Baltimore sports, read closely: who's clutch, who's padding, and how much the team around a player makes the numbers we hang on him. Plus youth sports, from the dad at the backstop.
Eight drafts of elite capital, zero first-round pitchers, and a homegrown core whose trend lines all point down. Why the Orioles are where they are, and why it comes back to Mike Elias. Eight figures, one table, every claim sourced, including the audit of all sixty drafted arms.
Henderson has declined in the bottom quartile of his own age group two years running, at ages when the median hitter improves. His expected numbers fell with the real ones, which rules out the comfortable explanation.
The outfield was the second-worst hitting unit in baseball. It was also, and this surprised me, a perfectly average defensive one. What that changes about the fix.
Everyone talks about the bottom line. This is about the row underneath, where the score, the clock and the personnel still live.
Lamar wins late more than almost anyone, with fewer friendly flags and worse hands around him. But his play-by-play in those moments is only average, which is the part of my thesis the numbers refused.
A pressured dropback is a disaster for the offense no matter how the pressure arrives. The parts I got wrong: blitzing late was not worse, and coverage matters about as much as the rush.
Eight drafts of elite capital, zero first-round pitchers, and a homegrown core whose trend lines all point down. The same evaluator found stars in Houston and regulars in Baltimore.
Same batting order, sorted by leverage instead of volume. Three names move a lot, one of them is the "disappointing" guy.
Fourth-quarter yards down 21. Prevent-defense picks. The column that checks the score before it believes the box score.
The hitter Baltimore gave up became an All-Star somewhere else. How much of a stat line is the player, and how much is the building?
Every stat gets asked what the score was when it happened. Clutch and padding look identical in a season total.
Lineups, coaching, and ballparks make individual stats more than fans admit. We give the building its share of the credit and the blame.
Numbers get used to sell narratives, and to ruin the watching. We show our charts, date our sources, and invite the argument.
I'm Chris, dad, youth coach, former athlete, lifelong Baltimore fan. I run numbers for a living and I love the game more than the spreadsheet. This blog is where those two facts argue.