geschinger

2024. Best case scenario is 2023 is like in Houston in 2015 - exceed expectations and sneak into playoffs but not really a contender. But realistically if they stick to what I think the plan is next year they see what they have with all the prospects and then in the offseason after the 2023 season they start dipping into the inventory built up during all the losing to add pieces they think they need to legitimately contend. They've been executing a plan that is remarkably similar to the one Houston executed and I just don't see Elias making a significant divergence from that plan when (A) it's proven it can work and (B) it seems to be working in Baltimore.

That is my expectation. Definitely Henderson, Westburg, Stowers, Hall and Rodriguez. Probably Cowser as well and maybe one or two more guys from Bowie (Ortiz etc....) if they continue to produce enough to get promoted to Norfolk and then produce there as well. Giving a ton of ABs and Innings to rookies is not typically a recipe for contention.

This is exactly right. It'll be even more frustrating for many when I suspect next year will also not be "all in" to get a playoff spot. I suspect next year is going to be all about seeing what they have - lots of ABs for prospects at the expense of W/L record in 2023. I see the offseason after the 2023 season as when moves are made to optimize W/L record in 2024 and beyond. That is when I think this team starts going all-in.

Povich was a soft tossing starter in college. That he's gained that kind of velocity gives me some hope that he's someone who is going to continue to get better with the more reps he gets with the changes that the Twins made to his mechanics.

If his August/September are anything like July I'd say it's likely. Pena has really struggled offensively the past two months and if voters look at more than just the surface stats he's already produced more value than Witt Jr despite playing in a lot less games.

I doubt it. I would expect him to struggle initially and may not be enough of the season left once things start to click (hopefully) to end the year with a .751 OPS.

The odds of Grayson being ready / capable of returning a pick were nowhere near what they were with Adley. The strategically smart play with Grayson was to start in Norfolk. Unless Elias thought Adley was not as good of a prospect as he seemed to everyone else the smart play was to go for the pick. When it comes to Gunnar it would be irrational to bring him up early enough to lose eligibility to potentially return a draft pick. I think Gunnar will be instructive of how he would have handled Adley if healthy and by extenssion what he values. Do they bring him up later this year and put him in a position to win a pick or do they hold him back a few months into 2023.

Nothing as explicit as we plan on him being the OD catcher but he said multiple times the decision would be merit based and he had a chance to open with the club. When I hear him interviewed he often mentions probabilities and odds. With a player like Adley the odds of earning an extra pick were pretty good. The odds of getting the extra year were/are far from a sure thing. I think there is a decent chance he gets a full year of service time even coming up when he did. JRod seems to have ROY locked up but whose behind him - Pena and Witt Jr? I could easily see him catching them if he plays the rest of the year like he did in July.

We can never know for sure how things would have played out but from all the talk leading into ST my impression was Adley was going to start in Baltimore. Once he got hurt the extra pick was no longer a possibility the next best thing was to take a shot at gaining an extra year.

Punishment starts once the pool is exceeded but is only financial until you cross the 105% threshold at which point you start losing future picks.

Doubtful the Orioles or any other team willingly exceeds 100% of the draft pool and willingly takes the punishment. We should assume the draft pool is a treated as a hard cap.

Adley was the right pick IMO because of the scarcity of catchers that have his combination of offensive and defensive abilities. The Orioles may have gotten someone close to as good (if not better) as Witt in Henderson and then again with Holliday. A catcher with Adley's skillset is so much harder to find.

Is that a fair criticism - do any teams go into the draft expecting to take the penalty as a cost of doing business for exceeding the bonus pool?

This. Almost nothing that Elias has done during his tenure in Baltimore is surprising if one looks at what worked and didn't work from his time in Houston. And Keuchel was like Grayson and Hall in that he was inherited from a previous regime not a draft success story for Luhnow/Elias etc..

This is definitely possible, but not sure the evidence is there yet to support he overly enamoured with the underslot approach. Maybe if he does it again this year. He's done BPA once and underslot twice in Baltimore. The track record of the Astros when he was there was not afraid to go underslot (Correa) but mostly it was BPA.

You are tyring to have it both ways. They saved 400k on that 12k signing but the main reason they got so much talent into their organization is they took the approach which you thought is so poor. They did underslot/overslot with the Davis pick. The money was not there to go overslot with those three other first round talents had they not gone underslot on Davis. It isn't saving the 400k on the 12k pick that made that possible, it was the underslot/overslot approach with the #1 pick that did.

If in this scenario Haskin doesn't sign and chooses to go back to school you have to subtract the slot value of 1.9m and you've exceeded 5% and the Orioles lose their 2021 first round pick (and the associated bonus pool).

That is not a realistic approach - it's a recipe for getting your 1st round pick the next year. 1.5m for rounds 2 through 10 would mean just about every pick would need to agree to sign for well under slot. If they don't, you lose that pick's slot value. One or two guys don't sign and you've now exceeded the overall draft pool by more than 5% and you've surrendered your first rounder the following year. If I remember correctly it's not that much more of an overage to then lose a second first round pick. Mathamatically possible, reaslitically impossible.

It's not wrong. The vast majority of examples of teams being able to go +1m over slot has required underslot in round 1. There is no way the Orioles have Mayo and Baulmer in the system if they had given Austin Martin $7m - there would have been no money left. The Astros could have still gone overslot to the extent they did for Brett Philips, but no, they would not have been able to have still landed McCullers had they not gone underslot for Correa.

Not really, because for every example of it not working out there are examples of where the underslot/overslot thought is the opposite of a poor thought. Kind of like when Elias was part of the approach of going way underslot on Correa and landing Lance McCullers with the savings. While I'm not confident that we'll look back at 2021 and be able to say it was the right call (making a leap and assuming it would have been Lawlar instead) I'm cautiously optimistic that it will end up being clearly the right thought with the 2020 draft. At this point I preefer having Kjerstad+Mayo+Baulmer in the system over Lacy or Martin.

It doesn't have to be another $2m signing, the extra resources could be spread around. The number of potential targets depends on how agressive you want to get. Looking at a past draft as an example - In the DL Hall draft, two of the Orioles unsigned HS picks turned into 1st round picks a couple of years later and third developed into a 2nd round pick. Obviously picking where they did in that draft they didn't have the draft pool capital to make buying them out of their college commitments work like they did with Mayo, Baulmer and Willems. But in a scenario where they did if those resources could have been used to buy them out of their college commitments that would have been a homerun to have those guys in the system.

Personally I think there is some separation between Jones and the others and therefore he'd be my pick. But if they are considered close, maximize the use of the draft pool capital. If hypothetically on a scale of 1 to 100 their analysis is that Jones is 100 and Johnson is a 99 and going 1.5m over slot with a competetive balance pick allows the team to get someone who they rate as a 70 instead of an expected 55 if they were limited to slot then it's a no brainer. The 99 player and the 70 player is a better use of draft pool resources than using the same for a 100 player and the 50 player.

That is the advantage of #1 overall. The amount over slot for Adley+Henderson was less than 300k and then it was exactly slot for Stowers and Watson and then underslot for a lot of the next several picks presumably to make sure to stay under the overall pool total for the top 10 rounds to avoid penalties / taxes. No resources available to for shots on high school talent that are tought signs like Mayo / Baulmer a year later to buy them out of college commitments, etc..

Not sure that's true but can't say I've looked at all the teams draft picks to know with any certainty. I cannot think of any examples of the top of my head of teams that paid full slot in the first round and still managed to make significant over slot picks in later rounds.

Yep, much more difficult to grade. It'll be interesting to see how things play out. WIth the failure rate of first round picks I lean towards the volume of talent over putting all the eggs in one basket if there isn't a clear cut best player. It will be interesting to see in 5 years which approach created more value for the respective teams.