LookinUp

I see his dWAR was negative 1.0 in 2019. Is he gaining a bad reputation as a 3B? I'm just trying to think of other reasons? Attitude problem? I'm speculating at this point.

Yep, and for some reason the O's disagree. We won't know until we know. All I know is there is some reason we didn't protect Pop and some reason we picked these two guys. Those reasons might be completely unrelated. What's kind of clear to me is they didn't have a strategy of targeting 1 guy in particular. That's important because if the O's were targeting 1 guy in particular, it's possible they would have failed (e.g., he was taken before us). In that case, you might say that they took a gamble by not protecting Pop. But they left 2 spots open and drafted 2 guys. That means they felt that there was an available profile (or just a bunch of players) that they preferred to Pop. They decided the players available in rounds 1 AND 2 of the Rule V draft are more valuable than Pop. So they don't like Pop anywhere near as much as you do. That's the conclusion I've come to.

He's expensive and the team that drafted him and watched him become a superstar wants to get rid of him. I want to know why. If they thought there was a decent probability of him maximizing his value during this season, as illustrated in the reasons you mention above, they too can play that game and thus the price now will likely be too high. If they don't, what do they know that message board dudes do not? The best case is the Cubs are in pure cost cutting mode, but even that's bad news because it would give even more credence to the idea that if even the Cubs are desperate to cut payroll, a team like the Orioles must be panicking over payroll. Add in the fact that the entire league could have had him over the last 12 months, but no trade has happened, and none of this adds up to making sense for the O's to go after Bryant. Something's up with him.

You're really digging in on the "Pop's middle relief to potential late inning arm is higher upside than two guys who have a chance to be starters and whose stuff would most likely play up if moved to the bullpen" point aren't you?

Bottom line of both Iglesias and Rule V. More pitching in hopes that some develop.

Of course they're not infallible. That's why I stated explicitly that you may be right. I do have reason to trust their processes though. I have more confidence that they know the type of people to talent than any group that has ever come in, and I'm certain they're contemplating age/level in the context of a million things. I trust their processes and am willing to see how this all turns out before drawing wild conclusions. Heck, they could be wrong and still be right. They could say that Pop's ceiling is a 1-2 WAR middle reliever. Pop turns out to be just that for 4 years and the other two guys flame out. However, if they think those other two guys have a good chance to be 2-3 WAR SPs, it's still the direction I want them to go.

One way of looking at this is your way, to look at it and say it's maddening. The other way to look at it is to ask why the O's would do this. Why keep those two over Pop? The answer is some combination of they needed to confidently fill out the ML roster plus they don't think Pop is that guy because of some reason (health, talent, fitness, dedication, attitude, advanced metrics, whatever). There's a reason. It's not like they made this decision with their eyes closed. You just don't know the rationale so it's maddening.

I think this is always a fair question. It's also a fair question about our own guys too.

Bottom line: they have much better information than you have. It's like the days when fans looked at batting average and ERA and the Oakland A's looked at OBP. They were ahead. The O's Front Office is ahead of Sports Guy in not insignificant ways. Does that mean Rule V guys will hit or Pop will fail? Not at all. You may be right, but I'll go with their judgement over yours 10 days out of 10. And I'm not saying that to talk bad about you. I think you have a great baseball mind. I probably give you more rep than most here, but I just think this exercise is above your area of expertise.

Why do you seriously doubt that? First of all, age/level is slightly off because nobody played last year. This is a guy who would have been in AA in 2020 but for Covid and thus likely projects as a 2021 ML player if the results matched. I know you were not active here at the time, but Luke used to always go through his Rule V guys and give nuggets that us luddites simply didn't know about. For pitchers, it was almost always spin rate. Then the O's hired him. My guess is they see something in the profile (spin rate, possibly mechanics) that says he has a better chance of being developed than every single pitcher who was otherwise available. He was the top of our board and he was there for a reason. Any other conclusion is conspiracy theory stuff.

Elias' priority is pitching, namely getting a ton of guys and hoping some of them stick. Then why did Elias pick him? Don't you think he has spin rate data or something that says he's a better pick than anyone else available, or do you really just think he's throwing darts at the board and picking the guy he hits?

Getting rid of Delmarva instead of Frederick would make sense to me from a pure "target market" perspective, but if that's the consideration, isn't getting rid of Aberdeen by far the easiest in terms of not losing a market? What does Aberdeen bring other than the Ripken name and nice facilities? That tells me this is about facilities. It's called in-game betting. Monumental sports (Leonsis, Wizards/Capitals) is huge into this. Baseball would be smart to integrate this stuff ASAP to improve the fan experience.

The O's obviously realized this stuff when making the decision. My assumption was always that the presence of a MiL team would create fan loyalty to the ML team. I wonder if I'm over reacting to that point. As markets go, Aberdeen is the outlier here. Frederick, Bowie, Salisbury and Norfolk all seem to be much more strategically important from a market perspective. I guess Aberdeen is more important from a Ripken, and maybe facility, perspective.

I'll keep going back to SG's example of the Cozart deal. He's right that we could have built our farm by taking on cash in a trade. That's an example that's hard to argue with except in terms of ROI. Is there a FA that's "worth it" for this team? I'd argue yes. There are guys that would make us competitive. Not against the Yankees and Rays, but certainly in terms of being a decent team that fans want to watch. Does spending that money take away from our future ability to spend? SG says no. I think that's where I disagree, knowing there's a lot of unknown in there.

I think he's arguing that we should spend 20-30 million now for a team that is more competitive (e.g., 70-80 wins) and might have some role in helping to build a contender (e.g., trading those players later, contributors on a contending team).

Damn. The writing was on the wall but I was really hoping they kept the Keys.

With the caveat being that I'd be willing to trade anyone in the right deal... I completely agree with the above post. We have to get an absolutely great offer for me to want to trade Means, and I love the Keuchel comp as it relates to our first winning team. I think he'll age awesome with that change up. The extra velocity is icing on the cake. I don't think he'll need that as he gets older.

I don't believe we have $2.5-$3.5 million left over in the international player pool. In other words, we're already putting that money into those players, which is good.

I think that you think there's less fat in the MiL system than I think there is. I think most (all?) systems can cut 25 players out with very little difficulty. I think one byproduct might be a touch more position flexibility, as teams are less likely to carry as many complete non-prospects just to cover a position

Really? It tells me that they over paid him and, rather than make roster decisions based on sunk costs, they’re treating him based on merit. They reassessed his value. MLB Pipeline may be slower in doing so.

That's good advice for any kid. Most programs want good people who can play baseball and don't want to take on other people's problems into their program.

Which means, when combined with the fact that he's available in the Rule V draft, that the Dodgers likely don't view him as highly as MLB Pipeline.

Yeah, I understand that, but it's a bridge too far for me. I don't like the idea of massively holding back players when it's clearly not warranted. We have several guys in our system now who would be on the ML team if it was 1968. It's a broken system. Hard for me to believe that Rodriguez, for example, couldn't be a real asset out of the bullpen right now. AR at Catcher. Probably Hall out of the bullpen too, if not a starter.

He's going to be a GM before we know it.

I think who he works for and who actually comes with an offer like you would accept, right now, is not the same. I tend to agree that he has the capability to be a piece that people want down the stretch. If he proves that in the first half of 2021, I think we get much better offers. I also think that us not trading Santander does not mean that we're not willing to trade him. I think it's a large bridge to assume those offers are coming in.