. After all, the results are likely to be similar; if those games are going to be "scheduled punt games" either way, you might as well pencil in the #5 starter / Bryan Baker / Gregory Soto / Craig Kimbrel for eating 9 innings.

 

[hattersgonnahate]

Overreaction from the Friday game:

Seems that Burnes might be getting tired? This most recent game seems to be his worst start ever in terms of earned runs, and his August ERA was elevated to begin with... Given the benefit of hindsight, you have to wonder whether Burnes should have been pulled after walking Devers (since anyone can have a bad day), or perhaps Kimbrel should have been deployed in the 9th inning of the Thursday game instead (since they could afford giving up 3 runs with a 5-1 lead, while being down by 2 runs in the Friday game wasn't a "white flag" situation yet). For that matter, even deploying Povich on Friday instead of Saturday (his last start was on 8/10) might have been better, as Povich would only need to outperform 4 IP / 8 ER, while Burnes would get an extra day of rest as well...

P.S. Time to DFA Kimbrel? The only thing worse than losing money is losing both money AND games...

 

[UVA_Guy81]

Sucks that Povich actually had his best outing so far last night and nobody else was there to pick up the slack. No clutch hits from the offense and then Cano and Smith both let up two runs each. I just don't have the same positive attitude about this years team that I did about last years team.
I honestly don't know what to do with Kimbrel at this point. A lot of the bullpen seems like liabilities anymore.

 

[hattersgonnahate]

Sucks that Povich actually had his best outing so far last night and nobody else was there to pick up the slack. No clutch hits from the offense and then Cano and Smith both let up two runs each. I just don't have the same positive attitude about this years team that I did about last years team.
I honestly don't know what to do with Kimbrel at this point. A lot of the bullpen seems like liabilities anymore.

At this point, I'm keeping my expectations low and would view a wild card round exit to be the baseline for what remains of the 2024 Orioles; anything more than that would be viewed as a plus. After all, you simply cannot recover from that many concurrent injuries, and the bullpen struggles are clearly linked to losing almost an entire rotation (whether to Tommy John or equivalent surgeries, general ineffectiveness, and/or fatigue from overuse). You have to wonder if the front office should have considered repeating the 2022 strategy at the trade deadline (read: fully commit to punting the 2024 season in order to prepare for 2025), as unpopular as that might have been for the fanbase.

For now, my only suggestion for Hyde is again to consider "scheduled punt games" as a necessary evil for periodically resting the better players, as the goal is to maximize the total number of wins as opposed to trying to win every single game. Again, it's like gerrymandering: Instead of a 25% win probability in one game and 55% in another (Game 3 of current series at top of 7th / before Game 4), maybe make that 5% and 65%; instead of a 99% chance in one game and 55% in the other (Game 1 of current series at top of 9th / before Game 2), maybe try to make it 70% in both.

 

[ThomasTomasz]

I don't know if I even trust him in the long reliever role, considering what happened to Cole Irvin. It's like he fell off a cliff and then as soon as he went into the long reliever role he was driving the bus that went off.

I low-key wish they woulda went after James Paxton when the Dodgers just up and decided he was expendable....but then he went and got hurt. Then there's the obvious wild card nobody wants....Trevor Bauer. If the dude could help us get to that next step, I don't see why the risk isn't taken.

Honestly, the reunion with Jack Flaherty should have been the move, but I wonder if he wasn’t a great teammate last year and ‘clubhouse chemistry’ is valued heavily by Elias. The price was certainly right.

 

[hattersgonnahate]

And the Orioles were somehow bailed out by the Yankees' opponents once again (ironically partly thanks to Skubal not being traded this time). Notably, the two teams have now stayed within a game of each other for over three weeks:

• July 27: Orioles 61-43, Yankees 61-45
  
  
• August 18: Both teams are at 73-52, which means that the Yankees went 12-7 while the Orioles went 12-9. The two extra losses occurred during the "8 games in 7 days" stretch (which caught up on the two "missing" games) where the Yankees only had 6 games scheduled in the same week.

So, once again: Looks like this team is still staying competitive partly because the Yankees are almost equally inconsistent? The division may still hinge on the 9/24-26 series @ NYY after all (I've outlined the scenarios previously)...

 

[UVA_Guy81]

Honestly, the reunion with Jack Flaherty should have been the move, but I wonder if he wasn’t a great teammate last year and ‘clubhouse chemistry’ is valued heavily by Elias. The price was certainly right.

I’m thinking the reunion we should’ve gone for was Tanner Scott. Our bullpen is erratic and it’s hard to trust most of these guys right now.