Orioles manager Brandon Hyde told MASNsports.com’s Roch Kubatko and other reporters that John Means is slated to return “at some point right after the All-Star break.” Means hit the 10-day injured list on June 6 due to a shoulder strain, and his timeline wasn’t entirely clear at the time of the placement. For now, Means is able to play catch, and will gradually work his way up to readiness over the next few weeks.
Though it’s good news that a projected return date is in place, the timing confirms that Means won’t be participating in the All-Star Game, and the left-hander certainly looked like a strong candidate for his second All-Star selection based on his first two months of work. A return shortly after the July 12-15 All-Star break would allow time for Means to show that he is healthy for any teams interested in a deal prior to the July 30 trade deadline, though since Means is controlled through the 2024 season, there isn’t any immediate pressure on the Orioles to move Means unless a great offer comes along.
More on other injury situations from around the AL East…
- The Red Sox placed Christian Arroyo on the 10-day IL due to a right knee contusion, with the placement backdated to June 21. Michael Chavis was called up from Triple-A in the corresponding move. Arroyo left Sunday’s game after a collision with teammate Enrique Hernandez, though x-rays were negative on what the club described as a bone bruise in his right shin. Arroyo has hit a solid .264/.324/.432 over 138 plate appearances while getting the bulk of playing time at second base this season, though this is his second trip to the IL, after missing two weeks in May with a hand contusion after being hit by a pitch.
- The Rays placed shortstop Taylor Walls on the 10-day IL (retroactive to June 23) due to right wrist tendinitis, and right-hander Drew Rasmussen has been called up to take Walls’ spot on the active roster. Walls told Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times and other reporters that he received a cortisone shot after trying to play through the injury for around two weeks, and he doesn’t expect to miss time beyond the minimum 10 days. Walls made his MLB debut just over a month ago, and he has posted a respectable 95 OPS+ while hitting .222/.337/.333 over his first 95 big league plate appearances. The Rays have used Walls as their starting shortstop since his promotion, though now that star prospect Wander Franco is on the roster, Franco is likely to get the bulk of time at the position while Walls is out. Given how the Rays mix and match players around the diamond, Walls probably isn’t in danger of getting Wally Pipp’d by Franco, who made his own debut on Tuesday as Tampa’s starting third baseman.
- Ryan Borucki is slated to throw a bullpen session on Friday, Blue Jays manager Charlie Montoyo told Sportsnet’s Arden Zwelling and other reporters. Borucki hasn’t pitched since May 7 due to a left flexor strain, and while the southpaw was tentatively scheduled to return sometime before the end of June, Montoyo didn’t commit to any firmer timeline. “We’ll see how he does….If he throws a good bullpen, then we’ll go from there,” Montoyo said.
What……Walls made his MLB debut just over a month ago, and he has posted a respectable 95 OPS+ while hitting .222/.337/.333 over his first 95 big league plate appearances.
The guy is hitting .222 and that’s considered “respectable” in todays MLB?
Granted he’s a rookie in MLB but come on man….Mark…..222 is not respectable in any form unless you think batting .250 is All Star country!
His OPS+ is what the respectable part is… Not his actual slashline
That’s what makes OPS+ a joke stat for people who watch games instead of playing with a computer. Certainly, computers have their uses and can help separate a champion from an all-ran. The thing is so many other stats can theoretically too. Too much emphasis on saber stats has ruined the game for many of us.
I don’t see how someone can get so angry over stats that they hate or dislike a game they supposedly ‘loved’. Acting as if new stats, advanced thinking, etc. is new is far from the truth. Teams have been using math to find a way to get an edge since Branch Rickey.
Problem I have is that, for example, OPS+ is NOT something that Rickey would have needed, because it tells him nothing he did not already know; additionally it, and any other “+” stat, has a variety of fundamental flaws in its very premises.
Nuanced Jamesian – Great comment. OPS is batting average biased. Break it down and you get (batting average + isolated power) added to (batting average + walk rate). So OPS is 2 times batting average plus isolated power and walk rate. Why arbitrarily make batting average twice as important? NO GOOD REASON!!!
In the 90s when this first came out and ESPN kept referencing it as if the analysts had a clue what it meant I thought it was a travesty. It’s bad enough the analysts didn’t have a baseball background but for them to dictate to the public a biased stat to measure players, that was outrageous. Since then you can always tell the fool because he’s the one talking about OPS not something meaningful.
It’s so simple to fix that I can’t believe nobody has done so in 30 years!! Remove one of the batting averages so the total offense is batting average plus isolated power plus walk rate. It’s a fair number to compare players by but it’s always good to show the three parts so you get a better understanding of the player. A guy who hits for a high average many not have power or may not have a good eye. When you have a prospect, the batting average is by far the most important. Many nerds today say OBP is but they simply don’t get stats. OBP is batting average and walk rate and frankly the batting average is the key part not the walk rate. The walk rate is a bonus to batting average just like isolated power.
These are simple concepts completely missed by the new generation of thinking fans!! hahaha Brian Kenny – making up crap and forcing it down the public’s throat doesn’t make for good stats or smart baseball. Your show should be the non-thinking fan’s baseball show!!
Boras started using saber stats to fill his “prospectus” he uses during negotiations and the “team” game that often made baseball beautiful to watch has basically disappeared. Batters overemphasize loft angle at the expense of contact and those on the mound overthrow instead of learning how to develop the art of pitching.
deweybelongsinthehall
That’s what makes OPS+ a joke stat for people who watch games
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Actually, OPS is almost directly related to scoring. My guess is that this year is a bit of a fluke, but the correlation between OPS and RPG, in the AL, is over 85%, which is huge.
But this is largely true for every season. For example, in 2019, the top 4 OPS teams are Astros, Twins, NYY, RS. The top RPG are NYY, Twins, Astros, RS.
And just taking a look at the past roughly 20 years, the top AL OPS team is the top scoring team about 85% of the time, the #2 scoring team about 10% of the time, #3 5% of the time, and no team that lead the league in OPS has finished lower than 3rd in scoring.
So, basically, OPS equals Runs Scored.
deweybelongsinthehall
Batters overemphasize loft angle at the expense of contact
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I hope you know that this is not new. Ted Williams mentioned angle at least 50 years, and my guess is that other players mentioned the same thing 50 years earlier.
I think a lot of people think these concepts are new because they are more highly publicized, and they can be scientifically measured.
The shift, for example, started in the 1920s against Cy Williams, and was made famous by Ted Williams in the 1940s. The folks in the 1920s, kept stats using paper and pencils, but they were just as smart as us.
I used to have The Science of Hitting book. I don’t recall launch angle. arather, I remember Williams using his own averages showing hot and cold zones with the emphasis on swinging at balls you can hit and not swing at the others. I could be wrong but I just remember his illustrations of different colored baseballs with his average inside each
I don’t remember the book, or it could’ve been an interview, but my friends and I discussed this, and it was probably in the late ’60s. I always had a flat swing, emphasizing line drives and all fields, and one of my friends told me that Williams always said you had to have an uppercut. I didn’t agree, and I am still not sure. For a hitter like me, a line drive down the right field line seemed to make the most sense.
thriftbooks.com/w/the-science-of-hitting_john-unde…
The book can at least be found online used. Williams divided his strike zone into bone parts to illustrate the pitches he could handle better than others.
thriftbooks.com/w/the-science-of-hitting_john-unde…
I just read the intro and I think we are both right. bits been a long time since I looked at the book but I saw he did infer angling.
JB – Your response to Dewey is exactly what I’m talking about.
Nobody cares about correlations especially insignificant ones that you declared to be huge!! Read up on math buddy. Its irrelevant.
Next the entire point about the inaccuracy of OPS was missed by you.
You need to ween off StatCast, it’s messing with your thinking.
OPS equals Runs Scored? Are you insane? OPS is nothing more than an inaccurate contrived measure of the productiveness of a player. You’ve ignored it’s inadequacies and then declared it a HOF stat!! It equals Runs Scored. For the record, it has never equaled Runs Scored because the numbers are completely different.
Next, I am sure your reference to Ted Williams had to come from one of my rants on the concepts not being new but to be fair you have misquoted me. Launch angle is crap. Bat path is what Bonds understood better than anyone of his generation as did Williams. Bat path is not launch angle. Launch angle is nothing more than the degree the ball leaves the bat during any swing that makes contact. Hitters don’t have the ability to control the launch angle, they simply use bat path and their instantaneous analysis of a 100 mph pitch to see of the optimum contact point of the bat can be applied to the ball. Modern day nerds make it sound like they are calculating the precise angle to launch the ball and they even believe players can change their launch angle by guiding their hands precisely to the 100 mph pitch to create their desired contact point. What a bunch of crap. A player tries to bring the bat through the strike zone with two things in mind – how can I keep it in the zone long enough in case the pitcher changes speed and how can I bring my hands to the projected location of the ball to make maximum contact. That’s it. They can’t calibrate the precise location of a 100 mph ball hitting the edge of a rounded surface. All they can do is use good judgment in the bat path and hope they aren’t fooled by the speed. Launch angle will be different on every pitch because no two bat paths or pitches are identical and the combination will never be identical. The fake science presented by the launch angle concept is crap. Bat path and keeping the bat in the strike zone as long as possible for speed changes are the concepts taught to hitters. Not how to launch a ball at a 33 degree launch angle.
Dewey – GREAT RESPONSES!!!!
I don’t think you understand one iota of math. The highest correlation to team scoring is OPS. The correlation is almost spot on. This is why you said that 70 wins was a fantasy. All you had to do was calculate OPS and OPSa, and you could predict a rough number of wins. If your OPS is going to be higher than your OPSa, then you are likely to be > .500.
That said, you are correct. I should’ve said bat path instead of launch angle.
OPS+ works on a scale where 100 is league average, so yeah, a rookie who has almost 100 plate appearances and is very close to league average is definitely respectable. And hypothetically, if a player has something like a .245/.375/.510 slash, I’d be OK with them being an All-Star. Batting average is only one measurement of many, it seems like you might be placing too much importance on that one number.
Stevewpants – You actually said a very true statement but I doubt you know why it’s so true.
You said there is too much importance put on batting average. In the context that you said it you were dead wrong but the statement is true if you are talking about comparing OPS+ to evaluate players.
OPS+ is a normalization stat for comparison purposes but it is batting average biased as I explained above.
If you want to truly compare players they need to develop a normalized number for the stat I mentioned above – call it TO or total offense. It doesn’t include defensive metrics or base running metrics but it is a measure for total offense without double accounting any aspect of the offense.
Once TO is adopted as a better measure than OPS then a TO+ can be calculated that measures the TO across baseball with a TO+ of 100 being league average. Now that number would give you a better idea of who the best player is that year and how they compare to other players that year. It would not be all encompassing because it wouldn’t include defense and stolen bases but it would show a great comparison among players of their innate ability to contribute to the team while in the batters box.
Hilarious how condescending you are when you’re so wrong
The stat you sound like you want is wRC+.
BeforeMcCourt – No balls? Can’t respond with details why I”m wrong? Next time just pass on commenting. Your words add no value to the discussion.
therealryan – I don’t research the new contrived formulas so can you please explain how you see it being comparable.
The brief explanation of the stat on the MLB site is a vague since there are some undefined qualifiers in the explanation that make no sense to the average baseball fan..
What is a weighted run as opposed to a run? What is the weighting and when is it to be used? Before it happens as an estimate, after it happens as a normalization or as a stat to compare across players?
Google it and you get this mumbo jumbo –
Here is the formula for wRC+ for reference: wRC+ = (((wRAA/PA + League R/PA) + (League R/PA – Park Factor* League R/PA))/ (AL or NL wRC/PA excluding pitchers))*100. The equation is in several parts. To start, the player’s wRAA per PA is added to the league runs per plate appearance (which also varies each year).
So basically, without a computer telling you what the value is there is absolutely no way to calculate it yourself. That’s certainly a big drawback of this stat. Next, clearly the normalization is happening but there is no way to evaluate if the normalization is done correctly, it must be assumed to be correct because a bunch of non baseball people said it is. That certainly reduces the reliability of it to me..
Next, can you give me a description of the value in layman’s terms?
See guys like JoeBrady like to throw around innocuous stats like this to make it seem like they understand baseball but unless I can dig into ALL COMPONENTS that go into a stat I find no reason to believe it.
So, if you can provide a layman’s explanation of this stat and why it has any significance to a baseball fan I would be grateful.
See guys like JoeBrady like to throw around innocuous stats like this to make it seem like they understand baseball but unless I can dig into ALL COMPONENTS that go into a stat I find no reason to believe it.
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LOL. The stats I’ve been using are OPS, OBP, SLG, and HRs.
Which of those stats do you want me to explain to you?
I get what you’re saying about the slash line and maybe even the word chosen to describe it. But beyond that, Wall made a favorable impression on those who watched him play.
We need to stop assessing young players based solely on statistics in a limited number of game appearances, And it goes both ways. After his first few games, there were stories about Wall being the next great Rays player (as if there were previous ones). He was no way near an automatic out and fielded well. For a young player getting his first taste of the MLB lifestyle, that’s respectable. I wouldn’t quibble too much with the word.
it’s the common use of the word that some quibble with.
My guess is that TB promoted Walls so they could establish some MLB bona fides for trade purposes. And he’s had a terrific season, albeit obviously short. He’s basically reinforced his minor league stats (high .780 OPS), with a good glove.
Max Muncy is a .248/.380/.519 hitter with the Dodgers. That’s pretty good.
Sir are you trying to make a point using batting averages alone?
Your argument, as pointed out by others with respect to batting average alone, has hit a Walls.
I agree. Anything under .250 is dismal. A respectable average is .275 or better.
Hahaha. By acmeants logic, there’s less than 40 respectable hitters among 30 different 26 man rosters
780 active major leaguers. Less than 40 are respectable hitters with enough at bats to win a batting title
Sounds like you have a problem just with baseball and are lashing out because you’re too lazy to learn how to read new stats and how they can help. Just like any other stat, BA or OPS+ alone are flawed
Sorry, but that is not mathematically accurate. The league average is .242. Therefore, anything above .242 is above-average, and anything under .242 is below average.
Rocky can’t put a sentence together well enough to understand that respectable had nothing to do with 222, yet has to be an absolute jkass
Learn to read before insulting a writers writing buddy
He is a rookie SS. That is very respectable. I’m still unsure of why they gave up on Willy Adames and traded him for 2 relievers but Walls has been a decent replacement. Gleyber Torres is hitting .246/.331/.324 for an OPS+ of 85 and Javier Baez is hitting .224/.264/.469 for an OPS+ of 101. Both of them are considered good starting SS with potential for more. Walls fits in between them nicely. I do agree that OPS+ is nothing but a counting stat. I would rather have a player that hits over .300 than someone with an OB% of .350. In the bottom of the ninth with a runner on 1st and 2 outs you could pinch run with a speedy player who has a chance to score with a deep single to the OF and a good jump. It would take 3 walks off a closer to get that run in. Sabermetrics can be useful but you can’t forget about the fundamentals of the game. Beane has never won a WS. Neither has Tampa. The Dodgers are SM darlings every year and it took a pandemic shortened season for them to win one. Someday a team will figure out a happy medium.
In the bottom of the ninth with a runner on 1st and 2 outs you could pinch run with a speedy player who has a chance to score with a deep single to the OF and a good jump. It would take 3 walks off a closer to get that run in.
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That cuts both ways. You’re looking at the end. But there is also the beginning where the guys get on base. If you’re down 3 runs in the 9th, do you want your lead-off hitter to be a .300 hitter with a .330 OBP, or a .280 hitter with a .360 OBP? For your second hitter, do you want someone with 40 HRs, but a .230 average, or do you want a guy with 10 HRs and a .280 average?
In regard to scoring, OPS mostly equals runs scored, with OBP being slightly more important than SLG, and somewhat surprisingly, HRs and scoring don’t correlate that highly. Just going by the past ten years, in the AL, the team that led the league in OBP was ranked 1.4 overall in RPG. The team that finished 1st in HRs only finished 3.4 in RPG.
JB – always take the better hitter because you can’t coax a closer into walking a player so the better hitter is ALWAYS the better choice. Again, you need to stop reading Stat Cast. You are losing your mind.
A ‘better hitter’ likely means guys that can take walks. That said, OBP is always more important than HRs.
IRT to reading Stat Cast, you should endeavor to read more stats. Your calculations on the RS not winning 70 is a case study in folks not understanding simple math.
I wonder if Means could, in fact, come back earlier but the Orioles are using this as a way of controlling his innings after last year’s shortened season. Also, his continued absence helps in the race with Arizona in the Elijah Green sweepstakes.
I wouldn’t put it past them. The Orioles are amazing though, they could have the #1 pick 5 years in a row, hype them in the lower minors as the next superstars, and have them come up and all be busts for an endless string of 100 loss teams. Then they will trade them and they become Cy Young or MVP candidates within 2 years on other teams.
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As far as Walls goes – he’ll return to the minors to ensure his Super 2 status is good. The late call up of Wander ensured his non Super 2 status. If TB is smart, they’ll do the same for Walls and they’ll need to play him at a different position in the minors to prepare him for the majors.
Too bad he’s injured and on the major league IL, earning major league time
So close with your conspiracy theory
BeforeMcCourt – You are a complete moron. How do you figure that my explanation of why a team would send a player down to save them from Super 2 status is a conspiracy theory? Sending him back down when he returns for the IL simply gives him less days in 2021 on a major league roster which reduces his chances in 2024 for qualifying for a Super 2 status. It’s just that simple and it has nothing to do with conspiracy theory!!
Do you even follow baseball? You write the dumbest comments. Save yourself the embarrassment next time and just read comments don’t write them.
You’re right, they should. It would be the smart thing and is exactly the type of move the Rays do so they can continue to be one of the most successful teams in baseball. There are 25 or so other teams that should be doing the same thing if winning was their top priority.
While I think baseball has turned more into a visual math problem over the years, there is some truth to the OPS+ stat. It does give a way to compare guys who play half their games in bandboxes like Fenway or Wrigley to those who play in Oakland or Dodger Stadium…and across eras.
For instance, no one hit .300 in the AL in 1968. In 1996, the 10th place hitter hit .326. I don’t think we’re going to say all those players in 1996 were better. OPS+ helps us make a better comparison.
Looking at traditional stats for two power hitters, both corner outfielders who played some at DH, and played in the same division:
Player 1: Hit .315 with 46 HR, 139 RBI. 86 total xbh. Team finished 2nd in division, player won MVP.
Player 2: Hit .295 with 35 HR, 111 RBI. 65 total xbh. Team won division, player finished 2nd in MVP.
Player 1 is a heck of a lot better, right? OPS+ for Player 1 is 157, for Player 2 is 155.
This one you can’t place it on the era….Player 1 is Jim Rice 1978, whose home field is Fenway Park, one of the top 2 or 3 hitters parks in MLB then and today. Player 2 is Ken Singleton 1979, whose home field is Memorial Stadium, one of the top pitchers’ parks in the late 70s. That is a factor.
What else evened the score? Well Rice walked only 58 times for an OBP of .370 while Singleton walked 109 times for an OBP of .408. The stat heads will say while Rice put the ball over the fence more, he also had more empty outs where he did nothing for the team than Singleton, who could walk and create an extra run for his team. The stat heads make this nearly a tie, but the fan debate will be Rice couldn’t get his team into the playoffs while SIngleton got his team to game 7 of the WS.
It’s not interesting when you are watching a game and want to see action and skill displayed, but its great for sitting in front of the computer.
Thornton, there are holes in your logic. The game is played to score runs. Player A produced far more runs than player B. Stadium is a game changer but anyone who saw Rice play knows Fenway took at least as many homers from him as it gave him. The difference was in doubles. Fenway has always been a doubles paradise for hitters.
Rice had the greatest season of his generation in 78, totaling over 400 total bases. Otherwise Guidry would have won the MVP hands down even as a pitcher. As good as Singleton was, he was never feared like Rice. Back then, Rice was not supposed to walk. That’s one reason why you can’t compare generations.
Also, the game changed when the leagues adjusted the height of the mound and then the DH was soon thereafter implemented. Moreover, Fenway since they renovated is no longer the bandbox it once was. Still a great hitters park but it’s not Cincinnati, Philadelphia or Baltimore just to name a few.
Meant to add with Rice/Singleton, you can’t use newer stat lines.
Thorton Mellon – OPS+ is average biased. A high batting average player gets more credit than he should. Put a player in a ball park like Fenway and one in Dodger stadium and the guy who can hit for average ends up with a higher OPS+ given all other aspects of the players hitting is the same. This contradicts your theory on Fenway creating a higher OPS+.
Don’t believe me. Let’s do the numbers.
Player A – bats .350 like Boggs his Isolated power is .150 so his Sluggin percentage is .500 and his walk rate is .080 so he’s above average in his ability to walk.
For me – adding .350 to .150 and then .080 creates a value of .580 as the players total offense.(A far superior stat to OPS)
OPS calculates the .580 and then adds another .350 to it so the new OPS total is .930. A very good OPS number.
Player B – bats .250 like Stanton his isolated power is .300 which makes his slugging percentage .550 and his walk rate is comparable to Player A in that it’s .080 making his total offense number (my coined stat) equal to .630. That’s 50 points higher than player A.
But his OPS is batting average biased so when you double .250 it’s .500 then add .380 (IP and walk rate) and you get .880 OPS. Thus, the high average hitter appears to be contributing more to the team than the power hitter but if you don’t have a flaw in the formula the power hitter actually contributes more.
Now consider the ball parks and can you really say that small parks improve OPS when you know the batting average is being double accounted in the number? Size of ballpark is irrelevant and some could argue the batting averages are higher in large parks due to the amount of space in the outfield which might suggest bigger parks create higher OPS values.
OPS is an invalid measure and even in normalizing it you are still doing a huge injustice to the power hitters with lower averages. Boggs, Ichiro and others had inappropriately high OPS values because of the flaw in the formula.
This is why I don’t trust modern stats. They get created and sold to the public as being meaningful when they aren’t. My suggestion is always go through the details of a stat to see if it’s valid. That is if you can find the detail since most of the sabremetric stats are computer based due to the complexity of the formulas. For me, there is no reason to believe any of them are correct from a baseball and mathematics perspective. All we know is that the computer will run the numbers correctly but it can’t validate the formulas being right. These formulas include so many assumptions and constants and variables that have been conjectured by non baseball people because the theories have been applied in other sciences. Nobody has validated that the other sciences reflect the way baseball information should be normalized or calculated. It’s all about how fast can you come up with a new stat and sell it to the public and then sensationalize it on TV so it becomes a household name like OPS, the flawed stat that everyone accepts because they don’t know any better!!
KD ….a legend in his own mind. Lol lol lol
RS8 – Should I publish a primer on the topic written at a first grade level so you can grasp what is being said?
Cheap shots are very childish when responding to baseball comments and will always get nasty responses from me. It’s much more fun to discuss topics with baseball intelligent fans.
If you feel stupid because you didn’t understand something I wrote just say so. I can tudor you so at some point you have a minimal knowledge of baseball.
Can we end the experiment with Perez and Richards already! These two kill the bullpen and cannot go deep into games. Hell I would be happy if they could make 5 innings!
Perez might be a decent two inning lefty out if the pen but given Richards’ admitted reliance on using a substance, he appears to be a waste of $11m. However because of that money, he’ll get more of a chance to prove us wrong.
AL34 – WHO WOULD YOU REPLACE THEM WITH?
I sure Bloom is looking forward to Sale and Houck, but until they are ready Pérez and Richards are staying
The league average is 5.08 IPs/GS. Perez’s average is 4.67. Not ideal, but more than offset by his 4.09 ERA.