Sherzer or Lester idea

[weams]

When you have a bad staff I agree, waste of money. When you have a talented young staff I want that leader. Just different opinions.

The leader is Dave Wallace, Not a chicken and beer guy. He had a lot of character issues when he was younger. We just forgive them because he had cancer and beat it.

[Mayor McCheese]

So how did that "ace" idea work out for the Tigers and A's

No thank you, I like the DD approach to deep depth in the pitching staff.

Right now we have 6 pretty good starting pitchers, and heck DD may add more.

I think Gausman will be better than Shields next year, and who knows when Lester or Scherzer will break down?

Not going to gut the depth of my roster to find out.

No, we have a few good starters.

Norris, Gonzo, Jimenez, and Gausman are all big question marks.

Norris had a great season but can he repeat or be better - who knows?

Gonzo is a good back of the end rotation starter, but he still stuggles to pitch 5+ innings

Gausman, has huge upside potential but still very young and learning to pitch at the MLB level.

Jimenez is a complete wildcard - majority of his starts were horrible. few gems -- that needs to flipflop.

I dont see how having one of Shields, Lester, or Scherzer would take away from our depth - as we still have Bundy and some other guys in the minors.

[turtlebowl]

The leader is Dave Wallace, Not a chicken and beer guy. He had a lot of character issues when he was younger. We just forgive them because he had cancer and beat it.

I forgot about that and I really don't know what any of these guys are like off the field.

If you are going to spend that kind of money though he has to be a leader on and off the field. They have to be the full package!!

[tntoriole]

Like your creative thinking. I have always said Orioles lack a true ace since Mussina and until they get one there will be no World Championship. Not sure I would dump Davis but I like the other moves. Let's get an ace:thumbsup1:

Nonsense. The Orioles came within one bad series of being in the World Series this year. The 1966 Orioles had Wally Bunker 10-6, a rookie Jim Palmer at 15-10, Dave McNally at 13-6 and Steve Barber at 10-5. No ace. 1983 Orioles had the deep depth of Mike Boddicker, Storm Davis, Scott McGregor, and an older Flanny and a 37 year old Palmer and Dennis Martinez who went 7-16 during that year. You can absolutely win the World Championship without a so-called ace.

[Brooks The Great]

So how did that "ace" idea work out for the Tigers and A's

No thank you, I like the DD approach to deep depth in the pitching staff.

Right now we have 6 pretty good starting pitchers, and heck DD may add more.

I think Gausman will be better than Shields next year, and who knows when Lester or Scherzer will break down?

Not going to gut the depth of my roster to find out.

How did that ace idea work out for the Giants?

The Tigers had an unbalanced team with a glaring flaw - their bullpen - that the Orioles exposed. The A's also had an unbalanced team. They wound up weakening their offense too much by trading Cespedes, as Brandon Moss' injury ultimately left them with an anemic lineup.

Among several other things, the Royals exposed our lack of an ace. If we had a Bumgarner type (or any ace with nasty stuff) against the Royals, we likely would have won at least one of the first two games of the ALCS, and everything could have turned out differently.

[Brooks The Great]

Nonsense. The Orioles came within one bad series of being in the World Series this year. The 1966 Orioles had Wally Bunker 10-6, a rookie Jim Palmer at 15-10, Dave McNally at 13-6 and Steve Barber at 10-5. No ace. 1983 Orioles had the deep depth of Mike Boddicker, Storm Davis, Scott McGregor, and an older Flanny and a 37 year old Palmer and Dennis Martinez who went 7-16 during that year. You can absolutely win the World Championship without a so-called ace.

You can win a World Series without an ace, but I think it's much easier to win a championship when you have one.

You just mentioned a couple of Orioles WS championship teams - one from 30 years and the other from almost 50 years ago. With the 1966 team having a rookie pitcher that wound up in the Hall of Fame and proved to be the Orioles best pitcher of all-time. A rookie who won Game 2 of the World Series, beating Hall of Famer Sandy Koufax. It was a completely different game back then, if only for the fact starting pitchers were workhorses compared to today, and the game back then wasn't so specialized. Using those examples you offered isn't terribly convincing.

Quite honestly, I think you're completely wrong about teams not needing an "ace" (depending on whatever criteria you have for determining what an ace is, of course) to win a World Series. Going back to 1990, I really believe that only the 2011 St. Louis Cardinals, the 2005 White Sox, the 2002 Anaheim Angels, the 1996 New York Yankees, and the 1993 Toronto Blue Jays lacked a true ace. And the 2011 Cardinals rode Chris Carpenter, who had previously been an ace (and in fact was their ace when the Cardinals won the 2006 World Series), and his 4-0 record in the playoffs (as well as a absurdly lucky/hot postseason by David Freese) to a championship.

So I'm convinced that recent modern baseball history strongly supports the idea that it helps to have an ace if a team wants to win a World Series. It's certainly preferable to "starting depth" or a few solid starting pitchers, or whatever the Orioles had this past postseason.

[tntoriole]

If you define an ace only as a pitcher who has a great year on a championship team, then sure, the examples beome more plentiful. Your comments about Palmer do not change the fact that in 1966, he was not an ace and would have two years of arm injury rehab coming up. It would be the same as saying Tillman was an ace on the 2014 team if he then wins Cy Young awards in 2016 and 2018. Yes good pitching is essential to winning over 162 games..in a short series, it is who gets the breaks and who is pitching hot that week. We had legitimate aces in 1969, 1971 with 4 20 game winners and 1979 with Flanny and still lost to guys like Steve Blass. But that still is not what this thread is about. We are not going to sign Max Scherzer for 7 years and 185 million or Lester for 6 years and 120 million. And, i will offer up this prediction...the teams that do sign them will not win a championship with them.

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[Brooks The Great]

If you define an ace only as a pitcher who has a great year on a championship team, then sure, the examples beome more plentiful. Your comments about Palmer do not change the fact that in 1966, he was not an ace and would have two years of arm injury rehab coming up. It would be the same as saying Tillman was an ace on the 2014 team if he then wins Cy Young awards in 2016 and 2018. Yes good pitching is essential to winning over 162 games..in a short series, it is who gets the breaks and who is pitching hot that week. We had legitimate aces in 1969, 1971 with 4 20 game winners and 1979 with Flanny and still lost to guys like Steve Blass. But that still is not what this thread is about. We are not going to sign Max Scherzer for 7 years and 185 million or Lester for 6 years and 120 million. And, i will offer up this prediction...the teams that do sign them will not win a championship with them.

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That's not my definition of an ace. What is your definition of an ace? Because almost all the World Series teams in the past 25 years have had one. The Orioles last year did not have one. And no, not every team has an ace. Every team has a #1 starter, but a true ace should be something else entirely.

For me, and ace is a dominant pitcher who is going to take the ball in Game 1 of the playoffs, and in Game 1 of every postseason series as long as their days of rest work out for it. "Dominant" is the key word for purposes of the discussion we're having. To use metrics the casual fan is familiar with, an ace is a pitcher that pitches to a sub-3.50 ERA and sub-1.15 WHIP, and who pitches 175-200+ innings in the regular season. An ace tends to have a strikeout rate of at least 7.5 per 9 innings. Although the more dominant a pitcher is in ERA and WHIP, the less necessary it is for them to have a high K-rate. Aces tend to make the All-Star team in the year that they are considered to be a true ace.

Either way, if Scherzer and Lester are the kind of pitchers you consider to be aces (Shields is not an ace), then almost every World Series-winning team over the past 25 years has had one. I don't consider Chris Tillman to be a true ace, and I don't think he will ever be one. Gausman has the potential to be an ace in the future.

This thread is about Scherzer and Lester, but you claimed that a team doesn't need an ace to win a World Series. While I agree it's possible to win one without an ace, I believe you need one if you want to have a much better shot.

So would you mind defining what you consider to be an ace so that we can have a clearer discussion? If you don't want to, no worries. But you will have failed in convincing me that the Orioles don't need to acquire one, or that they don't need Gausman or Bundy turn into one. Unless you have a very strange definition of an ace, you will find that about 20 out of the past 25 World Series champions have had one. I just think you're overlooking or misremembering the pitching staffs on those teams.

[webbrick2010]

Didn't Lester and Shields just face off in a do or die wild card game?

Didn't they both get hammered?

Didn't the biggest ace of all Kershaw, go winless in the playoffs?

Didn't Scherzer pitch game one against the O's. Did he win?? Did he lose to Tillman (not and ace)

Did Price win in game 3, or was it Norris (not an ace).

[clapdiddy]

Didn't Lester and Shields just face off in a do or die wild card game?

Didn't they both get hammered?

Didn't the biggest ace of all Kershaw, go winless in the playoffs?

Didn't Scherzer pitch game one against the O's. Did he win?? Did he lose to Tillman (not and ace)

Did Price win in game 3, or was it Norris (not an ace).

Didn't Bumgarner carry the Giants to the World Championship?

[webbrick2010]

Didn't Bumgarner carry the Giants to the World Championship?

So we should sign an ace for 6 yrs / 120 million dollars and hope:

a. That we make the playoffs

b. That he pitches like the 2014 Bumgarner

c. That he doesn't pitch like the 1/2 dozen aces who pitched poorly as their teams were eliminated in the wildcard or ALDS series.

Sure that's a plan

[weams]

SCHERZER. Is how it is spelled.

[VeveJones007]

That's not my definition of an ace. What is your definition of an ace? Because almost all the World Series teams in the past 25 years have had one. The Orioles last year did not have one. And no, not every team has an ace. Every team has a #1 starter, but a true ace should be something else entirely.

For me, and ace is a dominant pitcher who is going to take the ball in Game 1 of the playoffs, and in Game 1 of every postseason series as long as their days of rest work out for it. "Dominant" is the key word for purposes of the discussion we're having. To use metrics the casual fan is familiar with, an ace is a pitcher that pitches to a sub-3.50 ERA and sub-1.15 WHIP, and who pitches 175-200+ innings in the regular season. An ace tends to have a strikeout rate of at least 7.5 per 9 innings. Although the more dominant a pitcher is in ERA and WHIP, the less necessary it is for them to have a high K-rate. Aces tend to make the All-Star team in the year that they are considered to be a true ace.

Either way, if Scherzer and Lester are the kind of pitchers you consider to be aces (Shields is not an ace), then almost every World Series-winning team over the past 25 years has had one. I don't consider Chris Tillman to be a true ace, and I don't think he will ever be one. Gausman has the potential to be an ace in the future.

This thread is about Scherzer and Lester, but you claimed that a team doesn't need an ace to win a World Series. While I agree it's possible to win one without an ace, I believe you need one if you want to have a much better shot.

So would you mind defining what you consider to be an ace so that we can have a clearer discussion? If you don't want to, no worries. But you will have failed in convincing me that the Orioles don't need to acquire one, or that they don't need Gausman or Bundy turn into one. Unless you have a very strange definition of an ace, you will find that about 20 out of the past 25 World Series champions have had one. I just think you're overlooking or misremembering the pitching staffs on those teams.

There are many ways to skin a cat in a SSS.

Would I like to have an ace? Yes.

Would I like to have a shutdown 7-9 like the Royals had this year? Yes.

Would I like to have guys play over their head in a SSS relative to their career and regular season? Yes.

Let's just focus on regularly getting to the playoffs and wait for the dice to come up 7 or 11. Giving a single player $150M+ would inhibit that possibility for the Orioles. If the O's get an ace, it will be because they developed him (or traded expendable assets for a short-term option like they tried with Lester).

[Tx Oriole]

I was trying to throw the idea of signing a top FA pitcher instead of Cruz & Markakis.

LF: De Aza / Pearce

RF: Lough

DH: De Aza / Pearce

Trade: Norris++

Dump: Ubaldo

Acquire: Almost MLB ready prospect(s)

Rotation:

Shields/Lester

Tillman

Chen

Gausman

Gonzo

You really think DD will just dump Jimenez?

[Toucan Sam]

SCHERZER. Is how it is spelled.

This is not a correct sentence either.