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Average payroll + below average farm system = trouble


Frobby

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I think people spend way too much time bemoaning our major league payroll. The truth is, we're about average. That's good enough to compete with a well-run club.

What frustrates me no end is our below average farm system. If this team hopes to compete for World Series titles, we simply have to produce more major league quality talent out of our own system.

I've been reading frequent complaints about how we don't follow Tampa's approach of decisively trading away good players when they get 1-2 years away from free agency. There's a simple reason for this: we don't have ready replacements. It's pretty easy to trade James Shields when that leaves you with Price, Moore, Cobb, Archer and a 5th starter. You can't build a farm system or team entirely on the young guys you get back by trading veterans (such as Archer and Wil Myers), you have to be producing your own fair share of young guys.

We have a lot riding on the top five guys in our system, because if they don't come through, there's not much behind them. BA recently did a rough ranking of the farm systems based on how many players were placed in the league top 20's, and the Orioles ranked 28th of 30. 28th. (BA did concede that if Gausman had spent enough time in any one league to qualify, and if Bundy had been healthy, we would have been in middle of the pack. Still, that's mediocre, not what we need if we want to be consistently competitive.)

So, while it's great that Andy MacPhail was so good at trades, and Duquette has made some nice scores off the scrap bin, I continue to think that getting our farm system to the point where it is consistently above average is the only way we are going to produce consistently contending teams. And I've been waiting a long time for that to happen. That is Duquette's biggest challenge, not signing some big free agent.

This is more of a snapshot in time issue IMHO.

We've graduated top talent to the majors, had a few top prospects flop in their debuts, and had some injuries/trades this year that depressed the rankings. I do think we need to consistently be in the top half of the majors in farm rankings to be successful long term, but I also think we'll see this ranking rebound right back to that level in the coming years.

Besides trading away the competitive balance slot, I liked what DD did with the draft. Harvey's pick is looking real good, and I'm intrigued to see who we take this year.

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Or Elvis Andrus, Jarrod Saltalamachia, Neftali Felix, and Matt Harrrison.

Or Chris Tillman, Adam Jones, etc. etc.

Two can play that game.

I am afraid of the former. Bedard was the best left handed starter available. It was like David Price.

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This is more of a snapshot in time issue. We've graduated top talent to the majors, had a few top prospects flop in their debuts, and had some injuries/trades this year that depressed the rankings. I do think we need to consistently be in the top half of the majors in farm rankings to be successful long term, but I also think we'll see this ranking rebound right back to that level in the coming years. Besides trading away the competitive balance slot, I liked what DD did with the draft. Harvey's pick is looking real good, and I'm intrigued to see who we take this year.

The O's have gone from a terrible farm system to a top heavy farm system and have not progressed from there.

When is the last time the O's could have been described as having a deep farm system? The 70's?

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I can see not wanting to give up the pick.

I don't see why teams are not taking the money hit and spending every penny they can.

After Strasburg, I think teams were scared of where the signing bonuses were headed. That's why the slot is more strictly enforced. It's going to take a special player to bust that open again. Mark Appel, you're not even close.

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I am afraid of the former. Bedard was the best left handed starter available. It was like David Price.

It was a perfect time to strike, you had a bad GM thinking he had a contender that needed one more piece to put him over the top.

I don't think anyone else would have paid close to that.

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It was a perfect time to strike, you had a bad GM thinking he had a contender that needed one more piece to put him over the top.

I don't think anyone else would have paid close to that.

We could have had Felix Pie, Ronny Cedeno, Eric Patterson and Sean Gallagher

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I agree with Frobby's initial post and I'd guess so do most of our more strategic thinkers.

I also basically agree with Gordo and I'm guessing that isn't a widespread belief. I think we HAVE to trade Wieters, JJ, and Davis. The rationale for the first two is fairly obvious, but my rationale for Davis is murkier.

Davis is probably going to be a good player for probably a long tie, but I don't think his true value is as high as his trade value at the moment. I believe he will settle into a 35-40 HR 1B who gets on base at a pretty good clip and he'll likely be an All Star more times than not. However, I believe he also has a chance to be a borderline starter at 1B. Right now, he could be traded for a ransom because he is such a "sexy" name. I love the guy, but I'd trade him for multiple prospects at the upper levels of the minors right now.

I personally believe we should trade these three guys, use the money we free up to prop up the ML team for a few years and take the ransom we get for these players to set ourselves up for the future. I think we'll regret it if we don't.

Excellent post, and I agree.

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Baseball America rankings: The Astros are ranked 2nd, Padres 3rd, Cubs and Royals 5th, Twins 7th.

28. ORIOLES

LHP Eduardo Rodriguez (9 EL) • 2B/SS Jonathan Schoop (14 IL) • C Michael Ohlman (18 CAR) • LHP Steven Brault (16 NYP) • no fifth representative

No organization was hit as hard as the Orioles in this exercise. They lost 2011 first-round RHP Dylan Bundy to Tommy John surgery, and 2012 first-round RHP Kevin Gausman didn’t spend enough time in the Double-A Eastern League or Triple-A International League to qualify for a list. Give them those two pitchers and the probably rise to the middle of the pack.

It wasn't that long ago that they ranked our organization higher. The problem being of late we graduated the best we had to the majors. All those years of losing afforded us several top 10 draft picks, but it has given us a mixed bag of success

These are our first round/first-supplemental picks in the past fourteen years

1999 Paradis 13; Stahl 18; Bigbie 21; Reed 23;Cenate 34;Rice 44; Roberts 50

2000 Hale 14; T.Johnson 32

2001 Smith 7; Fontenot 19; Bass 31

2002 Loewen 4

2003 Markakis 7

2004 Townsend 8 (never signed, led to Olson in 2005)

2005 Snyder 13; Olson 48

2006 Rowell 9; Beato 32

2007 Wieters 5

2008 Matusz 4

2009 Hobgood 5

2010 Machado 3

2011 Bundy 4

2012 Gausman 4

2013 Harvey 22

Here are the payroll numbers per year and the rank in MLB. If "average" is considered 15th, then at one point we were below average for 5 straight years (2008-12) and league average last season.

1999 $70,818,363 8

2000 $83,141,198 3

2001 $74,279,540 12

2002 $60,493,487 16

2003 $73,877,500 13

2004 $51,623,333 20

2005 $73,914,333 14

2006 $72,585,582 15

2007 $93,554,808 10

2008 $67,196,246 22

2009 $67,101,666 23

2010 $81,612,500 17

2011 $85,304,038 18

2012 $81,428,499 19

2013 $91,793,333 15

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This is more of a snapshot in time issue IMHO.

We've graduated top talent to the majors, had a few top prospects flop in their debuts, and had some injuries/trades this year that depressed the rankings. I do think we need to consistently be in the top half of the majors in farm rankings to be successful long term, but I also think we'll see this ranking rebound right back to that level in the coming years.

Besides trading away the competitive balance slot, I liked what DD did with the draft. Harvey's pick is looking real good, and I'm intrigued to see who we take this year.

The O's have gone from a terrible farm system to a top heavy farm system and have not progressed from there.

When is the last time the O's could have been described as having a deep farm system? The 70's?

The only year i can think of in recent times when BA ranked our farm system as above average was after the 2008 season. At that point we had Wieters (MiL POY), Matusz (who hadn't pitched yet but had been the no. 4 draft pick), Tillman, Arrieta (Carolina League pitcher of the year), Bergesen, Hernandez, Berken, Reimold, Britton and some others. All but Arrieta and Britton graduated in 2009, the 2009 draft was a bust, and we've never been considered above average since then so far as I can recall.

I do like some of the players we drafted in 2013, though I'm not that impressed with the 2012 class (only 3 of whom are in the OH top 20) and we obviously weakened our system by trading Delmonico, Hader, Hoes and our extra pick.

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The lack of a deeper farm system is why the Orioles have had such stale off seasons in the past few years. Simply look at the deals that have happened this offseason.

Detroit was able to trade fielder because they had Castellanos to replace Cabrera at third.

Texas was able to trade Kinsler because of the presence of Profar.

The Cards could trade Freese because of Carpenter.

The Angels could trade Bourjos because of the presence of Calhoun.

Establish your own prospects and build depth and you are able to make trades to build out other areas of you team.

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The clack of a deeper farm system is why the Orioles have had such stale off seasons in the past few years. Simply look at the deals that have happened this offseason.

Detroit was able to trade fielder because they had Castellanos to replace Cabrera at third.

Texas was able to trade Kinsler because of the presence of Profar.

The Cards could trade Freese because of Carpenter.

The Angels could trade Bourjos because of the presence of Calhoun.

Establish your own prospects and build depth and you are able to make trades to build out other areas of you team.

Exactly. I will add, the reason we've heard talk of trading Hardy is because we have Manny, who can move from SS, and some plausible candidates to play 3B if that happens. But we don't have that flexibilty in many places.

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