DrungoHazewood

2015 Orioles LF: .640 2015 Orioles RF:.767 2015 Markakis: .746 2016 LF: .687 2016 RF: .841 2016 Markakis: .744 (Kim and Trumbo had OPSes over .800, but the backups were so-so) 2017 LF: .702 2017 RF: .759 Markakis: .738 (Regular starters Mancini and Smith out-hit Markakis but backups like Rickard and Gentry brought averages down) 2018 LF: .692 2018 RF: .688 2018 Markakis: .806 He would have been a major upgrade in '18, and arguably a small upgrade in the other years if you shuffled around the LF/RFers. But by midyear 2018 he probably would have been traded with the Orioles in freefall. Nick probably would have added a small handful of wins over the life of his contract.

I don't think you can assume that $80M was rebated to people. It's dependent on provider. I was not given back a single cent by Directv for MASN not broadcasting Orioles games.

What's short order? Seems like we've been hearing about Angelos getting too old and the team being sold in the near future for years.

I have at least three questions/concerns about Jake Cronenworth: 1) He's 27 in nine days. That's a concern. 2) Why didn't he hit until 2019? As recently as '18 he had a .668 OPS as a 24-year-old in AA. 3) Is he really a MLB shortstop? He started playing quite a bit of 2B/3B in '18, and was primarily a 2B last year. On the other hand, he apparently was Michigan's closer in college, so maybe he can pitch some mopup relief.

342 innings and 30 complete games. I wish one of the leagues would mandate that teams couldn't carry more than eight pitchers, and deaden the ball and make the parks bigger. Then have the fans pick which they like better: seven pitchers a game all throwing 98 mph with strikeouts and homers all over the place, or one or two pitchers a game trying to get through the lineup four times and many more balls in play. And no, I have no recollection of Carlton saying he was learning to throw righty. It couldn't have been serious. I know there are a small handful of pitchers who've done that in the majors, half of them 130+ years ago. But I can't imagine a 40-year-old Steve Carlton could throw in the mid-70s with his off arm. I'm a natural right-hander, but played some outfield in softball left-handed after I injured my right arm. My left is probably 60% as good as my healthy right.

What is that goal? To invent a time machine to undo the deep regret they have over trading short term financial gains in 1930 for both having to care for and feed the minors for the better part of the next century, and crushing grassroots professional baseball forever?

But the fans will always have Jake Arrieta's 8-8, 4.61 season on an 81-81 team to cherish. Also, Bryce Harper's star shone moderately brightly and he'll definitely be around doing something for whatever core they have over the next several decades.

Thanks. So the soft cap had a temporary, moderate impact. The hard cap reduced spending in year one by about 30%.

I think they're more regular free agents than amateurs so you could reasonably exclude them from the study. Also, it's a wrong decision to treat someone who's played at a high(ish) level in Cuba or especially Japan and is 24, 25, 26 years old, and treat them like MLB rookies. Clearly just for cost-control, not for any logical quality of play or experience reasons. That and the typical "MLB is the only real baseball" attitude.

Does anyone know of the caps' impact on overall spending? Was there more spent overall (after inflation) in 2011 than in 2015? Or 2019? Eventually a decrease in compensation should lead to a decrease in talent.

Definitely need the denominator for context. For example, the 2013 draft's first round has seen about 2/3rds of players generate less than two wins in the majors. And nearly half below replacement level or never made the majors. The 2012 3rd round has seen one player get to five wins for his career. 2011 2nd round has four players get to five wins. How do amateur free agents at different price points compare?

I appreciate you conceding the point, it's a relatively rare thing in an online debate. One more point on Cruz. In his 20s he was tied for 741st all time in homers. Fewer than Rafeal Furcal, or Chris Hoiles or Nate McLouth. Well behind Ty Wigginton and Disco Dan Ford. He had fewer homers than Hugh Duffy, who played his entire career in the 1800s when you could lead the league with 11 homers. Since he turned 30 he has more homers than Mike Schmidt, Reggie Jackson, Stan Musial, Ted Williams, Willie McCovey and Harmon Killebrew. More than Arod or any number of PED era sluggers like Steve Finley and Gary Sheffield, Jason Giambi and Sammy Sosa. More than Eddie and Yaz, Franks Thomas and Robinson. More than all but nine players, ever. And his top six performances in that last timeframe have come since he turned 33. So not just his 30s, but his mid-to-late 30s. The only players to hit more homers than Cruz from 33-39 were Bonds, Ruth, Raffy, and Aaron. Betting on that happening is certifiably crazy.

How do those payrolls prove that they were spending prior year money on that year's payroll? I think it's reasonably clear that (at least) most of this year's payroll always comes out of this year's revenues. There's some cushion from money saved, but no team wants to get into a situation where they're subsidizing current year expenses with savings. And I think MLB heavily discourages teams from doing that.

Yes, I suppose you could argue that if the choice is between an ill-advised four year deal for an old DH, or a $160M deal for a guy who's going to hit .170... you're right, the Cruz deal is awesome and should have been signed. But the real answer was don't do either, especially if you're arguing that the Orioles need to be completely cold and unemotional and let everyone who's even moderately expensive/risky go. Which you are.

MLB GMs are paid to see into the future, and should be fired when they don't.

The only context in which resigning Cruz was good is hindsight. At the time you have to set aside emotion and let him walk, unless you know and don't care that he has access to essentially undetectable PEDs. The Orioles had Cruz for his age 33 season (one day shy of 34). His top bb-ref comps for ages 32-35 are: Henry Rodriguez (last good year at 32) Gus Zernial (okay in last year as a regular at 34) Kevin Mitchell (hit well but never played 100 games in his 30s) Jeromy Burnitz (had a 120 OPS+ in Colorado at 35, but had a combined 98 OPS+ from 33-on) There is just no logical way you can argue that you need to be emotionally detached and let players go instead of resigning them for their expensive decline years, and then turn around and argue that you should have signed Nelson Cruz at 34/35.

It is not easy to trade the guys who you developed and became fan favorites and key members of good teams. Everyone hates that. Even the GM doing it hates it. When they let Markakis go probably 75% of Orioles Hangout thought it was a terrible idea, and it just kept getting terrible-er every time someone played the outfield in Baltimore who wasn't great. Frobby still hates it even thought it made financial and on-field sense. Letting Nelson Cruz walk was a very Rays kind of decision, and to this day probably 90% of the board thinks that was a tragic mistake. Yes, you have to set emotion aside when you're in the Orioles' position. But it will always be controversial and if it doesn't work out (which it won't some of the time) the fans and the press will crucify you.

You're right, I should just stay away more because I don't find it pleasurable to read thread after thread about how Angelos is ultracheap, Elias is barely able to keep up, the rebuild is probably going to fail and was ill-advised to begin with, and the whole organization is probably hopeless.

That's right in line with my assumptions. They've almost always been willing to spend an average-ish amount on MLB player payroll and mid-tier declining free agents, but very, very little emphasis has been placed on keeping up in everything else like development, scouting, information technology, international academies, minor league and spring infrastructure, analytics, draft overslots, etc, etc.

Yes, with any competence whatsoever the Orioles should have been ranked 20 spots ahead of the Rays, and everyone else for that matter. Also, we should implicitly trust this one article by some guy as the ground truth on the rankings. And the Orioles should have traded their TOR ace for a bunch of prospects so they could win this.

Blaming ownership is like howling at the moon. Sure, that has been a major impediment, and may continue to be. But there's nothing at all any of us, including Mike Elias, can do about it. After 25 years it's become tiresome to repeat the "Angleos is never going to let the team be any good" mantra as a response to all conversations. But just like in 2005 or 2015 we can talk about what the team can do within the context of reality (i.e. the Angeloses own the team) to get better.

I don't know how you can possibly look at the performance of the 1980-2018 Orioles' development system and think that they put as much emphasis on that or resources towards that as even an average MLB team. To me it's been clear for several decades that they had a threadbare development program that wasn't remotely on par with most other MLB teams. There have been points where they made improvements, but I think that brought them from decades behind the cutting edge to only many years behind. It's a situation where (and I'm making up the numbers here) the Orioles were on par with everyone else in 1977 and they got better at 1% a year, while the Yanks and Sox and Dodgers and Cardinals and eventually Rays were getting better at 3% a year. So in 2010 they were basically where the Sox were in 1995.

The 1954-2018 Baltimore Orioles.

Most GMs didn't inherit a 47-win team with a farm system that hadn't been consistently productive since the late 1970s and an ownership group that pretty explicitly told previous management to stay away from most avenues of talent acquisition.

I guess you don't believe that there is any overlap or interaction whatsoever between the scouting/development/infrastructure budgets and the player payroll budgets?