tabletop

Yes

The owners are billionaires. They can afford to pay salaries much higher than they do. Most teams make a profit every year. It has nothing to do with market size.

That’s a pretty good summary on the move IMO. In sum, this is the right player at the right price for precisely the wrong team. To paraphrase Nietzsche, if you stare at the Pirates, the Pirates stare back at you. Someone should inform the Orioles that they are actually wild-card contenders.

Frazier is much better than Odor, Gibson is better than Lyles, Rodriguez is better than anyone that started a game last year, Henderson and Rutschman both will start on Opening Day (assuming health of course). They are definitely a better team heading into 2023 than they were at the end of last season.

"increasing their offseason spending on the major league roster to $18 million." That's more than the Rays have spent!

Hey, at least the O's don't have to worry about him getting hurt. Who cares that he's only 30 and has been arguably the best pitcher in baseball over the last 2 seasons?

Frazier has been worth around 2 WAR in 4 of the last 5 seasons and even last year was worth 1 WAR in the worst year of his career. Who in the system can you reasonably expect to come up and produce 2 WAR that also has the versatility to play anywhere?

We won't know that answer until we see how this season plays out. I don't see what "value" has to do with anything though. I guess it all depends on how you define value. If you want to talk in terms of on field value then last year Odor as per baseball-reference had a negative value. As per fangraphs he was worth less than $4m (assuming 1 WAR = $8m). Frazier, in the worst year of his career, was worth $7-8m per baseball-reference and a little over $8m as per fangraphs while he was paid $8m. Either way you want to look at it Frazier is a far better player than Odor is. He also has defensive versatility and can play anywhere on the field so it's not like he is locked into 2B like Odor was. Frazier is the type of guy the Rays have been drafting, developing, signing, and trading for over the last 10 years. He's a good baseball player. I guess it's semantics since value will mean something different to each person. I don't see how value matters to a team with such a low payroll though. If they were up against the tax or something it would make more sense to me to care about getting every dollar out every WAR you can.

Frazier had the worst year of his career and still put up 1.1 fWAR / 0.9 bWAR. Odor last year was worth 0.4 fWAR / -0.4 bWAR. To say Frazier is a “modest upgrade” doesn’t make sense to me. He’s a pretty big upgrade even if he only does a little bit better than last year. In 2021 he was worth 3.6 fWAR / 4.1 bWAR. I get he isn’t the big “MOO” bat most wanted but he is a significant upgrade over Odor.

Seeing as how the only 2 signings so far are Gibson and Frazier my guess is Wacha was way too good last year to even be on Elias’ list of potential signings. He seems to only want players who were bad so he can fix them and update his resume.

It’s called lift off.

“I also think that our team and our organization is going to continue to get better in 2024, in 2025, in 2026, in 2027, and I don’t think we want to steal from those teams to juke the odds of the 2023 Orioles getting into the playoffs because we see this as a window opening up, so we’re going to have to be a little bit careful about how we go about that. Doesn’t mean that we’re not looking at trades where we’re either trading prospects or maybe trading players on our major league team, but we’re being mindful of the next several years because I think we’ve got a very healthy period of time coming up for us.” He isn't trading for a pitcher with only 1 year on his contract.

He has one year on his contract. Elias already stated that the team isn't likely to compete for the AL East in 2023 and that he won't do anything to "juke the odds" that impacts teams in 2024 and beyond. If you take him at his word it would mean they are highly unlikely to trade for pitchers that won't be around long term. Oh, and he's also not a lefty.

Has the market taken “full shape” yet?

2/30 sounds like a big overpay for Cueto. He had a nice year last year but it’s hard to expect him to repeat that based on the previous seasons. That being said Elias has never signed anyone to a multi year deal. I highly doubt the first is going to a guy who will be 37 on Opening Day and seemed to be pretty lucky last year.

It’s still really strange how they did that with Odor and Aguilar. At least with Odor he was on the team and was starting all year. You trade away your closer and face of the franchise for prospects but then you refuse to play prospects. Then this off-season you don’t want to sign anyone for multiple years because you don’t want to block prospects down the line? It didn’t make any sense at the time and it makes even less sense with Elias’ recent comments about the 2024 and beyond teams.

That’s true. Peter was incompetent but at least spent some money to try and win. John is only interested in maximizing profits.

The whole point of this thread is to compare the O’s rotation to other playoff contenders rotation.

Wow, I usually really enjoy your posts but this makes no sense at all when comparing the two rotations. Your Severino comment can be made about every non-Gibson O’s starter. The Montas comment goes for a lot of teams #4 starter. In fact, Gibson only pitched twice and one was when they were down 3 and the other when they were up by 7. “Could be good or could turn bad” is the type of analysis I’d expect some random person on Twitter to say not one of the top posters on OH.

Even if you ignore Cole who is a true ace you have Cortes who has an era under 3 for the last 2 years and peripherals that suggest it should be around 3. Severino who came back from injury last year and had a 3.18era with peripherals that suggested he wasn't just getting lucky. Montas as their #4 who has a career 3.90era with a 105 era+ and German as their #5 who has a career 4.37era with a career era+ of 98. For reference, the only projected O's starter who has an era+ over 98 is Wells and that is because of his 2021 numbers as a reliever. His 2022 number as a starter was 94. How is that an ugly rotation? How is that only "probably" better than a rotation which includes 4 people who have career era+'s that are below average and a guy who has never thrown an MLB pitch?

Just saying, that’s where all the angst is from. I agree with you on the mega deals front.

While true they don’t do mega deals those teams all extend their own, trade for good proven major leaguers. and sign free agents to multi year deals. It’s still early in the grand scheme of things but so far Elias hasn’t done any.

This

At least now we won’t have to hear about the O’s signing Correa for 13 years. It was always a ridiculous idea for a team with multiple high end SS prospects.

The Rays have a proven track record, signed Eflin 3/40, are more talented than the O’s, and have a higher payroll than the O’s even though they are in a smaller market. It doesn’t make any sense to compare the two of them.