Dan's Offseason Moves Part Four: Replacing Markakis and Cruz

[Bahama O's Fan]

No poll for this one. Imagine you were Dan, and Nick and Nelson have left. How would you, under the current payroll, have replaced the production of these two?

[Bahama O's Fan]

Let's imagine it's Dec 5, 2015 and both have left.

[Il BuonO]

Travis Snider put together a good second half of the season. Maybe he fulfills his promise and we catch lightning....oh, wait.

[Can_of_corn]

Remember folks, this is hindsight.

I probably would have tossed Nolan a million dollars to DH and I would have looked long and hard at Kang in right.

I really don't like spending money on a DH.

[Aristotelian]

Hope that 1) Davis bounces back, 2) Machado takes a leap, and 3) some combination of Pearce, Young, Snider, De Aza, Paredes, Parmelee, and Lough produce at DH/RF/LF. In hindsight, 2 out of 3 isn't bad.

[abbott]

At best, at absolute 100% best, that recipe gets you even. But it doesn't, under the best circumstances get you better. The idea is to improve. THat off season recipe is a hope and a prayer of getting even. If it doesn't work out, you have no leeway, no margin of error.

And there's no make up for Hardy's season, Jones basically had an 8 week period where he struggled to be a replacement player.

Personally, I felt the front office did not beleive they could put together a division winner without busting the budget, whatever that budget was, and felt that spending 10-20 million just to play in the play-in WC game was not cost effective. The second WC plays a road game. No home revenue if they lose.

The cost benefit analysis of winning wasn't there last off season, so the team took a different path. In the end, they paid a lot for nothing

[DrungoHazewood]

At best, at absolute 100% best, that recipe gets you even. But it doesn't, under the best circumstances get you better. The idea is to improve. THat off season recipe is a hope and a prayer of getting even. If it doesn't work out, you have no leeway, no margin of error.

And there's no make up for Hardy's season, Jones basically had an 8 week period where he struggled to be a replacement player.

Personally, I felt the front office did not beleive they could put together a division winner without busting the budget, whatever that budget was, and felt that spending 10-20 million just to play in the play-in WC game was not cost effective. The second WC plays a road game. No home revenue if they lose.

The cost benefit analysis of winning wasn't there last off season, so the team took a different path. In the end, they paid a lot for nothing

- The idea is to win as many games as you can while making reasonable budgetary decisions and not committing the organization to unreasonable risk.

- It's quite obvious that the best-case scenario wasn't staying even with last year. The Orioles are scoring slightly more runs/game this year than last. If the platoon guys had played to their career marks the Orioles would have a significantly better offense than last year.

- They did believe they could win with that approach/budget. If Norris and Tillman hadn't tanked the first half and the outfielders in the last bullet hit as expected they'd be right there.

[RZNJ]

I was fine with De Aza in LF, Pearce at DH and trading for Seth Smith, signing Rasmus, or trading for Snider. Didn't realize how bad Snider was until I got to see him everyday.

[wildcard]

- The idea is to win as many games as you can while making reasonable budgetary decisions and not committing the organization to unreasonable risk.

- It's quite obvious that the best-case scenario wasn't staying even with last year. The Orioles are scoring slightly more runs/game this year than last. If the platoon guys had played to their career marks the Orioles would have a significantly better offense than last year.

- They did believe they could win with that approach/budget. If Norris and Tillman hadn't tanked the first half and the outfielders in the last bullet hit as expected they'd be right there.

This.

This 2015 O's have so far improved in runs per game, fielding pct., bullpen ERA but the starters have not been as good.

If they finish the season at the same rate Dan will have been right about he offense and but with worse pitching.

[Aristotelian]

You don't need to improve on 96 games. Anyway, there have been dozens of threads and literally thousands of posts on this topic.

[Bahama O's Fan]

And to think we went into the season thinking we had six viable starters.

[sportsfan8703]

I'm in Toronto. With an owner that wants to spend to win now and spend in the Dominican.

[Morgan423]

OP, no offense intended, but IMO it's about time to start focusing on this coming off season and stop rehashing the last one repeatedly. We can't go back and change it now... it's time to move on.

[sportsfan8703]

OP, no offense intended, but IMO it's about time to start focusing on this coming off season and stop rehashing the last one repeatedly. We can't go back and change it now... it's time to move on.

Well you have to hold your GM and Owner accountable. Not too many teams let the reigning HR leader walk. We have a chance to do that back to back seasons. I blame PA. DD was gone with a promotion to Toronto. DD forced him to stay. While he was gone the team was on auto pilot. Everyone was tendered contracts. Then DD legally had to stay. So he tried to make the best out of a situation he didn't want to be in. With serious budget constraints.

PA should've let DD take the promotion. Got the compensation part over quickly. Promoted Brady and raised the budget enough to resign Cruz and Miller. Instead we ended up with alot of guys that were tendered contracts that bloated our payroll and ended up becoming dead money anyway.

[royalstillman]

We also thought Wieters' bat would offset the loss of Cruz's production.