ThisIsBirdland

It's not as if Mountcastle is bad against LHP too; career .768 OPS vs LHP. My guess is on days McCann is not catching he gets a few DH at-bats vs LHP, or 1B starts against LHP if Mountcastle is in a slump. I think that'll put McCann at 2-3 starts/week, 60-90 games during the season. Adley gets DH/1B starts against RHP for half of his off-days from catching. Catches 110 games, DH for 20 games, 1B for 10 games.

What were the service time implications last year? After mid-late April is there anything to be gained by keeping players in the minors?

The only hesitation I have with this argument is I've wondered if the organization slow-played their good prospects early in the rebuild for service-time manipulation. Why rush Adley to a bad team? Whereas now, I think we could start seeing slightly faster graduations, especially for Kjerstad, Cowser or even Holliday as a high schooler. I could be and probably am wrong though; look at Gunnar last year. He would have been more helpful earlier than the O's promoted him. They probably do believe in over-exposing these guys in the minors before letting them take their lumps in the majors.

So this is saying they may not exercise the five year extension, but they will agree to a longer extension by December 31st? That'll be a wonderful distraction hanging over the organization until it gets resolved.

I get the sense they really don't want to move him going into this season. He's very important to their offense in 2023. I think they will move him once he gets close enough to free agency, probably next offseason. He definitely feels like the type they wouldn't extend (declining defense, limited to DH later in his career). I think they'll only end up investing in their high-end players like Adley, Gunnar, G-Rod if he pans out. Mullins is on the fence IMO. This is also why I don't like the idea of Cowser as part of any trades for players on contracts for two seasons or less, as opposed to our infield depth.

Under promise and over deliver, it never fails. For as politically measured as Elias usually is in his rhetoric though, it's pretty surprising he let those comments slip. The comments came after trading Lopez and Mancini; my guess is he felt compelled to try to keep morale high for both fans and the players. Either way, I still maintain no one will care if they can build on last season. If they take a step back this year, he'll face some real heat next off-season, and a big part of that will be from not doing a better job managing expectations. Because at the end of the day, I still think most people are happy with where the organization is and how quickly the rebuild has arrived.

A few changes may help here: 1. Shift elimination ought to help the heavy LHH lineup being put together. 2. Frazier in for Odor, especially if he can get back to the career .336 OBP. 3. Improved luck for Mountcastle that better reflect his underlying metrics. 4. Deeper bench with more productive veterans versus AAAA players, and more at bats from emerging players drafted by this front office.

Looks like they're still up to me. Every time I've read into them I find them a little cultish/overly positive, but I guess it's kind of a counterbalance to the more critical approach fans seem to take here.

Tough to know who will be selling and who will be putting up a strong season. I don't expect the Dodgers (Urias) or Phillies (Nola) to be selling. If the Angels are struggling they'll want the world for two months of Ohtani. Lynn (CWS), Giolito (CWS), Gray (MIN), or Marquez (COL) could be decent rental pieces.

Pretty sure Cal Ripken himself would have had Baltimore in a no trade clause in 2021

Is it possible that he actually believed that a Bassitt/Taillon/Eovaldi signing at whatever it would have ultimately cost didn't advance the goal enough this off-season to make it the right move right now? That it would marginally close the gap with the three teams ahead of us but not be as valuable as more major investments down the road? And it's not like they've never spent money historically; they were middle of the pack five years ago, even hitting top 10 in payroll one year IIRC. Their actions indicate they don't think they're a move or two away from having a high probability of taking the AL East in 2023, and they probably won't deviate from their value assessments on free agents until they feel like they're in a stronger position. My guess is they want to see one more year of maturation from their core, and next year's free agent pitchers market looks very strong. At that point if they won't compete in the long-term impact player market I'll be in full agreement with what seems like the majority of this board. I recognize how frustrating it is when it seems like we're getting close. It's similar to the rationale for trading Lopez and Mancini last year. People and media were pissed, but would we have had significantly better odds of making the playoffs had we held onto those guys? Based on their August/September performance, we seemingly sold high on both those guys, and it likely didn't significantly alter the Orioles 2022 outcome. Meanwhile they turned those guys into seemingly desirable pitching prospects, offsetting some of the lack of high draft capital.

This strikes me as the best summary of the way the front office currently views the team. They trust veterans more than prospects to fill these roles in pursuing a playoff spot in 2023, and they've clearly shown they don't want to rely on prospects to immediately meet starter level expectations. They probably don't believe Vavra is a contributor they should rely on in 2023, and potentially long-term as well. They don't want to enter spring training assuming Westburg and Ortiz are ready to break camp in a starter capacity. If those guys aren't ready to be starters, they probably shouldn't be relegated to utility roles when they can continue to work in AAA on a regular basis. Maybe one or all of those guys crush expectations and kill it in spring training, forcing their way into regular at bats on the major league team. That's a great problem to have! But investing $8m in a major league veteran 2B instead of relying on those guys breaking out or even just taking the next step is probably a prudent move. Fans seem to believe they're only interested in keeping payroll down, but that they should also be playing their cheap prospects instead of veteran stop-gaps. And I get the argument that the money could be reallocated to better players, but can we at least consider the possibility that Elias may fundamentally disagree with the market/contracts some of the SPs got this off-season? That maybe a 3/$63m deal for Bassitt isn't the right allocation when we're still a year away from Henderson and Rodriguez having one full season under their belts? I certainly think ownership is dysfunctional, cheap, a sale is coming, and it all may be impacting the approach to this off-season. But I also don't think the absence of the moves people were hoping for make the 2023 team fall from likely world series contenders to a non playoff team. The rebuild trajectory is strong, and they're exploring modest reinforcements to support playoff aspirations as the next wave of prospects emerge.

Just looking a little closer at this, the big three SPs this year all had risks with age/health. I think you could realistically make a case that Ohtani, Urias, and Nola are all comfortably safer signings than this year's top three. I think Darvish, Gray, Giolito, Mikolas, Marquez, Stroman, Montgomery and Lynn would all at least fall in the Bassitt tier, probably above Eovaldi/Taillon. That's eleven pitchers in 2023-2024 that would offer better value than committing major resources to the guys outside of this year's top four. And then if Severino puts together a healthy year, or Scherzer opts out, or Mahle stabilizes, you're talking about the potential for a very strong SP market next year. This list doesn't include one year signings who may have strong seasons such as Syndergaard, Manaea, Clevinger, Perez, or our very own highly appreciated Kyle Gibson Is it disappointing to look at next year's class instead of celebrating signings this year? I guess so, but the better value looks like it may very well be there next year. I'm obviously bought in (maybe naively) on this rebuild being performed methodically and not forcing signings or over-bidding this off-season. They've managed the rebuild well enough to earn the benefit of the doubt to this point. If our 2022 FA signings struggle like so many on here expect it to, it's obviously going to be a different story. But looking at next year's class, they'll have plenty of chances to correct course at that point, we'll just need to see how it plays out.

Per MLB.com for next year's FA class, I see plenty of good options here. Starting pitcher: Carlos Carrasco, Alex Cobb (club option), Yu Darvish, Jack Flaherty, Lucas Giolito, Sonny Gray, Clayton Kershaw, Lance Lynn (club option), Kenta Maeda, Tyler Mahle, Germán Márquez, Miles Mikolas, Frankie Montas, Jordan Montgomery, Charlie Morton (club option), Aaron Nola, Jake Odorizzi, Shohei Ohtani, Eduardo Rodriguez (opt-out), Hyun Jin Ryu, Max Scherzer (opt-out), Luis Severino, Blake Snell, Marcus Stroman (opt-out), Julio Urías, Alex Wood

He probably regrets saying it but he also probably knows no one will care if they win 85+ games next year.

Or is it also possible that they just don't value these free agents the way we as fans do? That they may view organization-building more in the Rays model versus the Padres model. It's the off-season. The only thing that matters is if they show acceptable improvement next year or not. I'm skeptical like most people are on here but until we see how the team and the signings perform next year, I just don't think there's much room for concrete assessments of this off-season.

First time poster, long time follower. Finally decided to jump on at the beginning of this off-season, and unfortunately there hasn't been too much worth commenting on yet. Apologies if this is too long of a first post The OP really listed a bunch of great points, and I think between those and what spiritof66 wrote, it feels likely that it's a combination of everything you all have been discussing. I thought Elias sounded shell-shocked in the winter meetings, as if he had legitimately thought there would be a good shot at the Bassitt tier on a 2/$36m or 3/$50m type of deal. Honest question though for those who are so disappointed right now: what realistic grouping of players would have made such a significant difference for the 2023 Orioles? I'm not including the top 3 SPs or shortstops here; whether the O's should realistically be in play for those contracts is a different debate right now. I wanted Bassitt ($21m), Josh Bell ($16.5m), Michael Conforto ($18m), a legitimate backup C ($2.5m), and a second vet SP ($10m) (Gibson would have been meh for me here but I'd have been sold if the FO felt strongly about him). I thought this was reasonable, and this would have been an increase of payroll of about $68m this season, plus $58m committed in 2024 and $21m committed in 2025. Instead, we're looking at Gibson ($10m), Frazier ($8m), Givens ($4-5m), and McCann ($2.5m) for about $25m, with only McCann and Givens' option moving forward (total of $147m for what I wanted versus $32m). FWIW I'm still hopeful for Wacha or a SP trade, plus maybe Belt/Hosmer for a LH 1B, so maybe we end up closer to $35-$40m this year. As someone who wanted the O's to sign Chris Davis, Alex Cobb, Ubaldo Jimenez (or Lance Lynn) back in the day, I'm maybe naively over the belief that big free agency moves determine success in MLB. But again, say we do end up bringing in Wacha and Belt/Hosmer, how much better would the O's be with Bassitt, Bell and Conforto instead of Wacha, Frazier, Belt/Hosmer and Givens? My preference would still obviously be the Bassitt/Bell/Conforto group, but for an additional $90-$100m over three years, I don't know that I fault the O's that much for not giving out those contracts. These aren't guaranteed contributors without warts we're talking about here, and I didn't feel like there were many other obvious options out there. None of this can be answered until the season of course. We honestly just need to see if Gibson and Frazier play well or not. If they don't and we regress, this was a pretty unequivocally bad off-season. If they positively contribute to a playoff season while we continue developing the farm, I think we may look back on this as an acceptable/good off-season. Time will tell, and given the pace and trajectory of the rebuild (much more important than free agency for me), I won't crucify Elias for over-promising and under-delivering with his media comments leading into the offseason.