What phase of Andy's plan are we in now?

[JTrea81]

Wasn't this billed from the get go as a five year plan?

I think a lot of what is going wrong this year is simply bad luck.

This board was highly enthusiastic at the start of the year and justifiably so. MacPhail made a lot of good moves in the offseason.

I wouldn't jump off a bridge if they let him continue.

I want to see this five year plan quote. To me that seems like it's being made up by the MacPhail apologists to justify 4 years of continued losing.

It also doesn't make sense for MacPhail to say that considering his contract ran 4 years not 5.

Who was going to continue his vision if he was out in year 4? And why would you want it to continue as if he's out in year 4, as that likely means his plan has failed, which it indeed has.

[Scrat1]

But the Giants have more than just Bumgarner. You don't win championships with just one pitcher. You have other great players around them. Yes, I know part of it as well was that they did catch lightning in a bottle with Huff (noone could have predicted his great year last year). Baseball is a lot of luck... and a couple of bad years in a row can be attributed to bad luck. Not 14.

You're being hypocritical here, though. Earlier you said:

"We had 5 MLB level pitching prospects (Matusz, Arrieta, Tillman, Bergersen, Britton). In other words, we had a rotation's worth of prospects. But with nothing else already in place, you have to assume that three is the MAXIMUM you'll get out of that group in terms of legitimate starters.... more realistically, 1 or 2."

But now you're saying the Giants had more than Bumgarner. Of course they did. That's not the point. The point is they didn't have any depth in case Bumgarner or Sanchez or Lincecum went down, just like the Orioles didn't have any prospects following in behind the calvary. The only difference is all of the Giants' guys developed/stayed healthy, while ours did not. The Giants did not have more than 5 MLB level pitching prospects, which you suggest is too few, and they came out just fine.

As I said, I think you're greatly exaggerating the amount of depth other clubs have. Even the Yankees were scrambling to replace Hughes and, in another case of So It Goes, their rag tag replacements have pitched the hell out of the ball. It wasn't minor league depth, but creaky vets, that saved them. For maybe a more apropos example, look at the Royals. The Royals have depth out of the ears, exactly what everyone wants for the Orioles. But they five major starting pitching prospects - Duffy, Montgomery, Lamb, Jeffress, and Dwyer. A rotation's worth, the same amount you just criticized the Orioles for having.

I agree with you that fourteen seasons of losing can't be attributed to luck. Boy do I agree with you. I'm not at all arguing that the Orioles have been a well run organization the past decade and a half and have lost because of some bad luck here and there. I'm just talking about recent history. You can't blame fourteen seasons on MacPhail. We know who to blame for those.

[Mashed Potatoes]

I think it's fair to say we've had a lot of bad luck this year, and that our best prospects and players have underperformed even compared to Davearm-like projections. I also think it's fair to say that MacPhail has done a lot of good for this organization during his tenure.

However, this all seemed doomed from the beginning. We're not beating the top of the division in free agency, so we had to beat them elsewhere in order to compete for a playoff spot. International scouting and talent acquisition? Getting crushed. Amateur draft? Doing alright, but not at the top, and certainly not by any significant enough margin to begin to close the gap. Talent development? Yuck. Unique strategy or usage of players at the ML level? None.

What's required is not just to do things well, but to do certain things much better than other AL East teams in order to make up for the areas where we cannot match them. How could we possibly expect to compete without any innovation in any aspect of creating our team?

[sangar]

I want to see this five year plan quote. To me that seems like it's being made up by the MacPhail apologists to justify 4 years of continued losing.

It also doesn't make sense for MacPhail to say that considering his contract ran 4 years not 5.

Who was going to continue his vision if he was out in year 4? And why would you want it to continue as if he's out in year 4, as that likely means his plan has failed, which it indeed has.

Okay, fair enough. I'm not going to look for the quote and I've rarely read the board the past couple weeks so I didn't realize this has been as issue. Either way, it seems like I remember him saying it.

[HokieOs]

You're being hypocritical here, though. Earlier you said:

"We had 5 MLB level pitching prospects (Matusz, Arrieta, Tillman, Bergersen, Britton). In other words, we had a rotation's worth of prospects. But with nothing else already in place, you have to assume that three is the MAXIMUM you'll get out of that group in terms of legitimate starters.... more realistically, 1 or 2."

But now you're saying the Giants had more than Bumgarner. Of course they did. That's not the point. The point is they didn't have any depth in case Bumgarner or Sanchez or Lincecum went down, just like the Orioles didn't have any prospects following in behind the calvary. The only difference is all of the Giants' guys developed/stayed healthy, while ours did not. The Giants did not have more than 5 MLB level pitching prospects, which you suggest is too few, and they came out just fine.

As I said, I think you're greatly exaggerating the amount of depth other clubs have. Even the Yankees were scrambling to replace Hughes and, in another case of So It Goes, their rag tag replacements have pitched the hell out of the ball. It wasn't minor league depth, but creaky vets, that saved them. For maybe a more apropos example, look at the Royals. The Royals have depth out of the ears, exactly what everyone wants for the Orioles. But they five major starting pitching prospects - Duffy, Montgomery, Lamb, Jeffress, and Dwyer. A rotation's worth, the same amount you just criticized the Orioles for having.

I agree with you that fourteen seasons of losing can't be attributed to luck. Boy do I agree with you. I'm not at all arguing that the Orioles have been a well run organization the past decade and a half and have lost because of some bad luck here and there. I'm just talking about recent history. You can't blame fourteen seasons on MacPhail. We know who to blame for those.

Maybe I should clarify my point a little. Having a full rotation so to speak in the rungs is all well and good and not bad at all. However... once those guys break into the majors, there needed to be more guys behind them. There really aren't. I know we were counting partially on Hobgood (why?).... but the pitching ranks are very barren. It's like we took the 5 prospects and said these guys are the future.... and essentially counted on ALL of them without any failsafes behind them at all. That doesn't necessarily mean we would be able to sub one guy immediately behind... but at least there would be other guys close behind that we could have hope to eventually fill in. We don't have that. Some of our cavalry is struggling mightily (I'll avoid the B word for now)... but the fact of the matter is what we should have had more guys AFTER they got their calls.

I know even the good organizations don't exactly have 10 guys at each position. But they usually have other field/hitting prospects. They usually have some guys who have hope in the pitching staff. The field/hitting prospects we have are a minimum of a couple years away and the best pitching hope we have isn't even technically an Oriole yet and would be doing very well to be in Baltimore in 2014.

[sangar]

Maybe I should clarify my point a little. Having a full rotation so to speak in the rungs is all well and good and not bad at all. However... once those guys break into the majors, there needed to be more guys behind them. There really aren't. I know we were counting partially on Hobgood (why?).... but the pitching ranks are very barren. It's like we took the 5 prospects and said these guys are the future.... and essentially counted on ALL of them without any failsafes behind them at all. That doesn't necessarily mean we would be able to sub one guy immediately behind... but at least there would be other guys close behind that we could have hope to eventually fill in. We don't have that. Some of our cavalry is struggling mightily (I'll avoid the B word for now)... but the fact of the matter is what we should have had more guys AFTER they got their calls.

I know even the good organizations don't exactly have 10 guys at each position. But they usually have other field/hitting prospects. They usually have some guys who have hope in the pitching staff. The field/hitting prospects we have are a minimum of a couple years away and the best pitching hope we have isn't even technically an Oriole yet and would be doing very well to be in Baltimore in 2014.

I'm not saying one method is better than another but it looks to me like the O's are building for a "next wave" rather than a continuous flow. I fully expect as the Machado, Shoop, the Bundy's, et al... generation develops it will be supplemented with college picks, all to debut within a year or two of each other.

[jabba72]

We are in the 'circling the clogged toilet' phase.

[$Greatness$]

I hate to even open this can of worms, but I still think MacPhail is used far too often as an easy scapegoat for the lazy.

Lots and lots of things have happened to the Orioles that were in no way MacPhail's fault. He made a nice trade to get Pie, which was universally praised within the baseball community. Pie failed to develop. He made a nice trade to get Bell, which was also universally praised in the baseball community. Bell failed to develop. Wieters failed to develop offensively. Matusz lost velocity and got injured. Tillman lost velocity and failed to develop. Even if you thought Lee and Guerrero were bad acquisitions (and the majority of the board did not), no one could have rationally projected that they would both be putting up sub. 700 OPS seasons. Scott got injured. Markakis regressed from a great player to a merely solid one. Roberts has ongoing back problems and concussed himself with a bat. These are the reasons our team sucks and very few of them MacPhail had control over.

Had even half of these things turned out differently, the team would be in a very different situation and we would all be championing MacPhail because he made the trades that put us in the position to even be disappointed. Five years ago the team had no chance at all because there was absolutely no talent on the roster. Now we have loads of talent and all of it is failing to live up to expectations. The Tejada trade, the Bedard trade, the Sherrill trade, the Hardy trade, the Reynolds trade, the Pie trade, the Andino trade -- these are all good to great moves, some of which turned out better than others. He has never once made a trade where immediately you felt we had lost or that the pundits immediately came down in favor of the other party. Far more often than not, MacPhail came out ahead.

I'm not saying he's a perfect GM or even an above average one. MacPhail definitely shares a chunk of the blame. He's been totally non existent on the international signings front, keeps giving moronic deals to free agent relievers and, worst of all in my opinion, he's been tentative about choosing a path, not entirely committing to one way or the other. The latter, however, could be Angelos' influence. I'm not saying that things couldn't be better than they are - obviously they could - but to act like MacPhail has somehow driven us straight to this point is just lazy intellectual gerrymandering.

I know there are some very vocal people around the board that think MacPhail is a terrible GM because he failed to sign Teix or Holliday, despite the fact that the vast majority of the board felt the deals were too rich for the O's blood. And even if we had signed one of them, the team still wouldn't be competing right now.

Watching this board has made me understand why the country's political process is so messed up. The country has problems = the President's fault, despite a myriad of events and policy decisions made by both political parties over the course of decades that led us to this point. The Democrats blame Bush. The Republicans blame Obama. Rather than trying to think through any sort of complex gray area, just treat it like a sports franchise and root for the home team. Because it's easier, and self-righteous indignation is so much more fun than intellectual honesty.

Makes a ton of sense. Even still, what we've done has been pedestrian. But excellent post nonetheless.

[El Gordo]

I hate to even open this can of worms, but I still think MacPhail is used far too often as an easy scapegoat for the lazy.

Lots and lots of things have happened to the Orioles that were in no way MacPhail's fault. He made a nice trade to get Pie, which was universally praised within the baseball community. Pie failed to develop. He made a nice trade to get Bell, which was also universally praised in the baseball community. Bell failed to develop. Wieters failed to develop offensively. Matusz lost velocity and got injured. Tillman lost velocity and failed to develop. Even if you thought Lee and Guerrero were bad acquisitions (and the majority of the board did not), no one could have rationally projected that they would both be putting up sub. 700 OPS seasons. Scott got injured. Markakis regressed from a great player to a merely solid one. Roberts has ongoing back problems and concussed himself with a bat. These are the reasons our team sucks and very few of them MacPhail had control over.

Had even half of these things turned out differently, the team would be in a very different situation and we would all be championing MacPhail because he made the trades that put us in the position to even be disappointed. Five years ago the team had no chance at all because there was absolutely no talent on the roster. Now we have loads of talent and all of it is failing to live up to expectations. The Tejada trade, the Bedard trade, the Sherrill trade, the Hardy trade, the Reynolds trade, the Pie trade, the Andino trade -- these are all good to great moves, some of which turned out better than others. He has never once made a trade where immediately you felt we had lost or that the pundits immediately came down in favor of the other party. Far more often than not, MacPhail came out ahead.

I'm not saying he's a perfect GM or even an above average one. MacPhail definitely shares a chunk of the blame. He's been totally non existent on the international signings front, keeps giving moronic deals to free agent relievers and, worst of all in my opinion, he's been tentative about choosing a path, not entirely committing to one way or the other. The latter, however, could be Angelos' influence. I'm not saying that things couldn't be better than they are - obviously they could - but to act like MacPhail has somehow driven us straight to this point is just lazy intellectual gerrymandering.

I know there are some very vocal people around the board that think MacPhail is a terrible GM because he failed to sign Teix or Holliday, despite the fact that the vast majority of the board felt the deals were too rich for the O's blood. And even if we had signed one of them, the team still wouldn't be competing right now.

Watching this board has made me understand why the country's political process is so messed up. The country has problems = the President's fault, despite a myriad of events and policy decisions made by both political parties over the course of decades that led us to this point. The Democrats blame Bush. The Republicans blame Obama. Rather than trying to think through any sort of complex gray area, just treat it like a sports franchise and root for the home team. Because it's easier, and self-righteous indignation is so much more fun than intellectual honesty.

There is one common theme to what you say about our troubles."Failed to develop". To some degree AM is responsible for seeing that players get developed, and the O's apparently are miserable in that dept. Now I suspect that Matusz, Bergesen, and Tillman's problems, stem from Mark Conners tweaking, and he was Buck's choice, but still, a number of players with upside have fizzled and that needed to be addressed.

[El Gordo]

If your title is President of Baseball Operations, aren't you in charge of selecting the coaches and developmental staff?

I think Buck is responsible for the coaching at the ML level and this season that is the level where it has failed, if it has. Bergesen, Matusz, Tillman, Markakis ,Gregg, Gonzalez, Wieters, have all recieved the brunt of their coaching at that level. No one IIRC complained that Buck shouldn't have total control of his coaching picks.

[GoldGlove21]

There is one common theme to what you say about our troubles."Failed to develop". To some degree AM is responsible for seeing that players get developed, and the O's apparently are miserable in that dept. Now I suspect that Matusz, Bergesen, and Tillman's problems, stem from Mark Conners tweaking, and he was Buck's choice, but still, a number of players with upside have fizzled and that needed to be addressed.

Tillman and Bergesen were struggling at times last year. Matusz might be injured to some extend, his conditioning is a problem at this time. Baseball America ranks the top-100 prospects every year and when you look back over those lists it is easy to find guys who just fade. If the Orioles wanted to find 4 legit in house pitching options then they should have 7 or 8 strong candidates. Most experts thought Bergesen would be a backend guy.

I heard people knocking Tillman's fastball command and Palmer made comment after comment about young pitchers being taught to use their fastball to setup the breaking stuff. The Orioles are telling him a philosophy and I can not sit here and blame them for why he failed. What I will say is that this team has tons of holes and MacPhail is responsible for them.

[GoldGlove21]

I think Buck is responsible for the coaching at the ML level and this season that is the level where it has failed, if it has. Bergesen, Matusz, Tillman, Markakis ,Gregg, Gonzalez, Wieters, have all recieved the brunt of their coaching at that level. No one IIRC complained that Buck shouldn't have total control of his coaching picks.

We are calling out the coaches for what exactly:

1.) Tillman can't throw strikes.

2.) Roberts get injured with no real backup in the minors or on the roster.

3.) Markakis slumps for the first quarter+ of the season.

4.) Reynolds made 20 errors after earning a reputation for doing such a thing elsewhere.

5.) Matusz gets hurt.

6.) Simon gets into trouble at home.

7.) Scott gets hurt.

8.) Guthrie entered camp as the only starter with more than 200 IP in his career if I am not mistaken.

9.) Gonzalez is wild and very expensive.

10.) Lee doesn't hit his weight.

The key to sustained winning is depth, depth and more depth IMO. The Rays let Crawford and Pena go in the offseason and didn't really miss much of a beat. Could you imagine the Orioles letting Jones and Reynolds go at this point? Replace them with Pie and Bell. Managers can only do so much. At some point someone needs to call all of the managers who managed this team after Davey Johnson and offer them an apology. As a matter of fact they should call Davey too!

MacPhail has done some good things since joining the Orioles, but most if not all of them were through trades. The drafts are unimpressive outside of the first pick, which every team loves until they falter. He can't seem to recruit the players we need to compete. Lee and Guerrero seemed to only sign here after all other starting opportunities were filled. It is a shame that such a great baseball city has to deal with them year-in and year-out.

[NewMarketSean]

It's the "time to root for the Nationals" phase.

[Dr. FLK]

This phase is titled "I'm in over my head."

[TGO]

Maybe it's the "Rope-a-Dope" phase. Watch out, 2012 AL East, we are setting you up.