Some Unsystematic Observations From the March 29 Norfolk Exhibition

I'm one of the regular milb.com datacasters for the Norfolk Tides. When I'm working, I'm one of the people who input the pitch and play codes that generate the GameDay play-by-play, the final box score, and ultimately the official statistics. I datacasted the Orioles-Tides exhibition game on March 29, so I have a few observations not mentioned in the game summaries I've read.

First, because the game was played in a persistent rain, each inning ended when the pitcher reached twenty pitches. So, the "official" pitching lines aren't quite equivalent to normal pitching lines. Based on the number of outs recorded, rather than innings, the lines are:

Suk-Min Yoon	3 2/3	4	2	2	0	2
Mike Wright	0	3	1	1	1	0
Zach Davies	3	7	4	4	2	5
Tyler Wilson	2	1	0	0	1	0

Yoon's third inning ended with two outs and a runner on second, so he probably could have gotten out of the inning without giving up another run. Davies' second inning ended with one out and runners on first and third; he might have escaped without giving up more runs, but he might not. His fourth inning ended with two outs and runners on first and second; again, he could have gotten out of the inning without giving up another run. Finally, Mike Wright's inning ended with no outs and the bases loaded; he almost certainly would have surrendered more runs had the inning not been ended. So while Yoon's and Wilson's lines can be taken at face value, Davies and Wright pitched worse than their lines indicate.

(It's interesting how one out affects our impression of a pitching line. Yoon's box-score line - 4 4 2 2 0 2 - is only one out better than the line above, yet the line above looks much worse to me. It's not unlike basketball scores - 81-69 looks a lot more one-sided than 85-73 or 77-65, because of the two-digit jump in the tens column.)

The pitch counts for the pitchers are:

	Balls	Fouls	Called Strikes	Swinging Strikes	In-Play
Suk-Min Yoon	18	13	10	5	12
Mike Wright	8	6	3	0	3
Zach Davies	31	9	9	10	11
Tyler Wilson	11	4	3	3	7

I wouldn't read too much into these counts. but I mention them because I haven't seen them reported anywhere else.

Next, in Nelson Cruz' second plate appearance, he drew a walk to lead off an inning. Matt Wieters flew out to Quintin Berry at the left-field wall. Cruz tagged from first and advanced to second after Berry stumbled after hitting the wall. I had never thought of Nelson Cruz as a smart or alert player, but this was an alert advancement. Cruz scored on Ryan Flaherty's single.

Also, in the future I'm going to pay attention to the throwing of recent acquisition David Adams. Adams played third base for Norfolk yesterday. In addition to the rain, the wind was generally blowing from right to left (the official box score says "varies", but I blew it - I should have said the wind was blowing from right to left) with frequent gusts stronger than the game-time official 13 MPH measurement. I noticed two of Adams' throws into the wind, and the wind seemed to hold them up. At the same time, his throws were perfect - right on-line, chest-high to the first baseman, in time to get the out. So, I don't know whether Adams has a weakish arm that couldn't cut through the wind, or Adams has a strong-enough, accurate arm and yesterday's wind was so strong that it would hold up even Nolan Ryan's throws.

Finally, and I hesitate to bring this up because it's one exhibition game, in bad conditions, but J.J. Hardy didn't play well defensively. He made no plays at shortstop, which isn't necessarily his fault. However, there were two medium-speed ground-balls hit just to the left of second base that found their way into center field for singles. Again, I may be completely wrong, but it seemed to me that the shortstop could have gotten to those balls; Hardy didn't. It's likely that Hardy simply didn't want to risk injury, especially with Manny Machado out, and that on a dry field in a meaningful game Hardy would have made the effort to make those plays. But yesterday he didn't, and if I watched the Orioles - I can't watch them as often as I'd like because I'm attending Norfolk games - I might pay attention to Hardy to see if he's making all the plays.

Arrivals and Departures (3/24/14): Outrights and Options

As Spring Training winds down, we should expect a relative flurry of moves due to the Orioles having so many players who are out of options.  One such player was Kelvin De La Cruz.  He was one of the players Duquette offered a 40 man roster deal.  He had pretty much dominated AA and AAA for the Dodgers last year, but they let him depart instead of securing him on their roster.  It was thought that the Orioles would bring him in as a replacement for Troy Patton who will be suspended for the first 25 games or for Brian Matusz who has trade rumors constantly swirling around him.  That might no longer be the case because De La Cruz was designated for assignment with the intention of being outrighted to Norfolk when the Orioles claimed INF David Adams from the Indians.

For De La Cruz, it now gets interesting.  Here are the following scenarios:

1. De La Cruz is claimed by another club and departs.
2. De La Cruz is traded to another club.
3. De La Cruz passes waivers and accepts being sent to Norfolk where he will continue earning the contract that was agreed upon.
4. De La Cruz, having been outrighted before by the Dodgers, is able to refuse his assignment to Norfolk and elects free agency.  The Orioles are no longer responsible for his salary in this case.

It may well be that De La Cruz is no longer in the Orioles' plans after his spring has seen him having little control or command of his pitches.  This has always been the knock on him.  His stuff looks electric, but he cannot consistently get the same movement on his pitches all the time and has difficulty placing them.  I would call him a poor man's southpaw version of Pedro Strop (in a very loose sense).  I imagine we will soon learn his fate.

David Adams was a rather promising second base prospect in the Yankees system.  Nick Faleris (now with Baseball Prospectus) wrote up Adams for a series we were doing on AL East young talent.  Here is what Nick had to say at the time:

Adams was one of our favorite middle-infield targets in the 2008 draft, potentially providing Top 50 value out of the late third round. The former UVA Cavalier has taken his professional approach at the plate at the college ranks and transitioned well to the low-minors. Thus far, he's walked in a little over 10% of his professional plate appearances, posting just 1.5 strikeouts per base-on-balls. Adams has a lot of moving parts in his swing, and it remains to be seen whether or not it will continue to play at the upper-levels. A reasonable projection has Adams carving-out a career as a solid average regular, with no spectacular tools but enough defensive value to make a .750-775 OPS playable out of the bottom-third of the order. There is top-of-the-order upside if Adams shows enough gap-to-gap pop to force upper-level pitching to respect him (if not, his plate discipline will be negated by pitchers coming right at him looking for weak contact).

That season Adams suffered a pretty awful leg injury, which bottomed out his range.  He has a good eye and still has that gap-to-gap power.  However, he is more of a third baseman these days and lacks the extra power often expected from that position.  In his first taste of big league action, Adams withered up at the plate filling in for Alex Rodriguez at third for the Yankees.  I assume the Orioles see him as part of the contingency plan with third base this season as opposed to second base, which appears ably covered with a wide assortment of players.  Adams has one option left. The Yankees used one in 2012 and, I believe, the last time he was optioned in 2013 was for long enough to count.