Sheinin: Orioles’ analytics-driven regime is already shifting the team’s culture
From Dave Sheinin at the Washington Post on February 23, 2019:
When right-hander Yefry Ramirez climbed the mound and delivered the first pitch of the Baltimore Orioles’ Grapefruit League season at 1:09 p.m. Saturday, under scattered clouds and in 82-degree heat at Ed Smith Stadium, few in attendance would have noticed anything fundamentally different about the 2019 Orioles. A few new faces in the lineup. A new coaching staff. A No. 20 patch on their uniform sleeves in honor of late Hall of Famer Frank Robinson.
But below the surface, it was as if the Orioles had undergone a skeleton transplant since September. The entire infrastructure of the franchise has been transformed since the team last walked off a field, some five months ago at the end of a miserable, franchise-worst 47-115 season that cost general manager Dan Duquette and manager Buck Showalter their jobs.
In the franchise’s bigger picture, nothing that happened on the field Saturday, as the Orioles hosted the Minnesota Twins, meant nearly as much as the quiet, out-of-public-view work being done on their back fields earlier in the day, when pitchers threw bullpen sessions off mounds outfitted with $10,000 Edgertronic high-speed cameras, which provide high-def, ultra-slo-mo images of pitchers’ deliveries.
Read the full article here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2019/02/23/orioles-new-analytics-driven-regime-is-already-shifting-teams-culture/
Originally published: March 1, 2019. Last Updated: March 1, 2019.