Pickles

Yes. I don't believe they are the worst team in the MLs but they're in the conversation. They have faced and will continue to face an extremely challenging schedule. I think the outlier is the #5 pick this year.

My response to you is similar to my response to SportsGuy: What specific moves should have been made? I think this team plays pretty hard, with a few notable exceptions. Our infield is undoubtedly a weakness- organizationally. How could they have improved it without trading talent, or spending money? Neither of which this team is in a position to do. These guys aren't turning it on and off depending on if Means is pitching or not. It looks like that because the question is one of ability not effort. Rest assured, this is a bad team. But there will be a few weeks at some point later this season when we'll be on here saying, "These guys don't look too bad."

Be specific. That's all I hear. They could be better if they tried a little harder. What moves, that are not just pure hindsight, could have been made in the last 14 months, which would improve this team in the here and now, and not cost them in the long term? I think Rutschman is a perfect example. Yes, if we called him up now it would improve this team. It would cost us a year of his prime theoretically. I'm perfectly fine with that decision. I think a lot of people have a misguided and linear view of a rebuild. And I think a lot of people got overly encouraged by a SSS improvement last year.

They don't have to be FAs.

I agree with most of this. I'm not advocating calling up Adley for the reasons you listed. But I do believe he would improve this team tangibly.

What would you have them do to improve that wouldn't take opportunity from future seasons? You're not wrong, but it isn't a particularly strong argument. Yeah, they could bring up Adley tomorrow, and improve the team. Is it worth it? They could trade prospects for improvement in the infield. Is it worth it?

Who was the big FA signing that led to the competitive window of 2012-2016? How would those teams have fared had they successfully signed in 2009 Tex?

Well, explain.

Facetiously, yes.

Teams that lose 95 games often go through week long stretches where they look atrocious. It is indeed painful, but entirely expected.

It has been thrown around here ad infinitum here, but it's worth noting that the O's aren't bad in 2021 because of decisions made in 2021. They are bad because of decisions in 2017. Unless Elias was in possession of a time machine when he got here, this was always going to be a long, painful process.

I find myself tempted to get excited about this kid.

The only thing you could ask if for a higher average. He's looking like advertised.

Slow bat.

This is really inaccurate. Means alone should have us doing backflips.

Cutting Pujols doesn't cost money at this point for the Dodgers. But if they do it at some point, it won't be "quiet." It will draw press attention, and possibly some negative attention as it did for the Angels.

So Means looked fine to me. Obviously not his best performance, but for those concerned with his health, I think tonight should have alleviated their concerns.

I don't want to see CD ever again. I'd literally rather give Ryan Ripken 200 abs than give CD 2. As far as Pujols and Cabrera, before this year they had faded remarkably similarly. Pujols keeping more power; Cabrera keeping more hit tool. Both of them were averagish hitters, and, as you might expect, poor runners and defenders. They were only disasters in context of their contracts. Davis was just a disaster. If I was looking for a guy to give me 50 abs as a pinch hitter vs lhp, I could do worse than Pujols. My reluctance in signing him would simply be it won't be easy to cut him.

I was just being facetious. We don't have playoff chances, and obviously nothing fulfills the adage of "addition by subtraction" like "losing" Chris Davis at this point. I agree with the idea that he'll be back out there next Spring. Whether they'll be willing to cut him or not, I'm not sure, but at that point, I don't see why they wouldn't. In the fullness of time..... The Pujols signing puzzles me. I think there are considerations which extend beyond baseball in that case.

You put way too much thought into that. LOL

How do ya'll think this affects our playoff chances?

As a team they are exceeding my expectations.

Like I said above, if he takes the mound to take this start, we can be sure there weren't any injury reasons for this push back. There's no way they would risk that.

I don't know enough about the day to day machinations of the Tigers' organization to speak too intelligently about what is going on there, and I doubt anyone else here does either. So making direct comparisons there seems a bit silly. However, as a general meditation on a rebuild, specific to the Orioles' situation, this conversation has some merit. First, many have rightfully focused on the most noticeable and prominent aspect of such a rebuild: Player acquisition. I think the O's record is mixed, or neutral, in this regard under Elias. He hasn't had the opportunities to trade away ML talent for prospects, not significant ones anyway, so there isn't much to talk about here. He's only overseen two amateur drafts. There's not a lot of information to go on there. Some will rightfully point out drafting Adley where he did wasn't much of an accomplishment. Some will criticize the Kjerstad pick. Well, we don't know enough about that yet either. That's not to mention that with the lower picks we have even less to evaluate. It's going to take time to fairly grade the recent drafts. The same is largely true of their international efforts. It's great to see the change there- but that's far more attributable to change in ownership than anything else. And it remains to be seen if Elias and Co. are going to capitalize on the opportunity. So while player acquisition is the more obvious aspect of a rebuild, and the one that draws the strongest of fan opinions, 2+ years into a rebuild how valid those opinions are or aren't isn't clear yet. (Except process decisions. Opinions on process are quite valid almost immediately. What I find though is we have less insight into those processes than we think, and it often devolves into people attributing motive to processes which they can't possibly know, and then attacking their own attributions.) Second, what few have touched on, is the less obvious, and perhaps even more important aspect of a rebuild: Player development. Acquiring talent is important. However, if you don't create an environment for that talent to thrive, then you aren't going to succeed. Sure, there are the Mannys and the Mussinas- guys that Showalter said you "can't screw up." But there aren't enough of them to build an organization around. You're going to have to develop late bloomers, cast offs, late round picks, etc. into useable ML players. And on this front, I have been very happy with the O's progress so far. There's development that's going on at the MiL level, but in a rebuild it will extend to the ML level as well. Again, these processes are largely unseen and I doubt too many of us are that informed to have strong opinions about them. I mean, does anyone want to actually posit they should be telling the O's how to conduct batting practice, or soft toss, or throwing programs? So we're going to have to judge results, and imo the results have been encouraging. Things I am most encouraged about: 1) Veteran players are performing here. Guys like Iguelias and Galvis and Harvey (Franco so far is an exception) are joining our program and showing improvements. This isn't likely to change a lot about the rebuild, but it is encouraging nonetheless. 2) The development of the young major leaguers. This is likely to change a lot about the rebuild and there is a lot to like so far. The development of Means, and the specific attribution of it to his work with the staff, has been a minor miracle. We've seen Mullins taking big strides this year, likewise after a developmental decision. These are the two "star" examples so far, but guys like Hays, Santander, Stewart, Mountcastle are establishing themselves as major league contributors. It hasn't been a perfect record of course- calling Cisco- but it seems leap years ahead of where we had been for so long. 3) The development of the minor league players. The cancellation of last year, and how little we've seen so far, leave this incomplete, but there are some encouraging signs. The MiL teams played winning ball in 2019, and seem to be well on the way to repeating that in 2021. Now, winning % at the MiL level isn't what it is all about, but I'd rather win than lose, always, and we've seen concrete improvement. Of course, more important to the rebuild is the development of the individual players. The early returns on Hall and Rodriguez are fantastic. Despite some of the unreasonable agnst in the Adley thread, there has been absolutely nothing wrong with his performance and development so far. There's guys like Henderson and Hall who have exceeded expectations. I mean, other than Kjerstad, and that seems to be an act of God, has any of our prospects seriously disappointed of late? I can't recall. 4) This is kind of a composite point as it entails both development and acquisition. The bullpen. In today's day and age, there is little excuse for not having a solid bullpen. If you are proactive and aggressive you can compile a solid bullpen for virtually nothing. Duquette did it. It was the backbone of his success. We've seen yearly improvments in our pen since Elias got here, and we have a cheap, solid, flexible bullpen situation right now. If they were still trotting out Mike Wright to pitch 70 innings of a 7.00 ERA, I'd be far more critical. This shows a FO that is doing their diligence. Hopefully, we can turn some of these RP arms into future pieces. So, I don't have anything to say about the Tigers. I think trying to make a comparison to their situation is pretty futile, and not particularly illuminating. But as far as the O's rebuild goes, I'm pretty encouraged.

I guess we'll see shortly because if Means is having any issues he won't be making that next start.