7Mo

Those guys aren't comparable though. Henderson signed for $2.3M and Stowers signed for $880,000. Comparable would be 1 Henderson or 2 and a half Stowers. For the O's to take 2 of James Wood, they would have to punt the rest of the draft. Total O's allotment = $11.8M. Cowser costs $4.9 and 2 James Wood cost $5.2 which would leave $1.7M for the remaining 18 draft picks.

That's a fair question. Here's something to watch. The Padres just signed their second round guy, James Wood, for $2.6M. The O's will sign their second round guy (Connor Norby $1.7M) plus CB-B pick Reed Trimble for likely $2.8 or maybe a little more for the 2 combined. Let's check back in 3 years and see who brings the most value, Wood or Norby plus Trimble. Wood is clearly a high ceiling guy. And I know nothing about Wood other than if they paid him $2.6M, they think very highly of him. That's the crux of the argument, right? You like the very high ceiling guy and Elias is going the other direction, spreading money to many. Fair?

Good post. Thanks.

2 points: One is I don't feel as though there's enough talent in place now. I don't think you can look at MiLB infielders and say we're set. To me, you count Henderson and Westburg (and they're no where close to sure things). Then you hope for Jones, Vavra, Ortiz, Hernaiz and some younger guys. That's not enough. If every one of those guys were playing great at Bowie or Norfolk, ok, maybe you have enough but not given where they are today. As to elite talent, clearly everyone wants to add every elite talent possible. But you're relying on the draft projection guys to make your decisions. You mentioned Lawlar was projected at or near the top for a year. Yes he was. But he also was dropping for the last 30-45 days before the draft. But either way, it's Mayo and Callis, etc placing him there. If 3 years from now, Lawlar is playing better than Cowser, fine, you win. But I think there's a ton of information that GM's have that we don't to make those type decisions. I agree with the theory........take elite talent. Agreed. I just don't think it's that easy to identify and project over the next 3-4-10 years.

I agree with every bit of that. Latin American will take a while because the relationships begin so very early.

I don't disagree with any of that. The Rays have definitely earned the benefit of the doubt. My point is with your second paragraph. I don't think Elias should be saddled with O's failures that pre-date him. Obviously you liked Lawlar as the pick. No way to know for a few years. The one point you're making that I quibble with is we don't know (or I don't know, maybe you have the same inside information GM's do) whether the O's took high ceiling guys or not. The definition isn't limited to HS guys. Or maybe that's your definition. I think it's very possible the O's view Trimble and Rhodes as high ceiling guys as college soph's. You've said several times that a team picking this high needs to take the high upside guys now because if things work like they should, you won't be picking this high later. Agreed. But that assumes the draft projections are accurate in saying who the high upside guys are. We all know how many guys miss from the MLB draft. I don't want to start picking chalk or who Keith Law likes here or Callis or any of those guys. I'd rather that Elias and Sig take their guys based on what their analytics tell them and see where we are in a few years. Even when that means they're taking guys who aren't popular names.

I think it might even be more simple than that. The O's at pick 5 take a guy ranked approximately 10th and the reaction is "the O's suck, they're dumb, I told you Hobgood was a bum, ownership is cheap, this team is getting ready for sale". And then a few default to "Elias thinks he's smarter than everyone else". And the Rays pick at 28 and take a guy ranked 41 and the reaction is "I'm sure they've done their homework, the Rays rarely miss, give them time to develop him and watch out". I think Elias will be saddled with every O's mistake over the last 50 years until the ML team is challenging for a playoff spot in September. Then the narrative will shift to how ownership doesn't care about the fans enough to make one key acquisition to put them over the top.

Obviously the Dodgers are cheap and the O's spend for players.

Looking further at draft rankings: In Round 1, 21 of 30 picks were ranked above their draft slot, meaning pick 1 took ranked 5, etc. In CB-A, it was 6 of 8. In Round 2, it was 15 of 27. In CB-B, it was 6 of 8. In Round 3, it was 24 of 30. In Round 4, it was 26 of 30. In Round 5, it was 26 of 30. Add those up and 122 picks out of 161 were ranked higher than their draft slot, 75.77%.

Your post got me curious so I checked 2 teams on the MLB rankings Tampa Bay picked 28 ranked 41 picked 34 ranked 84 picked 63 ranked 81 picked 100 ranked 196 picked 130 ranked 190 picked 161 unranked Yankees picked 20 ranked 55 picked 55 ranked 99 picked 92 ranked 131 picked 122 ranked 171 picked 153 ranked 194 None of it means much today and won't for 2-3 years when we see who pans out and who doesn't. Those incompetent Rays didn't take a pitcher in the first 5 rounds and took a first baseman in the second round. Thanks for your post.

I don't think Elias is "smarter than everyone else" but I do think he's a competent GM and doing a lot of good things. And I think he walked into a miserable situation where he had little talent to trade, couldn't get rid of one monster salary, did not have an International pipeline or even a set of connections or presence in that area. Do you think the brothers are telling Elias what to do? Or are you saying Elias doesn't have the money to do otherwise?

I've read his summaries on the other divisions and they're pretty similar. He ain't exactly a ray of sunshine.

So you're confident that they picked "almost all guys under slot"?

"towers". Here's the video of him being drafted while on deck: https://www.si.com/extra-mustard/2019/06/04/tuesday-hot-clicks-mlb-draft-orioles-stanford-kyle-stowers-video

I think it's going to be 10 days to 2 weeks before we start seeing the draft picks at Delmarva: “Used to be you would take a college hitter in the first round, a DJ Stewart or Adley Rutschman, and they would go kind of get their feet wet in Florida, take a physical, they sign and they see our spring training facilities, and play a game or two in the Florida Complex League. And then they would go to Aberdeen, which used to be our short-season summer league,” Elias said. “But now that league is gone.” “So it’s different. We don’t have that. So I think what we will see with a lot of these college hitters, they will, like I said, go to get their feet wet and get introduced to the organization in Florida. These guys haven’t been playing for two months, so kind of get back into game shape. And then we will ultimately try to get a good group of these guys up to (low Single-A) Delmarva to finish up the summer.” https://www.masnsports.com/steve-melewski/2021/07/os-end-kc-series-on-high-note-and-elias-on-the-draft.html

I think a lot of people have concerns about strikeouts with Stowers. He's really shown improvement as a hitter and with power the last 60 days though.

That's 5 good appearances in the last 6, the only blip being giving up 3 earned in 4 innings on July 13.

Good video on Norby.

I appreciate that. Thanks. I read some comments earlier today suggesting the guys nearest the majors were likely most affected by the pandemic. I feel good about Zimmerman. Hopefully Kremer, Akin and Lowther can get back to a productive path in the next year.

Don't know the answer to that but I think Rhodes is going to be costly.

Sorry to post something positive. I should have realized where I was.

https://www.thescore.com/mlb/news/2178631/after-a-lost-season-some-minor-league-systems-have-vaulted-ahead-of-others The Orioles have enjoyed a staggering 42.1% season-over-season gain in their hitters' walk rate across those four minor-league levels in the data we collected through July 8. Overall across the four levels, their walk rate is now at 10.6% of all plate appearances, up from 9.1% in 2019. That's an improvement of 17.3%.

Interesting to see some very low dollar signings coming in. Cubs signed their 6th round pick for $1,000. Dodgers signed both their 9th and 10th round picks for $2,500. Braves signed their third round pick for 1/5 the slot value ($122,000 on $604,000). Pirates paid their 6th rounder $7,500.

Baumann seems to be pitching his way back into that group too.

I was someone who thought Mancini would bring back good value. After the last few weeks, unfortunately, I'm trending more toward your opinion above.