Keith Law hating on the Orioles big time.

[ilbm88]

Law is a joke. Calling the Os the worst team in the al east, sounds like he doesnt like the os personally. He makes it out we signed lee and vlad to 5 year deals, its only 1 year deals, meaning that after this year we can sign other younger players.

[PeteCanes]

"Nobody in the front office should be thinking that way. The second thing is, Mark Reynolds strikes out 200 times a year and is a brutal defensive player. Is that really the guy you want teaching Matt Wieters? He shouldn't be leading anybody by example.

This is silly. We need to bring in players that are positive role models for someone entering his third year in the bigs? What is he talking about?

[ShaneDawg85]

Honestly, there are some things where I simply can't disagree with him. I wasn't in favor of the Vlad move. I don't hate the move, but I didn't like it either, and Law pretty much summed up why. I really liked his comments on picking up the scouting and international presence, because if there's one thing that the Orioles have not, and did not address this offseason, that's it. There were better in-house ways to use the funds spent on Vlad, both in the present and for the future, and I can't disagree with Law on that front.

I don't share his disdain for the Reynolds move, because I think his positives outweigh his negatives, and we simply could not enter the season with Josh Bell playing the position after he showed he was clearly not ready, or blowing millions of dollars at Adrian Beltre (not that he would have come here anyway), or some other scrub. The Orioles had to make an upgrade, and they did so with a guy who is still on the right side of 30, signed relatively cheaply, and signed for a few more years. Even if he strikes out a lot and isn't a good baseball player, whatever that means, he's still got enough positives to justify the move.

[flashjordnk]

Agreed. That's one man's opinion. Here is another that thinks what we are doing makes perfect sense.

http://espn.go.com/blog/sweetspot/post/_/id/7034/orioles-take-necessary-steps-to-compete

Yeah I saw that one and it's true. But I just don't get it.

The guys that are panning the O's, are doing it hard. They don't see ANY of the reasons why this team would be doing that stuff.

Maybe being a fan and being immersed in watching a team go from amazing to nothing is something these pundits can never grasp. They see so many teams and so many fan bases they don't give ever give any credit to teams who are trying to appeal to their fans and communities as well as the future.

Doing these actions is not mutually exclusive. We can build for the future and for the now. Again...if it all falls apart, we'll just trade away all our additions. And at the very least we'll be paying that money for future potential value.

[ScottieBaseball]

That may be, but I think he's wrong in saying that even if we do win 85+ games this year that it means nothing. 13 years of losing is enough. And while we all want this team to get to the playoffs finishing with a winning record would be a step in the right direction.

Outside of Baltimore, 85+ wins in the AL East really means nothing. It's not like Reynolds, Lee, and Guerrero are bridging the gap to sure-fire, can't miss prospects at their respective positions.

[Frobby]

Just looking at what the various national writers interviewed by Chris Stoner had to say, plus the sabermetricians, plus Keith Law, it appears there is a lot of sentiment out there that the O's are still a sub-.500 team and moving in the wrong direction strategically. It's not like Law is out there by himself.

The issue of depriving Reimold and Pie of at bats has been discussed ad nauseum here, and there's no point going over it more here. A lot of his other points are evaluative (Vlad is toast, Reynolds is brutal defensively, three other teams in our division are 95-win teams if they played somewhere else). Those are either right or wrong, and we'll see.

The one point that struck a chord is whether spending on veterans will impede our draft spending. If we go cheap in the draft, I'll be furious about it. That really would be stupid.

[ScottieBaseball]

Law is a joke. Calling the Os the worst team in the al east, sounds like he doesnt like the os personally. He makes it out we signed lee and vlad to 5 year deals, its only 1 year deals, meaning that after this year we can sign other younger players.

What other younger players?

[PeteCanes]

"Make sure you have $5 million available for your first pick in this draft and another $3 million for the second pick. Because this draft is loaded and there might be somebody there you can overpay for," he said.

He's certainly right about this, but is he operating on the assumption that we are not doing this. How does he know we didn't set the budget in regards to the draft?

[Slappy]

He believes we should be in a perpetual rebuild. It's a common perception of the numbers geeks - if your first rebuild doesn't work, go into another one - rinse and repeat. Lose fans, lose gate revenues, lose interest, lose the ability to sign players - none of that matters.

Only spending to win when you are near 80 wins is patently ridiculous and has been disproven over and over again by the number of worst-to-first stories over the past 20 years in baseball. It is one of the things that annoys me the most about "Sabermetrics".

[clapdiddy]

Just looking at what the various national writers interviewed by Chris Stoner had to say, plus the sabermetricians, plus Keith Law, it appears there is a lot of sentiment out there that the O's are still a sub-.500 team and moving in the wrong direction strategically. It's not like Law is out there by himself.

The issue of depriving Reimold and Pie of at bats has been discussed ad nauseum here, and there's no point going over it more here. A lot of his other points are evaluative (Vlad is toast, Reynolds is brutal defensively, three other teams in our division are 95-win teams if they played somewhere else). Those are either right or wrong, and we'll see.

The one point that struck a chord is whether spending on veterans will impede our draft spending. If we go cheap in the draft, I'll be furious about it. That really would be stupid.

I doubt we'll go cheap. We don't have a bunch of sandwich picks, so we won't be spending a ton of money on the early rounds like the Sox, Rays, and Jays will be.

[Orioles0615]

according to keith law they way he wants us to build we would be in a catch 22. He doesnt want us to add any solid veteran guys and wants us to stick with young guys and only add veterans once we reach .500. Well we have proven we can;t reach .500 with only young guys. So what does he suspect they do. Even if you look up catch 22 on Wikipedia under real life examples it says

A sports team needs good players to be good; but good sports players will not play on a team unless it is good.

Someone should go into the page and add "The Baltimore Orioles" to that list

[allstar1579]

http://www.masnsports.com/steve_melewski/2011/02/keith-law-criticizes-the-os-offseason-moves.html

Steve Melewski did a phone interview with Kieth Law yesterday and let's just say he's not a fan of the O's chances or the moves we made. A few quotes below, but I encourage you to read the whole article.

I understand how difficult the AL East is, but I don't think you can say that we are clearly the worst team in the division and to say we have very little chance of getting to .500

Truth hurts...I know people have been excited because we have been making SOME kind of moves, but in the long run he's right, we aren't doing anything to grow as a young team, just adding complementary pieces to a team still in need of an identity.

[Orioles0615]

according to keith law they way he wants us to build we would be in a catch 22. He doesnt want us to add any solid veteran guys and wants us to stick with young guys and only add veterans once we reach .500. Well we have proven we can;t reach .500 with only young guys. So what does he suspect they do. Even if you look up catch 22 on Wikipedia under real life examples it says

A sports team needs good players to be good; but good sports players will not play on a team unless it is good.

Someone should go into the page and add "The Baltimore Orioles" to that list

There I added it to wiki. lol

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catch-22_%28logic%29#Real-life_examples

[hoosiers]

No problem with what Law said. The Hardy move was a good one, but we will spend over $10M in volatile production like Reynolds and Vlad.

I'll have more of an issue if we go cheap in the draft or don't spend $ internationally.

[flashjordnk]

Also what fascinates me is that conversation about the O's isn't about the progress of guys like Jones/Wieters/Big 3.

I mean if talk about the guys that really matter to this team. Yeah Pie/Reimold is an easy spot to talk about how to maximize what we can on our team. But what really matters is whether or not our young guys will step up.

If the young guys don't step up, all this will be moot because everyone that Law doesn't potentially like including Vlad, Reynolds, Lee and Hardy will all be gone and be replaced by AA or lower prospects.

If the growth happens these vets balance the ship and put us in a position to go after major Free Agents in 2012.

Maybe I see it because I WANT to see that. But this idea doesn't seem so far fetched to me. And if AM is good at anything it's moving pieces like Bedard, Tejada, etc. if the deal is right. He's reestocked himself with future potential trading chips, and basically on the backs of low end prospects or dollars. We lost no talent but leave ourselves in the position to gain talent. Am I missing something?