2011 Depot Draft Preview - Finding 1:4 (Gerrit Cole)

We continue our annual look at amateur talents the Baltimore Orioles could (should) be targeting in the 1st Round and beyond. Over the next two weeks we will bear down on the eight potential 1st Round targets listed below, followed by a week dedicated to the 2nd - 5th Rounds and finally the 6th - 10th Rounds. As a reminder, the draft coverage here will focus on Baltimore. More in-depth coverage, including rankings, scouting reports, videos and more can be found over at http://www.diamondscapescouting.com/.

Potential targets at 1:4

Anthony Rendon / 3b / Rice Univ.
Gerrit Cole / rhp / UCLA
Bubba Starling / of/rhp / Gardner Edgerton HS (Gardner, Kan.)
Sonny Gray / rhp / Vanderbilt Univ.
Danny Hultzen / lhp / Univ. of Virginia
Dylan Bundy / rhp / Owasso HS (Owasso, Okla.)
Taylor Jungmann / rhp / Univ. of Texas
Jed Bradley / lhp / Georgia Tech

*Every player discussed in the Depot Draft Preview has been scouted by Nick J. Faleris, either through his efforts at DiamondScape Scouting or as part of his duties as an Associate Scout in the Midwest Region for a National League organization.

Gerrit Cole (rhp, Univ. of California - Los Angeles)
Ht/Wt: 6-4/225
B/T: R/R
Year: Junior
Age at Draft: 20y9m
Games Scouted: 2 (in person); 6 (video)

Grades - Now (Future):
Motion: 50 (50)
Fastball: 65/70 (75/80)
Slider: 55/60 (70)
Cutter: 50 (60)
Change-up: 55/60 (65/70)
Control: 50 (60)
Command: 45/50 (55/60)
Feel: 45/50 (60)
Overall Future Potential: 62/63

*Notes on Grades: The Scouting Scale works from 20-80, with 50 being Major League Average. The scale operates loosely on a bell curve, so the further you move from 50 the fewer grades you'll find among ML players (e.g. Aroldis Chapman's fastball, Ichiro Suzuki's arm strength, Adam Dunn's power and Albert Pujols' hit tool would all be 80 grade). A 60 grade is sometimes referred to as plus and a 70 grade is sometimes referred to as plus-plus.

Physical Description:
Big, thick and strong throughout. Well proportioned build and distribution allows for solid body control. Moves well enough on and off the mound.

Motion:
Cole has a simple, repeatable delivery with a clean arm action and solid tempo throughout. He throws from a low three-quarters slot that suits his repertoire, and while there is effort (there is bound to be when sitting mid- to upper-90s with your fastball), it works with his motion, minimizing stress in the shoulder/arm during his forward action and softening his recoil. Just as important, Cole is able to maintain solid command and repeatability in spite of reaching back and letting it fly. As compared to his freshman year, Cole has all but removed his tendencies to dip his back shoulder as he enters his arm circle and is much more consistently out and over his front leg as his arm is accelerating towards home -- both adjustments playing a role in his improved command.

Stuff:
Fastball - True "80" offering, with upper-90s velocity at peak, life and ability to maintain to the late innings. Swing and miss pitch off pure stuff alone, but precision has improved through two-plus years at UCLA and with Team USA. Will sit 94-96 mph and bump 98/99 mph. 4-seam and 2-seam are mixed, with his 2-seam coming with excellent boring action and sitting 93-95 mph and his 4-seam 96-98.

Slider - Cole's slider is a swing-and-miss breaker generally in the 86-88 mph range. He hits the same slot and release as his fastball, giving him deception in pitch plane.

Cutter - The cutter essentially acts as a harder slider, showing tighter, later break but less depth. He is 88-89 with the offering, and has broken 90 mph without losing the late life. This pitch bleeds into his slider and could probably be folded into it at the next level.

Change-up - Cole has made big strides with his change-up, flashing plus this spring. The biggest advancement has been in his ability to maintain his arm speed, which now offers solid deception. Additionally, with the improved arm speed has come a little more late tumble and a whole bunch of empty swings from opposing hitters.

Discussion:
Cole has everything you want in a potential ace -- big, durable build, loud stuff that includes three plus or better pitches, an aggressive but under control demeanor on the mound and a desire and ability to attack hitters with his arsenal. While he has not racked-up the strikeouts this spring to the staggering extent of his rotation mate Trevor Bauer, Cole has shown legit ML "power stuff", better overall command in the zone and a less troubling, cleaner delivery. The Friday starter should be in the discussion for #1 overall, and is still the top arm in the draft two plus months in. Coming out of high school there were some make-up concerns floating around, as well as mechanics to clean-up, consistency issues with his secondaries and spotty control. He has addressed each and every one of these issues and has put himself in a position to follow in the footsteps of David Price (Tampa Bay Rays) and Stephen Strasburg (Washington Nationals) as a quick-to-rise Major League front-end starter.

Projected position: #1 starter on 1st division team; perennial all-star candidate
Suggested draft slot: Top five overall

Video:






This scouting report originally published by the author here.

Game Wrap and Morning Links: May 12, 2011

Baltimore 4, Seattle 2
Box Score / Play-By-Play / AP Recap

Last night had carried a sense of dread as the game began.  The Orioles were facing on the best starting pitchers in baseball in Felix Hernandez and the Mariners had been hot of late.  The realistic hope was that the Orioles would be able to last out Felix and get lucky of a errant pitch home run or two.  Instead, we were treated to a shaky outing by Felix where his pitches fell out of the zone a bit too much and his command was uncharacteristically off.  The Orioles waited him out and wound up getting good pitches to hit and those batted balls falling in.  On the Orioles' side, there was concern of former Mariner farmhand Chris Tillman throwing too many pitches and getting knocked out early.  Tuesday had been a rough night on the Orioles' pen and they needed to be saved as much as possible.  Tillman answered that with a good effort by going six inning while putting up a poor, but not horrific 112 pitches.  The other major note of the game was former Mariner Adam Jones being en fuego.  He saw only eight pitches last night, but he hit them for a hard triple and three solid singles.  He certainly has streaks like this when it seems like he can cover the whole plate on any kind of pitch.  If he can keep that up, we can think of him more as a superstar instead of being an average centerfielder, which also has a lot of worth.

Stat of the game

  6 innings

After a draining night on the pen yesterday, Chris Tillman was needed to go as deep as possible.  Tillman brought out 112 pitches over 6 innings.  This was not exceptional, but was needed.

Orioles Game ball

Adam Jones (4-4, 3B(1))

MiLB game balls

Norfolk (Box) - Blake Davis, PH (1-1, HR (2))
Bowie (Box) - Pedro Florimon Jr., SS (2-4, HR (3))
Frederick (Box) - Tyler Townsend, 1B (1-3, HR (7), BB)
Delmarva (Box) - Kipp Schutz (3-4).

Three Morning Links

Contracts have now been approved allowing for further renovation of the Orioles' Ed Smith Sports Complex.

Camden Crazies' Daniel Moroz reports from a conversation with an Orioles front office employee that the O's are not fully involved in international markets because the numbers do not work out.  The rest of baseball scratches its head.

Roch Kubatko reports that Brian Matusz threw 40 pitches in extended spring training as part of his rehab assignment..

Up Next

Zach Britton (3.97 xFIP, 136 ERA+) will try to lay in the sweep against the Seattle Mariners and Jason Vargas (3.96 xFIP, 80 ERA+).

Are All Divisions Created Equal? Team WAR (2002-2010)

Many a fan, particularly in Baltimore, has uttered the words: if only we played in another division.  Without a doubt, the AL East is a difficult division to play in.  The Yankees and Red Sox have considerable resources that help them sign top talent in the offseason and gives them enough of a margin of error to absorb bad contracts.  The Rays are saddled with severe cash restrictions, but their front office finds remarkable ways to remain competitive.  Finally, the Blue Jays are a club that always appears to be underrated.  It is tough to be an Oriole fan at times with all of these successful teams to play against with an unbalanced schedule.  This leaves many wondering what would it be like if the Orioles were to play in a different division and makes me want to try to quantify it.

This is not exactly an original idea.  It has been addressed before by Stacey Long over at Camden Chat.  They decided to use the Orioles' winning percentage in each division to determine how the team would perform with various unbalanced schedules.  In that article, Long found that the Orioles' record in 2009 would have improved by four games had they played in an easier division.  I think that is solid work, but I wonder if the number of games the Orioles play against other teams in the other divisions is robust enough.  Daniel Moroz of Camden Crazies wrote over at Beyond the Box Score a short piece trying to determine what the difference playing between divisions would be.  Moroz used an elegantly simple set of assumptions (e.g., typical wins by AL East teams, an 81 win average for AL teams, interleague play winning percentages) along with Bill James' log5 calculations.  He found that unbalanced schedules could cause changes of a win.  That is not much to be concerned about.  So, two solid articles with two different conclusions.

This well tread idea needs, perhaps, another way to address it.  I propose that WAR (Wins Above Replacement) could be used to determine how many games a team could win by shifting divisions.  You may have noted in the past that if you sum up all of the WAR of individuals on a single team, you wind up with a number that is anywhere from 35-55 wins less than the actual total wins that the ball club earned.  This makes sense as a replacement level team (roughly defined as a team composed of AAA players) would be able to win a game here or there.  WAR actually relates rather well to actual wins.  The graph below illustrates how WAR relates to actual wins for AL teams from 2002 to 2010.

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The trend line shows a good fit between wins and WAR with an R-squared of 0.81.  The y-intercept (where the line crosses the y axis (the vertical one)) is the number of wins that would be expected to be won by a replacement level team.  As this can be done with all of these data points from 2002 to 2010, we can also do something similar for teams in each division for each year.  With fewer data points, the correlation will not be as strong, but using replacement level performance as a base line for each division would provide a different way to measure how a team would perform in a different division. The following graph illustrates Replacement Level Wins (essentially Average Wins minus Average WAR) for each division.

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The graph above passes a general smell test for me.  My perception has been that the AL East is the toughest division to play in because there is a concentration of talent of both young players (Tampa Bay Rays) and free agents (New York Yankees).  It has also been my perception that this concentration of talent has been challenged at times, which is also indicated in the graph above.  What I find interesting is that over this stretch of time, a replacement level team shifting from the AL East to the AL Central or AL West would improve by one and three wins, respectively.  If you translate that into free agent money (4.5 MM for every win), you could say that it costs 4.5 MM less to compete in the AL Central or 13.5 MM less to compete in the AL West.

Again assuming that the replacement level is additive, we can determine how well the Orioles would perform in "weakest" AL Division each year over the past nine years.

Comparing our results to what Long and Moroz found, we see in general that our numbers fit in more with Long's in the idea that shifting divisions would cause a decent sized shift in the number of wins.  When we specifically unravel Long's predictions for the Orioles in the AL Central from 2002 to 2009, we do not see a strong match between our efforts.  Years in which I show little difference between the AL East and AL Central (e.g. 2005), she shows a difference.  In my opinion, I think this is largely a product of there may not being enough games played when using one team's winning percentages to determine division strength.  What is certainly known by all of these efforts is that simply moving the Orioles to another AL division is not a cure for what ails them.

In the near future, I will be using this approach to address the addition of a fifth team in each league's playoffs and will try to determine how good that team would be in comparison to the current field.

Game Wrap and Morning Links: May 11, 2011

Baltimore 7, Seattle 6

Box Score / Play-By-Play / AP Recap

Last night was a long and wild night.  Kevin Gregg blew a save on a night when the Orioles offense was more productive than usual.  The bullpen was forced to go deep into a game without a 13th man, which forced Jeremy Accardo into 43 pitches over two innings and seemingly giving up the winning run in the 13th.  Felix Pie and Matt Wieters then came through with runners on base (did we ever doubt Wieters in that position) to plate two men and the Orioles break their losing streak.  Although it was tough on our relief corp and Chris "I might be able to give you six innings" Tillman is starting today, it was good to notch one in the win column.  It was also good to see JJ Hardy out-Andino Robert Andino with a 4-5 performance highlighted with a home run.  It is nice to have him back.  Hopefully, he will do more of the same against King Felix tonight.

Stat of the game

  8-21

The Orioles were 8 for 21 with runners in scoring position.  This is a change from the previous week.

Orioles Game ball

JJ Hardy (4-5, HR(1), BB)

MiLB game balls

Norfolk (Box) - Brandon Snyder, 1B (2-3, 2B (9), BB)
Bowie (Box) - Robert Widlansky, 1B (2-4, HR (3))
Frederick (Box) - Brian Ward, C (2-4, HR (3))
Delmarva (Box) - Mike Flacco (1-2, 2 BB).

Three Morning Links

Matt Wieters looks good in Matt Klaassen's catcher defense ratings for 2011 over at Beyond the Box Score.

Orioles legendary coach Earl Weaver is selling some of his memorabilia because he would hate to misappropriate items in his will.

Troubled pitcher Alfredo Simon will be making two more starts before going back to the Dominican Republic due to his legal problems.

Up Next

The O's hope to make it two in a row with a tired pen and Chris Tillman (4.36 xFIP, 56 ERA+) on the mound against stalwart King Felix Hernandez (2.90 xFIP, 123 ERA+).  Looks like one of the teams pens tonight will be getting some rest. 7:35 pm Eastern start.

2011 Depot Draft Preview -- Finding 1:4 (Anthony Rendon)

With four weeks remaining before the 2011 MLB Rule 4 Draft, we begin our annual look at amateur talents the Baltimore Orioles could (should) be targeting in the 1st Round and beyond. Over the next two weeks we will bear down on the eight potential 1st Round targets listed below, followed by a week dedicated to the 2nd - 5th Rounds and finally the 6th - 10th Rounds. As a reminder, the draft coverage here will focus on Baltimore. More in-depth coverage, including rankings, scouting reports, videos and more can be found over at http://www.diamondscapescouting.com/.

Potential targets at 1:4

Anthony Rendon / 3b / Rice Univ.
Gerrit Cole / rhp / UCLA
Bubba Starling / of/rhp / Gardner Edgerton HS (Gardner, Kan.)
Sonny Gray / rhp / Vanderbilt Univ.
Danny Hultzen / lhp / Univ. of Virginia
Dylan Bundy / rhp / Owasso HS (Owasso, Okla.)
Taylor Jungmann / rhp / Univ. of Texas
Jed Bradley / lhp / Georgia Tech

*Every player discussed in the Depot Draft Preview has been scouted by Nick J. Faleris, either through his efforts at DiamondScape Scouting or as part of his duties as an Associate Scout in the Midwest Region for a National League organization.

Anthony Rendon (3b, Rice Univ.)
Ht/Wt: 5-11/190
B/T: R/R
Year: Junior
Age at Draft: 21y0m
Games Scouted: 7 (in person); 14 (video)

Grades - Now (Future):
Hit: 50/55 (65/70)
Power: 45/50 (55/60)
Arm: 60 (60)
Defense: 55/60 (60/65)
Speed: 55/60 (55)
Feel: 55 (60/65)
Overall Future Potential: 63

*Notes on Grades: The Scouting Scale works from 20-80, with 50 being Major League Average. The scale operates loosely on a bell curve, so the further you move from 50 the fewer grades you'll find among ML players (e.g. Aroldis Chapman's fastball, Ichiro Suzuki's arm strength, Adam Dunn's power and Albert Pujols' hit tool would all be 80 grade). A 60 grade is sometimes referred to as plus and a 70 grade is sometimes referred to as plus-plus.

Physical Description:
Average build with strong wrists/forearms, solid core, lower-body strength. More strength than frame lets on. Good agility, excellent body control with quick first step.

Defense:
While much of the focus on Rendon often centers around his bat, he is easily one of the best defensive infielders in the college game, and could hold down shortstop at the collegiate level if asked. He has a strong and accurate arm and shows consistent strength and accuracy from a multitude of angles, highlighting his footwork and quick release. Rendon charges very well, has no difficulty with throwing on the run, and displays a high level of comfort to both sides. An excellent defender already, he should provide plus defense as a pro, with a chance to grow into a truly elite defender at the highest level.

Bat:
Rendon's bat is special. He generates very good bat speed through a strong core, maintaining and then transferring the force in his swing through his strong wrists. The top notch bat speed produces loud contact as often as any amateur in the game, and portends an ability to hit for average and power (despite his unimposing physical appearance) at the next level. What sets Rendon's offensive prowess from other elite bats is his command of the strikezone and his ability to control the barrel. He has an uncanny ability to lay off close balls and spoil tough strikes, helping him to eventually find the pitch he needs to do damage. His approach seldom falters (though he was caught pressing some earlier this year), and there is little question his game should transition well to the pro ranks.

Discussion:
The story this spring has been a sore shoulder for the five-tool third baseman, which has kept him in the DH role for most of the season. Perhaps stemming from the sore shoulder, Rendon's power numbers have fallen off drastically, with his isolated power dropping from a whopping .407 to a merely impressive .189. Barring troublesome medical reports come draft time, there is little concern that this will have a long term effect on Rendon's game. Provide the shoulder checks-out, he is easily the top position player in the draft class, arguably the top player overall, and on par with the likes of Bryce Harper and Stephen Strasburg in terms of future potential and draft time skill set. Rendon is the rare five-tool talent with game changing ability in each category (he was clocked at 4.2 seconds home-to-first a number of times last year, during the USA CNT Trials and twice this spring), and an intricate feel for the game on defense, in the batters box and on the basepaths. He has a chance to move quickly once he signs and could be a perennial All-Star at the Major League level.

Projected position: Elite third baseman on 1st division team; perennial all-star candidate
Suggested draft slot: Top five overall

Video:































This scouting report originally published by the author here.

Just the Links . . . and Today's Game: May 10, 2011

MILB Game Balls

Norfolk - Ryan Adams (2-4, 2B (6), 3B (2))
Bowie - Jose Diaz (1 IP, 3 K, 1 BB)
Frederick - No Game
Delmarva - Michael Ohlman (2-4, 2B (4))

Three Morning Links

Baltimore Sun reports JJ Hardy did not play Monday for Norfolk and is expected to be activated Tuesday.  Clay Rapada seems like she will be designated for assignment.

Carroll County Times reports that Justin Duchscherer will throw a couple simulated innings in the next few days.

Luke Scott has torn his labrum and will need to get surgery after the season is over.


Today's Game

Seattle is in town tonight with the game starting at 705 PM EST.  Jake Arrieta (3.80 xFIP, 92 ERA+) will face off against rookie sensation Michael Pineda (3.33 xFIP, 144 ERA+).  The Orioles will try to end their slide with a series against the last place team in the AL West.

Predicted Wins and Playoff Probability: Week 6

This past week, the Orioles were 1-6, managing a win against the Kansas City Royals.  Each projection system thought the Orioles would do better than they did and so we find the new predicted wins to be less than they were last week.  However, it is about in line with where the predictions were two weeks ago.  PECOTA has the Orioles at a 1.8% chance of making the playoffs.  We have them at 0.41%.

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So, once again, this team is about as good as the systems thought they would be.

EDIT: It appears that we are getting considerable traffic from ESPN on this post.  I think I might need to explain some thing here as this is one of our weekly updates.

We are using three "systems" to predict the number of wins the team will win over the course of the season.  The three systems we are using are:

PECOTA - Baseball Prospectus issues updated projections on a daily basis.  We use this as an industry standard.  These figures are based on updated PECOTA player projections, playing time projections, and strength of schedule.

Camden Depot - At Camden Depot we used Tango's MARCEL projections and account for playing time to generate a WAR prediction.  We then generate a prediction for each team in baseball and weight the Orioles schedule according.  Expected wins are derived using Bill James log5 method.  The MARCEL projections are not updated, but the Orioles record in past games is incorporated in what we expect them to do in future games based on the projections and strength of schedule.  We will change our projections if major trades or injuries occur.

Pythagorean - This method is the simple well known Pythagorean method where we predict wins based on runs scored and runs given.

Playoff predictions are done by PECOTA in their daily update and by us.  We use a simple binomial function and adjust it to the expected Wild Card win total or AL East win total (which ever is lower).

Feel free to ask more questions.

Game Wrap and Morning Links: May 9, 2011

Baltimore 3, Tampa Bay 5

Box Score / Play-By-Play / AP Recap

Tampa Bay completed it's sweep of Baltimore yesterday on Mother's Day.  Brad Bergesen was knocked out of the game before the end of the fifth inning.  All five runs were scored after him.  The pen was able to shutout the Rays for the rest of the game, but the Orioles were only able to muster three runs.  Although it is disconcerting that the Orioles keep losing, but it will soon exhaust the bullpen with the starters not being able to go deep into the games.  Thankfully tomorrow the team has a day off and should help out the bullpen.  Matt Wieters continued his guru hitting with runners in scoring position by tacking on two more hits and is now 10 for 15 with runners in scoring position.  He seems to be the only Orioles hitter who is capable of hitting well with men on base.

Stat of the game

  5 Orioles walked and none scored

The Orioles have a problem with earning walks.  This series they earned a great number of walks while not being able to plate many of them.

Orioles Game ball

Matt Wieters (2-4, 2B (6))

MiLB game balls

Norfolk (Box) - Michel Hernandez, C (1-2, 2 BB)
Bowie (Box) - Kyle Hudson, LF (1-2, 2B (2), BB)
Frederick (Box) - Oliver Drake, SP (6 IP, 7 H, 1 ER, 6 K)
Delmarva (Box) - Michael Ohlman, C (4-4, HR (2), 2B (3)).

Three Morning Links

Former Orioles Groundskeeper Paul Zwaska is now keeping fields tidy for a Little League in Wisconsin.

Steve Melewski talks to several Orioles, including Luke Scott, about the offensive slump the team is going through.

Jeff Zrebeic lists off some depressing numbers about the Orioles, including noting that the Orioles are 2-16 in games in which they score three or fewer runs.

Up Next

The O's get a day to think about things.

One Fifth of the Way into the Season, Vlad is Below Replacement

The last time we checked out Vlad's performance was 16 games into the season.  At that point, he had a -0.3 WAR which would have qualified him as one of the worst DHs in history.  Sixteen games later, a fifth of the way into the season, Vlad is still below replacement level at -0.1 WAR.  More and more, it appears that Scott at DH and Pie in left or Reimold at DH and Scott in left would have been the better approach.  However, Vlad is a "proven veteran," so Buck may have little choice other than to keep shoving Vlad in the cleanup spot game after game after game.  Vlad's walk rate is the lowest of his career and is less than half of his career average.  His ISO is the worst of his career.  His HR/Fly is the worst of his career.  Only 32 games in, but he has seen a 22% decrease in fastballs seen.  His swinging percentage is the highest of his career.  This is not a great series of statistics.

At -0.1 WAR, Vlad has passed the 1994 Dave Winfield and is now tied with the 1976 Minnie Minoso.

Game Wrap and Morning Links: May 8, 2011

Baltimore 2, Tampa Bay 8

Box Score / Play-By-Play / AP Recap

Compared to the two previous home Saturday games, the Orioles' attendance fell slightly more than 50% to 18,961.  Hopefully, this was a product of several fans wishing to go to Kentucky Derby parties.  There is certainly some concern that the fan base has determined this team is gilded and not solid gold as none of the major off season acquisitions have paid off.  Mark Reynolds (-0.3 WAR) is on pace to avoid 200 K's, but is also on pace to have less than 20 home runs and fail to hit a .200 average.  Vladimir Guerrero (-0.1 WAR) is not rewarding people's faith as he is struggling to get on base (.290 OBA) and has not shown much if any power (.126 ISO).  Derrek Lee (-0.1 WAR) is also on pace to hit about 15 home runs over the course of the season.  None of this is surprising, but what has happened is slightly below what we were anticipating here at the Depot and far below what the public in general seemed to think.  What happened in the game?  Jeremy Guthrie was hit hard over five innings, giving up three doubles and two home runs.  Four of the extra base hits that fell on hit were when there were base runners compounding the effect.  The Orioles only managed five hits with Nick Markakis producing three singles.  They were unable to take advantage of the Rays issuing 10 walks over the course of the game.  The difference really was that the Rays were able to produce extra base hits and the Orioles were not.  It was the 17th time out of 32 games in which the Orioles failed to score more than three runs.  Brad Bergesen is now tasked to lead the Orioles back on track with a solid game on Mother's Day.

Stat of the game

  5 XBH in 5 IP

When a pitcher gives up on average an extra base hit per inning, he is going to be giving up a lot of runs.  The Rays did a good job of squaring up on Guthrie and were a tad bit lucky so many balls fell in to the right place.  Twice that right place was in the stands.

Orioles Game ball

Nick Markakis (3-4, SF)

MiLB game balls

Norfolk (Box) - Tyler Henson, CF (2-3, 3B (1), BB)
Bowie (Box) - Ronnie Welty, RF (1-4, HR (5))
Frederick (Box) - Tyler Townsend, 1B (2-4, HR (6))
Delmarva (Box) - Jarret Martin (2 IP, 1 H, 4 SO, 1 BB).

Three Morning Links

Cal Ripken Jr. thinks Manny Pacquiao will win..

Baltimore Orioles had a scout in attendance for New York HS Kevin McAvoy.  The right hander hit 90 a couple times.

Derek Jeter played his 2,303rd game at shortstop for the Yankees.  This breaks Cal Ripken Jr.'s record for most games played at shortstop with one club.

Up Next

The O's loss last night has dropped them into sole possession of last place in the AL East. Brad Bergesen (4.32 xFIP, 82 ERA+) will work to prevent a sweep against Wade Davis (5.04 xFIP, 133 ERA+) who is having a confusing year as he is striking out only 3.9 per nine innings, yet have been effective. 1:35 pm Eastern start.