geschinger

Spending money on things like an academy in the DR doesn't fit the theory. Yes they would avoid large long term contracts but they absolutely would not be putting a team on the field that loses 100+ games a year. If they wanted to maximize a potential sale price whatever spending they did do would be to keep the team competetive enough to not have the cratering of attendance the Orioles have seen since 2017.

Like I said, I'd love for the Orioles to acquire a Feldman type player if they can. I do think they'll try to add at least one more MLB caliber starting pitcher. Looking at the Astros roster, some of that spending made them worse off. They likely would have won more games if they had even more trust in letting the prospects play and instead of trading for Dexter Fowler they kept Joran Lyles and didn't let go of J.D. Martinez. I'm of the opinion the Orioles will spend more in the next couple of weeks but I predict it will be on short term stop gaps that won't win the team many accolades from the impatient.

I'm looking at their roster, they signed Scott Feldman, Chad Qualls, Matt Albers and Jerome Williams for a combined $19m and traded for Dexter Fowler who was another $7m. Only Feldman was more than a 1 year commitment. I would have nothing against moves like that - in fact I would love it if they could find another Feldman type for the rotation. But wouldn't you agree that doubling the payroll with moves like that is not what those who want more spending have in mind?

Ia part of that salary increase for the Rays in 2008 the signing of Longoria? If so that is absolutely the type of move I hope the Orioles would try to do with Adley. As for comparisons, my hope that the 2022 Orioles are the 2014 Astros.

No matter what they did in 2022 I don't see how you get to 40 more wins by 2023. It's unrealsitc.

Improving by approximately the 40 wins it would take to be a legitimate contender in 2023 seems unrealstic unless the team started making some truly dumb decisions like trading prospects for established players instead of having the patience to let them develop.

Absolutely but whether it's this year or next, I'm not too concerned. But assume they do nothing else major this year. Prospects are pushed, start to develop and they win 10-15 more games this year than they did last year and then in 2023 after seeing what they have they start adding some pieces and end 2023 at .500 and while still having a top tier farm system. What grade do you give Elias? For me that would be an A+ for the rebuild and the expectations would shift to how to go from there to a championship. I think this is still an outcome that is possible with everything that has been done up to this point.

If you agree that the approach has been correct and now it's time to try to win 75 games now then it's not a difference of opinion on philosophy but rather timing. I would not have minded seeing the team make more moves to improve this off season for positions where there aren't any potential future pieces in relatively close. But I'm also not opposed to playing out the year pushing prospects at the MLB level to see what they have. My benchmark for a successful teardown/rebuild was to get back to .500 and have a top tier farm system in 5 years. Like I mentioned in a previous post I think that the team is a year behind schedule but considering the lost year of player development that doesn't concern me.

That is of course possible that he was told something else after the interview process. I don't think someone that young who seemingly is well respected as he was in the industry willingly takes a job where he's told ownership will never give him what he needs to win and that will tarnish his reputation.

I know that's probably a popular opinion with many. I feel better about the future of the franchise coming off a some 100 loss seasons but now with one of the best farm systems in baseball than I would have had coming off some 75 win seasons with a middle of the pack farm system at best. Your approach can absolutely work and obviously is less frustrating during the initial years. I prefer more pain up front to get to a point where sustained long term success is possible quicker.

He was not implicated in any way in what hit the Astros FO. He may have had a good chance to have been promoted had he remained as they did not clean house they only got rid of those MLB direclty implicated/punished. It's not like he was someone towards the end of his career taking the job because it might be his only opportunity. I don't believe for a minute he came with the expectation that his job as Orioles GM is to never win.

What in Elias background makes you believe he is someone who doesn't care to win anytime? Do you think he was part of a World Series win and thought that sucked, let me go somewhere else where I can make sure I never have to go through that again?

What does short term risk to get ahead mean? Spend $60-70 million and win and additional 15-20 games? What would that have accomplished other than putting the team further away from long term success? Those 15-20 extra wins would have significantly reduced the draft pool the team has had available to work with to add talent and rebuild the farm system.

I'm pretty sure Mike Elias previous team was at least four years if not more with a bottom of the league payroll and then they ramped up spending. And they started their teardown from a much better place than Baltimore started from. They had a international presence already in place and had talent like Altuve already in their organization. The question is how long do you think a complete tear down / rebuild should take from where the Orioles started from. The Orioles are a year behind where I thought they should be in a well executed full teardown/rebuild but there was an entire year of player development lost which makes me less concerned about that than I would have been.

That isn't really true. They had a payroll consistently in the middle of the pack and as high as 10th as late as 2017. The committed to a complete tear down and rebuild where spending money potentially slows things down as getting top picks / draft pools several years in a row speeds up talent acquisition. If prospects start to develop and they still refuse to up payroll that would be worrisome. Right now the payroll is consistent with what it should be with the type of rebuilding plan they've comitted to.

Dumb decision - it makes the product suffer. Probably worse than implied as I don't see how the costs of having 9 guys travel with a team is anywhere near "millions of dollars". Ths savings have to be significantly less than that.

Thanks for the link, set me down a bit of a rabbit hole with the other articles it linked to. What I found interesting it that the examples of when it hurt teams was when they ended up resigning the player for more money. The example in Cameron's article are more a more difficult calculus and I can see clubs being more reticent to offer them in that they were much shorter deals and opt-outs were earlier. There isn't anywhere near as much reduction of risk value on a 6 year deal with a 3 year opt-out as there is on a 10 year deal with an opt out after 4. I know it's very like confirmation bias, but the quote below from this article I ended up on How newly popular opt-outs can be a team-friendly contract tool is where I remain for the type of offer Correa is rumored to be looking for and with those parameters I think it's a no brainer to offer an opt-out and if he signed hope he opt-out after year four.

Ah, ok. I was confused as it was quoting one of my posts which had nothing to do with frontloading.

You might be replying to something other else than what is quoted in the response? If not, the guaranteed money isn't equal as when the player opts out he's giving up whatever guaranteed money remains in those years being opted out of.

Not really, if they outperform you've gotten four years of outstanding performance *and* you've eliminated all the risk of years 8, 9 and 10 of that contract. More times than not that would work out as a win for the team.

That makes sense to me if the teams are the ones pushing to lock players up for 10 years. But I'm convinced that if teams had their way free agents like Seager and Correa would be getting a 4-6 year contracts not 10 year contracts. Unless I'm totally wrong about that a player opting out is not much different than what a team would consider the best case scenario before the player signed. I like the idea of creativity with salaries and opt-outs. If a team opt-out is a no go, a ^ structure would be interesting. Opt out after four with a contract that has the max salary in years 5.

Do you have any insight to the logic employed by teams that are anti opt out? With analytics as wide spread as they are now, teams have to know most of the value in a 10 year deal comes in the first half of the contract. I think most GMs would prefer to sign a FA for 4 years instead of 10 if the market enabled them to so I don't understand opposition to an opt out.

I love them as well as long as the organization the player is opting out from has the discipline to walk away and not get involved in the bidding on a new contract for that player. If they have that discipline a player opting out getting rid of the back end of the contract would in almost all cases be the best case scenario even if it hurts for a year or two.

Quite an array, I guess one good sign is that it isn't a singular injury that keeps reoccurring. The wrist is the only thing I see him missing time for in multiple years. He's missed time dealing with shoulder inflamation, a back issue, finger sprain, wrist sprain, hamstring, hand, knee, oblique, and elbow.

Like his career productivity his perceived durability is higlhly skewed by his first three seasons. Since 2018 he's played 102, 147, 34 out of 60 and 144games. 15 of those as a PH. Now he's on the wrong side of 30. Rockies will be lucky if they get 120 games a year out of him over the next 4 years.