LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. — There is a Branch Rickey axiom that goes something like this: when trading an asset, it’s typically better to do so a year too early than a year too late. That is largely pragmatic and true. One could argue that Baltimore is a year too late in considering a rebuild. But late is also preferable to never.

As Dave wrote, the Orioles appear to be coming to their senses in exploring a trade of Manny Machado. The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal reported that the Orioles are engaged in more than listening; they are asking for offers to be submitted for Machado. The franchise-cornerstone talent is interested in returning to shortstop.

From Rosenthal’s piece:

Jon Heyman of FanRag Sports previously reported that the Orioles are listening on Machado, but the team actually is operating with a more aggressive stance, telling potentially interested teams to make them offers, sources say.

Rosenthal goes on to suggest that moving Machado would “trigger a series of moves intended to redefine the future of an organization that currently has only two reliable members of its starting rotation and an improving but still underwhelming farm system.”

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When the Angels landed Shohei Otani on Friday and the Yankees acquired Giancarlo Stanton over the weekend, I noted that the move might motivate the fringe contenders in the AL to shift gears. Rationally, the bar to make the postseason in the AL was just raised significantly, and teams like the Orioles saw their path to the playoffs get significantly slimmer.

This week, the Orioles appear to have gotten the memo.

#Orioles shopping Machado – and he wants to return to SS. Story: https://t.co/gnKcmW0dUh $

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) December 12, 2017

There’s no real reason for the Orioles to keep Manny Machado. We have the Orioles projected for 76 wins, right between the Braves and Marlins, and Machado is heading into his final year before reaching free agency. The Orioles can’t afford to let a guy with his value walk for draft pick compensation next year, so the question is whether they would trade him now or this summer.

By moving him now, they can take advantage of the desire of multiple teams to add an impact position player this winter, with the Cardinals as a potentially obvious suitor. While there aren’t that many contenders out there looking for a shortstop, Machado is a legitimately elite player, and teams that don’t see SS as a need might still get involved just to get that kind of impact player in the fold. And if some team wants to take a 10 month run at trying to re-sign him before he hits free agency, then there’s value in acquiring him ahead of time to get those exclusive negotiating rights.

The Orioles should do pretty well in a Machado deal, even though he’s just a rental. A +6 WAR guy who can provide his level of offense from SS is not something that comes available every day. Let the bidding begin!

The Baltimore Orioles were unlikely to sign Shohei Ohtani. He seems to have had little interest in teams east of the Mississippi — the Chicago Cubs represented the lone exception in that respect — and there was probably little that Peter Angelos, Dan Duquette, and Co. could have done to change that. Still, they had to try, right? That was the opinion held by 27 of the league’s 30 teams, at least. The Orioles weren’t one of them, though.

What was the Orioles’ logic for not pursuing the two-way star? Perhaps not what you’d think.

Huh. That is certainly interesting. While an organization might have (justifiably) felt as though they had little chance with Ohtani, this doesn’t appear to be Baltimore’s main reason for having abstained from courting him. The team’s objections appear to be founded on a greater underlying issue.
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When Travis Sawchick asked you which question was most important on Shohei Ohtani’s questionnaire, you answered overwhelmingly that the team capable of keeping him healthy — or of convincing Ohtani that they’d keep him healthy — would win out. Travis went on to use a metric, Roster Resource’s “Roster Effect” rating, to get a sense of which team that might be. The Brewers, Cubs, Pirates, and Tigers performed best by that measure.

Of course, that’s just one way of answering the question. Health is a tough thing to nail down. To figure out which team is capable of keeping Ohtani the healthiest, it’s worth considering the possible implications of health in baseball. Roster Effect, for example, considers the quality of the player and seems to be asking: which rosters were affected the most by poor health? That’s one way of approaching it. Let’s try a few others and see who comes out on top.

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Trey Mancini had a successful first season with the Baltimore Orioles. The 25-year-old University of Notre Dame graduate hit .293/.338/.488, with 24 home runs. Last week he was rewarded with a third-place finish in American League Rookie-of-the-Year balloting.

Every bit as notable is the fact that he played the majority of his games as an outfielder. Coming into the year, Mancini had served exclusively as a first baseman or designated hitter. At 6-foot-4, 215 pounds, he profiled as a slightly more athletic version of Mark Trumbo.

Neither would dispute the comparison. When I talked to the Orioles teammates late in the season, both agreed they have a lot in common. The body types, the determination to overcome their defensive limitations, the plus power and the strikeouts, the hot and cold streaks. By and large, Mancini is Trumbo 2.0.

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Trey Mancini: “This season has been a whirlwind, for sure. Changing positions in spring training and learning to play the outfield at this level has been the coolest experience I’ve ever had. I grew up a first baseman — I’ve been a first baseman all my life — and nobody really thought much of me switching positions. People didn’t think I was athletic enough.

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When I talked to Mike Rizzo in Orlando earlier this week, he told me the Washington Nationals have an eight-person analytics department that includes “three or four employees” who have been added in the last two years. The veteran GM also told me they have their own “Scouting Solutions, which (they) call The Pentagon.” In Rizzo’s opinion, his team has gone from behind the times to having “some of the best and brightest analytics people in all of baseball.”

A pair of uniformed-personnel changes further suggest an increased emphasis on analytics. Dave Martinez has replaced Dusty Baker as manager, and Tim Bogar has come on board as the first base coach. According to Rizzo, their saber-savviness played a role in their hirings.

“It was part of the process,” related Rizzo. “Davey is a 16-year major league veteran who can appeal to a clubhouse of major league players — there’s a respect factor there — and he’s also coming from two of the most-analytical organizations in baseball, in Tampa Bay and Chicago. He’s bringing that love of analytics and the implementation of those statistics with his thought process. Read the rest of this entry »

Free agency began a week ago to an expected lack of fanfare. Unlike the NBA, where free-agent deals are often announced minutes after the midnight opening bell, it usually takes a little while for baseball’s hot stove to ignite. Until the GM Meetings, which began this past Monday, free agency is usually dominated by leaked contract demands, contract extensions, and declarations by certain players that they intend to keep playing.

Thus far, the 2017-2018 offseason is no exception. For the moment, we must content ourselves with news of minor-league deals for Kevin Quackenbush and Rubby de la Rosa with Cincinnati and Arizona, respectively.

Alongside the minor-league signings and contract demands, the early days of this offseason have been marked by another annual tradition. According to Orioles beat writer Rock Kubatko, Baltimore has shown “definite” interest in Andrew Cashner and Jason Vargas. The Orioles’ rotation remains a weakness for the club, and as is often the case, the team appears to be targeting mid-level innings-eaters. It also appears to be all they’re likely to afford: due to questionable commitments on the payroll, the Orioles will probably find it difficult to pursue many true rotation upgrades to prop open their closing — or perhaps already closed — window.

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Corey Knebel has come a long way since I first talked to him four years ago. At the time, the hard-throwing right-hander was wrapping up an Arizona Fall League season, five months after the Detroit Tigers had drafted him 39th overall out of the University of Texas.

Knebel is now 25 years old and coming off a season where he logged 39 saves and a 1.78 ERA for the Milwaukee Brewers. In January 2015, the NL Central club acquired him from the Texas Rangers, who’d earlier procured his services from the perpetually-bullpen-deficient Tigers.

According to Knebel. while some things have changed since our 2013 conversation, overs haven’t. By and large, he’s the same guy on the mound.

“I guess I’ve kind of grown into this new role,” the 6’4″ 220-lb. fastball-curveball specialist told me in September. “Other than that, I’ve just tried to perfect two pitches. I like to focus on what I know I can do. My delivery is the exact same — I’m still herky-jerky — although I don’t go from the windup anymore; I’m just straight stretch.”

There has been a velocity jump. Knebel’s heater averaged 97.8 MPH this season, up a few ticks from previous seasons. He didn’t have an explanation for why that is, but he does know one thing — it’s not because of a weighted-ball program. Read the rest of this entry »

Manny Machado turned 25 on July 6. If he checked his stat line after that day’s game, he probably wouldn’t have liked what he saw. A little over halfway through the season, Machado had come to bat 350 times and hit 16 homers, which is pretty good. He was also slashing .215/.283/.418, though, equivalent to just an 80 wRC+.

That didn’t seem right. After all, the young infielder entered the season with a 119 career wRC+ — and had actually produced an even better 130 mark between 2015 and -16. At Machado’s age, hitters tend to improve, not collapse.

Machado’s performance gave the impression that something might be wrong, that something might need to be fixed. Whether that impression was correct at the time, it’s moot now: over the past two months, all he’s done is hit.

Here are a few relevant hitting stats for Machado from earlier this season compared to 2015 and 2016, when he was one of the better hitters in baseball.

While Machado began the season striking out a bit more often than in recent seasons, his walk rate was fine. And while his power took a dip, it still compared favorably to the league average. There’s nothing here that would reduce Machado from one of the top-20 hitters in baseball to one of the 30 worst.

Here, though, are some other relevant stats from those same time periods.

The batting results from that period through July 6 line are poor — but almost entirely a product of a lower batting average on balls in play. Now, that lower BABIP could reveal some decline in Machado’s game. An injury or change in approach. And if the drop in BABIP were paired with other observable differences, it might warrant further consideration.

And there were some differences. For example, while most of Machado’s batted-ball profile — including pull percentage, infield flies, ground-ball rate — remained largely unchanged, he was swinging outside of the zone a little more and making a little less contact. His swinging-strike rate had increased from 8.3% in 2015 and 2016 to 11.5% in the early going this year. The combination of some extra strikeouts and reduced power certainly affected Machado’s production. Again, though, their effect was pretty minor compared to the massive drop in BABIP drop.

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The Orioles won again on Wednesday, continuing their surge back into the wild-card race. In the bottom of the fifth inning, Jonathan Schoop knocked a game-tying first-pitch homer against the admittedly homer-prone Ariel Miranda. Later on, in the bottom of the eighth, Schoop laced a tie-breaking first-pitch single against Marc Rzepczynski. Schoop was only one of the Orioles’ heroes, but they presumably wouldn’t have won without him.

As the Orioles have shaken off their slump, observers around the league have begun to notice. It was only weeks ago one wondered whether the team might elect to sell off Zach Britton, and more. There was even a little chatter about a trade of Manny Machado. The club now has three more wins than losses, and Machado’s drawn praise for his big second half. Dylan Bundy, too, is getting the spotlight treatment for his possible August breakout. Even Kevin Gausman has received plaudits for turning his season around. But you know who leads the 2017 Orioles in overall WAR? It’s Schoop, and it’s Schoop by the better part of a win. While Machado is still the best player on the roster, Schoop’s own progress shouldn’t be overlooked.

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