Are we trying to get too much pitching?

[Scribo]

At 29 years old, I don't consider him much of an option past the next few years.

I don't mind Scott at all but when I say long term, i am talking guys we want to extend and have here for 10 years.

Jones, Bruce, Votto, Pie, Kemp, LaRoche....Guys like that.

We need to add 2-3 of those type guys...at least.

We don't need to add them all this winter.

This is a long-term project. Without much imagination I can see the O's being six or seven deep in good starters within the next year or two, with two or three more actually being blocked... dealing off the excess at the deadline for a blue-chipper.

Pitching may be over-valued. But if that's the value of it, we can convert it for top positional prospects when the time comes.

[Scribo]

yes he is locked up for four more years, but for a player of his limited big league experience, and the fact that he is almost 30, I dont see how he could be factor four of five years down the road

So he runs out of steam in four years. Big deal.

Besides, he will be 30 next year. That's 33 when he ends his final arbitration year.

[Sports Guy]

We don't need to add them all this winter.

This is a long-term project. Without much imagination I can see the O's being six or seven deep in good starters within the next year or two, with two or three more actually being blocked... dealing off the excess at the deadline for a blue-chipper.

Pitching may be over-valued. But if that's the value of it, we can convert it for top positional prospects when the time comes.

If you are trading Bedard and BRob, you need to add a lot of them.

We aren't going to be able to trade them again next year.

[mweb]

The reality is we don't know what he was worth at this point.

What if the Angels said that we could have Wood for him? Maybe the Orioles preferred to have the Stros package more than just Wood.

It seems that his value was definitely less than I and others felt though, i do agree with that.

Well according to at least one of our insiders, we asked for Wood and Saunders, if they accepted, a deal would have been made. I doubt Saunders really held it up if they were willing to deal Wood.

But yeah, maybe 1 blue chipper, but not two.

Glad we are in agreement.

[Scribo]

If you are trading Bedard and BRob, you need to add a lot of them.

We aren't going to be able to trade them again next year.

If you're talking about young prospects with a real high ceiling and a good chance of getting there, that kind is hard to find anyway, and it's unlikely that anybody who has two will give up both. Kemp and Laroche probably comes as close as any we've heard, and we haven't yet been able to swing that one.

Would Pie and Jones fill the bill?

[Elon Os Fan]

Would the M's take Payton and Huff/Millar if we take Sexson?

[UMterp08]

I think Scott could be our DH for a while, if we fill our outfield with Pie and Jones or Balentien. So he may not be a long term solution in the OF, but he'd definitely be a servicable DH for the next 4 years. In those 4 years, I'm hoping for at least one year of competing for the Wild Card.

[ON BASE %]

We got 3 pitchers in the Stros deal and now BB is saying we are throwing around Adam Jones and 3 pitchers from the M's.

Why so much emphasis on pitching?

This team has got to get more positional talent.

It is an absolute must.

Plus, the pitching they are targeting isn't even top pitching.

I am not saying that AM is going to make the deal for Bedard like BB is saying...I am just saying that for what we are hearing, there isn't enough positional talent coming back.

If Pie is out of a Cubs deal, they really don't have much in terms of real positional talent...And that's fine...A deal headlined by Gallagher and Veal is fine. Although, as has been said, we need to see if the Rockies are interested in BRob.

Bedard is the guy...That is the trade we need to gbet at least 2 position players back and maybe even 3.

I just hope the Dodgers are still in on Bedard.

SG,

Let me start off by saying I really enjoy your posts. I feel that the previous two FO regimes overvalued pitching way too much instead of taking the best player available. In the June 2007 draft we took pitchers from rounds 18 through 26. Not to be critical of Joe Jordan but were pitchers really the best player on his draft board for each of those 9 consecutive rounds? Or was Jordan nudged towards excess pitching by Flanagan and Duquette?

The farm system is still very thin in with postion players IMHO. However, given the overall weakness of our system we need to take the best player available in trade offers for Bedard and Roberts. This is our best chance to infuse the farm system with talent. AM can always rebalance later.

When we do trade for position players let's hope that AM values plate discipline and extra base power. Those attributes should never again be taken for granted. I don't ever want to see a Brandon Fahey type hitter starting in left field again for the Orioles!

It's a good sign AM traded for Scott and Costanzo. I am confident AM will one day buiild a balanced organization that can effectively hit, field, and pitch.

OBP

[RShack]

MacP on XM just said no matter how carefully you evaluate your pitching, it's so iffy that to get 10 solid ML pitchers you need at least 25 stacked up in the system. So that's his point of view on the matter.

Right. So that's gonna be one thing he tries to do. There's lots of good arguments about whether that idea is the right one, but they don't really matter, because that's what he believes in. Now that everybody's glad that somebody's finally in charge, it makes sense to just take that idea about pitching as one of the parameters. This particular idea of his is now part of the informal franchise rules. Whatever the new Oriole Way ends up looking like, this idea will be a part of it. So, we should face it: this idea is now part of the new Oriole Way. Doesn't matter whether we like it or not, he's sure he's right about this.

I really wish that we had some good way to stick our nose inside the organization and keep tabs on how he's gonna get the organization to behave with all the kid pitchers he wants to load up on. I think this specific thing might be an important determinant of what actually happens. One thing we saw this year is that the kid P's we're producing get confused. Part of this is inevitable, they just need IP. But I think they could/should do better. My big hope is that he establishes a standard approach to growing pitchers, and a big active feedback loop so that all the kids are always informed about exactly what they're supposed to be working on. I hope it's not just more of what seems to have been the case: each MiL team has its own P-coach with his own philosophy, and every year the kid P's are getting told something different. That would keep anybody confused and unsure.

So, I hope AM gets to work on helping the org become a system that produces kid pitchers who are way, way less confused about what they're supposed to be doing. All the basic stuff about mechanics and approach should be drilled into their heads by everybody at every level. By the time they get to Baltimore, they should know it inside and out (as much as is humanly possible). It seems to me that that's not happening now. I understand the "getting rattled" part, but I don't think there's much excuse for the "being confused" part. They should get off the bus knowing exactly what they're trying to do.

[hoosiers]

They should get off the bus knowing exactly what they're trying to do.

I'm not saying this is wishful thinking because it happens. But, except for the times it happens, it's wishful thinking.

[RShack]

They should get off the bus knowing exactly what they're trying to do.

I'm not saying this is wishful thinking because it happens. But, except for the times it happens, it's wishful thinking.

You think it's wishful thinking that an org could/should concentrate on making sure it's kid-pitchers know what they're *trying* to do? I fully expect them to get rattled when they try to do it vs. big-league hitters. So, I'm not saying that actually doing it all the time is easy. I fully expect them to have their ups and downs. But I would expect them to be pretty solid on knowing what they're *trying* to do. You don't think that's a realistic goal?

[El Gordo]

You think it's wishful thinking that an org could/should concentrate on making sure it's kid-pitchers know what they're *trying* to do? I fully expect them to get rattled when they try to do it vs. big-league hitters. So, I'm not saying that actually doing it all the time is easy. I fully expect them to have their ups and downs. But I would expect them to be pretty solid on knowing what they're *trying* to do. You don't think that's a realistic goal?

I really don't think the basics of pitching coaching varies that much from one coach to another. What does change is the ability of one particular coach to communicate with one particular pitcher. I've been an actor and an acting teacher for 40 years. It took one particular acting teacher who taught Stanislavski, just as 80 % of all acting teachers do, to get the light to go on for me. He wasn't saying anything different than all my other teachers did; he just knew what it took to connect with me. It's been the same with me and my students. Some I can reach, some I can't. I don't think you can codify that.

[NoVaO]

What is clear is that we have and will continue to add to a stock pile of arms.

We will have Guthrie, Loewen, Cabrera, and then Penn, Olson, Liz, Burres, Patton, Albers, Gallagher, and the pitcher(s) in the Bedard deal.

So that is 11 or 12 potential starters. 2 are certain. I believe as things stand right now Cabrera will be in the rotation. Liz and Albers and to a lesser extent Burres are guys who might be better off left in the bullpen, but could certainly compete for a spot in the rotation.

And right behind these guys in AA are Spoone, Hernandez, and Berken.

I think a starter, maybe even two, are expendable right now. Our two primary partners for Bedard are in the market for 2 starting pitchers. Both teams have two holes in their rotations and we can provide both a number 1 starter and an upgrade over each team's #5 starter (#4 and 5 in the Mariners' case).

I would think the addition of another pitcher would enable us to get an extra position player from both teams.

Fill the holes at every position you possibly can, and stockpile 2 or 3 more arms to our collection of pitchers, with one of those guys being a top guy from the Bedard trade.

[RShack]

I really don't think the basics of pitching coaching varies that much from one coach to another. What does change is the ability of one particular coach to communicate with one particular pitcher. I've been an actor and an acting teacher for 40 years. It took one particular acting teacher who taught Stanislavski, just as 80 % of all acting teachers do, to get the light to go on for me. He wasn't saying anything different than all my other teachers did; he just knew what it took to connect with me. It's been the same with me and my students. Some I can reach, some I can't. I don't think you can codify that.

I'm sure that what you say is correct, as far as it goes. I fully believe that teaching people stuff includes a large measure of finding the right way to say it to them, and that often there is no single best way for everybody. So, you need to say it this way for one person and a different way for another person. Plus, there's mysteries of chemistry between people that matters a lot, even though we don't understand it very well. I believe all that is true.

But not all teaching-and-learning is like that. Some stuff is just basic. Like knowing your multiplication tables, or like a QB knowing that he's gotta scan through his receiver options so he doesn't miss the guy who got wide open. That's just basic stuff. It seems to me that there's basic stuff that some kid pitchers didn't know when they got off the bus at Eutaw St. For example, everything I know about pitching mechanics I learned in the 2nd half of this season from watching kid pitchers do things wrong, and then reading people here talking about it. Some of it was very obvious (like flying open, dropping the glove hand, falling off the side of the mound, etc.). I asked why somebody didn't get them to fix that stuff before they got here. People said it was because these guys were mowing people down in the bus leagues, so therefore nobody messed with what they were doing. Now, that's just what people said, I don't know if that's really true. But it seems plausible to me.

It also seems like a bad thing. I'd think you'd want all the P-coaches on the same page about fixing that stuff. I'd think you'd want a MiL system in which it wasn't just a judgment call on the part of the individual P-coach about whether to mess with it. It ought to be a joint call based on people reviewing things and deciding what's best. That way, if some coach tells a kid he needs to work on something, it's not just the individual coach speaking from his own philosophy, it's not just an individual disagreement between the coach and the young know-it-all pitcher. Instead, it's the guy speaking for the whole organization. For example, it might be some version of this: "We just had a meeting about you, and here's what the people in the Warehouse said to tell you: Maybe you're fooling all those AA-hitters you're mowing down, but you're not fooling us. On the one hand, you're doing great. But on the other hand, if you wanna move up to Norfolk, you gotta fix these two things first. We want to move you up ASAP, but that can't happen until you fix these particular things first. So please get to work on it right now. Yours truly, The Warehouse." Wouldn't that be better than just leaving it up to each coach to have to do cajoling about basic things? Wouldn't that help keep things from falling through the cracks because a particular P-coach's philosophy doesn't emphasize them? I don't see how it makes any sense to let kid pitchers progress through the system with habitual flaws, and then suddenly learn about them the hard way when they're on TV in the big leagues. They're gonna have their hands full, just coping with ML hitters, even if they do have the basics right. Why would you wanna let them get there without having fixed that stuff first? Isn't that just stacking the deck against them? Isn't that hurting your own investment in them? Isn't that bad for everybody involved?

AFAIK, this is just an example of the standard thing about "perfect practice makes perfect". Now, I don't know about pitching in particular, but I know the old Oriole Way was based on this idea in general. It didn't start out as a philosophy, it was the title of an actual training manual, and it specified how everybody was supposed to do stuff, and what they were supposed to do in each of various situations. It was used at every single MiL level. The expectations were consistent everywhere throughout the organization, so by the time a kid got to 33rd St., he pretty much knew what they hell he was supposed to do, simply because he'd been expected to do it that way his whole time in the bus leagues.

Seems to me if they were doing that nowadays, we wouldn't have guys getting off the bus with obvious glaring problems like this. If I can see it on my TV, I'm sure people in the organization can see it too. Seems to me they should use some of the video they probably take of these guys anyway, and having meetings where people review it, and decide what each guy needs to fix before he gets there. Better to fix it beforehand. If you don't fix it beforehand, then you're not really being a "Player Development System". If you just promote guys just based on counting K's, you're just being a "Darwinian Survival System" that happens to have some coaches hanging around to give optional advice.

But I'm not a pitcher, so I don't really know. Maybe I'm accidentally being full of crap. I wish vatech would chime in here. He's had pitching coaches in college. He knows a lot more about it than I do...

[Sports Guy]

Pitching coaches and the quality of their instruction do vary a ton in my experience. There is so freaking much to learn, digest, and repeat about pitching, I don't know where to begin to respond to this thread. I'll write something up and post it, but I need an atmosphere where I can focus on what I'm writing/saying and I can't do it right now. Snippets are the best I can do. Let me take some time tonight and write up a response and I'll post it here.

Perhaps you can explain something to me.....Why in the world do these guys need coaches at this level?

And i guess more specifically, why do they need them after they have been around for a while?

I mean, they have been doing this their whole lives...I know there is always stuff to learn but you hear a pitcher gets out of whack with his mechanics a lot...Why does that happen?