Orioles' Duquette: "Our future is now."

[Lucky Jim]

You don't want to pre-judge, but the draft was a failure? I can't reconcile that.

BTW, he isn't above criticism, but I haven't seen anything yet that makes me think he is going to hit the panic button.

Where did I say the draft was a failure?

Where is there a panic button anywhere?

[Lucky Jim]

Roger, that. I've been working since 8am, my eyes and brain are a bit fried. Apologies.

No worries. I agree w/ you. But I wanted to quote both of you for context, that's all. I know where you stand on this, and it's reasonable (re: not giving much up) as far as I can tell. I'm more critical, but I realize the limits of that criticism.

[MrOrange82]

Machado plus...what, do you think?

Disclaimer: I'm not very good at this. I'd think one of the "cavalry" plus another 1-2 low-level prospects. As far as I know, AZ has enough OF talent, so I don't think Hoes or Avery would be involved. If Machado was involved, I wouldn't consider adding Schoop. I mean...it definitely depends more on what other teams are willing to bid, especially since the DBacks seem content to wait until winter to trade Upton if the market doesn't develop. A "wow" trade offer to snare Upton this season would probably be (much) too pricey for the O's in re: MiL talent.

[Ampontan]

I don't like his trades for Eveland, Thome or Teagarden.

I don't like his actions w/r/t to the signing of Seong Min Kim.

I'm skeptical of his firing of numerous scouts.

I don't much like the inefficiency/failure to maximize in the recent draft.

I'm skeptical of his expenditures of solid amounts of cash for low-to-medium-upside international prospects.

All the things you thing are wrong are stuff I'm glad he did, though nobody knows about #4 yet.

Aren't message boards great?

[EagleOriole]

Where did I say the draft was a failure?

Where is there a panic button anywhere?

Yeah I read that draft comment incorrectly, sorry, too late for me I am heading to bed...as for the panic button, that didn't really apply to you specifically but many posters in this thread that seem convinced that Duquette is going to do something big and stupid because he said "our future is now."

[Flash- bd]

Look, I don't think that either Buck or DD are clueless. They're smart guys, but smart guys fail all of the time. And smart guys with previous success fail all of the time. This logic could also apply to Syd Thrift, Andy MacPhail, Omar Minaya, Dallas Green, Billy Beane, etc. None of them merit deference. So, no, we shouldn't disparage Duquette hyperbolically, but we shouldn't be told to pipe down w/r/t criticism, either.

Glad you posted this. The "don't criticize the GM because he's a really smart guy" trope is one of my biggest pet peeves. Maybe I'll hesitate to question an astrophysicist's word or a top surgeon's opinion but none of these guys are genius level. People in the U.S. call Bill Belicheck the "genius" but if you were to quantify the guy's IQ it would probably measure out at slightly above-average. Now I think the atmosphere in baseball is a little more conducive to/attractive to people of real intelligence than the one in football, where some of those GMs/coaches are not just average intelligences but clearly below-average ones (Herm Edwards anyone? ), but please, don't tell me anyone in sports is doing something too complicated/too high-level for me to challenge.

That said, I'm closer to agreeing with this

All the things you thing are wrong are stuff I'm glad he did, though nobody knows about #4 yet.

than I am with this:

I don't like his trades for Eveland, Thome or Teagarden.

I don't like his actions w/r/t to the signing of Seong Min Kim.

I'm skeptical of his firing of numerous scouts.

I don't much like the inefficiency/failure to maximize in the recent draft.

I'm skeptical of his expenditures of solid amounts of cash for low-to-medium-upside international prospects.

[Lucky Jim]

That said, I'm closer to agreeing with this

than I am with this:

I'm used to being in the minority. I don't sweat it much.

[hoosiers]

It's hard to remember a time when I had less confidence in our front office to do the right thing.

Our FO is talking about being buyers when we should be sellers.

Our FO has already dealt away a top 10 prospect for an over-the-hill DH on a team that already has Betemit and Flaherty.

We just came away from the draft with much less talent than we should have.

I love the Guts trade, the bullpen moves, etc, but it is time to cash in those chips via trade, bring up guys like Hoes to see if they can provide a spark or be ready for next season. Our FO speaks and acts like a huge, unpredictable wild card, and while I believe net/net that DD will make beneficial movies, I am not sure I can be along for a ride that will contain so many stupid moves of the Eveland, Lino, let's draft Poche and cave in to Gausman variety. There are already too many moves of the Bautista/Grimsley ilk that show a front office completely unable to appropriately assess its competitive position as well as one that plays fast and loose with prospects and draft picks.

[incubus]

I'm used to being in the minority. I don't sweat it much.

I agree with you to a degree Jim, except for the Scouts (because I don't know anything about the situation.)

[Lucky Jim]

I agree with you to a degree Jim, except for the Scouts (because I don't know anything about the situation.)

I agree. I didn't want to come down to hard on it, but I do remain skeptical. Nothing more, for the moment.

[Flash- bd]

There are already too many moves of the Bautista/Grimsley ilk that show a front office completely unable to appropriately assess its competitive position as well as one that plays fast and loose with prospects and draft picks.

Like? The Thome trade is the only one I can see, and I know better than to jump into that argument again (but I was for it, and that's coming from a guy who never expected us to contend this year, even with the Thome trade).

Now if he truly believes, "The future is now" and some of the things he's putting out in the media no one disagrees more with him than me, but DD strikes me as a guy that's coy and clever with the media and isn't going to make the mistake of being earnest/transparent when there's no need to be.

I admit I'm worried more than I used to be about DD--and I've gone from being well in favor of him to a bit lukewarm after seeing our names bandied about with the likes of Greinke, Saunders, etc., but let's see if this is all just smoke and mirrors before we decide the guy doesn't have a clue.

At this point, I just don't see much to criticize him for; in fact, I've been pretty impressed by their recent move to keep Matusz and Avery down which for me are quite clearly future-oriented moves which suggest a realistic understanding for our position and objectives.

[sangar]

With all of the preseason talk from the experts about how bad this team was, do you think our strong play the first couple of months surprised Duquette?

[El Gordo]

The O's need to stay in the mix to keep attendance up. That is the name of the game. We need to shore up the SP and add an OBP bat to help the offense. That is what DD will do, and he can do it without mortgaging the future. This is a critical time with the SP in disarray. If some trades can be made to help us now, by Sept. we should have plenty of reenforcements to keep us in the hunt.

[Lucky Jim]

Like? The Thome trade is the only one I can see, and I know better than to jump into that argument again (but I was for it, and that's coming from a guy who never expected us to contend this year, even with the Thome trade).

To start, for context, I haven't been against everything he's done. I supported the Hammel trade. And I supported Chen signing, albeit abstractly - in August of last year, I endorsed going after second-tier Nippon league free agents, rather than Darvish-like FAs....

I mean, we know that some Nippon League pitchers can succeed in the U.S. But hasn't the real value been in guys like Uehara (sort-of/health), Saito and Takahashi?

It seems to me that the system promotes huge upfront costs for what is deemed "exceptional" talent - but the returns on that cost have generally been disappointing at best. Igawa, Matsuzaka, and Ishii cost $88m in posting fees alone and combined put up under 11 WAR. That's $8m a win w/o even taking into account salary. On the other hand, guys like Otsuka, Takahashi, Saito and Uehara - w/ more limited expectation and *much* more limited expenditure - provided legitimate MLB value.

What I'm getting at is maybe the Nippon League is a great resource - it's just not a great resource for elite pitching talent. Someone will strike gold someday, but the posting fees are remarkably prohibitive given the inherent risk in translating elite performance.

I think his bullpen acquisitions were savvy, but not quite the genius-level they looked like early in the season.

That said, as I posted in another thread, Duquette's acquisitions of Teagarden, Eveland and Thome have garnered us all of .2 fWAR (exactly .1, 0 and .1 respectively), for which we spent: Lino, Henry, Martin, Miclat, Simon, and Henson. Even if you don't think there's tremendous talent going out, I think that's strong evidence that there's a disconnect between what we spend and what we get when it comes to prospects.

I think Hoosiers probably thinks the one-year nature of the MLB talent that we got makes each of them somewhat Grimsley-like, but how many trades do we need to see to have these concerns?

In the end, I'm guessing that Hoosiers is inclined to frown upon the draft inefficiency as much or more than the trades...

I've never gotten the sense that DD is coy or clever with the media. Reticent, maybe, but no kind of master manipulator.

[Flash- bd]

To start, for context, I haven't been against everything he's done. I supported the Hammel trade. And I supported Chen signing, albeit abstractly - in August of last year, I endorsed going after second-tier Nippon league free agents, rather than Darvish-like FAs....

I think his bullpen acquisitions were savvy, but not quite the genius-level they looked like early in the season.

That said, as I posted in another thread, Duquette's acquisitions of Teagarden, Eveland and Thome have garnered us all of .2 fWAR (exactly .1, 0 and .1 respectively), for which we spent: Lino, Henry, Martin, Miclat, Simon, and Henson. I think that's strong evidence that there's a disconnect between what we spend and what we get when it comes to prospects.

I've never gotten the sense that DD is coy or clever with the media. Reticent, maybe, but no kind of master manipulator.

Read the quote from hoosiers again: "There are already too many moves of the Bautista/Grimsley ilk that show a front office completely unable to appropriately assess its competitive position as well as one that plays fast and loose with prospects and draft picks."

That was what I responded "Like?" to. That is: it's not that I've never disagreed with a DD move and that I was asking for examples of one's I should disagree with, I just don't see how you can say "there are already too many moves of the Bautista/Grimsley ilk that show a front office completely unable to appropriately assess its competitive position."

The Teagarden and Eveland trades have also been argued to death by me and others but when you name Lino, Henry, Martin, Miclat, and Henson not one of those names bother me. I still like all three of those trades (Thome, Teagarden, and Eveland) in retrospect. You can use fWAR all you like (fWAR for me isn't a good stat when you're trying to measure actual value given so much as it is useful for judging the value of a player in a vacuum, rWAR is better for that, IMO) but that game we won in which Eveland started earlier in the year vs. TB and Teagarden's HR might have already provided more value than the guys that were traded for will ever give. Henson and Miclat are MiL/organizational guys and Martin's upside is probably something like Eveland while Lino will be lucky to become Taylor Teagarden. If everything works out with Henry he'll become Miguel Socolovich...

I don't know why you mention Simon because he was DFA'd as I recall. If you want to argue with that move, that's a separate issue, but I'm actually inclined to agree that was a bad move. Still, it's hardly indicative of a "front office completely unable to appropriately assess its competitive position."

As for DD being coy or clever with the media, I actually just read the article on Orioles.com containing all his quotes today and yeah, I think I'm swung over to your side on this. I can't interpret those comments any other way than earnest, and it seems like he is definitely serious about acquiring a SP.

I do think there's more value in a half-assed playoff push (and more importantly, for me, a .500 season) than some idealists on this board--including maybe even myself--are willing to admit. If Duquette can toe the line between not sacrificing/offering any detriment (to) the future outlook I'll be okay with it, but if he offers anything of worth for a SP I'll be strongly against it. We'll see--I was officially nervous when the Greinke thread popped up on here--now I'm officially nervouser.