kidrock

I would love to ask another question to the experts on here again: given the following factors, what is your realistic ideal build/makeup for the O’s: 1. Play in the AL East - seemingly much smaller/hitter friendly than other divisions on the whole 2. Play in Camden Yards - seemingly brutal for pitchers 3. Have a payroll with an upper bound of the 2015-2017 teams To be more specific, the 2012-2015 had very solid defense up the middle/third along with pretty good power for the respective positions in Aj, Wieters and Hardy. They had plus power from Davis, Trumbo. They seamed to really lack OBP across the team. Their starting pitching seemed average as best and their bullpen was elite. Again, my question for you all: what qualities/traits do you think the O’s need. Is it ground ball pitchers, is it defense up the middle? Is OBP more important power or is power more import as they play in such small stadiums? Obviously the ideal but not realistic scenario is to have an all star at each position. I’m looking for what traits or characteristics need to be of focus.

It seems like that the only possible way that the O’s (or most teams for that matter) can compete is by building an elite farm system. Given how hard and how slow that process is, I wanted to ask the O’s experts on here a few simple question for discussion: 1. how long would you estimate that it takes for a team to go from a mediocre/poor farm system, to a system that has produced enough major league talent to win in the AL east? Additionally, how long in your opinion does the pro club need to suck while building the farm. 2. is there a team that you would prefer that the O’s model their approach after? Is it Tampa? Toronto? St. Louis? I think the Tampa model is the most brutally efficient, but I can’t see many people truly being happy with that model in the long haul (getting rid of good players while value is high, rarely spending a dollar in FA). 3. do you like the financial model of baseball as opposed to other professional leagues? Baseball has always been my favorite sport, but it really seems to favor the larger market teams in the end. Not that smaller market teams can’t compete, it’s just that every year it seems the larger market teams win. I know there are some poor large market orgs, but I personally get disinterested when I see how imbalanced the competitive landscape can be at times.

Yeah they should

I’m pretty sure in Patrick Mahomes’ contract, I remember reading that after year 5, each year he plays will guarantee 2 more years of pay. Something along those lines. That’s makes so much sense to me. The guy will never be poor, he will never have the rug ripped out from under him, but if starts to suck, he will get some a large chunk of his money and the team won’t be paying him every cent.

Good points all around. The union is incredibly strong. I dislike how much the union favors the older players. I’m all for players making a ton of money. Just seems ridiculous to pay guys the most money on the team while the player is horrible.

I dont know about you all, but watching the stars of my youth playing out their careers while being an embarrassment to the game is absolutely heartbreaking to me. I like how football does contracts with a portion being guaranteed and a portion, typically the last year or two not guaranteed. Football contracts are typically much shorter. I think it’s partially steroid related, but these baseball players seems to hit a cliff in their low 30s now. Obviously this isn’t true for all players, but these massive contracts seem terrible for the game. any thoughts on how to make baseball contracts better? The obvious answer would be to not give out foolish contracts, but that always happens as gms are understandably short sighted.

Yeah good point. Being bad has a lot of advantages from a playing time standpoint.

That's exactly what I was thinking as well. Its hard to tell what is just natural talent and what is the new processes. I was expecting this team to be far worse and I am encouraged about the team. I think the only real way to tell is to look over a 5-8 year time horizon really.

Question for the O's faithful here. How much stock/credit do you put in Elias/Sig's player development approach for some of the young guys on offense who are performing well? Do you give their "process" a lot of credit for some of the successes with Nunez, Alberto, Santander etc? Do you feel confident that, after a small sample size of their development process, that they can improve more players?

I didn't see a thread posted on here (maybe I missed it), but Nick now has 505 career doubles. That's incredible. I miss him on the O's alot. Still wish Sabathia didn't hit him in the hand that year.