The Orioles offense has struggled mightily in the month of September, and recently there has been talk that one of the problems with their offense is that it relies too much on the home run. Today, I have a post over on the ESPN Sweetspot Network Orioles blog, Camden Depot that takes a look at whether the Orioles hit too many home runs, which when you read it out loud, sounds pretty absurd.
Direct Link to Article –> Do the Orioles Hitters Have a Home Run Problem?
I have a post up this morning on the ESPN Sweetspot Network Orioles blog, Camden Depot taking a look at the current AL wild card standings and the chances for the Orioles to make the playoffs. Even though the Orioles won last night to pull just one game behind Texas for the second wild card spot, their playoff percentage (as determined by ESPN) only sits at 17.2%. But should they be higher than that?
Direct Link to Article –> Are the Orioles Playoff Chances Dead?
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to have a professional baseball player live with you during the season? If so, I have a post up on the Orioles ESPN Sweetspot Network blog, Camden Depot today that takes a look at Mel and Barbara Roberts, a Maryland couple who have been hosting Bowie Baysox players during the minor league season for the last 13 years. They were kind enough to chat with me about their experience during a Baysox game earlier this year. Head on over to Camden Depot and check out their story.
Direct Link to Article –> Life in the Minors: A Home Away from Home
Welcome to the second and final installment of the Minor League Recap for the 2013 season, coming to you a day later than normal to include the final game, which was played on September 2. None of these teams advanced to their respective league’s playoffs, so their seasons are no over. Maybe next week I’ll attempt to do a full season minor league recap for Norfolk, Bowie, and Frederick, but then again, maybe I won’t. As always, the following is based on performance only, and is not to be considered a list of prospects.
Weekly Summary
Norfolk (AAA): 6-3 (W-L), 34 RS, 27 RA
Bowie (AA): 4-5, 51 RS, 33 RA
Frederick (High-A): 4-5, 40 RS, 52 RA Continue reading
After reportedly claiming every available batter that was put on revocable waivers during the month of August, the Orioles finally were able to acquire one of them, by trading minor league outfielder Xavier Avery to the Seattle Mariners for DH/LF Mike Morse. In theory, the Orioles receive a much needed upgrade at the DH position for the price of a speedy/athletic outfield quasi-prospect who has never really hit much at any level of the minor leagues.
Morse is viewed as a slugging DH/outfielder and was considered one of the Mariners big acquisitions during the off-season in an attempt to add power to their lineup. Continue reading
Recently, as I was thinking of potential topics to write about, it occurred to me that Orioles Proving Ground has not dealt much with the minor league system of the Baltimore Orioles. This is somewhat strange considering that the name of the blog was partially meant to invoke images of players in the minors proving their worth and graduating to the major leagues. That has not really happened to date, other than maybe a couple of posts. In order to change this, I thought we would start a weekly feature that looks at the best and worst individual performances of Baltimore’s top three minor league affiliates (AAA, AA, and Hi-A). Conveniently, the minor league season will be coming to a close in the next week, so there will only be two installments of this series in 2013, after which it will hopefully pick up again during the 2014 season. For the most part this is just a recap, but some analysis may be given where appropriate.
Just a note. As I do not have much scouting experience and have not attended many minor league games this summer, these posts will look at on field performance only and are not meant to be used as scouting reports.
The following post was written by Doug Nickerson as a guest post for Orioles Proving Ground. Nickerson grew up as a Red Sox fan on Cape Cod, MA and is looking forward to writing about the Orioles with his knowledge of the AL East from a non-emotional perspective. He moved to the DC area last August, and while he loves the city, he hates humidity and traffic.
In watching so many games this year with the purpose of evaluating the players instead of solely enjoying the beauty of the game, many ideas have percolated from the frustrations of watching teams struggle to score, while others seem to score with ease. Now obviously some matchups are lopsided causing teams to either easily run up the score or look helpless at the dish. But the real question I ask myself is, what is the relationship between being good and being able to perform under pressure?
On the surface, the Orioles haven’t been able to turn it on when it counts this year compared to last year, especially when considering their record in 1 run games has gone from 29-9 in 2012 to 14-22 this year. What’s the cause of this? Is it purely luck? Did last year’s team have nerves of steel compared to this year or is it just the law of averages taking its course?
To compare this year and last year, I needed to look at clutch stats. The easiest to compare is baseball-reference.com’s “clutch” stat, which is based on its win probability stat and average leverage index. The clutch stat normalizes these numbers so that a player with a clutch rating of 0 is an average player and a positive or negative rating is more or less clutch, respectively. Let’s take a look at the offensive numbers (I included guys with at least 45 ABs for the season).
|
2013 Clutch Rating |
2012 Clutch Rating |
||
|
Chris Davis |
1.7 |
Adam Jones |
1 |
|
Chris Dickerson |
1.1 |
Taylor Teagarden |
0.7 |
|
Adam Jones |
1.1 |
Nate McLouth |
0.6 |
|
Nick Markakis |
0.7 |
Jim Thome |
0.6 |
|
Steve Pearce |
0.7 |
Mark Reynolds |
0.4 |
|
Brian Roberts |
0.6 |
Steven Tolleson |
0.4 |
|
Alexi Casilla |
0.5 |
Chris Davis |
0.2 |
|
Manny Machado |
0.4 |
Manny Machado |
0.2 |
|
Danny Valencia |
0.4 |
Matt Wieters |
0.1 |
|
Yamaico Navarro |
0.1 |
Steve Pearce |
0.1 |
|
Travis Ishikawa |
0 |
Nolan Reimold |
0.1 |
|
Taylor Teagarden |
0 |
J.J. Hardy |
0 |
|
Henry Urrutia |
0 |
Nick Markakis |
0 |
|
Chris Snyder |
-0.1 |
Endy Chavez |
0 |
|
Nolan Reimold |
-0.2 |
Brian Roberts |
0 |
|
Nate McLouth |
-0.3 |
Ryan Flaherty |
-0.1 |
|
Matt Wieters |
-0.4 |
Ronny Paulino |
-0.1 |
|
J.J. Hardy |
-0.5 |
Xavier Avery |
-0.2 |
|
Ryan Flaherty |
-0.8 |
Nick Johnson |
-0.2 |
|
Omar Quintanilla |
-0.3 |
||
|
Lew Ford |
-0.4 |
||
|
Robert Andino |
-0.7 |
||
|
Wilson Betemit |
-0.9 |
||
Now, as expected, Chris Davis is the most clutch player on the 2013 team and that’s a reason why he is rightfully in the MVP race. The surprising results of this stat is that 3 regulars are considered the most clutch hitters on the team (Davis, Jones, Markakis) and 3 regulars are considered to wilt during the big moments (McLouth, Wieters, Hardy) for the 2013 season. When compared to last year’s team, only 2 players that got regular starts (Andino and Betemit with over 350 ABs each) had a negative rating. This could be a potential reason for the drastic change in their record in 1 run games. However, now the question arises as to how much are they affected by the big situation? How much does 0.1 clutch point reflect into a player’s OBP in high leverage situations? Is it substantial, where all hope is lost if there are two outs, man on third, and the game is tied in the late innings? I find the clutch stat to be interesting but it leads me to more questions.
Now let’s take a look at each players OBP in different leverage situations to see if there is anything substantial. I used OBP as a comparison, to measure the ability to keep the inning alive as critical to increasing your opportunity to score runs. It is also a clean stat that is taken directly from the field and not manipulated in any way, unlike win probability, runs created, etc.
From the chart, it can be seen that Nick Markakis is the most clutch batter on the team in getting on base in high pressure situations this year. He also has nerves of steel as his OBP rises almost 100 points from his average when he is in a high leverage situation. Matt Wieters appears to be deserving of his low clutch rating due to his drastically low OBP in high leverage situations. However, the same can’t be said for J.J. Hardy or Nate McLouth. Both are roughly the same or above their 2013 OBP average in high leverage situations, making them fairly clutch relative to themselves in low-pressure situations. Five of six regular Orioles perform better when the pressure is on them to succeed. This causes me to believe that the clutch rating stat has to be taken with a grain of salt when looking for it to translate onto the field.
With this in mind, I’ll look into the team’s clutch pitching numbers with my next post to see how the 2013 team is comparing to last year’s.
The title of this post basically says it all. Orioles Proving Ground is now on Twitter (and actually has been for about a week, so…sorry for the late notice). Follow us @OriolesPG for links to blog posts (mine or other posts I find interesting), thoughts, observations, etc.
Jim Johnson has been struggling. He leads the league in saves, but he’s blown 9 saves on the year, including 3 in his last 3 opportunities. In today’s post located at ESPN Sweetspot Network affiliated Orioles blog, Camden Depot, I take a look at what is wrong with Jim Johnson to see why he isn’t performing as well as he did last year, and what the Orioles can do about the situation.
Direct Link to Article –> What’s Wrong with Jim Johnson?
Orioles Proving Ground 