Pickles
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Posts posted by Pickles
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40 minutes ago, Moose Milligan said:
I thought it was a pretty good article. If anyone out there gives a **** to learn about what the Orioles are up to, this would give anyone who would bother to look a rundown as to what's going on.
It was fair in regards to pitching prospects, recapping what we've discussed about G-Rod, Hall having issues and setbacks and practically everyone else. It was also nice to see Acevedo get a mention.
The summary, IMO, was well done:
It's not wrong.
And actually, I'll come back to this.
I think it is wrong.
To describe the hole as "self-dug" is completely inaccurate.
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17 minutes ago, Moose Milligan said:
You've gotta consider who they're writing for. No, it's not news to anyone on this board and any one of us could have written it.
But again, it's being written for baseball fans who love the game, love advanced metrics but aren't cued into what the Orioles are doing on a daily basis like we are here.
The conclusions are obvious, of course they are. They're obvious because that's what needs to happen here, there's no other option.
What other article would you expect from a national outlet?
Honestly, national pubs like Baseball Prospectus, Fangraphs, and the Athletic regularly do better than this, imo.
I mean again, the thesis is just so thin as to be basically meaningless: The O's are bad; they'll get better; but they have work to get real good.
I mean, no crap. You could literally say that about any bad team.
The only real analysis in the article was on the pitching and it went no deeper than "It's terrible. In a historical way." And it is the weakness of a good farm system.
Again, tell me something I don't know?
How about an analysis of Why. Why is the pitching historically terrible?
But that would require thinking. And that quality left journalism long ago.
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3 minutes ago, Moose Milligan said:
I thought it was a pretty good article. If anyone out there gives a **** to learn about what the Orioles are up to, this would give anyone who would bother to look a rundown as to what's going on.
It was fair in regards to pitching prospects, recapping what we've discussed about G-Rod, Hall having issues and setbacks and practically everyone else. It was also nice to see Acevedo get a mention.
The summary, IMO, was well done:
It's not wrong.
I mean I guess I have a higher standard. I'll grant that it isn't the lazy, kneejerk reactions to "tanking" we've gotten the last couple weeks, but I find the conclusions to extremely thin and obvious.
The basic premise of the article is the O's are historically bad; the farm system is good and help is on the way; the team should soon be "respectable" and no longer historically bad; but to really compete at a championship level they'll need more than they have in house, particularly on the mound, and will have to go to trades and the FA market to get it.
I mean, is any of that news to anybody on this board? Could not a couple hundred people have written that? And are the conclusions particularly insightful?
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Eh.
Lot of words and doesn't really say anything.
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5 minutes ago, Philip said:
That’s Dave Parker??
More like Ray Parker.
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4 hours ago, Can_of_corn said:
I don't think we will see a drastic change in the next CBA. Baseball doesn't like sudden movements.
5 hours ago, Can_of_corn said:The average age might change significantly dependent upon the next CBA.
These seem pretty incongruous.
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13 hours ago, Tony-OH said:
Not to be bearing of bad news, but Rom was absolutely awful last night. Not sure if he's tired or what, but he couldn't command anything last night.
Looked like thy came into the game trying to work on the slider and changeup but neither pitch was good. The slider didn't have a lot of bite and very little vertical movement minus a few. The changeup was absolutely awful. No feel for the pitch at all. He threw at least two that were Nuke Laloosh like with the only difference being he didn't hit the mascot.
His fastball was his best pitch last night though even that had below average command. He did get some swings and misses up with it but it was hit hard in hitters counts when he didn't keep it up.
Maybe he's going through a little funk, but the lack of a remotely good changeup is going to drop his prospect status. If I were the Orioles, that has to be priority for him in the offseason is to find a grip that works for him.
If he can't command and he can't change speeds, he can't pitch in the MLs.
Hopefully, you just saw him on an off night, in the doggest of dog days.
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33 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:
The other thing is, even if the top 2 guys don’t beat out the other 18, the question is how much better are those 18 guys? If it’s 50 WAR for the top 2 and it’s 60 WAR for the other 18, I still want the top 2. I can find that additional 10 WAR. It’s so hard to find that elite talent.
This is true too. There is opportunity cost with each roster spot.
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1 hour ago, sevastras said:
Pie got a good opportunity, I like Mateo better than I liked Pie and I was really pulling for Pie.
I second this.
I liked Pie. He was a great guy to give a chance. He had his moments but ultimately didn't pan out.
Mateo is probably destined to the same fate. But he deserves an opportunity.
At this point, I personally would be giving him chances over Stewart.
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I got to be honest: I wish he'd be less chatty with reporters about his strategy in the batter's box.
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6 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:
I’m not disagreeing with that. I’m saying it’s not rare imo…I’m guessing it happens more than you seem to think.
Ok, well we're talking about the same thing here at least.
I guess a lot of it depends on how good someone is at picking talent.
Still, Frobby's outline suggest less than half, or even a third, of the time there are two guys who will have more value than the 18.
Let's just cut the difference and say if you pick PERFECTLY you'll be correct 40% of the time.
Well, I haven't seen anybody pick well enough that those odds don't drop real fast and real drastically.
I think in absence of a global top 10 guy, you probably have to take the other 18 except in rare specific circumstances.
(I realize when you brought this up you were talking about Adley and Grayson, who are both global top 10 guys. And I think this O's system might be one of the exceptions to the rule.
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7 hours ago, Pickles said:
But then that would be their prospect ranking, which doesn't change anything. It's still a matter of preference.
You get what I'm saying here though @Sports Guy?
There are twenty prospects. Legit ones. Good enough to get on a Org top 20 list. (And yes that value does vary.)
You get to pick two of them. Any two of them. We'll call them 1-2 because that is your preference.
I get the other 18.
I believe I'll get the better value the majority of the time. One could probably go stronger than that.
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18 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:
I’m not talking with the benefit of hindsight. I’m saying that not everyone would take the #1 and #2 ranked prospects in a discussion like this all the time.
Sure it’s the case with hindsight, which is why I said you were wrong about the rare comment but I’m saying I could have easily see scenarios where you don’t always take the 1 and 2 ranked guys…I mentioned this because you said sometimes it’s the #5 guy who gets the most WAR. That’s true but there may be situations where he is one of the 2 guys you trade for, even if he’s not ranked in the top 2.
But then that would be their prospect ranking, which doesn't change anything. It's still a matter of preference.
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7 minutes ago, Frobby said:
I’d say top 2 > next 18 more often than top 1 > next 9.
That's yet another interesting thought experiment.
I'd probably agree with this because prospect #2 is more likely to outperform prospects 11-20 than prospect #1 is to outperform 1-9, largely because of the drop between the values of 2-10 vs. 11-20.
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32 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:
You mentioned that sometimes the 40 WAR could be the #5 prospect. My point is, that in a trade scenario like this, it may not always been the guys ranked 1 And 2 that you make the deal for.
In the example I brought up, the Os, you do and you might do that with Seattle because of Kelenic and Rodriguez. But maybe you like Gilbert more then Kelenic, so you take him instead.
I just think it happens a good amount where 2 prospects from a teams top 20 outperform the rest of the top 20. So many guys just don’t make it or become anything.
Ok, so we are having two different conversations.
That's fine. I guess that's why you took such exception to my phrasing.
I whole-heartedly agree with you that with the benefit of hindsight, and talking about players and not prospects, it isn't rare at all.
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5 hours ago, Sports Guy said:
But that’s not really the point. You are assuming that #1 and #2 are who you would always make that trade for.
But the idea is the 2 best prospects you see for the majors. In this exact scenario, that happens to be #1 and 2.
The other thing that matters is, what is the drop off like after 1 and 2. For the Os, your third best prospect is Hall according to top 50 lists. But that’s not who Tony has and many others as well. For me? I put Hall more like 5th or 6th. I think the difference for the Os between 2 And 3 is pretty huge.
Going back to your “exceedingly rare” comment (which thankfully you took back), I think you this conversation only happens in certain cases. Not everyone has those 2 guys at the top. And someone may say, I wouldn’t trade our #10 guy for our #1 guy. Maybe the #10 is some elite level newly signing intl prospect, someone who has barely played. There is a lot of nuance to this conversation but for me, I take the premium/elite talent over the middling solid guys any day of the week. Once you get to the majors, it’s easy to find those middling guys. You may spend more money than you want to for them but it’s a lot better than spending 250-400M.
Those guys are few and far between and in sports, you need those elite guys to win.
Are we having two different conversations here?
I'm talking about prospects not players.
So yeah, looking at a group of 20 prospects with the benefit of hindsight, and taking the two which provided the most value vs. the other 18 is not what I'm talking about.
I'm saying you get the two best prospects. You don't get to know in advance if they pan out or not.
So it's not players 1 & 2 vs. players 3-20.
It's prospects 1 & 2 vs. prospects 3-20.
I brought this up with Frobby because his analysis provided a very rough guesstimate to how often one prospect would be worth 9 others. But it's more than fair to point out that doesn't really answer the question, unless we can likewise determine how often that best player was indeed the best prospect.
I concede that the odds shift drastically in your favor with the benefit of hindsight and picking what becomes the two best players. But that's not what I'm talking about.
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4 hours ago, Frobby said:
There used to be a website (I’m blanking on the name) that had historical data on how much value was within each team’s farm system at the end of any given year (judged retroactively, by rWAR). One probably could have looked at that to answer this question. Unfortunately, that site no longer exists.
Again, I think it depends what you are measuring. Excess value during the years of team control? Total value over a player’s career? I think the answer using those two measures wouldn’t necessarily be the same.
We know from my other thread about the value of a draft that the average WAR produced by a draft is about 23. We also know that about 30 % of WAR comes from foreign players who weren’t drafted, so make it 33 WAR/year entering the farm system. The average average player who makes the majors probably takes 3-5 years to get there, though the great ones may only take 1-2 years. So I’m going to say, finger to the wind, that an average farm system probably has about 100 WAR in it at any given year, and probably 80% of that comes from the top 10 players in the system. So, if you have a 40+ WAR player in your system, he’s probably worth as much as the next 9 guys combined. I don’t know how many 40+ WAR guys are lurking in the minors at any given time, but if I had to guess, I’d say 10-15 (of whom 3-5 graduate to the majors each year). So, I’d guess that roughly 30-50% of the time, a team has a player in its system who is worth more than the next 9 guys combined in terms of total WAR. All of this is a pretty rough estimate, but I think it’s good enough to say it’s probably not “exceedingly rare” to have a guy in the farm system who will produce more WAR than the next 9 guys combined, though it probably is true less than half the time and maybe less than a third of the time.
At some point I may try to do a bit more research to confirm this.
Don't forget the 40 WAR guy has to be the #1 spot in this scenario. If the 40 WAR guy is the #5 prospect, the diversifier still wins. Which is kind of the whole point. Right?
(Being a little more diplomatic as a lesson for Sports Guy):
I would also very much like to investigate the idea that 80% of the value of a farm comes from the top ten guys. Is there data for that?
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37 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:
Common? Probably not. Rare? No
Well, we're splitting hairs here. But I overspoke before.
We were initially talking about 2 vs 18, which I think leans more to the 18 more than the 2, even more so than the 9 vs the 1.
There's arguments to be made for both sides if you are arguing generalities.
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By the way, with hindsight, I concede it is certainly easy to find top prospects who were better than the next 9, or whatever. Yes, with the power of hindsight, all this speculatin' stuff doesn't matter.
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2 hours ago, Sports Guy said:
Extraordinary rare? Yea, I call bs on that. Considering the low hit rate on prospects, I think it’s fairly easy to find elite guys that were worth more than the top 10 in their teams lists.
I would have to see the proof that it’s extraordinarily rare or did you just pull that out of your ass and make it up?
Always a charmer. LOL.
Using the adverb "exceedingly" is probably excessive.
I still think it's rare enough, and Frobby's rough estimate suggests it certainly isn't common.
Mind you, I'm not talking about draft picks. I'm talking about guys established enough- or high enough pedigree- to be listed be seen, for the most part, as legitimate prospects.
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Just now, Can_of_corn said:
It also depends on what other avenues are open to you to obtain talent.
If Free Agents aren't really an option for you then that would make the quantity option more appealing.
Yeah, that would probably affect my way of thinking.
Certainly, where I'm at in the ML win cycle would have a huge impact on that decision too.
The better I was at the ML level, the more likely I would be to take the quality over quantity.
And the worse I was, the opposite is probably true.
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5 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:
Sure..it’s the old, Tiger Woods vs the field. Tiger was winning at about a 29% clip, which was astounding but still only about 3 out of every 10 tourneys.
But I would have bet on Tiger and I would bet on these 2 as well.
Well then you'd lose money 70% of the time.
There's not right or wrong answer here. It's an interesting thought experiment.
But it is extraordinarily rare that one prospect would be more valuable than 9 others by the time they've progressed as far as these lists.
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4 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:
I'm a quality over quantity guy but yea, I'd probably blink over the risk and take the 18.
It certainly depends on the quality of the quantity.
There are some farm systems where it's a no-brainer to take Adley and Rodriguez.
The O's comp I used earlier was from 2009, which is probably the last time our farm system was as deep as the current version.
Wieters/Matusz vs. Tillman/Arrieta/Britton/David Hernandez/Reimold/Joseph
The quantity here wins out.
It's certainly an interesting thought experiment.
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15 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:
Right…which is why I’m taking the top 2..far harder to find that talent, on any level vs the middling guys.
But applied to the real world and not just theoretical guesses, essentially, the 18 is probably the better bet.
Goldstein on the Os
in Orioles Talk
Posted
Everybody's free to their opinions. If you think this was "good" journalism, that's your right.
I'll update you on the Pirates rebuilding efforts with the same depth Goldstein covered the O's:
They're bad. They have some prospects. They'll be better soon. But to really compete, they'll need more.
Now, please go spread the word of what a great writer I am.