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

[sportsfan8703]

I'm tired of seeing this thread. The people crying that we gave up too much need to go back to their 20 team, AL only, Keeper fantasy baseball leagues. I used to like and root for Josh Hader, but that ended because of this thread. I will be openly rooting against him. Same for Hoes, who won't need too much rooting against because he's not very good, to be polite. And the comp pick, It's real easy to hate a UVA guy. Now I'm off to look at Arrietta's (that's right I never learned how to spell his name because he was horrible) the stats of his 100+ chances he had to prove himself a starter.

[Frobby]

Well, I am really happy that I started this thread. I think the discussion here has been very high quality, with great posts made by people with different perspectives, and at the end of the day, it's about the most important topic there is.

I'm kind of torn on the whole topic. The whole reason we fell into the 14-year losing streak was because the team in the mid/late '90's got into a "win now" mentality and let their team get too old with not enough in the farm system to back them up, then had a last minute fire sale in 2000 that didn't yield much. Then it took longer to rebuild the system than it should have through a combination of bad luck and bad management choices. So here we are, enjoying a pretty nice three-year run of playoff contention, and maybe we will get hot at the right time and make a deep playoff run, but we certainly aren't the best team in baseball. Are we about to make the same mistake that led to 14 straight losing seasons in the first place?

Well, I don't think it's that bad. We have the following major league assets:

6 years: Gausman

5 years: Schoop

4 years: Machado, Jones, Britton, McFarland

3 years: Tillman, Gonzalez, Jimenez

That is not a bad base of guys who will be around for 3+ years. You can throw in Joseph, Flaherty, and Lough on that list if you want to.

Then in the minors you have some high-end talent -- Bundy (ETA late 2015?), Harvey (ETA mid-2017?) and hopefully some others. But it's not like our system is stacked. The poor seasons of EdRod and Wright kind of dim my perception of our near-term reinforcements, as I'd hoped those two guys would be in a position to help us next year, but now it's not clear that they'll help (but maybe Zach Davies will?).

Overall, it is not a desperate situation, and I don't see us sinking into the 1998-2011 abyss. Duquette is creative and will find us some nuggets we don't know exist currently, and Buck will have the team playing fundamentally sound baseball. But, if the goal is to build a team that is better than the 2012-14 Orioles, it's a bit tough to see how we are on that path. There's not enough talent in the pipeline for that, so we'll have to be a bit lucky for that to occur.