FanSince88

Unless a contending team is extremely desperate (as we were in 2013), I can't see Bundy having much trade value. He's probably more valuable to the Orioles than he is to other teams. At least he can provide innings so that our bullpens' arms don't fall off, and we don't have to call up prospects who aren't ready. He's basically cannon fodder, he's out there to throw soft, throw strikes, get barreled, but also get the games over with and put everyone out of their misery for the night. That's not attractive to contending teams but it is useful to rebuilding teams. There's 1,458 innings in a season, and someone's gotta pitch them for us. Might as well be Bundy for 10% of them. If we somehow have 5 other competent starters by the end of 2020, he can be non-tendered.

I'd really hope that Elias sat Cashner down shortly after this came out and told him, "look, Cash, I'm super-flattered that you like our city and organization so much. But right now the best thing you can do for us is let us cash in on your value to help our rebuild. If you're willing to take a team-friendly deal next offseason to come back to Baltimore, I'm open to it!"

Yeah, good point there Drungo, especially since it's pretty clear there were PEDs involved. Nevertheless, I don't believe it's out of the realm of possibility for Trey to follow Raffy's trajectory into his mid 30s (33 or 34). After that, there will almost certainly be a decline in production.

If we're on the topic of comps, and want to be on the very optimistic side, how about....Rafael Palmeiro? Palmeiro had a strong hit and power tool. He tried to play outfield early in his career and wasn't good defensively, then moved to first and was just okay. Mancini's defensive metrics at first base only are fairly similar (in a small sample size!) to Raffy's a the same age. Way too early to declare Mancini another Palmeiro, but perhaps Palmeiro represents the ceiling of Manicini's value? It will all depend of course on how Mancini's bat ages. If it ages gracefully, and he's willing and able to adjust as the league adjusts to him, he's certainly got a great shot at providing similar career-wide value. That's a big "if" right now, but the potential is probably there.

https://www.pressboxonline.com/2019/06/21/jim-henneman-heres-why-trey-mancini-wont-be-dealt-by-orioles?fbclid=IwAR0XubZ5Woo9IcXI40ncYc07FS0UPA2ViHdGQARawR-RwMmmFmGfQXgkUPE Essentially, compared to others at his position on contending teams, he's actually not all that special, despite being easily the best hitter on the Orioles. This is a pretty strong argument. O's might be better off trying to see if he'd take a super team-friendly extension deal instead of trading him. I'm talking about maybe something like 5/50, to lock him in a fixed value during arbitration and get a few extra years after that of team control at a reasonable price. Mancini would get predictability and guaranteed money and avoid the risk of non-tender if he falls off.

I'm inclined to cut the guy a bit of slack. He's never had a single AAA at bat. He'll never hit for power. It took him until last year to have an OPS over .725 in the minors. If he can push his OBP over .300, and play up to his potential on defense, he'll have value. That probably won't happen this season, but it could in late 2020 or 2021.

I guess the question around Martin is can the Orioles find a SS on the WW with as good or better long-term upside as Martin? My understanding is there's not really anyone in our minor leagues who is equipped to play SS in the ML right now. If we can find a SS on the WW who has more upside than Martin to replace him, then sure, cut him. But if not, there's not really any point. He's here for his glove in the short term, and then long term the hope is he figures things out with his bat after a year at Norfolk in 2020. We'll need Martin's glove even more if we trade Villar this season.

If you're going to be mad about teams that tank, look at some of the teams in the incredibly soft AL Central (minus the Twins). Nobody except the Twins seemed to show any interest in making the playoffs out of that division the past offseason, even though it was right there for the taking. The Orioles are one of the few teams in the MLB that has a legitimate excuse for being bad -- in general, their players across the entire high minors and the MLB roster are awful, with a handful of exceptions. There's not much you can do to fix that situation in the short term. Even if they broke the bank on FA signings last offseason you're still looking at a ceiling of 70-72 wins.

Yeah this makes sense. It should be similar to what the NFL does. MLB has teams playing roughly 46-47% of their regular season games against division opponents. In the NFL it's only 37.5%. MLB needs to reduce number of divisional games and then give bad teams an easier schedule in the non-division games and good teams a harder schedule.

If you think "Dillon Tate" is going to do much better in 2019 than Dan Straily -- who did have a track record of modest MLB accomplishment spanning years -- in the big leagues, and make that your hill to die on, vaya con dios, I guess. It's rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic as far as I'm concerned. Certainly not an indication that the team is trying to lose, either way. It is just a reflection of how bereft of talent the MLB team and upper minors currently is. What's next, are folks going to start clamoring for Grayson Rodriguez to play in the MLB next month?

How exactly would this team avoid "tanking" with the current personnel in our system? Sure, we could promote Mountcastle now and DFA Davis. That might be worth a couple wins the rest of the season, maybe. Who else are these incredible can't-miss prospects that we're holding back and would be sure to help us win 70 games instead of 50? Because I don't really see a lot of that right now. I wouldn't have minded if we'd signed Keuchel, honestly, but we'd have had to offer him a lot more than the Braves gave him, and he might help us win 2-3 games a year over the next guy in our system, I guess. That's not going to make the kind of impact we need to contend.

I take no pleasure in any of this. Playing davis in the short term does help elias inch toward his goal of orioles playoff contention in 2022 or 2023. Davis alone could make the difference between a first pick and fifth pick next year, if he is several wins below replacement again. However the integrity of the game is more important. There has to be some baseline degree of professionalism for regular mlb players, for the good of the sport. Davis hasnt hit that arguably since mid 2017. Baseball is a declining sport right now and davis will help it decline if he keeps playing

At some point you would think even the mlb commish might want to have an informal chat with elias and the angelos brothers. At a time when strikouts across the mlb are at a record high and the game desperately needs more action and to attract more young people, having Davis play is hurting not just the orioles but the game as a whole. Better to have a low power slap hitter who could at least put the ball in play.

So in the blurb about 2B, they keep referring to Jonathan Villar as an "average" second baseman (both defensively and offensively). Yet the Orioles are ranked dead last at 2B. All I can say is...

Very quietly, Buck and Dan are still unemployed. Interesting. I know a lot of folks seemed very sure both would immediately get jobs elsewhere the minute they left the Orioles. But they haven't. Is Duquette seen as out of touch in this analytic-driven era? And has Buck's Britton decision in 2016 tarnished his reputation? Or was Buck's decision to bat Chris Davis over 400 times last year, usually in the middle of the order, part of it? Or is it something else? Maybe they're just deciding to hang it up after two frustrating years (I could hardly blame them).

Great post and i agree 100%

Yeah i'm not putting a lot of stock in the name dropping as it relates to holding on or extending players. I think that was mostly just a hat tip, "vote of confidence" for those guys. Fully expect Elias to deal them if he thinks their trade value is high enough and it's worth the return.

Thanks for the correction, although I would like to see a weighted average of across the board projections of these prospects (assuming the OH rank is not that). As I'm sure you're aware, there's no way Rodriguez makes the ML roster as a SP until 2022 at the earliest. Likewise, I'd be very surprised if DL Hall makes the ML roster until late 2020 at the very, very earliest. That's our top two right there -- still speculative and a long way off. Mountcastle is a nice hitter and all but a negative in the field by all accounts, unless we most him to first where CD is blocking him. Will be interesting to see if Kremer or Hays get a cup of coffee at the majors next year -- 2019 will be a make or break year for both of those guys. There's no way I would consider Hunter Harvey above a 50 at this point, the guy is totally snakebit by injuries even worse than Bundy was which I can't believe I'm saying but it's true. I'm a bit embarrassed but I've not heard of Lowther/Knight/Hanifee before, will have to check those guys out. Regardless, the word on the street seems to be that our minor league system is still in the bottom third even with all DD's midseason aquisitions. Don't see Elias realistically propelling it to the top ten -- unless a few guys come out of nowhere -- before 2021 at the earliest.

I would say four too if Elias was over 40 or I thought anyone in our current minor league system had the potential to be an above-league-average MLB player. Diaz is our top rated prospect right now and everyone is pretty sure that league average is his ceiling. It's all downhill and more speculative after him. Elias' 2019 draft pick probably won't see AA until 2021 at the very earliest. Probably won't see the majors until 2022 at the very earliest. Same for most of the international guys he picks up over the next year or two. And he's probably going to learn on the job to some extent and make some "rookie" mistakes. Put all those factors together, and it's hard for me to imagine us even having a strong minor league system before 2021 or 2022, and that could easily be set back by injuries or underperformance that is always a risk no matter who is running things. That's to say nothing of the mothership, of course. If we end up with some elite prospects on ML roster as September 2022 callups, that will probably be reasonably on schedule. TL;DR current organization is a dumpster fire and Elias is very young. Demanding he be fired anytime before 2023 is irrational.

For me, it's five years. I'm going to refrain from wondering if he's the right man for the Orioles until the end of 2023. If by then we still aren't over .500 AND our minor league system isn't better than mediocre AND it's clear that Elias has actually been the one calling the shots, then I will start to be worried that he might not be suited for the GM role in Baltimore. But by 2023 if he is able to get the team winning again or we aren't winning yet but our minors are elite or the ownership is breaking their promise and keeps meddling in baseball decisions, then I will be fine with Elias continuing in his role indefinitely. Just hope he isn't poached by another organization before the Orioles start to see success at the majors.

I hope that was meant to be sarcasm.

There's no way Chris Davis should have more than maybe 80-90 plate appearances from now until the end of the season. Buck needs to stop kissing his rear and give the young guys a chance.

I'm going to sound like a broken record, but he needs to be benched again. He is forcing Mancini out of position, and because of that domino effect he is blocking a now-healthy DJ Stewart AND Mountcastle. He should be treated as a low value Rule 5 guy for the rest of the season, and then re-evaluated next spring.

He's already indirectly blocking Rickard from being an everyday outfielder, and if DJ Stewart were healthy, he would probably be blocking him from a promotion too. He's forcing Trey out of position which is the domino the is causing the aforementioned blocking. Next year he will probably block Mountcastle too.

What I'm starting to get worried about is Mountcastle being blocked. Very few think he sticks at third and the general thought seems to be he's going to be a first baseman. By the middle of next season, his bat could be ready for the big leagues but we'll have at least 3 other 1B/DH blocking him if we hang on to Trumbo. Also, Davis could indirectly block Stewart and Mullins this season because he's forcing Mancini to left field. It's one thing to trot Davis out there in a year you have no chance to contend. But it's quite another if he starts blocking quality prospects and delaying their development. We're not quite at that point yet -- although you could credibly argue that Mancini playing left is hurting his development a lot -- but we will be headlong into that phase by this time next year for sure.