Who is the next JR House or Jon Knott we could sign this offseason?

[Sports Guy]

If we are taliking about last year when Millar was coming off an .811 OPS year with a high OBP, it's a pretty big gamble to play a guy like House who might be better, but most likely not, for a season or two consdering his age, 28. And now since we are rebuilding a guy like House or Knott would only make sense as a cheaper stop gap, if you can't get someone long term.

And it would have cost us what exactly???

[Why Not?]

So what is the other option? Pay Jay Payton $5 million a year? Just let Kevin Millar keep playing because he's slightly above average and we might not be able to find someone who is better and shouldn't waste our time to find out?

Some of these kinds of answers are amazing.

I'm not saying we shouldn't give those guys a chance. In this team's position, I think we should. It's dumb not to.

But only the occasional guy of the Phelps/Cust/Knott ilk who "gets a chance" amounts to anything. Almost none of them wind up being as good as Payton or Millar (which is not saying those guys are great). Sometimes the board acts like we were 500 Knott/House at-bats away from a championship.

[Why Not?]

The only one?!? He wasn't the only one last year. He probably wasn't the only one on the Oakland A's last year. He wasn't even the only Oriole discard to play a key role on a team better than the O's in 2007 - that list at least includes Casey Blake and Joe Borowski. Every single year there are minor leaguers and journeymen and underused players who'd been written off by numerous organizations who end up with significant playing time on good teams.

The 1989 Orioles happened mainly because of a collection of players exactly like this. The 1983 Orioles had numerous players like this play key roles on a World Championship team.

I'm thinking more along the lines of guys who have been overly beloved by this board.

[TinCup]

I'm thinking more along the lines of guys who have been overly beloved by this board.

Oh lord, here we go.....

[El Gordo]

At the same time, what harm would it have done to at least try and see what a guy like House could have done instead of Millar? Would we have lost even more games? The point being made in more than just the tea leaves is this team has made a penchant of playing league average journeymen that few if any other teams would employ as opposed to taking a real earnest flyer on the Knotts and Houses of this world.

Well, at the beginning of last season unlike most here at the old OH, I thought we had a good shot at being at least an 85 win team. I didn't know that Bedard, Loewen, Guthrie, Olson, Baez, Ray, Penn and Benson would all be on the DL by the end of the year or that Huff wouldn't find his bat until after the AS break or that Gibbons never would find his or that Miggi would miss 29 games or Perlozzo would abuse the bullpen, etc. Had I known this I would have realized the season was shot, we were in rebuild mode, and so I might have been more willing to give House a look.

[DrungoHazewood]

And it would have cost us what exactly???

He might have allowed a passed ball in a crucial moment of a key game and embarrassed a proud franchise that's never embarrassed. Everybody knows that a couple of passed balls is a far bigger sin in baseball's unwritten rules than hitting .205/.277/.256 with four RBI after April 8th while playing middling defense.

[TinCup]

Well, at the beginning of last season unlike most here at the old OH, I thought we had a good shot at being at least an 85 win team. I didn't know that Bedard, Loewen, Guthrie, Olson, Baez, Ray, Penn and Benson would all be on the DL by the end of the year or that Huff wouldn't find his bat until after the AS break or that Gibbons never would find his or that Miggi would miss 29 games or Perlozzo would abuse the bullpen, etc. Had I known this I would have realized the season was shot, we were in rebuild mode, and so I might have been more willing to give House a look.

I hate to sound trite or invoke another leitmotif , but I must....Excuses, excuses, excuses. Most others saw this team at the start of last year as just the team that ended the season in such a woeful state. It was not a talented team then, and it is not a talented team now. Been like this for a long time. Folks just need to see it for what it is and stop overvaluing our own.

[SrMeowMeow]

Not caring does seem to be a hallmark of everything about the modern day Baltimore Orioles, so the quote is fairly appropriate.

We wouldn't be obsessed with talented+flawed players here if the Orioles weren't so comically, consistently abysmal at handling them, and if we didn't have such good examples of brilliantly using these players in the team's own past.

You know, I KNEW when I wrote that line that someone would ***** me out, take it completely out of context, and turn it into some sort of moral lesson about the Orioles.

I'm pretty sure you know I didn't mean "I think we shouldn't care about things and that will make us a winner."

What I meant was, in as non-catch-phraseable language as possible, is that I think people get way too worked up over "the ones that got away" and "finding diamonds in the rough". It's very very rare. And because we're human beings, we focus on the very few players we toss that turn out well instead of the vast majority that bust - or at least never surpass expectations as MiL players. And because we're O's fans, we obsess over the mistakes the Orioles make and blow them way out of proportion. EVERY club makes bad trades, bad signings, misreads players, makes bad decisions under pressure or not.

I will be surprised if Knott or House go on to have productive major league careers (pleasantly, if it's for the O's). But I won't beat my own head in because of the missed opportunity. Sometimes things just don't click in certain situations and then come together in others. Maybe John Maine would have never been good with the O's, or maybe we missed out on a staff ace. Scott Kazmir (Mets - Rays trade) could have busted and Zambrano could have stayed solid and it would have been a good trade.

Hindsight is 20/20. It's easy to say we should have kept Cust now, and equally easy to make predictions about House/Knott now that you know will probably never be proven either way, but it's not particularly sound thinking.

[Moose Milligan]

So what's your other option? Having really crappy reserve players and a useless squad at Norfolk so that we don't have any realistic options besides the overmatched players on the major league roster?

Who wants capable backups and platoon players if it means a little messageboard rabble rousing? I'd much rather have the soothing contentment that accompanies poor play and nowhere to turn.

The title of the thread is "Who is the next JR House or Jon Knott we could sign this offseason?"

One (in this case, me) might take that to mean "Who is the next AAAA player we could sign this offseason and then jerk him around between Norfolk and Baltimore and make him ride the bench while he's in the majors and never give him any playing time?"

It's not like House and Knott had ample playing time here, it's not like we saw what they could do on a regular basis. So who is the next JR House or Jon Knott for the Baltimore Orioles? Does it matter? Cause if they're going to do a good job of filling those roles, they better get acclimated to the bench.

Now if we were talking about changing a philosophy to something like the A's have where we look for people like Jack Cust and actually PLAY them, that'd be different story altogether. . . . . .

[mefogus]

Hindsight is 20/20. It's easy to say we should have kept Cust now, and equally easy to make predictions about House/Knott now that you know will probably never be proven either way, but it's not particularly sound thinking.

I think you will find that the majority of people lamenting about House/Knott now were the same people lamenting about Cust and Maine and Stephens and Pickering and...

Hindsight has nothing to do with what these same people are talking about. It's simply another lament in the stream of justified laments.

-m

[DrungoHazewood]

You know, I KNEW when I wrote that line that someone would ***** me out, take it completely out of context, and turn it into some sort of moral lesson about the Orioles.

I'm pretty sure you know I didn't mean "I think we shouldn't care about things and that will make us a winner."

What I meant was, in as non-catch-phraseable language as possible, is that I think people get way too worked up over "the ones that got away" and "finding diamonds in the rough". It's very very rare. And because we're human beings, we focus on the very few players we toss that turn out well instead of the vast majority that bust - or at least never surpass expectations as MiL players. And because we're O's fans, we obsess over the mistakes the Orioles make and blow them way out of proportion. EVERY club makes bad trades, bad signings, misreads players, makes bad decisions under pressure or not.

I will be surprised if Knott or House go on to have productive major league careers (pleasantly, if it's for the O's). But I won't beat my own head in because of the missed opportunity. Sometimes things just don't click in certain situations and then come together in others. Maybe John Maine would have never been good with the O's, or maybe we missed out on a staff ace. Scott Kazmir (Mets - Rays trade) could have busted and Zambrano could have stayed solid and it would have been a good trade.

Hindsight is 20/20. It's easy to say we should have kept Cust now, and equally easy to make predictions about House/Knott now that you know will probably never be proven either way, but it's not particularly sound thinking.

It's not rare, it's not a crazy gamble, and it's not magic. Talent is distributed unevenly in baseball. There are always situations where one team has two or three players at a position that are better than the first string guy on another team. The Orioles need to take advantage of this, as they've done so often in the ever more distant past.

I'll repeat - this is not a crazy scheme or a big gamble. It's doing your homework, finding decent ballplayers, and giving them a chance. When it works out it can be wonderful, and even when it doesn't you're not stuck at the end of the year with an untradeable Jay Payton or Danys Baez.

What would have happened if the O's had given a chance to Jon Knott and he hit .190? He would have been released, and they would have moved on. What did happen when they instead signed Jay Payton? We're looking at a 2008 Oriole team that includes the worst-hitting regular LFer in baseball from 2007. Either that or eating 10 times Jon Knott's salary, or picking up a similarly awful contract to make Payton go away.

All it takes is wrapping your mind around the concept that the top 10% or 20% of AAA and the bottom 10% or 20% of the majors are largely interchangeable, except when it comes to salary. Always opting for the "proven" player from this echelon guarantees nothing except a higher payroll and longer commitments.

[El Gordo]

I hate to sound trite or invoke another leitmotif , but I must....Excuses, excuses, excuses. Most others saw this team at the start of last year as just the team that ended the season in such a woeful state. It was not a talented team then, and it is not a talented team now. Been like this for a long time. Folks just need to see it for what it is and stop overvaluing our own.

I must have been reading a different message board. My sense was that an 85 win team was pretty much what a lot people were anticipating. I admit to lacking your prescience. But in the context of an 85 win team and projecting House's MiL numbers adjusting for a jump to ML I wouldnt have expected hm to put up the .785 OPS that Millar ultimately did.

[nyjimbo]

I felt Cervanak should have been given a chance with some 1b/Dh at bats last season. He didn't even get a "cup of coffee". I think he led the league in hits.

[SrMeowMeow]

It's not rare, it's not a crazy gamble, and it's not magic. Talent is distributed unevenly in baseball. There are always situations where one team has two or three players at a position that are better than the first string guy on another team. The Orioles need to take advantage of this, as they've done so often in the ever more distant past.

I'll repeat - this is not a crazy scheme or a big gamble. It's doing your homework, finding decent ballplayers, and giving them a chance. When it works out it can be wonderful, and even when it doesn't you're not stuck at the end of the year with an untradeable Jay Payton or Danys Baez.

What would have happened if the O's had given a chance to Jon Knott and he hit .190? He would have been released, and they would have moved on. What did happen when they instead signed Jay Payton? We're looking at a 2008 Oriole team that includes the worst-hitting regular LFer in baseball from 2007. Either that or eating 10 times Jon Knott's salary, or picking up a similarly awful contract to make Payton go away.

All it takes is wrapping your mind around the concept that the top 10% or 20% of AAA and the bottom 10% or 20% of the majors are largely interchangeable, except when it comes to salary. Always opting for the "proven" player from this echelon guarantees nothing except a higher payroll and longer commitments.

It also means you're sticking AAAA guys in your starting lineup for an entire year. While you somehow have made out everyone who disagrees with you to be part of Jay Payton's fan club, I agree that I would have preferred giving Knott a shot in LF instead of signing Payton, had I known how bad a season he was going to have. Do you realize that Payton's OPS was down 90 points from his career numbers last year?

So, to summarize, I would of course rather have a relatively young guy (House is 28 and Knott is 29) in the lineup as opposed to a guy like Payton with nowhere to go but down, signed purely because he's "proven", and on the verge of his worst full MLB season in five or six years.

However, that's not the question. I do not think we should be looking for the "next House or Knott". We are not in a position where we have a couple holes that we can try to fill next year with underappreciated AAAA guys. We have a LOT of holes, and are hopefully gearing up for a full rebuild. We should be looking for young players with legitimate upside, not actively trying to find near-30 career MiL guys to plug holes with. Sure, I'm obviously not saying we should sign expensive, bad free agents, but, then again, who is?

Honestly, even if we had had Jack Cust last year and he carried his success over this year and for two more years, he's 28. Last season we were not 26 home runs away from anything meaningful. This season we will almost certainly be rebuilding. In 2010 he'll be 31...the odds of finding a player like him (and Cust is pretty much the Cinderella story of what you're advocating) are ridiculously low, and the chances of him having anything to do with a new O's dynasty founded on youth we get back in Tejada/Bedard trades are lower.

There's no risk, but I see almost no gain. I'm happy to field all AAAA guys next year if it's a rebuild year, but even if, say, Knott broke out in a big way, the odds of it being useful longterm are really slim.

[nyjimbo]

Most of those AAAA players offensive abilities don't equate well to being able to play spareingly and pinch hit. As a 24th or 25th player I would rather see a Gomez type not a House or Knott.