Justify keeping Bedard or Roberts

[NoVaO]

The development of quality starting pitchers, something that may have been a strength of past Orioles organizations, has been extremely rare lately. Prior to Bedard, the last top notch Orioles starter since the glory days of Palmer, Cuellar, Flannagan, the Martinez boys, and Dobsen, was Mike Mussina. It really puzzles me that fans accept so easily that the team relationship with Eric Bedard is irretrievable. I know that, if I were in the O's front office, I'd be working hard to repair that relationship (if it's really frayed) and get Bedard signed to a multi-year contract with a club option.... It may well be another 18 years before the O's develop another genuine ace, but some fans are all to ready to throw Bedard under the bus and move on to still more, highly touted prospects....

What pitchers the Orioles have developed in the past isn't really relevant here. If we aren't competing, Bedard's talent is wasted here. He is pitches like his normal self. We continue to lose. He eventually declines and/or leaves after his contract expires (whether we resign him or not) and we are left a couple draft picks. I'm not throwing Bedard under the bus. I just think moving him is best for the long term health of this franchise.

Players trade potential future dollars for guaranteed current dollars all the time, which is why it's become such a rarity for a really premier player to reach free agency any more. Most of the free agents are mediocre non-entities simply because teams weren't willing to enter multi-year contracts and take the risk on players who are replaceable. They save those dollars to lock up players who can really make a difference. Bedard is such a pitcher. I would be surprised to see the Orioles trade him, unless someone like the Mets come in with a "knock-your-socks-off" offer they can't refuse.

For me, it doesn't matter whether Bedard wants to resign here or not.

Do I see Bedard on the next competing Oriole team? No I don't.

If by some miracle we are competitive while Bedard is an Oriole, is the long term health of our franchise still in better shape with Bedard?

Again the answer is no. We fail to infuse young talent into our system and at some point when player contracts expire and/or players start declining, the team will implode naturally. And we will be left with very little, a team that is in a rebuilding process, but wasted the resources to speed the rebuilding process up. No long term foundation will have been established.

If we trade Bedard and Roberts and not one prospect fails does it really change anything?

Not really. It would really be awful if every prospect failed to develop, but we would ultimately be in the same shape as we were with Bedard and Roberts, minus a couple draft picks 2 - 4 years from now and better draft position overall.

I predict that the O's don't trade Bedard, despite the trade rumors, simply because this organization has not demonstrated the ability to produce another pitcher of his caliber more than once every decade or two. Bedard likely is NOT replaceable, as any O's fan who's watched Dan Cabrera, Matt Riley, and Rodrigo Lopez the few years ought to know. The O's also know that, if Bedard does remain healthy, they'll have another opportunity to negotiate with him next winter

Again, what relevance does that have? How many great pitchers we have developed in the past shouldn't be relevant.

Bedard is a fantastic pitcher, but he is replaceable. A #3 starter that puts up a 4.50 ERA is about 30 - 40 runs worse than what we can expect Bedard to put up in 180 innings. This is maybe 3 - 5 wins. Adam Jones doesn't have to reach his full potential to be a 5 win player.

Remember, Rodrigo Lopez gave us two seasons that were not much worse than Bedard last year.

The key thing people ignore or take too lightly, and lets use Adam Jones as an example, is that you get control of Adam Jones for years at a cheap cost through the prime years of his career. If we acquire a young pitcher like Gallagher for example, we have him under our control for a very long time through the prime of his career. These will players will be on the next competing Oriole team.

The only question I have to ask is whether something will benefit our franchise in the long term. Trading Bedard and Robert will benefit the long term health of the Orioles.

....

If the [Orioles] were able to find and develop "ace" pitchers the way the Twins and A's seem to be able to do, you might be right [about needing to trade Bedard], but the O's would be trading away the only pitcher of this caliber that they've been able to develop in the last 15 years. I don't have any faith whatsoever that the O's can find and develop an ace like Bedard capable of leading the staff, and that's an essential part of improving in this division. Either you've got to have a murderer's row like the Yankees and Red Sox or you're going to need an ace like Holladay to lead your rotation. You're not going to be able to move up with guys like Cabrera, Penn, and Loewen or any new acquisitions (e.g., Moss, Ainsworth, Batista) leading your rotation unless you find a better way to develop them than has been demonstrated up to now.

I still don't see what our past of developing pitchers has anything to do with trading Bedard. He will not be part of the next great Oriole team and by keeping him, while the team is better in the short term, you still hurt the long term health of the franchise.

I don't understand how you have no faith in the Orioles being able to find and develop an ace like Bedard when they in fact developed Bedard themselves. We haven't developed many pitchers like Bedard because we simply haven't placed many pitchers of his talent in our system. Penn was never considered to be an elite talent. The book on Loewen is still out so lets not include him in your list of busts. Anybody could of looked at the stuff/numbers/health of Moss and Ainsworth and concluded their upsides were limited. And we never actually developed Bautista since he spent less than a year in our system. I'll give you Cabrera.

The reason we don't have any top-level pitchers in our system is because we haven't drafted a pitcher in the first round since Loewen in 2002. We drafted Townsend in 04 and we all know what happened with that. And our drafts were a debacle until 2005.

An ace is wonderful, but they are useless on a losing team. We have tons of holes to fill and trading Bedard and Roberts would be a major step toward addressing most of these needs.

You're not going to get the next Santana and Miguel Cabrera in a package for Bedard; you're going to get guys like Damian Moss, Kurt Ainsworth, Chris Duncan, Anthony Reyes, Milledge Lastings, or Ryan Church. Some of those guys may eventually develop into reliable starting pitchers or position players, but they'll all be prospects or lower echelon regulars, if you're expecting to get back 3 or 4 of them for Bedard.

Well, Santana himself was acquired for Jared Camp and cash. But in any case, we will get back much more than players with AWFUL peripherals (Moss) or pitchers with sketchy peripherals that are INJURED (Ainsworth). Milledge would of been a fine 2nd part of a package for me, and Reyes would of been a fine 2nd piece for a trade if it included Rasmus. Duncan or Church would be ok 3rd pieces.

Either way, Jones I feel pretty confident he is still on the table and he blows away all the players you mention in terms of upside and value.

I can't for the life of me understand why O's fans are so desperate to trade away the only top drawer pitcher they've been able to develop over the last 15 years, but it's obvious that's all that occupies their thoughts for every waking minute. I should think that the experiences with young prospects in the past that the O's have acquired, like Ainsworth and Batista, or prospects who've come up through the system, like Riley and Coppinger, would have educated O's fans to the reality that one ace in the hand is worth a dozen top notch prospects in the system -- especially in this system which seems to be clueless when it comes to developing young prospects into serviceable major league pitchers. Besides Bedard, whom do the O's have to show for all the prospects they've nurtured since Mussina broke through? Maine? Towers? Johnson? Even the mediocre ones are no longer with the team because the organization lost patience.

Sorry for the rant. It's your team. Sell off all your major league quality players if you want. It's unlikely that you'll ever compete with the Red Sox and Yankees again anyhow. You might as well get rid of your good players so that you can finish behind the Rays and Jays every year.

Heh.

1. Ainsworth was not a prospect when we acquired him. He was an injured major league pitcher with limited upside.

2. Bautista was never developed in our system

3. Coppinger and Towers were more or less mid-level prospects.

4. Riley was a top talent, but injuries and maturity derailed him. It happens.

5. You seem unaware of one of the worst front offices in baseball history with Syd Thrift. We had very little minor league talent, we didn't draft well, and we were an incompetent organization. Sure, we had some players that "made it", but not nearly enough. Most of the players you listed were not top talents.

To repeat, Bedard and Roberts will not be part of the next competitive Oriole team. A team actually has to have a direction, a long term foundation in place. To compete, we actually have to infuse this organization with young talent under our control for a long time and build a pipeline of talent in which we can draw upon year in and year out, whether it is to fill holes on the major league roster or to trade for a proven player to fill a hole on our mlb roster. That is the only way to compete. Keeping Bedard and Roberts does nothing to accomplish this and leaves us spinning in circles.

I understand you made this post a while ago, so maybe you have changed your views. And the last comment was an unnecessary cheap shot, which is why you probably got that neg rep.

[RShack]

The only chance we have of being any good in the next 5 years is gutting the team. And getting 4 players for Bedard & 3 For Roberts & combined with whatever we can get for this rest of this sorry bunch. Markakis is the only player who started this past year that is worth hanging on to. Pitching wise almost all of those guys should be available.

A lot of people simply don't care if the Orioles get better. That is, they are content to go to the ballpark every once in a while and watch the players whom they know will entertain them. Brian Roberts is steals all those bases and just plays real gutsy baseball, and Eric Bedard has that big hook and can make a lot of people look foolish, of course they're the guys people just want to see stick around. These people aren't emotionally invested in the season, just the few games that they watch. It'd be nice if they win those games, but it's hardly necessary to be a suitable distraction from the drudgery of a normal life.

I do not mean to pick on the 2 guys I've quoted here, simply because I think these posts represent the assumptions made by many people who completely diss the idea that any possibility but trading our 2 best players might be worth thinking about. It's reached the point where it is routine for people to say that AM should take the "whatever is the best deal he can get" rather than insist on a deal he thinks is good.

I think this is crazy. I think the idea that the O's can't be good in 5 years without trading Erik and BRob is simply and demonstrably wrong. I think the idea that's underlined in the second post is completely insulting to anybody who doesn't buy the message-board party-line hook, line and sinker. Again, I'm not fussing at these 2 posters, it's just that their posts expressed the usual set of assumptions.

There are many Actual Examples that we might consider. I'll pick the two that immediately come to mind:

• The first O's team that was a contender. The O's were created from the absolutely dreadful St. Louis Browns in 1954. By 1960, they were in first place late in the season, before folding right at the end and fishing in 2nd place. That's 6 crappy seasons during which they usually finished in 6th or 7th place before they began their incredible multi-decade run of usually being a serious contender. The claim above is that it can't be done in 5 years. If we examine the starting lineup, the starting rotation, and the key BP guys of the first good O's team, here's what we find:
  • C: A 29-yr-old who had been on the team since 55.
  • 1B: A 26-yr-old who they got the winter before for $50K and PTBNL.
  • 2B: A 26-yr-old rookie who'd been in the MiL since 55.
  • 3B: A 23-yr-old named Brooks in his third big-league season.
  • SS: A 22-yr-old ROY who they'd signed in '56.
  • LF: A 37-yr-old who they had before, got rid of, and then got back right at the end of his career.
  • CF: A 26-yr-old who they got the winter before in return for not much.
  • RF: A 29-yr-old who they received as a PTBNL in a minor trade that involved a couple of nobodies.
  • A starting rotation of 4 guys who were 21 or 22 (three of them were signed in '57, and the other one in '56), plus a 35-yr-old who they bought from a PCL team a few years before.
  • A bullpen in which the big star was a 37-yr-old knuckleballer.

  .

  In other words, they started with trash in '54, and were a contender in 1960 primarily with kid-pitchers, a few young position-players they'd signed, and some other journeymen and old guys they picked up here and there. Of all the guys I mentioned, only one had been obtained in a Big Important Trade, and that guy was the C who'd been hanging around since '55. Most of the guys who counted had been signed by the O's only 3-to-5 years before.

  .

  [*] The team that began the Braves amazing streak of 1st-place finishes. This came after an streak of 6 years finishing in last place or next-to-last-place. Bobby Cox took over as GM of a terrible org in '86, and by '91 they were in the WS. If we examine the starting lineup, the starting rotation, and the key BP guys of that '91 team, here's what we find:

  • C: A 30-yr-old in his 2nd ML season who they'd gotten the year before for nothing because nobody else wanted him.
  • 1B: A 30-yr-old part-timer who they signed as a FA the winter before because they wanted his "veteran presence".
  • 2B: A 25-yr-old guy in his 2nd ML season who they had drafted a few years before in the 27th-round.
  • 3B: A 30-yr-old guy who they signed as a FA before the season because they wanted his "veteran presence".
  • SS: A 29-yr-old who had never been more than a part-timer, and who was a glove guy who's OPS+ had always been mid-40's-to-mid-50's.
  • LF: A 26-yr-old who they'd drafted in the 4th-round a few years before.
  • CF: A 32-yr-old journeyman who they got the winter before for a PTBNL.
  • RF: A 25-yr-old who was ROY the year before, and who they'd drafted in the 4th-round a few years before.
  • A starting rotation consisting of a 34-yr-old journeyman who the got in a trade for trash the winter before, plus 4 young pitchers: Smoltz (who had had 2 ML seasons), Glavine (who had had 3, but none with an ERA+ of 100), Avery (who had been a rookie the year before with an ERA+ of 71), and Smith (who only started 10 games).
  • A bullpen in which the 3 main guys were a 36-yr-old journeyman FA and 2 kids, one whom was drafted in '88 and the other in '87.

  .

  The only one of these guys that was acquited in an Important Trade was Smoltz, who they got in a deadline deal for Doyle Alexander 4 years earlier.

These examples are just 2 of many that disprove the claim that the O's can't be good in 5 years without Big Important Trades. They can be good in 5 years if they start from scratch. The main reason that Big Important Trades matter is to help them get good *sooner* than 5 years from now. The Big Trades could easily be the difference between being good in 2010 and 2012... but that's only *if* they turn out to be *good* trades. I completely understand the rationale behind trading Erik and BRob... if the trades are *good* ones. But the idea that the O's are doomed forever if they don't happen just isn't true. The O's can be good in 5 years regardless of whether these trades happen or not. You can start with an absolutely crappy organization, and in 5 years build a good organization that establishes you as a solid contender. The Big Important Trades matter most when it comes to making things good between now and 5-years-from-now.

As for the by-now-standard claim that Erik and BRob are certain to walk after 2009, that's a fact-free rumor that gets echo-chambered like crazy around here. If the team is good in 2009, and poised to be very good by 2010, then there is no reason to assume that these guys will bail out, right when their suffering is about to pay-off. In general, if you've been climbing Mt. Everest and suffering like hell getting there, you don't bail out when you're 50 feet from the top. The big question is whether the team can be good in 2009, and about to be very good for 2010 without trading them. In my mind, that is the only big dilemma: can Baltimore be a fun place to play before the end of 2009 without trading them. For me, that is the issue. I think all the other stuff is mostly echo-chamber hype.

[NoVaO]

Now, as to what is acceptable in a return for Bedard...

Ideally, I would want three of their top prospects for Bedard, but that isn't a necessity. We apparently want Sherril, so lets assume:

Jones and Sherril are in the deal.

I push for Tillman and Truinfel to be included, leaving them with Clement and Morrow. I would offer to throw in a prospect or two like Hoey or Olson, somebody in that mold to get the deal done. I would even take back Sexson.

I don't see us really doing anything creative to get a deal like that done because nothing we have done indicates we would do that.

If we can't get both, then we should ask for Tillman or Truinfel and replace one of them with Chen and somebody like Michael Saunders. I would include one of our many relievers in a deal to get it done.

That is probably the bottom line for me, though the last couple of players could be interchanged with others.

If the Mariners don't include Jones, they need to replace him with Balentien and the other half of Tillman/Truinfel, whichever was not included originally.

[NoVaO]

I do not mean to pick on the 2 guys I've quoted here, simply because I think these posts represent the assumptions made by many people who completely diss the idea that any possibility but trading our 2 best players might be worth thinking about. It's reached the point where it is routine for people to say that AM should take the "whatever is the best deal he can get" rather than insist on a deal he thinks is good.

I don't have the energy to make a long reply to this post since a lot of my answers are in the post above yours, but I will say that even if we are able to compete in the next three years with Bedard and Roberts, we still will have done nothing for the long term healthy of this franchise. Long term, the organization would suffer.

I'm not going to go as far as five years though, since a lot could happen between now and then. However, eventually Bedard and Roberts will be gone and will have little to show from them when they actually do leave/decline.

[ChaosLex]

After reading this latest piece about the Rays, I believe more than ever that we can't survive without a proper rebuild. And unfortunately that means both Bedard and Roberts need to go.

http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2008/01/needs-and-lux-2.html

[ChaosLex]

After reading this latest piece about the Rays, I believe more than ever that we can't survive without a proper rebuild. And unfortunately that means both Bedard and Roberts need to go.

http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2008/01/needs-and-lux-2.html

By the way, you gotta love how we're not even acknowledged in the article. Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

[RShack]

I don't have the energy to make a long reply to this post since a lot of my answers are in the post above yours, but I will say that even if we are able to compete in the next three years with Bedard and Roberts, we still will have done nothing for the long term healthy of this franchise. Long term, the organization would suffer.

Well, I read them and I didn't see compelling answers. Long term, these trades don't matter all that much. It's short-to-midterm when they matter most. Long term, it's the guys in A-ball and the guys who we haven't even drafted yet, combined with whatever the MiL alleged-system does to them, that matters. The big trades people are talking about non-stop mostly matter between now and then.

[Migrant Redbird]

For me, it doesn't matter whether Bedard wants to resign here or not.

Do I see Bedard on the next competing Oriole team? No I don't.

Why not? He's 28 years old. If he's really one of the top 5 left handers in baseball and he can remain healthy, he could still be pitching and winning 12-13 years from now, like Tommy Glavine.

If you think the Orioles organization is so terrible that Bedard won't re-sign with the team, well that's an indictment of the Orioles rather than of Bedard. Quit trying to trade off the only good pitcher you have and figure out how to patch up your sinking ship, so that you can hang onto good players for 16 years, like the Braves did with Glavine.

If instead, you don't really think that Bedard is that good or you think he's too fragile and you want to get rid of him before he breaks down, well don't you think that the GMs of other teams are capable of reaching the same conclusions you have and will discount Bedard's value accordingly? In that case, you're not going to get the number of top prospects for him that you think you can.

And why is it that everyone is so willing to throw in the towel on 2008 before the first pitch is thrown? Yes, the O's had a bad record: 69-73. They haven't been above .500 since 1997. But let's look at last season's playoff teams:

The Rockies went from a 76-86 record in 2006 to a 90-73 record last year. Before that, the Rockies had 6 losing seasons in a row and 8 out of the last 10. Not quite as bad as the current O's, but what does it matter? Todd Helton is the only player on either team who has been with the team that long.

Arizona also went from a 76-86 record in 2006 to win 90 games in 2007. Before that, they had 3 losing seasons in a row, including an incredible 111 losses in 2004, just 2 years off a division title and 3 years off their world championship.

The Cubs went from a 66-96 record in 2006 to win their division with an 85-77 record in 2007. Not really much of a record to be proud of, considering how much they spent last winter and how badly the rest of their division sucked, but at least they made the playoffs. Plus the Cubs have a record of utter futility reaching back 100 years now, longer than any team in baseball.

Only the Phillies among the NL post season teams last year could lay claim to a string of recent plus .500 seasons, but they'd been perennially just good enough to finish 2nd or 3rd to the Braves (and occasionally the Mets or Marlins) for most of the past 14 seasons.

In the AL, the Indians went from 78-84 in 2006 to tie for the best record in baseball in 2007. True, the Indians had a 90 win 2nd place team in 2005, but it had been 6 years since they had previously sniffed the playoffs. They just kept plugging away until they finally improved the team enough to slip through.

Of course, the Angels have been quite a bit more successful, in keeping with their status as generally one of the higher payrolls in baseball, having winning records in 7 of their last 10 seasons, along with 3 division titles and a world championship.

Going back a year, the Tigers had a string of 12 losing seasons before turning around a 71-91 record in 2005 into a 95-67 and a world series berth in 2006. Just 3 years earlier, the Tigers lost an incredible 119 games, winning only 43, which goes to show you just how quick some astute management and some good luck can change an organization's fate. The year before that, it was the White Sox improving from an 83-79 record in 2004 to win 99 games and a world championship in 2005.

What all those examples demonstrate is that teams can turn their fortunes around in just one year or two, providing that they can get some good development on their young players and a little luck. OK, maybe a lot of luck. It's been a string of poor luck -- injuries and subpar performances -- which has kept the Yankees out of the world series the last 4 years, despite having the highest payroll in baseball by a large margin.

It can be done, but it requires a sound organization and a number of players coming together to have good seasons without being weighted down by too many injuries. OK, maybe it doesn't even require the soundest of organizations either, given that the Marlins have managed to win a pair of world series over the last 11 years, which is only 1 less than the Yankees during that time frame.

If by some miracle we are competitive while Bedard is an Oriole, is the long term health of our franchise still in better shape with Bedard?

Again the answer is no. We fail to infuse young talent into our system and at some point when player contracts expire and/or players start declining, the team will implode naturally. And we will be left with very little, a team that is in a rebuilding process, but wasted the resources to speed the rebuilding process up. No long term foundation will have been established.

Well, if you're that pessimistic about your organization's capabilities, why even bother with trading off Bedard and Roberts; you'll either misjudge the talent of the prospects you're getting in return or you'll ruin them once you get them into the organization anyhow, so you might as well give up and stick to following the Ravens.

How many great pitchers we have developed in the past shouldn't be relevant.

Bedard is a fantastic pitcher, but he is replaceable.

Well yes, Bedard is "replaceable", but are you going to need to wait another 15 years to develop that replacement, which is about how long it was between Mussina and Bedard? Pitchers of that quality are rare; you need to find some way to hang onto them, unless you're a team like Minnesota or Oakland which can't afford to hang onto their pitching stars but somehow seem to be able to draft replacements or snooker them from other teams. Most teams can't do that. I haven't seen the Cardinals do it. I haven't seen the O's do it either.

The key thing people ignore or take too lightly, and lets use Adam Jones as an example, is that you get control of Adam Jones for years at a cheap cost through the prime years of his career. If we acquire a young pitcher like Gallagher for example, we have him under our control for a very long time through the prime of his career. These will players will be on the next competing Oriole team.

If they continue to develop the way that you anticipate, which is far from being a given. An awful lot of "can't miss" prospects do. Bedard is now an established top flight major league pitcher; if you can keep him healthy and keep him signed to multi-year extensions, he could be the Orioles version of Tommy Glavine -- a star remaining with his original team for 16 years.

The only question I have to ask is whether something will benefit our franchise in the long term. Trading Bedard and Robert will benefit the long term health of the Orioles.

Yes, it may. However, that is far from being certain. Keeping them may do far more for the long term health of the team than being defeatist and giving up on your best young players because you've lost faith in the ability of the team to turn things around in the near term.

I don't understand how you have no faith in the Orioles being able to find and develop an ace like Bedard when they in fact developed Bedard themselves.

Yup! One ace in about 15 years. I've not noticed that any other teams have been spectacularly more successful at it, aside from the A's and Twins. Maybe the Tigers, if their youngsters hold up. I don't believe that a team can develop if they are constantly spending their harvest just to buy more seed corn and hope for bountiful rains the next few years. The history speaks of more impending drought.

2. Bautista was never developed in our system

Yeah, you're right. He was acquired as a "top notch prospect" and discarded a year later as a bust. Yes, he certainly did not develop in the O's system!

5. You seem unaware of one of the worst front offices in baseball history with Syd Thrift. We had very little minor league talent, we didn't draft well, and we were an incompetent organization. Sure, we had some players that "made it", but not nearly enough. Most of the players you listed were not top talents.

Thrift has been gone now for several years. It's time to stop blaming him for the state of the current O's teams.

... the last comment was an unnecessary cheap shot, which is why you probably got that neg rep.

Actually, my last comment in that post was a necessary "cheap shot", to try and break O's fans out of this attitude of defeatism which so pervades the base. If you can't hold out some hope for the organization being able to right itself, you need to find another source of entertainment. You talk about how players don't want to come to Baltimore because it's a "losing organization". Maybe they don't want to join the O's because too many of the O's fans have given up on the organization and want to keep "blowing the team up" every couple of years, rather than attempt to use the solid building blocks you already have as a firm foundation for something great.

And I don't care about the neg rep. I still have accumulated rep points at a faster pace than just about anyone on this forum aside from Roy Firestone -- who joined the forum with his rep already established -- so I'll take the inevitable negative rep or two as par for the course whenever I speak my mind. I just have to be a little careful about what I say because I really don't know as much about the O's as virtually all of you do, so it's easy for me to slip up and make a mistake if I don't check my facts before I post my remarks.

[Ruzious]

Because I like giving Jordan top 5 choices!

But seriously, we realistically want to get a top 3 pick in the next draft, and trading Bedard and Roberts this offseason will help that.

[Roll Tide]

Quantity is nice but it is not a substitute for quality. Quantity will not beat the Yankees and Red Sox. Quality will.

I agree but if Bedard has brought a offer from the Mariners of Jones, Clement, Tillman & Sherrill or Jones, Triunfel, Tillman, & Chen. I would consider these quality offers. With all the misinformation its hard to tell on our side if any of the rumored information is true. But I would guess somebody on Seattle's end has a insider that currently has better info. Forget all the Gibbons rumors & stuff I think Jones, Clement, & Sherrill was a legit offer (IMO) or something close with the 1 player away rumors that got Seattle to give Jones a weekend off. Its just hard to imagine that we were 1 player away & the deal is stalled or dead.

I know Morrow was a hangup for a while. So if it was Jones, Clement , & Morrow. Then swapping him for Triunfel & Tillman or Chen orSherill & 1 or the other imo would look pretty fair.

[Dipper9]

In Roch's recent blog titled "Adam Loewen" his last sentence is this...

"Imagine a lineup that includes Teixeira, Nick Markakis, Billy Rowell, Matt Wieters, Brandon Snyder and Nolan Reimold. You know plenty of people in the warehouse have done it."

This could be a major reason why the trades of Bedard and Roberts have yet to occur. The Orioles see future major leaguers in our OWN system, and thus don't neccessarily HAVE TO trade Bedard or Roberts. Signing Bedard and Roberts to extensions was always the Orioles Plan A, and seeing this line from Roch could back up the opinion that deep down, MacPhail sees no need to trade either of these two. Add them to the list above, and the Orioles future doesn't look half bad. Then consider the pitching prospects that MAY work out within the next 2 to 3 years, and maybe we really don't have to trade them.

Okay, I know this is a stretch, but the OP wants reasons for keeping them. Well there is one.

http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/sports/roch/blog/

[Roll Tide]

In Roch's recent blog titled "Adam Loewen" his last sentence is this...

"Imagine a lineup that includes Teixeira, Nick Markakis, Billy Rowell, Matt Wieters, Brandon Snyder and Nolan Reimold. You know plenty of people in the warehouse have done it."

This could be a major reason why the trades of Bedard and Roberts have yet to occur. The Orioles see future major leaguers in our OWN system, and thus don't neccessarily HAVE TO trade Bedard or Roberts. Signing Bedard and Roberts to extensions was always the Orioles Plan A, and seeing this line from Roch could back up the opinion that deep down, MacPhail sees no need to trade either of these two. Add them to the list above, and the Orioles future doesn't look half bad. Then consider the pitching prospects that MAY work out within the next 2 to 3 years, and maybe we really don't have to trade them.

Okay, I know this is a stretch, but the OP wants reasons for keeping them. Well there is one.

http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/sports/roch/blog/

its unlikely the Orioles will be good enough to convince Bedard to stay. If they trade Bedard they should rebuild & also move Roberts.

[NoVaO]

Why not? He's 28 years old. If he's really one of the top 5 left handers in baseball and he can remain healthy, he could still be pitching and winning 12-13 years from now, like Tommy Glavine.

I will lead you to this discussion about pitcher age and attrition rate:

http://forum.orioleshangout.com/forums/showthread.php?t=50000&highlight=attrition+rate

You have to consider the risk involved in keeping Bedard and hoping he continues to perform at his current level, not to mention everything I said above.

The chance of him pitching effectively for 12-13 years is extremely slim.

If you think the Orioles organization is so terrible that Bedard won't re-sign with the team, well that's an indictment of the Orioles rather than of Bedard. Quit trying to trade off the only good pitcher you have and figure out how to patch up your sinking ship, so that you can hang onto good players for 16 years, like the Braves did with Glavine.

If instead, you don't really think that Bedard is that good or you think he's too fragile and you want to get rid of him before he breaks down, well don't you think that the GMs of other teams are capable of reaching the same conclusions you have and will discount Bedard's value accordingly? In that case, you're not going to get the number of top prospects for him that you think you can.

I don't get what you're saying. I'm not indicting Bedard for anything. I have seen no realistic way for us to actually compete and build a long term foundation that involves us keeping Bedard.

I believe Bedard is *that* good. He is a top-5 pitcher. With this top-5 pitcher, we won 69 games because the rest of the team is just that bad. And on top of that, we are an old, bad team. Would I let on to other GMs that I am desperate to trade Bedard? No. Andy McPhail, I believe, has played that card right.

If you are a team looking to contend and need a starter, Bedard represents an 8 - 10 win improvement over, in the case of the Mariners, their #5 starter. Bedard is a valuable commodity and other GMs recognize that and know they will have to pay up to get him. I'm not sure what McPhail's baseline is though. Even the Florida Marlins when they were having a known fire sale got two top 50 prospects, two quality relief prospects, and a taker for Lowell's salary.

And why is it that everyone is so willing to throw in the towel on 2008 before the first pitch is thrown? Yes, the O's had a bad record: 69-73. They haven't been above .500 since 1997.

Just a quick glance up and down the roster should tell you what you need to know. There is very little upside to our roster and I would expect many of our players to decline or at most have a moderate uptick.

The Rockies went from a 76-86 record in 2006 to a 90-73 record last year. Before that, the Rockies had 6 losing seasons in a row and 8 out of the last 10. Not quite as bad as the current O's, but what does it matter? Todd Helton is the only player on either team who has been with the team that long.

Arizona also went from a 76-86 record in 2006 to win 90 games in 2007. Before that, they had 3 losing seasons in a row, including an incredible 111 losses in 2004, just 2 years off a division title and 3 years off their world championship.

1. The NL West is not a strong division. The balance overall was excellent and almost every team was viewed as having a chance entering the year.

2. Both rosters had much more upside and talent entering the season.

The Cubs went from a 66-96 record in 2006 to win their division with an 85-77 record in 2007. Not really much of a record to be proud of, considering how much they spent last winter and how badly the rest of their division sucked, but at least they made the playoffs. Plus the Cubs have a record of utter futility reaching back 100 years now, longer than any team in baseball.

You sum it up best with the part I bolded.

In the AL, the Indians went from 78-84 in 2006 to tie for the best record in baseball in 2007. True, the Indians had a 90 win 2nd place team in 2005, but it had been 6 years since they had previously sniffed the playoffs. They just kept plugging away until they finally improved the team enough to slip through.

Again, the upside. And the Indians were reaping the benefits of having gone through a complete rebuilding right when it became apparent their team really wasn't any good, and the rebuilding centered around them trading their ace at the time.

They got Grady Sizemore and Cliff Lee who was more help in 2005. Traded Branyon for Broussard. Traded Einar Diaz and Ryan Drese for Travis Hafner, made an underrated signing of Casey Blake. Went through a rebuilding year in 03, showed potential in 04 as their young talent developed and 2005 everything came together. It should be noted that the Indians had the top rated (or close to it) farm system for 3 or 4 years before the talent finally developed. We don't have that.

Going back a year, the Tigers had a string of 12 losing seasons before turning around a 71-91 record in 2005 into a 95-67 and a world series berth in 2006. Just 3 years earlier, the Tigers lost an incredible 119 games, winning only 43, which goes to show you just how quick some astute management and some good luck can change an organization's fate. The year before that, it was the White Sox improving from an 83-79 record in 2004 to win 99 games and a world championship in 2005.

I'll give you the Tigers and White Sox. But both teams had much more talent than the Orioles currently have. And both had extraordinary health and success in their rotations.

What all those examples demonstrate is that teams can turn their fortunes around in just one year or two, providing that they can get some good development on their young players and a little luck. OK, maybe a lot of luck. It's been a string of poor luck -- injuries and subpar performances -- which has kept the Yankees out of the world series the last 4 years, despite having the highest payroll in baseball by a large margin.

It can be done, but it requires a sound organization and a number of players coming together to have good seasons without being weighted down by too many injuries. OK, maybe it doesn't even require the soundest of organizations either, given that the Marlins have managed to win a pair of world series over the last 11 years, which is only 1 less than the Yankees during that time frame.

Anything can happen, but our roster is so depleted in talent and the farm system is only average. The upside is extremely limited. I view any short-term success as temporary. We don't have the pipe line of talent to restock ourselves when players decline and contracts run out. And the Marlins got one of their rings due to rebuilding.

Well, if you're that pessimistic about your organization's capabilities, why even bother with trading off Bedard and Roberts; you'll either misjudge the talent of the prospects you're getting in return or you'll ruin them once you get them into the organization anyhow, so you might as well give up and stick to following the Ravens.

From the quote you are quoting, I am talking about what I view as happening if Bedard and Roberts are not traded. I don't give an opinion on the organization's capabilities. I think our evaluation of talent is fine. It is the direction of the franchise that is the concern and if they trade Bedard and Roberts then they have chosen the right direction.

And just to be clear, I'm a Redskin fan

Well yes, Bedard is "replaceable", but are you going to need to wait another 15 years to develop that replacement, which is about how long it was between Mussina and Bedard? Pitchers of that quality are rare; you need to find some way to hang onto them, unless you're a team like Minnesota or Oakland which can't afford to hang onto their pitching stars but somehow seem to be able to draft replacements or snooker them from other teams. Most teams can't do that. I haven't seen the Cardinals do it. I haven't seen the O's do it either.

I don't see why I have to wait 15 years. Just because it took that long to develop that kind of quality pitcher doesn't mean it is going to be another 15 years to develop another pitcher. Aces are rare, but they don't do you much good when they are pitching on a 69-win team.

And Chris Carpenter was a pretty nice pick-up for $300 K. Not a draft pick or trade, but still.

If they continue to develop the way that you anticipate, which is far from being a given. An awful lot of "can't miss" prospects do. Bedard is now an established top flight major league pitcher; if you can keep him healthy and keep him signed to multi-year extensions, he could be the Orioles version of Tommy Glavine -- a star remaining with his original team for 16 years.

Again, I haven't really been criticizing the Orioles' player development. The risk of a guy like Jones, who has already had major success at AAA, not panning out isn't much more of a risk than Bedard seeing a serious decline in 3 years. If Jones does pan out, is there really much of a difference in the value of a gold glove, plus bat in center field and a #1 starter?

Yes, it may. However, that is far from being certain. Keeping them may do far more for the long term health of the team than being defeatist and giving up on your best young players because you've lost faith in the ability of the team to turn things around in the near term.

Well, how do they compete in the AL East in the near term? How do we do this without sacrificing our future success? Taking the risk of having Bedard and Roberts playing at their current levels three or four years from now is not something we should take. The chances of the Orioles being competitive in 3 or 4 years without majorly shaking up this roster is small. It is best that we acquire a stock pile of young talent that is under our control for a cheap price during their peak years.

Yup! One ace in about 15 years. I've not noticed that any other teams have been spectacularly more successful at it, aside from the A's and Twins. Maybe the Tigers, if their youngsters hold up. I don't believe that a team can develop if they are constantly spending their harvest just to buy more seed corn and hope for bountiful rains the next few years. The history speaks of more impending drought.

So what? Develop a #3 starter and put a gold glove, power hitting player in CF for 6 - 8 years and you easily make up for what Bedard gave you and more. It isn't like we've had an impact player in CF the past 7 years or have a player that is even close to one in our system right now.

Yeah, you're right. He was acquired as a "top notch prospect" and discarded a year later as a bust. Yes, he certainly did not develop in the O's system!

He spent 4.5 years in the Marlins system and then spent about half a season in Baltimore's system. His numbers were no different from the time he arrived to the time he left. The trade was stupid, but he shouldn't be cited as somebody that the system failed to develop.

Thrift has been gone now for several years. It's time to stop blaming him for the state of the current O's teams.

A lot of people deserve blame for a lot of different reasons. I point to his regime as the biggest reason for why our farm system is in the state it is today. Some of these problems, which continued after Thrift left, were finally resolved in 2005. Still more work to do...

Actually, my last comment in that post was a necessary "cheap shot", to try and break O's fans out of this attitude of defeatism which so pervades the base. If you can't hold out some hope for the organization being able to right itself, you need to find another source of entertainment.

I DO hold out hope that this organization will do the right thing and start over from the ground up. Gather as much young, cheap and under control talent as you can. Invest in the international markets and player development. Build a pipe line of talent to draw from year in and year out and have the depth necessary to fill the gaps as you see fit.

You talk about how players don't want to come to Baltimore because it's a "losing organization". Maybe they don't want to join the O's because too many of the O's fans have given up on the organization and want to keep "blowing the team up" every couple of years, rather than attempt to use the solid building blocks you already have as a firm foundation for something great.

Please. I'm not even going to go into how ridiculous this is. What is this blowing the team up every couple years? We haven't blown up anything. We have been spinning in circles for 10 years without a clear direction. And no player is going to use that as an excuse for not coming here.

And I don't care about the neg rep. I still have accumulated rep points at a faster pace than just about anyone on this forum aside from Roy Firestone -- who joined the forum with his rep already established -- so I'll take the inevitable negative rep or two as par for the course whenever I speak my mind. I just have to be a little careful about what I say because I really don't know as much about the O's as virtually all of you do, so it's easy for me to slip up and make a mistake if I don't check my facts before I post my remarks.

Your post absolutely didn't deserve a neg rep, but saying "It's unlikely that you'll ever compete with the Red Sox and Yankees again anyhow." really got under my skin, which is not easy to do. I believe you didn't actually get what I called a cheap shot. It was that one sentence that really stood out.

The problem with this:

You build organizational depth by doing a better job of scouting players for the draft, getting as many of your draft picks signed as possible, keeping those players healthy and developing them through your minor league system, and trading spare parts for players that you do need. The last I looked at the O's roster, neither Bedard nor Roberts qualified as a spare part. I can understand the sentiment that trading Tejada was addition through subtraction, but the O's are going to have to do a better job of developing their players and hanging onto them if they're ever going to compete in the AL East again; they can't be discarding the only ace they've been able to develop over the last 15 years because of a comment made during contract negotiations and blown up out of proportion....

...is that it is a slow way to rebuild. Better scouting is necessary. Signing draft picks is necessary. Keeping those players healthy is necessary.

But how many years will it take for us to draft and develop enough talent where we have enough talent to actually compete in the AL East AND still have the necessary depth to compete year after year?

The Brewers went through the same thing the Orioles are going through now. They never really officially went into rebuilding mode. But they have drafted real well the last 7 or 8 years and they just got over the .500 mark last year. They did basically what you are saying the Orioles should do. And it has taken them 8 years to really arrive and this is the NL Central we're talking about.

You have to take into consideration the risk that Bedard and Roberts will decline as they get older. That they won't be as good as they are now and mostly in Bedard's case, the risk of him even being healthy is significant.

The contract situation has nothing to do with my feelings on Bedard. I simply don't think the Orioles will be ready to compete during the periods I expect Bedard and Roberts to be considered near the top of the list at their respective positions. And since the chance of being competitive is small, we should trade them while their value is highest and stockpile young talent that can be apart of the next competitive Oriole team.

[Sports Guy]

But seriously, we realistically want to get a top 3 pick in the next draft, and trading Bedard and Roberts this offseason will help that.

I think keeping them helps that...They can solve a lot of holes for us...Without dealing them, those holes aren't filled, at least not with quality.

[wildcard]

I agree but if Bedard has brought a offer from the Mariners of Jones, Clement, Tillman & Sherrill or Jones, Triunfel, Tillman, & Chen. I would consider these quality offers. With all the misinformation its hard to tell on our side if any of the rumored information is true. But I would guess somebody on Seattle's end has a insider that currently has better info. Forget all the Gibbons rumors & stuff I think Jones, Clement, & Sherrill was a legit offer (IMO) or something close with the 1 player away rumors that got Seattle to give Jones a weekend off. Its just hard to imagine that we were 1 player away & the deal is stalled or dead.

I know Morrow was a hangup for a while. So if it was Jones, Clement , & Morrow. Then swapping him for Triunfel & Tillman or Chen orSherill & 1 or the other imo would look pretty fair.

I would not be surprised if MacPhail has a problem with either of the two trades for several reasons.

1) One of the blue chippers that the O's get in return has to be a pitcher that will help the O's in the near term. Morrow is that pitcher in the M's system. I personally do not value him that highly but I think MacPhail does. If MacPhail is trading his ace, he may well need to have strong, near term pitching in return.

2) Clement is trade bait to the O's. Wieters is the long term answer at catcher. Clement has not played any other position and therefore is a high risk that he would not be able to transition as a first baseman. You don't trade Bedard for a DH. Therefore Clement has to be flipped and MacPhail may have to know in advance where he would trade Clement for a blue chip pitcher, since pitching may be MacPhail need in return for Bedard.

3) Tillman and Triunfel are far enough away that they can not be consider as more then the 3rd or 4th players in the trade.

Therefore it may be that Jones is a acceptable #1 and there may be acceptable #3's and 4's. But the blue chip #2 pitcher has been a problem. It also may be the if the M's give up Jones they don't see the need to give up 4 players.

You could say the MacPhail is being hard nosed here, and he is. MacPhail wants quality in return and does not feel the pressure to trade Bedard or Roberts for less. I am in total agreement if that.