Jump to content

Revisiting Duquettes' second half moves


Frobby

Recommended Posts

In my mind both starting pitching moves made sense. Norris is here 2 more years and fits financially. Feldman has pitched well and cost us players that weren't going to work out here.

The mistakes made were the smaller pieces. We still don't have a DH that can hit RHP. Krod didn't make an impact-did he have the chance?- and that became more important down the stretch with O'Day hurting. Our bench in general hasn't given us much this year. The Krod trade to me is the only one I question in terms of what we gave up. The fact though is the starting holes were filled fairly well but the bullpen help and DH issues weren't addressed well enough.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 127
  • Created
  • Last Reply
What rental? Are you talking Delmonico for Krod? Norris is here for 2 more years that costed us the most. We gave up Strop and Arrieta for Feldman and may also of gotten a 2nd catcher.

Not fair in my mind to compare us to Boston. Look at what they paid for Dempster, we aren't doing something like that. Norris fits our economic model.

I compared the Os to the first place team in our division - Boston. If that team were Tampa, I would have posted the same thing .... but you are right that I cannot compare our economic model to Boston's, which is why we should be trying to win by gathering prospects and draft picks and not dealing them away. We see teams like Oakland and Tampa moved players for prospects ALL THE TIME while maintaining low payrolls. The road map is there to compete with the big boys, but our GM has decided to deal prospects for veterans and we will enter this coming offseason farther behind Boston than we were when the season began - because of our GM.

Norris shouldn't fit the economic model of any team because he's not very good.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I compared the Os to the first place team in our division - Boston. If that team were Tampa, I would have posted the same thing .... but you are right that I cannot compare our economic model to Boston's, which is why we should be trying to win by gathering prospects and draft picks and not dealing them away. We see teams like Oakland and Tampa moved players for prospects ALL THE TIME while maintaining low payrolls. The road map is there to compete with the big boys, but our GM has decided to deal prospects for veterans and we will enter this coming offseason farther behind Boston than we were when the season began - because of our GM.

Norris shouldn't fit the economic model of any team because he's not very good.

We have a core to win now. Once again who did we give up that you are worried about Hader? I don't see how we are further behind Boston due to what we did. We had holes in the rotation, he filled them.

Norris might not be great but he also might be a solid #5 starter in the AL East. We all know we need to do better developing pitching, I don't see how unless Hader makes it where we have done that. That pick isn't a going to play a role until years down the road anyway, even if it does.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

We have a core to win now. Once again who did we give up that you are worried about Hader? I don't see how we are further behind Boston due to what we did. We had holes in the rotation, he filled them.

Norris might not be great but he also might be a solid #5 starter in the AL East. We all know we need to do better developing pitching, I don't see how unless Hader makes it where we have done that. That pick isn't a going to play a role until years down the road anyway, even if it does.

Well, you don't know which of these B prospects will pan out - do you? That's why you keep them and develop them. A large majority don't pan out, but the ones that do, like all pre-arb everyday players, are worth their weight in gold. If you don't care about your B prospects and Top 40 draft picks, that's fine. I do and I guess we'll have to disagree there.

The "that pick isn't a going to play a role until years down the road" mentality is for GM's with short careers ....

What I don't understand about your opinion is that you say we can't compete with Boston (from an economic model point of view), yet you believe should deal prospects for veterans because of a "core to win now". Do you see how well the As and Rays have maintained their competitiveness? They have traded guys like Dan Haren, Gio Gonzalez, Matt Garza and they still compete because they trade "core" players for future core players - as we did with Bedard. There are ways to trade "core" players and get younger and cheaper and even better.

Those organizations avoid listening to fan's clamoring to sacrifice prospects to help the "core to win now" by dealing so-called "core" players to become an organization of strong and deep assets. This second type of organization stays competitive for a long time.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well, you don't know which of these B prospects will pan out - do you? That's why you keep them and develop them. A large majority don't pan out, but the ones that do, like all pre-arb everyday players, are worth their weight in gold. If you don't care about your B prospects and Top 40 draft picks, that's fine. I do and I guess we'll have to disagree there.

The "that pick isn't a going to play a role until years down the road" mentality is for GM's with short careers ....

What I don't understand about your opinion is that you say we can't compete with Boston (from an economic model point of view), yet you believe should deal prospects for veterans because of a "core to win now". Do you see how well the As and Rays have maintained their competitiveness? They have traded guys like Dan Haren, Gio Gonzalez, Matt Garza and they still compete because they trade "core" players for future core players - as we did with Bedard. There are ways to trade "core" players and get younger and cheaper and even better.

Those organizations avoid listening to fan's clamoring to sacrifice prospects to help the "core to win now" by dealing so-called "core" players to become an organization of strong and deep assets. This second type of organization stays competitive for a long time.

Last time I checked we were in the pennant race this year. We trade one pick and Hader and now all the sudden we have turned into the Raiders or something. If every season we deal away pick after pick and it becomes a habit than I would agree. We have invested in a lot of pitchers in the draft.

We gave up one pick and one pitcher, not 5. The player we received is here 2 more seasons. Do we have a history of trading away young players for older players? Kind of hard to play in the AL East and play it safe all the time and win. We all know we need to do a better job in terms of drafting and developing talent if we want to win over the long haul. I don't think one trade changes that.

Those teams traded those players because they can't afford to keep them. We traded away players who haven't even proven that they can become big leaguers. I doubt very seriously that DD is going to go for broke and trade away future assets like they are going out of style.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well, you don't know which of these B prospects will pan out - do you? That's why you keep them and develop them. A large majority don't pan out, but the ones that do, like all pre-arb everyday players, are worth their weight in gold. If you don't care about your B prospects and Top 40 draft picks, that's fine. I do and I guess we'll have to disagree there.

The "that pick isn't a going to play a role until years down the road" mentality is for GM's with short careers ....

What I don't understand about your opinion is that you say we can't compete with Boston (from an economic model point of view), yet you believe should deal prospects for veterans because of a "core to win now". Do you see how well the As and Rays have maintained their competitiveness? They have traded guys like Dan Haren, Gio Gonzalez, Matt Garza and they still compete because they trade "core" players for future core players - as we did with Bedard. There are ways to trade "core" players and get younger and cheaper and even better.

Those organizations avoid listening to fan's clamoring to sacrifice prospects to help the "core to win now" by dealing so-called "core" players to become an organization of strong and deep assets. This second type of organization stays competitive for a long time.

You're right, you never know which B prospects will pan out. The fact that DD is willing to let go of them under certain - IMO reasonable - conditions is a refreshing change of course. There's an element of risk involved in any trade and the potential for miscalculation needs to be factored in. In other words, take it for granted that you're going to look stupid every now and then; keep your percentage low and it'll be OK. If the Orioles' record of developing B prospects in recent years were a little better, I would be a little more concerned about DD's moves over the last few months.

If I had to guess about DD's opinion about the overall health of the organization's MiL system I would guess it was on the low side, and I would agree. I would also agree to the proposition that dealing players like Wieters and maybe Davis at this point could be beneficial if the return was right. The best word I can come up with to describe DD's 2012-2013 off season is equivocal. It would be great if 2013-2014 showed a clearer direction.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You're right, you never know which B prospects will pan out. The fact that DD is willing to let go of them under certain - IMO reasonable - conditions is a refreshing change of course. There's an element of risk involved in any trade and the potential for miscalculation needs to be factored in. In other words, take it for granted that you're going to look stupid every now and then; keep your percentage low and it'll be OK. If the Orioles' record of developing B prospects in recent years were a little better, I would be a little more concerned about DD's moves over the last few months.

If I had to guess about DD's opinion about the overall health of the organization's MiL system I would guess it was on the low side, and I would agree. I would also agree to the proposition that dealing players like Wieters and maybe Davis at this point could be beneficial if the return was right. The best word I can come up with to describe DD's 2012-2013 off season is equivocal. It would be great if 2013-2014 showed a clearer direction.

I agree for the most part. We can't develop and keep all our players like the Skankees and Sox. We need to trade some players we know we can't afford before we lose them and replentish the farm. I'm not against trading Wieters this offseason aslong as we get players who are ML ready. I think other then Davis he is our biggest bargining chip. I think we should attempt to sign Davis long term. However, if we are to trade Davis, do it now when his value is at it's highest!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

A couple more points. By June 30th we had lost 6 games that we lead going into the 9th and another one by July5th. Since July 1rst we are 3 games under .500 even though we have outscored the opposition by 16 runs. Since the All Star break we are 3-14 in one runs games.

DD saw that in the first half of the season our starting pitching at the back end weren't getting the job done. He addressed that. Chen was out for awhile as well. It is kind of hard to me that DD saw a team that was getting by with smoke and mirrors-which the 2012 team looked like. Davis and Machado were becoming 2 young stars. The bottom line is we should of had more wins than we did up to that point. He traded some "B" prospects to try to improve the team at an area of need. Since the break it has been one tough loss after another. We don't look like a team that is overmatched, we just can't find a way to win.

I guess if DD knew we were going to go 3-14 in one runs games then he shouldn't of tried to improve the team. The 2 wildcard's exist. This isn't 1984 and the Red Sox aren't the 84 Tigers. We had and still have a talented team in which everything has gone wrong the second half of the season. I think DD didn't address the DH spot well enough and based on how Buck has used the pen he needed to give him more there as well. I think though at the end of the day he accurately saw a contending team, things didn't work out and in life sometimes that happens. He didn't give the up the farm to go after it either.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I compared the Os to the first place team in our division - Boston. If that team were Tampa, I would have posted the same thing .... but you are right that I cannot compare our economic model to Boston's, which is why we should be trying to win by gathering prospects and draft picks and not dealing them away. We see teams like Oakland and Tampa moved players for prospects ALL THE TIME while maintaining low payrolls. The road map is there to compete with the big boys, but our GM has decided to deal prospects for veterans and we will enter this coming offseason farther behind Boston than we were when the season began - because of our GM.

Norris shouldn't fit the economic model of any team because he's not very good.

While I generally have disagreed with your argument, I find the bolded statement worthy of consideration. I think you may well be correct. I think the moves that were made were ok in the framework of what DD has. I think the chance that our true cost of the trades, being that we may well enter the coming offseason farther behind Boston than when the year began, will make the offseason interesting.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't agree with his take. Sure the moves haven't put us over the top but our failures are primarily bull-pen /closer related with a dash of offensive ineptitude. I would have liked to see Morse make a difference but his replacements like were't much better.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...
Without Feldman and Norris, we would have had a difficult time having a winning season.

The team was doing just fine without them and should have been allowed to play out the season as constructed.

We were passed by about four teams and finished six games out of a playoff spot. We were NOT competitive with them.

Terrible trades no matter how it is sliced - team finish or individual player WAR. Our GM made a fundamentally incorrect decision regarding the team's competitiveness.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The team was doing just fine without them and should have been allowed to play out the season as constructed.

We were passed by about four teams and finished six games out of a playoff spot. We were NOT competitive with them.

Terrible trades no matter how it is sliced - team finish or individual player WAR. Our GM made a fundamentally incorrect decision regarding the team's competitiveness.

Would you rather he did nothing at all? Didn't he owe it to the fans to try after last season? What would you have done with Chen out a month? Ditto, Hammel?
Link to comment
Share on other sites

The team was doing just fine without them and should have been allowed to play out the season as constructed.

We were passed by about four teams and finished six games out of a playoff spot. We were NOT competitive with them.

Terrible trades no matter how it is sliced - team finish or individual player WAR. Our GM made a fundamentally incorrect decision regarding the team's competitiveness.

I'm a bit confused by your post. The first sentence implies that our roster was good enough that we didn't need to improve. But I interpret your last sentence as saying that DD overestimated our talent and shouldn't have tried to improve the team because we weren't competitive enough anyway. If I'm wrong, then what did you think DD's fundamentally incorrect decision was?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Would you rather he did nothing at all? Didn't he owe it to the fans to try after last season? What would you have done with Chen out a month? Ditto, Hammel?

I really don't like to post in absolutes, but I am really shocked that such a majority of folks still look favorably upon DD's decisions last summer.

- from a WAR perspective at the major league level, DD gave up more than he received.

- from a prospect perspective, DD gave up multiple top 10 prospects, traded down international slots and gave up a top 40 draft pick. That's a LOT.

- subsequent to the trade, the Os fell six games out of the second wild card and were passed by at least four teams.

- these trades cost the team several $M (maybe we could have used this $ internationally?)

- these trades were made with the knowledge that our September schedule would be very difficult and that several key players on other teams (Yankees - Jeter, ARod for example) would be returning in the second half.

I guess we disagree over what DD owes the fans.

I believe DD owes the fans an accurate assessment of his team's competitive position and to act accordingly. IMO, DD misjudged our competitive position like a drunken sailor and our organization's talent base is weaker now as a result. As I've posted, DD performance last summer in his trades was bottom of the pile GM decision making.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.




  • Posts

    • Thanks for the detailed explanation of all of the issues.  Sounds like a mess.
    • Yeah the amenities are pretty outdated at the yard and they seem to do nothing year over year to improve them. The touchscreens have been banged on to death to the point they barely function, so you can't accurately fill out your order at the kiosks, and they don't have a way for the people behind the counter to ring you up at many of the food places. The sound is low to non-existent in certain sections of the club level, like around 218. Seems like there should be speakers that reach there but they might have been damaged by rain, etc. and they are too lazy to fix them. If you go to a game that's even slightly busy, you will wait forever to get into the bathroom, and the sink will be an absolute mess with no soap or paper towels. It's even worse on the club level where they have one sink that's right by the door. Nearby businesses don't care, either. The Hilton parking garage reeks of decay, pot and human waste. They don't turn on the air circulation fans, even if cars are waiting for an hour and a half to exit from P3, filling up the air with carbon monoxide. They only let you enter the stadium with one 20 oz bottle of water. It's so expensive to buy a drink or water in the stadium, but with all the salty food, 20 oz of water isn't enough, especially on a hot day. Vegetarian food options are poor to none, other than things like chips, fries, hot pretzels and the occasional pizza. Vida Taco is better, but at an inconvenient location for many seats. The doors on the club level are not accessible. They're anti-accessible. Big, heavy doors you have to go through to get to/from the escalators, and big, heavy doors to get to your seats, none of them automatic (or even with the option to be automatic with a button press). Makes it hard to carry food out to your seats even if not handicapped. The furniture in the lounges on the club level seem designed to allow as few people as possible to sit down. Not great when we have so many rain delays during the season. Should put more, smaller chairs in and allow more of the club level ticket holders to have a seat while waiting for thunderstorms to pass. They keep a lot of the entrance/exit gates closed except for playoff/sellout games, which means people have to slowly "mooooo" all the way down Eutaw St to get to parking. They are too cheap to staff all the gates, so they make people exit by the warehouse, even though it would be a lot more convenient for many fans to open all the gates. Taking Light Rail would be super convenient, except that if there's at least 20k fans in attendance, it's common to have to wait 90-120 minutes to be able to board a non-full train heading toward Glen Burnie. A few trains might come by, but they are already full, or fill up fast when folks walk up to the Convention Center stop to pre-empt the folks trying to board at Camden Station. None of the garages in the area are set up to require pre-payment on entry (reservation, or give them your card / digital payment at the entrance till). If they were, emptying out the garage would be very quick, as they wouldn't need to ticket anyone on the way out: if you can't get in without paying, you can always just leave without having to stop and scan your phone or put a ticket in the machine. They shut down the Sports Legends Museum at Camden Station in 2015 because the Maryland Stadium Authority was too greedy. That place was a fun distraction if you were in the area when a game wasn't about to start, like if you show up super early on Opening Day or a playoff day. Superbook's restaurant on Eutaw is a huge downgrade from Dempsey's in terms of menu and service quality. Dempsey's used to be well-staffed, you could reserve a table online, and they had all kinds of great selection for every diet. Superbook seems like just another bar serving the same swill that the rest of the park serves, with extremely minimal and low-quality food. For that matter, most of the food at the stadium is very low quality these days. A lot of things we used to love are made to a lower standard now if they are served at all. These are gripes about the stadium and the area that haven't changed my entire adult life. Going to an O's game requires one to tolerate many small inconveniences and several major inconveniences, any number of which could easily be fixed by the relevant authorities if they gave a damn about the people who pay to come see the team play. You would think a mid-market team would be able to afford to invest in the fan experience. You would think the city and partnering organizations like garages, the Stadium Authority and MTA would at least try to do their part to make the experience enjoyable and free of kinks. You would think they would put some thought into handling the "growing pains" of the fanbase due to recent renewed interest after the dark years. Instead, all we get is the same indifference and the same annoyances year in and year out. The whole area is overdue for a revamp. Not sure if $600 mil will get it done, but at least it's a start. Hopefully they can start to patch up some of the many holes in the fan experience. If you're not going to invest in Burnes, at least make it so paying customers have an easier, more enjoyable time getting to/from the stadium and having some food while we're there.
    • Elias has only been in rebuild mode with the O's so there's not much to speculate on there.  Houston, where he spent his formative years, doesn't seem to like to be on the hook for more than a couple of big long-term contracts at any given time.  I can see that as being Elias' choice as well, albeit with a lower overall cost - Houston runs a big payroll.  But it's all guesswork.  I really don't know. If Elias takes the 2025 payroll to $150 million it will creep up to $200 million or so by 2028 just from keeping the core together.  That's where I start to wonder about sustainability due to market size, economic forces, etc., etc., etc... If it were up to me, I would add a couple of free agents this offseason even if the contracts were longer than ideal and be conservative about extensions elsewhere until the prospects establish themselves a little better.  I think there's a competitive opportunity that the team is already into that's worth exploiting. I think ownership is very happy to have Elias on board and they're not inclined to force him to do anything.  I also think Rubenstein's demonstrated business prowess is great enough to assume that he has had plenty enough time to come to a mutual understanding with Elias as to goals.
    • We need a RH O’hearn…in addition to Westburg. At least 3 batters that will push up the pitch count and cause damage in the top 5 of the lineup.
    • Boy,  that Jackson Merrill is a good young player that is playing his best ball down the season stretch and in the playoffs.   He's only 21.  I guess some young guys are able to play up to the pressure.   Who could have guessed that?
    • I’m aware.   You are arguing something im Not.
    • What agreement? The agreement you are talking about happened as a result of the move.  The MASN agreement would not have existed if Angelos had gone to court to block the move.
  • Popular Contributors

×
×
  • Create New...