Have we sacrificed too much the last 2 seasons trying to be in "win now" mode?

[Pickles]

I disagree that any of this would be better. Arrieta was not going to turn around in Baltimore. He would still be pitching terribly. You would have prematurely pushed Gausman's development and his innings total. Johnson would have been impossible to hide and would have probably lost multiple games for us already. Without Cruz, this team would not be in first place. Period. Second guessing is fine and dandy, but the fact is we ARE in first place unlike the hypothetical scenarios proposed.

Exactly.

It takes epic ingenuousness to suggest that Arrieta would be putting up those same numbers here that he is in Chicago. Epic.

[Frobby]

Exactly.

It takes epic ingenuousness to suggest that Arrieta would be putting up those same numbers here that he is in Chicago. Epic.

I just don't think we know one way or the other. While it's true that the AL East is a tougher division to pitch in than the NL Central (at least, it has been historically), I don't think we can say that this is the entire reason, or even the main reason, for Arrieta's turnaround. My personal theory -- and it's just a theory -- is that he simply didn't click with Rick Adair, who was unable to unlock his talent. The Cubs pitching coach was able to do it, and maybe Dave Wallace and Dom Chiti could have done it, too. Again, it's all speculation, we will never know what Arrieta would have done if he stayed in Baltimore.

[Pickles]

I just don't think we know one way or the other. While it's true that the AL East is a tougher division to pitch in than the NL Central (at least, it has been historically), I don't think we can say that this is the entire reason, or even the main reason, for Arrieta's turnaround. My personal theory -- and it's just a theory -- is that he simply didn't click with Rick Adair, who was unable to unlock his talent. The Cubs pitching coach was able to do it, and maybe Dave Wallace and Dom Chiti could have done it, too. Again, it's all speculation, we will never know what Arrieta would have done if he stayed in Baltimore.

I agree that we don't know one way or the other. That's why I think it's ridiculous to suggest we know for sure that he would be.

My own theory on the guy is he got humbled a little bit and was a little more open to instruction.

I also don't think he'll be as good going forward. And that in 12 months it might be considered the height of absurdity to trade Norris for Arrieta.

[weams]

I just don't think we know one way or the other. While it's true that the AL East is a tougher division to pitch in than the NL Central (at least, it has been historically), I don't think we can say that this is the entire reason, or even the main reason, for Arrieta's turnaround. My personal theory -- and it's just a theory -- is that he simply didn't click with Rick Adair, who was unable to unlock his talent. The Cubs pitching coach was able to do it, and maybe Dave Wallace and Dom Chiti could have done it, too. Again, it's all speculation, we will never know what Arrieta would have done if he stayed in Baltimore.

Probably a good theory.

[atomic]

Markakis is basically a 2 WAR player this season. And you can't assume he will maintain that 2 WAR pace throughout the contract. He is going to want probably a 4 year deal at about 12 to 13 million a year. So during the peak of the core's run' date=' Markakis will be out there giving you replacement level play for 13 million dollars.

And you're probably right, the Orioles probably need him. Which to me is the problem.[/quote']

I think they pick up his option. It is 15.5 million to do so which I don't think is overpaying that much. He is a fan and ownership favorite so to me it is a no brainier and makes more sense than a extension.

Also I don't think you can truer value Markakis on WAR alone. He is about the only player on the team that gets pitchers into deep counts consistently. Also he keeps guys from going from first to third all the time. Sometimes you have to look at the player play and not just the stats.

[atomic]

Exactly.

It takes epic ingenuousness to suggest that Arrieta would be putting up those same numbers here that he is in Chicago. Epic.

I am glad he is gone. I hated watching him pitch a few good innings and then fall completely apart in the 4th or 5th inning. I am sure Buck is glad he is gone as well. He taxed the bullpen and looked like a head case out there. He was out of options for this year and sometimes you have to give up on players.

[Reboulet'sStache]

I think they pick up his option. It is 15.5 million to do so which I don't think is overpaying that much. He is a fan and ownership favorite so to me it is a no brainier and makes more sense than a extension.

Also I don't think you can truer value Markakis on WAR alone. He is about the only player on the team that gets pitchers into deep counts consistently. Also he keeps guys from going from first to third all the time. Sometimes you have to look at the player play and not just the stats.

What is the team's payroll going to be next year?

[BarclaySouthway]

I think that ever since the Bedard trade the long term plan was to gear up for a run in 2013 and 2014. They are still in that mode. The Jimenez signing was unfortunate, maybe, but understandable given the fact that 2014 has been seen as "the year" since 2009.

They are pretty much where they hoped they'd be, so it's hard to criticize what they have accomplished. Compared to the moves that have gone right, I just can't get worked up over losing Hader and 3 draft picks (the best of which was a #17) while they've been able to hold on to their top 4 prospects. DD's done a good job of straddling that line so far IMO.

[hoosiers]

I disagree that any of this would be better. Arrieta was not going to turn around in Baltimore. He would still be pitching terribly. You would have prematurely pushed Gausman's development and his innings total. Johnson would have been impossible to hide and would have probably lost multiple games for us already. Without Cruz, this team would not be in first place. Period. Second guessing is fine and dandy, but the fact is we ARE in first place unlike the hypothetical scenarios proposed.

This bullpen is built entirely on Britton who forced his way onto the major league roster and then into the closer role. Why would the Os have been slower to move JJohnson out of the closer role than the Os would have?

This team would absolutely be in first place in the hypothetical I drew up and, even without Arrietta, the overall organizational talent would be comfortably superior - which is the main point of that comment.

I don't think DD's trade tinkering in the past year has advanced the organization. I think it has set it back.

[Pickles]

This bullpen is built entirely on Britton who forced his way onto the major league roster and then into the closer role. Why would the Os have been slower to move JJohnson out of the closer role than the Os would have?

This team would absolutely be in first place in the hypothetical I drew up and, even without Arrietta, the overall organizational talent would be comfortably superior - which is the main point of that comment.

I don't think DD's trade tinkering in the past year has advanced the organization. I think it has set it back.

Setting aside Arrietta, this team hasn't traded anything of significant value in the last year or so.

The pieces they gave up are highly unlikely to translate to many ML wins. Certainly not any time soon.

And they have pieces here now who are delivering ML wins- right now.

Again, all this talk about organizational talent wildly overrates prospects, particularly mediocre ones, and devalues solid ML contributors.

Hell, does anybody remember the orgy of consternation that was set off when DD made that trade w the Dodgers his first off season?

How's that come back to bite us in the ass?

[tntoriole]

This bullpen is built entirely on Britton who forced his way onto the major league roster and then into the closer role. Why would the Os have been slower to move JJohnson out of the closer role than the Os would have?

This team would absolutely be in first place in the hypothetical I drew up and, even without Arrietta, the overall organizational talent would be comfortably superior - which is the main point of that comment.

I don't think DD's trade tinkering in the past year has advanced the organization. I think it has set it back.

We simply disagree. You minimize Cruz's role as if we would have gotten that production from....where exactly? The Os would have been MUCH slower to remove Johnson because 10 million dollars is a lot to pay a guy to only pitch the sixth inning (and we couldn't have hidden him there either.) Come talk to me after Jiminez turns it around, Norris continues to improve, Gausman has plenty of innings to go to October (unlike your hypothetical, unless you wanted to push his arm) and we go to the Series. Your hypothetical would have us worse, not better.

[Stotle]

So I'd like to respond to Stotle a bit here. I'm honestly really surprised at your posts here. Not that you have problems w the FO approach the last few years, but that you aren't able to articulate it better than you have here. I've talked baseball online w you for almost 10 years, and respect your opinion greatly, but I find logical fallacies and discrepancies all over the place here.

First, you suggest that we should trade our guys who are getting expensive- Wieters, Davis, Hardy, etc.- but not to save money, but to turn around and give EVEN more money to older, largely, inferior players. That's simply illogical.

Secondly, you talk about the need to resign guys like Machado, Gausman, etc., and say we need to show these guys we're committed to winning in order to do that. And the way you suggest we show our commitment to winning to these guys is to trade their friends, mentors, and teammates they've won a lot of games with the last 3 years for cheaper prospects. I suggest that wouldn't make the impression you think it would.

I think a lot of this stems from a general fallacy in your perspective: IMO, you wildly overrate prospects. I mean let's take an organization I know you admire for their abilities to develop prospects: Boston. How many Boston prospects have panned out in the last few years? Iglesia? Middlebrooks? Bradley? Hell, even Bogaerts is showing himself to be not the prospect some projected him to be. The fact of the matter is, yes, if you can develop a superstar you're a way ahead of the game. However, very, very, very few prospects even elite prospects, develop into superstars. And while developing a bunch of 2 win players is nice, if you're smart and proactive and a little lucky, you can find those players cheaply on the market every year. I mean look who we've brought in the last 2 years for nothing that have become good players- Gonzalez, Pearce, McCloth, Betimit to a lesser extent.

I think DD's philosophy has been quite apparent in regards to his minor league system: He's willing to shuffle the mid-tier guys because he thinks they're eminently replaceable, and he's damn nigh not going to give up an elite prospect, for average MLer coming back.

As far as my own thoughts, I don't have a problem with his approach to prospects or FA really. There's been few moves he's made that I've hated; and probably fewer still that I love. However, he's done an admirable job of finding value for nothing, and if he retains that ability, then a slightly thinner farm system won't kill this orgs chance of competing into the future.

My biggest knock on him would be his approach to international FA.

I do not necessarily think we should have gutted the team and traded everyone. I was articulating one approach that represented a specific plan for restructuring payroll commitments and supplementing an upper-minors that is light on potential contributors.

In this thread I said I'd be fine with moving a bunch of our young talent if it meant really going for it.

I don't in any way shape or form overrate prospects; I deal with analyzing them on a daily basis and I am comfortable saying I'm as familiar, if not more familiar, with risk profiles than anyone posting on here (which is why I've been more bearish on guys like Sisco and Harvey than the average poster).

My issue, and you're right I'm apparently not articulating it well, is that this organization is not really pushing in any direction with any coherent (from the outside) strategy. There isn't much premium put on bringing in an influx of amateur talent. FA targets seem to be based on who is available at random times in the offseason, and often it appears the organization is not landing its first or second choice. Trades have centered on second and third tier players.

Slightly modifying the line I wrote earlier expresses it best, for me: Observing from the outside, the last two years of activity for this org look a lot more like skillful Jenga than methodical Legos. I get the desire to capitalize on a competitive season a year or two earlier than previously expected. But I wish the org elected to do that by adding payroll rather than stalling out on building the farm.

[Stotle]

My basic problem is the supposition of many that we are destined to move on from Hardy, Wieters, Davis, and Markakis in the next 18 months.

I don't think we are. I expect 2 or so of those guys to sign reasonable extensions and stay here.

And the idea that we're doomed if we don't trade them for prospects is wrong imo. I know a lot of people will ***** and moan about the extensions- as they did w Jones- but we're far more likely to win games, now and in the future, with those guys instead of prospects.

I'm not trying to diss Boston's developmental system. I think they do a good job. But the reason they win has largely been about huge FA spending than it has been about development. The only stars they've developed in the last ten years are Pedroia, and Lester. All the rest of the long parade of uber prospects haven't amounted to much more than average. (Obviously the 21 years old now get some time to change that) Which is my point. Developing a prospect and getting average production from him is great. But if you can do that on the waiver wire that's just as good. And DD has shown that ability.

Take twenty minutes and sketch out what you expect payroll to be in 2016. Include increased salaries, keep Ubaldo, pick two current players with "reasonable" extensions. I think you'll find you run out of money a lot quicker than you expect.

Maybe the team is planning on waiting on extending guys like Machado and Gausman (rather than going the Tampa route and extending more cheaply early on). In that case, you could clear out a contract like Jimenez's and have that cover some of those extensions. I've run the numbers a handful of times over the last two years and I don't see it, but I don't run a team and Duquette & Co. certainly have experience in that department.

[malkusm]

3. It's not a loser mentality. It's actually the opposite. I think/thought with Gausman and Bundy' date=' the Orioles are going to have two front end starters. I was/am excited about their future in the next few years, and wanted to make moves that put the Orioles in position to take advantage of their Gausman-Bundy window. Davis isn't going to be apart of that window.[/quote']

Really I couldn't disagree with this more. 4 years ago you could have replaced "Gausman" with "Matusz" and "Bundy" with "Tillman" and said they needed to trade away X, Y and Z to be competitive in the Matusz-Tillman window. Maybe some of those prospects you would have gotten for guys like Tejada, Roberts, or Markakis would have been helpful, and maybe some of them wouldn't have been. But Matusz would still be Matusz and Tillman would still be Tillman, and you'd have built your entire roster this year based on the assumption that they'd be your 1-2 starters, and you'd have been wrong. Even still, we were losing then, so you can justify giving away the present for the future when the present isn't very valuable to begin with. Now, the present is much more valuable.

Now, the O's could definitely be doing some things to build the farm system a bit more than they have, but of all the trades I see mentioned, the only one I think would have made any sense would be to trade Jim Johnson, the thesis being "Closers are overvalued by arbitrators." What would have been the thesis in trading Chris Davis? Aside from the fact that we have zero clue what we could have gotten for him last offseason, did anyone think (and actually say) that he was going to perform below his arbitration contract this year, given what the market is for 1B?

I am really, really having a difficult time trying to figure out why we're complaining about moves we could have made to sacrifice 2014 for 2016, as if 2014 is not very valuable, when we have a division lead for the first time since Cal was playing SS.

[Stotle]

First, I don't trust Markakis' WAR numbers over the years, becuase he's badly dinged defensively- and he always has been, even when he was younger and visibly faster. Also, he has a sterling reputation throughout baseball for his defense; one I find it hard to believe he would have developed being as poor throughout his career as his defensive numbers suggest.

I have no interest in a 4/48 deal or whatever for Markakis.

I decline his option.

I offer him the QO.

And then I offer him a 3/30 extension, and if he refuses wish him luck.

Markakis isn't turning down $15 MM. Neither is Hardy. Cruz probably will unless it's an awful second half for him.