Phillies are a cautionary tale for rebuilding

[Sports Guy]

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/30442797/how-philadelphia-phillies-botched-their-rebuild-tells-us-tanking

[Moose Milligan]

A good autopsy, yet nothing really earth shattering.  

[Sports Guy]

7 minutes ago, Moose Milligan said:

A good autopsy, yet nothing really earth shattering.  

It’s actually not really an indictment on rebuilding persay.

It’s  an indictment on poor drafting an development.

What it is an indictment of rebuilding is that rebuilding doesn’t guarantee you contention.  You still have to do a lot of smart things along the way.  
 

It’s also why you don’t sit back and wait for a magical time to where you start making financial moves just because you are rebuilding.  You can still do many things while also trying to win games.  The Os should be doing that now and they aren’t.

[hoosiers]

Klentak's free agent signings have been fairly productive - as shown by the article - which is difficult to do.

IMO, the issue with the Phillies is that they did not have the depth of prospects that keep supporting the major league roster that they thought they did.  Hoskins and Nola emerged as very strong players, but they were not enough.  Other prospects have not panned out yet or were overrated - Moniak, Kingery, Williams, etc.  Right now could be a time when Sanchez is supplementing the major league roster when they lose Arrieta.  Instead they traded him.

When the Os were good, we did have Machado as an emerging superstar like Hoskins and Nola, but we also had a much more sizable core of cheap productive players - Wieters, Davis, Tillman, Jones, Britton and others - plus relatively reasonably priced veterans in Markakis and Hardy and others. 

I have posted many times in the past that, in a market like Bmore, perhaps 7-11 of a teams top 17 players - all starting position players and DH, SP1-4 and BP1-4 - should be pre-arb and pre-FA - in order to compete.  That is enough of a foundation to supplement with free agents.  FWIW, I think Elias is building a 2023 team that will be very cheap and should be emerging as quite competitive.

 

 

[Sports Guy]

I always thought the Phillies system was overrated. Never liked most of their guys.

[OrioleDog]

This doesn't make Klentak the Chris Davis of GM's, does it?

Could it make Bryce the Scherzer character of peak Rutschman teams?   That'd have some MASN sweetness to it.

[OriolesMagic83]

6 hours ago, hoosiers said:

Klentak's free agent signings have been fairly productive - as shown by the article - which is difficult to do.

IMO, the issue with the Phillies is that they did not have the depth of prospects that keep supporting the major league roster that they thought they did.  Hoskins and Nola emerged as very strong players, but they were not enough.  Other prospects have not panned out yet or were overrated - Moniak, Kingery, Williams, etc.  Right now could be a time when Sanchez is supplementing the major league roster when they lose Arrieta.  Instead they traded him.

When the Os were good, we did have Machado as an emerging superstar like Hoskins and Nola, but we also had a much more sizable core of cheap productive players - Wieters, Davis, Tillman, Jones, Britton and others - plus relatively reasonably priced veterans in Markakis and Hardy and others. 

I have posted many times in the past that, in a market like Bmore, perhaps 7-11 of a teams top 17 players - all starting position players and DH, SP1-4 and BP1-4 - should be pre-arb and pre-FA - in order to compete.  That is enough of a foundation to supplement with free agents.  FWIW, I think Elias is building a 2023 team that will be very cheap and should be emerging as quite competitive.

 

 

I have expressed my concertns about Elias, but obviously he understands that you have to have a core of young, cheap players that get to the majors around the same time.  Players that don't fit this timeline are being traded when the time or return is right.  This can make a lot of fans (and me) angry.  I'll be surprised if Mancini remains an Oriole past this year, regardless of his production.  Its probably more likely he's traded, the better he performs.  The O's don't have the deep pockets to acquire multiple top of the line free agents (or at least an owner that is willing to spend in that manner).  If the timing isn't right, even massive spending to the luxury tax won't make you a winning, playoff team. 

[Can_of_corn]

11 minutes ago, OriolesMagic83 said:

I have expressed my concertns about Elias, but obviously he understands that you have to have a core of young, cheap players that get to the majors around the same time.  Players that don't fit this timeline are being traded when the time or return is right.  This can make a lot of fans (and me) angry.  I'll be surprised if Mancini remains an Oriole past this year, regardless of his production.  Its probably more likely he's traded, the better he performs.  The O's don't have the deep pockets to acquire multiple top of the line free agents (or at least an owner that is willing to spend in that manner).  If the timing isn't right, even massive spending to the luxury tax won't make you a winning, playoff team. 

Mancini could be an ownership test.  Keeping Mancini strikes me as a move Peter would force upon his GM.

[LookinUp]

To me, the clear lesson here isn't about how good your FAs are or necessarily how good your top prospects are. It's about the importance of deep depth. 

Baseball is full of failures. Expensive failures in FA. Expensive top draft picks. Rule V guys. Whatever. Obviously those decisions matter, but for a team like the O's, we're not going to be able to buy our way out of those issues. That CAN'T be the approach.

The Phillies and the prognosticators over rated them based on those high profile names. They didn't appreciate the apparent lack of depth. This is why I still like the Iglesias trade. I want 40-45 FV guys sitting on the bench in the minors if necessary. I want so many capable minor leaguers that I won't really care (except on a human level) when one blows his arm or leg out in a fluke fly fishing accident. I want so many medium probability guys that we're almost guaranteed that 10 of them become valuable at some point. When you're there, you can blow your budget on a Lindor or trade a Mancini for more young talent and still handle it just fine both financially and on the field. 

[sportsfan8703]

Given our division, until we are league average players in the international signing market then we are always going to face long rebuilds. 

[OrioleDog]

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/30462167/sources-philadelphia-phillies-open-trade-offers-right-hander-zack-wheeler

In the space of just a few hours, Middleton denouncing the ESPN report on NBC Sports Philadelphia (not sure if that one is a team-owned network ala MASN), but if .500-dom was a local peak, and post-Realmuto the next couple years are bumpy (Mets/Nats pushing tail end of DeGrom/Scherzer, Braves Braves, maybe even Marlins athletes jell some), will Bryce get antsy?   Alec Bohm might save it, but they are on last 3 years of Nola as well (oooh Nola & Bryce July 31, 2023 to stop Dodgers four-peat).   I excluded Jean Segura from the 30 seats of SS Musical Chairs, but he's atop their chart for now, though both old and having started the slide down the Defensive Spectrum already.

The Verlander/Greinke blueprint is the guy paid $25M+ for the long term on some blah team (Cole was just blah not $30M), then you're the Second Buyer:

(a) paying a more equitable $20M while the dumper pays some modest but not insignificant fraction

(b) trading four depth pieces (flirting with the pupu platter) for your Finishing Touches player.

Having married into a Nationals batch of in-laws around the start of his career, latter Bryce becoming a piece like this for Peak Rutschman Orioles teams would be good theater.  

[andrewochs615]

I do find it kind of funny that it's an Andy Macphail rebuild

[DrungoHazewood]

14 minutes ago, andrewochs615 said:

I do find it kind of funny that it's an Andy Macphail rebuild

Exactly what I was going to say.  Hire Andy MacPhail and your rebuild might take like 12 years.  Does he still believe that all methods of player acquisition (besides maybe at-slot June draft picks) have too low an ROI to use?

[weams]

https://pressboxonline.com/2020/12/08/matt-kremnitzer-my-takeaway-from-orioles-infield-shakeup/

[OrioleDog]

This thread might be MLB forum ready, but OMG if Bryce gets him some Dombrowski, quick please let's make all the trades with Philadelphia.

Sisco and Severino are both better than Andrew Knapp, right?

https://theathletic.com/2252876/2020/12/10/stark-phillies-dave-dombrowski/