Pickles
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Posts posted by Pickles
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3 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:
Huh?
What does the delusions of the prior regime have to do with anything?
It is actually difficult to be this poor on the field. This is ordinarily a rare occurrence, to see teams do this poorly. The 2018 team stumbled onto it. This year is 100% intentional, and that's an impressive achievement.
They thought they could compete from 2016-2018 and they made a lot of moves in order to do so. Those moves almost all came with long-term opportunity costs.
It's exactly why we bottomed out so badly, and why this rebuild has been so mammoth.
Winning 47 games when spending 160 million dollars and legitimately thinking you had a shot at the playoffs is so on another level than winning 53 games in a year when you hoped not to lose 100 if things went right. I mean, it's not even comparable.
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3 minutes ago, Tony-OH said:
Were they delusional or were they under marching orders to continue to try and compete even though most could see the window was closed?
We also have to remember the dysfunction of the three headed regime with DD, Anderson and Buck all via for some kind of influence with an aged owner who probably should not have been making major decisions at this time in his life.
I can't answer that. I'm not sure it matters other than maybe assigning blame.
Regardless, it still stemmed from delusion- be it ownership's or management's.
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1 minute ago, Tony-OH said:
I never said he began the stripping down, but he traded everything player of value that he could and replaced them with AAAA guys. Not only did he trade the three you mentioned, he also trade away the three effective relievers (Bleier, Givens and Castro).
So no, I'm not wrong at all. He did strip this team down to bare bones and didn't even replace them with marginal ball players or players just needing a shot somewhere.
Along with the fact that he's in the toughest division in baseball with a ridiculous unbalanced schedule, and this is how you become historically bad.
It's semantics but it really does color how people view the rebuild so that's why I even bothered to say anything.
There are things Elias could have done to make this team better- some, as you point out, were simply things he didn't have to do- i.e. trade some vets for prospects. It's pretty clear that this team didn't have to be THIS bad. A couple minor upgrades and we are indeed just garden variety bad and nobody is too upset.
However, the reason we're not competitive now- and I'm not talking the difference between 55 and 65 wins, but actually a real major league franchise- is because of decisions which were made in advance of Elias ever arriving.
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2 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:
Because it's really hard to not improve when 47-115 is your baseline. (Yes I know the 2021 team currently has a higher winning percentage)
It takes talent, it takes vision, it takes dedication to lose that many games.
Eh. It just takes delusion. The prior regime was delusional about the reality of their situation.
We see it all the time. Much of the world is not in touch with reality. And most of the terrible things happening on your television screen every day, happen because people aren't in touch with reality and are delusional. They're often the very "smartest" and "brightest" and "accomplished" among us.
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Just now, Can_of_corn said:
We thought the historically bad season was going to be 2018 not 2021.
I'm not sure why anybody would think we'd getter better AFTER undertaking a rebuild.
I mean the whole point of such an exercise is generally to get worse in the short term.
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Just now, Tony-OH said:
I think this amount of ineptitude is why some people have become frustrated with the rebuild. I think 98% of people new this team needed to be rebuilt and losing was going to be a part of it. I'm not sure anyone thought they needed to be historically bad to do so.
Elias stripped this team down until it was an embarrassment in historical ways, and while I don't believe he meant for the team to be this bad, at the end of the day, it was that bad.
It's a little disheartening to know your team has sunk to this kind of low and even if the team returns to some kind of winning consistent ways, this stain will never go fully away.
I understand the frustration and I share it in many ways. As SG has said, we didn't need to be this bad. If we were just garden variety bad, there'd be few complaints.
I really do think going forward however, we won't be this bad. If we stink like this in 12 months, something's gone wrong, and perhaps a change in direction is in order.
However, the bolded is just wrong. The stripping down was done before he even arrived.
Now, Elias has continued to do things, like trade Iglesias, or Villar, or Bundy, that has contributed to this team being this bad. If Elias had a more conservative approach we probably could just be garden variety bad.
But to me the difference between 65 and 55 wins is not enough to say that Elias stripped this thing down.
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In the end we probably end up looking back at this as the bottom of the bottom, and when the turnaround began.
Similar to how I've always felt about the 30-3 game in 07.
It's not perfectly analogous, because in 07 we actually got worse on the field going forward, but there was a clear direction.
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20 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:
Yea but they were pushing a 170M dollar payroll not that long ago. Again, if you want to put it altogether in the same budget (not sure if teams do that or not) a 170M dollar budget is significant and there is plenty of money left over for the ML team. That’s all I’m saying.
I think they were losing money when they pushed in then. But we'll never really know about that.
All we can really know is that money isn't fungible, and the costs of running an international program (not to mention the domestic one) are significant.
All we can do is speculate and argue mindlessly about money.
I repose the question to you and the board at general as a more interesting one:
How many players should we be running through our academy down their in the Dominican?
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3 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:
Well the coaches at the ML level are making what, 250-750k? can’t imagine the coaches down there make that kind of money and probably not close to it.
Labor is probably relatively I expected since down there, so maintenance and stuff like that is probably cheap.
I just cant imagine this costs that much. And btw, when I say, that much, I’m talking relatively speaking. Like I said before, I think it’s a drop in the bucket for them (and any ML Team) and really should have no factor in what they spend on the ML level.
How many players? I think that's the question. How many coaches depends on how many players.
Labor is cheap. You're right.
As always, you manage to take something that is clearly a matter of degrees and reduce it to a black and white issue.
It takes money to run an International program right. A lot of it. I just laid out how 10-20 million annually be spent on that.
Money is not fungible. If you spend it here, you cannot spend it there.
You seem to argue: Regardless of the Davis contract, it's a drop. We can spend more to win an insiginificant amount more.
Regardless of the cost to build and set up and maintain international facilities- not to mention find and acquire the talent- it's a drop. We can spend more.
I'm here to tell you: That doesn't comport with reality. Resources are limited. And you have to prioritize.
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Just now, Sports Guy said:
What exactly do you think they are spending 10-20M dollars on?
And btw, going back to the point of this..even if they are and even if they are spending an additional 5-7M on top of that for Intl signings, they should still be able to spend 130-140M on payroll and that’s how numbers stand now..it’s possible/probable that this number rises if they win, with the new CBA stuff and any other potential revenue generating things they may do long term.
Well, what do you think the facility costs down there? I have no idea. But I could easily see 10 million dollars. We're talking fields, facilities, and dorms/living space, office space. Then what's the maintenance on that? 10-20% annually?
How many scouts do you have? What do you pay them? How much do are their expenses? Surely far more theirthan actual salary. Coaches. Groundskeepers. Cooks. Maids. Security. Janitors.I work in education. I have spent a long time abroad running operations like this. Not in the Caribbean however. What you're essentially talking about is running a prep school, with top-notch athletic facilities. The way to really evaluate it would be to talk about price per head.
How many players do you want to go?
I could see players costing the org ~50 K annually in such a scenario.
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Did we ever hear a number on the new project?
I can easily see that project being a ~ 10 mil project. And then the upkeep? 5%? 10%
I believe it costs real money to have a real international program.
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5 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:
Well think about it. How much could it possibly cost to upkeep it and stuff like that?
Even building it. How much could it cost?
There are a lot of things they may be paying for but the cost of doing things and the run that down there can’t be that much. We aren’t talking about $20-50M a year.
Ten seems completely reasonable for me. Hell, twenty seems possible.
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1 hour ago, sportsfan8703 said:
Mancini is a must trade because of AR needing those 1B/DH ABs.
This is something I hadn't thought of too much.
There's some truth here, but I wonder how much.
How many games do you want AR to get at 1/DH? If he's the catcher they say he is, I don't think it's that many.
There were roster construction hypothesis similar when Wieters was coming up, about how we'd need to accommodate him ABs at DH. But that never really matieralized.
You just catch him 130-140 games, and give him a day off once a week. Not a lot of time left to worry about.
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34 minutes ago, Frobby said:
What product did the O’s gut? They won 47 games in 2018. They didn’t need to gut it, the team already sucked.
I guess this fact is like Jimi Hendrix: A lot of people listen to it, but they just can't hear it.
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Just now, Moose Milligan said:
Well it was a narcissistic take. He wasn't wrong.
For the last time, I think the article was good for what it was. It was for a national publication. It was intended to inform baseball fans who are not necessarily Orioles fans as to who they have in the minors and how they can possibly get better. From that perspective, it was a good article. It did that clearly and concisely. It didn't ramble, it was focused.
And now it's some kind of analysis BEYOND "the pitching is terrible because the pitching is terrible."
But you don't have to be a good journalist to critique journalism, clearly you've critiqued this article all the while missing what the intent was (again, an article for a national publication). No one here's asked you to do any kind of journalism.
Yeah, I'm a narcissist because I have a different evaluation of a sports article than you.
That's completely normal discourse.
Again, we have a difference of opinion.
Ranting at me and insulting me won't change my mind.
Even if simultaneously accusing me of being the one ranting and insulting.
We agree to disagree.
Stop ranting and showing your ass. One might considerate pretty narcissistic.
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And you really you need something more specific?
Ok, we've had a whole class of rookie pitchers come up this year, and really struggle. Far worse than might have been expected.
Why not explore why?
Maybe ask some questions to people that I don't get access to because I'm not a professional journalist.
How about something like that?
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3 minutes ago, Moose Milligan said:
I don't think I really ranted there. And again, you're saying it's not good journalism without providing examples of what good journalism is. You say you want to further your understanding of a topic, yet you don't say what you don't understand and would like to learn, specifically. You said "some kind of analysis" but didn't say what that would entail. You wanted to know why the pitching was historically bad but that's it...again, just a shallow as the article.
I've not taken anything personal here. It's not like you insulted something personal about me. If I made fun of your mother, that'd be personal. And I'm also not really bent out of shape, I'm pretty amused.
You're accusing me of "showing my ass." I was accused of being a "narcissist."
Simply because I've criticized an article that ya'll seem to think is good.
But I'm the one ranting. And taking things "personal."
LOL. You can't make it up.
I said some kind of analysis beyond "The pitching is terrible because the pitching is terrible" is the kind of thing I would call good journalism. I've defined it pretty accurately.
It's not my responsibility to DO that good journalism. I'm not going to do that analysis. Because I"m not a good journalist.
But a good journalist and a good article would have analysis that was deeper than "The pitching is terrible because it is terrible."
And I'm not sure why you in particularly can't just accept that- at the very least that that is my opinion.
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Just now, Sports Guy said:
Yes…I’m not being clear. I see a little bit of it here but what I see on social media is far worse and some of that is from bloggers, podcasters, etc…ie people like the rest of us who really follow the team.
Well, I'll say two things to that:
No team in history has ever been built entirely through amateur acquisitions, so anyone with those expectations is wrong. I personally have seen nobody with expectations like that, but I can't deny they exist.
Secondly, we will bring in people from outside the organization. Obviously. They won't need to be high-priced FA necessarily.
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Just now, Moose Milligan said:
I'm more interested in why you're picking this hill to die on. It's kind of weird. I'm not even defending the article, I simply stated what the intent of the article was. You agreed that it wasn't "for" you, yet you continued to rant about it.
You didn't even really go into any details about the specific analysis of the pitching woes and what you were looking for. We're not talking about my standards here, we're actually talking about yours.
You said you wanted something more interesting than "the pitching his historically terrible because they're giving up runs a historical rate." You wanted him to "dig into the pitching data and come up with 'some kind of analysis' that would offer a fresh perspective," which is still really vague. "Some kind of analysis" is precisely as vague as the article you're claiming he wrote.
Is that it, you wanted some stat analysis? Did you want him to explain ERA+ to you? FIP?
"Far more interesting." "Some kind of analysis."
You also said you don't have much free time, and what free time you do have, you're extremely lazy with. And yet here we are.
What I find hilarious, is that this thread is a great example of people accusing one side of taking things personal and getting bent out of shape, while simultaneously accusing others of taking things personal and getting bent out of shape.
I made no rant. I'm not dying on any hill.
I find the article to be shallow. I don't find it to be good journalism.
It did absolutely nothing to further my understanding. Or anyone else's on this board.
We all acknowledge that.
So that's what I'm asking for. Something to further my understanding of a topic. If you want me to call it good journalism.
If stating blatantly obvious truths and generally acknowledged facts is enough for you, great. I gave you multiple opportunities to end this conversation we're simply agree to disagree.
But you had to rant. And die on this hill.
(My being as "vague" as the original article, is not insult to me. But the original article. Which was my point. I am not the professional journalist. If you want me to praise professional journalists, they should exceed the quality of a message board poster.)
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Just now, Moose Milligan said:
You've not really offered anything other than "I want more."
For not praising the article, you sure are defending it passionately.
What about the very specific analysis of the pitching woes I suggested? That doesn't meet your standards?
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1 hour ago, DrungoHazewood said:
I hope I'm not so narcissistic as to think everything that isn't targeted at me is trash.
I'll take your insults and blatantant hyperbole to be an admission that you don't actually have anything to say.
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1 hour ago, Sports Guy said:
And yet some here seem to think that they can…and people in the Twitterverse seem to get upset that people don’t see 5 home grown starters, 7 home grown relievers and 9 home grown position players all leading to a WS.
If there is any critique of that or any negativity towards the team, it’s like the biggest deal ever. I just don’t get it.
I personally see this as a very well balanced article explaining things pretty well.
I don't see this article as critiquing the O's. I think it is far more positive than some of the other recent takes. And I don't see anybody criticizing it on those grounds.
Furthermore, your classification of people's position on the idea that the rebuild will be accomplished entirely through the farm system is false. At least here. I can't speak to Twitter.
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1 hour ago, Moose Milligan said:
Well I don't think the author was looking to reach a specific word count.
I'm not praising the article, I think it's pretty solid. With a good conclusion. Can't rely on the farm system to get the team where it needs to be. Nothing wrong with that.
And if that's enough for you, that's fine.
Like I said, I'd like a little more.
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1 minute ago, Moose Milligan said:
Well IIRC, it was a fangraphs article, one of the national publications that regularly do better than...this, which is a fangraphs article.
Why is the pitching historically terrible? Because they're giving up runs at a historically terrible rate. That doesn't require much thinking.
Again, you're missing the point. This article isn't for you. You already know all of this stuff. This article is for the Seattle Mariners diehard who doesn't know what's going on with the Orioles and would be curious as to what's going on with them.
See, that's the depth of the analysis provided. Which is the problem.
Now, I'm no sabermatician, or a mathmetician, or a baseball journalist, and I don't have that much free time, and what free time I do have, I am extremely lazy with- but, I do propose a professional with the time on his hands could dig into the pitching data, and come up with some kind of analysis that would offer a fresh perspective.
Something far more interesting than "They pitching is historically terrible because they're giving up runs at a historical rate." That isn't analysis.
And I get that the article isn't "for" me. And it isn't "for" us on this board.
That's exactly why I'm surprised some on the board are praising it, as if it something that we all don't already know.
19 Game Streak Post-Mortem
in Orioles Talk
Posted
See, I just don't think it is that hard.
To me this was entirely expected.
Again, when you START the rebuild with a 47 win team that has been stripped bare, and a MiL system with few of note above A ball, I don't expect it to be quick.
I compared this to 30-3 before. That was right as AM came in and the decision to rebuild was made. Well, we got worse. We lost more under AM than we did under his predecessors. That's generally what a rebuild looks like.
And because we started in such a terrible position this time, the depth and breadth of this does not shock me.