On the Record: Better pitchers available that could be had for free instead of Eveland

[Enjoy Terror]

Why am I on that list? I'm okay with that trade an have voiced that opinion. I don't think Martin or Henson were going to be anything special, just as I don't think Eveland is either. We traded depth in the low minors for depth at AAA.

My gripe is that the Orioles haven't done a single substantial thing to make this club better. Why are we sitting on our hands? Do the Orioles know they were a distant last place in runs allowed with much the same pitching we have now? The O's need to bite the bullet and risk having a bad contract with a currently good starting pitcher. They need to win now so they can pay for that bad contract later. They need to trade Reimold and Andino and Davis and Adams and figure out what can come back to us.

[SrMeowMeow]

Why am I on that list? I'm okay with that trade an have voiced that opinion. I don't think Martin or Henson were going to be anything special, just as I don't think Eveland is either. We traded depth in the low minors for depth at AAA.

My gripe is that the Orioles haven't done a single substantial thing to make this club better. Why are we sitting on our hands? Do the Orioles know they were a distant last place in runs allowed with much the same pitching we have now? The O's need to bite the bullet and risk having a bad contract with a currently good starting pitcher. They need to win now so they can pay for that bad contract later. They need to trade Reimold and Andino and Davis and Adams and figure out what can come back to us.

Seriously, why am I not on the list? I've been stridently critical. :angryfire:

[Oh4real]

Ah, the value of having a terrible pitcher so that he's used to being terrible and it won't bother him.

Yeah - not exactly exciting. It is what it is. I am not purchasing playoff tickets just yet.

[Oh4real]

Why am I on that list? I'm okay with that trade an have voiced that opinion. I don't think Martin or Henson were going to be anything special, just as I don't think Eveland is either. We traded depth in the low minors for depth at AAA.

My gripe is that the Orioles haven't done a single substantial thing to make this club better. Why are we sitting on our hands? Do the Orioles know they were a distant last place in runs allowed with much the same pitching we have now? The O's need to bite the bullet and risk having a bad contract with a currently good starting pitcher. They need to win now so they can pay for that bad contract later. They need to trade Reimold and Andino and Davis and Adams and figure out what can come back to us.

I do not advocate making a move just to make one. The sad reality is that if you asked vegas to put odds on which team would be last to win a world series from this point on - we'd probably be the favorites.

If you come home and your house is burned down - you call the insurance company. Sadly, baseball has no such policy to rebuild burnt down organizations. You cant make any big moves because you really have nowhere to put anything nice..

[SrMeowMeow]

I do not advocate making a move just to make one. The sad reality is that if you asked vegas to put odds on which team would be last to win a world series from this point on - we'd probably be the favorites.

If you come home and your house is burned down - you call the insurance company. Sadly, baseball has no such policy to rebuild burnt down organizations. You cant make any big moves because you really have nowhere to put anything nice..

We are in bad shape, that's true. But the answer is not to play it safe and make depth signings here and there. The answer is that when you're a shambles of an organization, you have to make the hard decisions in a timely fashion. In our case, that means trading Adam Jones while he still has two years left. It means locking up Matt Wieters, Rays-style, even though we inherit some risk that way. It means moving Guthrie for high-risk, high-upside prospects, even though he's a good guy. It means not signing fan favorites and feel-good stories like Brian Roberts to long-term deals in non-contending years. It means investing in unconventional areas. It means risking angering your fanbase by spending more on unknown international prospects than you do on free agents. It means you don't sign mediocre placeholders to stay near .500 and avoid being a laughingstock, because you already are.

[bluedog]

I think the point is... Let me take a shot at this... The Orioles organization appears to believe that Eveland has hidden value. We can only speculate on how they came to this conclusion. They are the people being paid by Peter Angelos to make the decisions. They do this based on scouting reports from people who have personal knowledge of the performance, mechanics, makeup both physical and mental, and any other intangible that might be known or unknown. Probably some of this information comes from persons who have been in the clubhouse with the player in question.

This, I think is part of the point that is missed by some. While stats are a good indicator, they are not a stand-alone evaluation mechanism.

When fans have a lot of time on their hands, and a passion for their team, I think they lose sight of the real-world aspect of this issue, and start to play fantasy GM or sim-baseball GM and come to their conclusions based on the limited information they have.

[i hope this doesn't sound condescending. I may be wrong in my perspective. I never played baseball after high school. I am a fan who prefers to give DD the benefit of the doubt on MOST things, and trades at the Teagarden and Eveland level are very deserving of the benefit of the doubt.]

A perfect example of this was the Guthrie acquisition. The Indians gave up on him, so it wasn't like he was leaving a pitching rich organization who didn't have room for him anymore. They decided that he was basically not worth keeping under any circumstances and they found no other organization willing to trade anything significant for him. The O's apparently saw something in Guthrie that the Tribe (and all of the other ML teams) didn't see. In retrospect the O's did a fantastic job rolling the dice on Guts.

In fact, Eveland's minor league stats at Age 27 are superior to Guthrie's. Both pitchers struggled in the majors. Both came to the O's about the same time (28 years old). Now Eveland has about 300 more inning pitched at the major league level, but he seemed to have figured something out last year (small sample size noted). Maybe the O's think Eveland is another Guthrie? Late blooming 180+ IP / 4.00 ERA guy, who's cheap.

It could happen. So why all the hate about this move? We got a guy with potential upside at the major league level for two prospects that won't even crack the Dodgers Top 50 list. Low risk all the way around. Even if he fails to make the team, what have we really lost here?

[wildcard]

What about the three Japanese pitchers: Chen, Iwakuma and Wada?

[CA-ORIOLE]

A perfect example of this was the Guthrie acquisition. The Indians gave up on him, so it wasn't like he was leaving a pitching rich organization who didn't have room for him anymore. They decided that he was basically not worth keeping under any circumstances and they found no other organization willing to trade anything significant for him. The O's apparently saw something in Guthrie that the Tribe (and all of the other ML teams) didn't see. In retrospect the O's did a fantastic job rolling the dice on Guts.

In fact, Eveland's minor league stats at Age 27 are superior to Guthrie's. Both pitchers struggled in the majors. Both came to the O's about the same time (28 years old). Now Eveland has about 300 more inning pitched at the major league level, but he seemed to have figured something out last year (small sample size noted). Maybe the O's think Eveland is another Guthrie? Late blooming 180+ IP / 4.00 ERA guy, who's cheap.

It could happen. So why all the hate about this move? We got a guy with potential upside at the major league level for two prospects that won't even crack the Dodgers Top 50 list. Low risk all the way around. Even if he fails to make the team, what have we really lost here?

You must not be paying attention. Garret Atkins and past Oriole incompetence trumps 10 Guthrie's. Eveland's Minor League stats are awful. Not only that, all Evelands are the same, are available for free, and we were dumb enough to pay for one.

[Oh4real]

We are in bad shape, that's true. But the answer is not to play it safe and make depth signings here and there. The answer is that when you're a shambles of an organization, you have to make the hard decisions in a timely fashion. In our case, that means trading Adam Jones while he still has two years left. It means locking up Matt Wieters, Rays-style, even though we inherit some risk that way. It means moving Guthrie for high-risk, high-upside prospects, even though he's a good guy. It means not signing fan favorites and feel-good stories like Brian Roberts to long-term deals in non-contending years. It means investing in unconventional areas. It means risking angering your fanbase by spending more on unknown international prospects than you do on free agents. It means you don't sign mediocre placeholders to stay near .500 and avoid being a laughingstock, because you already are.

The biggest concern for me, with a new GM, is his familiarity with the system. While I know we're in a bad position now, I also know we have some assets that DD isn't as familiar with now as he will be a year from now. The major league guys he knows and Buck certainly can advise DD on his players, but when we start adding pieces to put a deal together I don't trust that he is as familiar with what we'll be giving as others are with what they'll be getting. That stated - I am admittedly unaware of his connection to baseball over the last couple years. I would rather gain that information from someone on the board than a wikipedia search.

[Oh4real]

I would not have been disappointed had we landed Ryan Perry for the price he was moved at.

[SurhoffRules]

I never claimed to be better or smarter than DD, nor did I join in on the "there are better options for free" campaign. All I said was that this trade was a non-move for a team that NEEDS to make significant improvements. If that qualifies as me saying I'm smarter than DD, then so be it, but I never said that. Therefore, there will remain a blank next to my name in this thread because I have no idea who fits the bill.

I was going to type this more or less so if it's okay with Dipper I'll just second what he said.

[TakebackOPACY]

Ok, it's time for you evaluators out there to put up or shut up about the Eveland trade. I've seen things thrown around that suggest you can shake a tree and ten Eveland's fall out or that you can find a guy like Eveland anytime and that there are many available right now for free.

So here's your mission:

Put down the names of pitchers who will be better than Eveland in 2012 who are available for free right now. You can even put down pitchers you believe will be DFA'd or non-tendered before arbitration.

Here are the posters that believe they are smarter than DD and his staff on this trade: 9brady,

atomic,

blid,

bOhs01,

Brian88,

ChaosLex,

ChrisAF79,

dabirds,

Dipper9,

DoobyDoo,

Dwight Schrute,

Enjoy Terror,

Florida_Osfan,

gfrank,

glenn__davis,

JamesI,

JanJaap,

JayGibbons31,

LookinUp,

lovetoaster,

mazarelo,

MikeAD,

Mongolbird,

nevadaO,

NewMarketSean,

PaulFolk,

playbaltimorecom,

sakata_catching,

Singleton,

Sports Guy,

square634,

SteveA,

SurhoffRules,

utvolzac,

WORST OWNER

I expect that each of you will have no problems finding these pitchers so put it down on record and at the end of next year, we'll see if you or DD was right. since this was such a horrible trade and since Eveland is such "trash," this should be simple endeavor.

Let's not rehash the trade in this thread, it's just for you to go on record with your choices. You don't have to add analysis to each pitcher if you don't want to, just the names are fine. Also, if you didn't like the trade because of what we gave up, please tell us what you think the players traded will become in the major leagues.

Nice try. I thought it was an interesting challenge. I would've thrown a few names out there, even though I'm very neutrally okay about the trade, just to see how I could do. But I can't even stand to wade through the thread.

[SteveA]

If posters defaulted to this position until proven otherwise, we wouldn't have this (and several other) thread.

You are right. We sinned. We made the bitter, horrific error of EXPRESSING AN OPINION BY CASTING A VOTE IN A POLL THAT SOMEONE POSTED.

Damn us to hell, for our evil ways. How dare we choose YES or NO when asked a question by someone else on the board, without first proving that we have an advanced degree in baseball scouting and GMing?

Why, the nerve of us to move our mouse so the cursor was over that little circle, and click on it to fill in the circle, and hit Submit!

Thank you for correcting the error of our ways. I will know better in the future than to actually have an opinion that I feel so strongly about I am willing ot put a little black circle inside a bigger circle and hit a submit button.

I have learned my lesson the hard way, I won't make this mistake again.

[Fan4Life]

You are right. We sinned. We made the bitter, horrific error of EXPRESSING AN OPINION BY CASTING A VOTE IN A POLL THAT SOMEONE POSTED.

Damn us to hell, for our evil ways. How dare we choose YES or NO when asked a question by someone else on the board, without first proving that we have an advanced degree in baseball scouting and GMing?

Why, the nerve of us to move our mouse so the cursor was over that little circle, and click on it to fill in the circle, and hit Submit!

Thank you for correcting the error of our ways. I will know better in the future than to actually have an opinion that I feel so strongly about I am willing ot put a little black circle inside a bigger circle and hit a submit button.

I have learned my lesson the hard way, I won't make this mistake again.

I don't think anyone with some common sense and perhaps read the entire thread thinks I was referring to everyone who opposed the deal. I was referring to those who seem to believe they are better qualified to judge the deal than those with a resume of near excellence. If that includes you, than I accept your apology.

[SrMeowMeow]

It's especially cool to call out a bunch of people for no reason and then disappear from the thread as your argument gets dismantled.