The This Team IS Done, We are Dumb and Nothing can Fix it MEGA THREAD

[weams]

Yeah; sorry. I was referring to international acquisitions in the same manner as the baseball industry, media, and fan bases. And I forgot insinuating that as a worthwhile approach to talent acquisition is deemed laughable by a vocal few.

Certainly not by me. We all know Andy MacPhail hated the Dominican republic. As a fiscally sound method of acquiring players.

[Stotle]

I don't disagree with Stotle. In fact, I think he's right. And yet, I think he'd say the Orioles have been doing things the wrong way for quite some time. It is quite interesting that between MacPhail and Duquette they've managed to turn a perrenial loser into a 3 year consecutive winner. You can only put so much of that success on the poor draft position we were in. I would prefer a more aggressive approach at the amateur and international level but the Orioles have definitely decided that spending lots o money on lottery tickets is not the way they want to go. And yet, you have to admire the luck/skill in picking up a players like Paredes, Miguel Gonzalez, Chen, Schoop. Those are 4 "international players", 2 signed for peanuts, one bought for peanuts and one on the relatively cheap.

I think Duquette is very skilled. I think he has had the fortune of a couple of questionable decisions working out and has also benefitted from struggles/misfortune of some divisional competition. I also think he would be running things differently if he had complete freedom to do what he wants to do.

To be clear, my issues with the Duquette front office almost all come down to the fact I don't think it is a sustainable approach to organization building. I think he has been very impressive in keeping a very solid club on the field and I think he is a very bright baseball mind.

[Stotle]

I would prefer a more aggressive approach at the amateur and international level but the Orioles have definitely decided that spending lots o money on lottery tickets is not the way they want to go.

I don't need/want to see dump trucks full of money spent on 16 year old international players. I would just like to see more aggressive scouting and an occasional "this is a potential impact guy we LOVE and are making sure we are a big player for him." But that is not on Duquette.

[Russsnyder]

I think its sad that many O's fans after rooting for their team for many years don't understand their team. The O's are a mid market team that is not going to spend 4/40 on a closer like Miller or 4/57 on a 34 year old Cruz. Its just not who the O's are.

Miller not only wanted a big payday but also wanted a team that had the resources to pay his teammates big money. That gives the Yankees a decided edge. If the O's had matched the offer or even offered more Miller would have still have went to the Yanks.

Cruz getting better at 33-35 years old suggests that he is probably juicing. Does that affect last until the is 38 or does his body start to break down? The O's can't take a 14M per year risk on that. Besides if the O's had Cruz, Paredes would probably not get the playing time is he getting.

Yes, the O's need to get better. They did last June through October. Maybe they will again. But even if they don't O's fans should know the team they are rooting for and understand why they do what they do. That includes Stan the Fan if he really said what is mentioned in your post.

I was quoting Stan the Fan who I hold in high regard. If you lose Cruz, Miller and Nick, when the team is in position to be a contender, you have to make an effort to replace their production. We miss Nick?s defense and on base percentage, Cruz?s bat, and Miller is the best reliever in baseball. We did NOTHING to replace their production. We went in with a flawed theory of Manny and Wieters returning. For that theory to be successful the team would have to go through the entire 2015 season with no injuries. We have gone from being on the cusp of a championship, to a team that through the first 29 games appears to have numerous flaws. People keep up bringing up the economics of the three free agents, and the club not being able to afford them. I will go with argument. My point is you just can?t lose three players of that caliber and replace them with a rule 5 pick, Travis Snyder, and I don?t know who they were planning to fill the void left by Cruz.

[Crazysilver03]

Snider has been worth more than Markakis. Lets not distort too many facts. If the argument is we didn't replace Miller and Cruz fine, but Markakis has been replaced.

[CA-ORIOLE]

I was quoting Stan the Fan who I hold in high regard. If you lose Cruz, Miller and Nick, when the team is in position to be a contender, you have to make an effort to replace their production. We miss Nick?s defense and on base percentage, Cruz?s bat, and Miller is the best reliever in baseball. We did NOTHING to replace their production. We went in with a flawed theory of Manny and Wieters returning. For that theory to be successful the team would have to go through the entire 2015 season with no injuries. We have gone from being on the cusp of a championship, to a team that through the first 29 games appears to have numerous flaws. People keep up bringing up the economics of the three free agents, and the club not being able to afford them. I will go with argument. My point is you just can?t lose three players of that caliber and replace them with a rule 5 pick, Travis Snyder, and I don?t know who they were planning to fill the void left by Cruz.

Ultimately Dan tried to field the best team he could with the budget constraints he had while not sacraficing notable prospects and future payroll flexibility. That involved bringing back the core of a team that won 96 games and counting on some guys to rebound from injury and/or production. That we were just going to replace Cruz's MVP caliber production was not going to happen when Cruz went beyond 3 years. The goal was clearly to gap the offensive production as much as possible with platoon players, bouncebacks and depth. I'm fine with disagreements about not retaining certain players like Matusz, Norris, Hunter etc, or even keeping Miller under our likely payroll constraints and him likely costing 4/40 plus (even though think most of this Miller stuff is Monday morning quarterbacking).

Offenses are better this year in the division and our pitching and defense has not been very good to date. That can change and we can still be a competitive team. A competitive team was the goal, not a better one. That's reality.

This notion that every team that is "close" can easily improve itself each year is pure fiction.

[Bahama O's Fan]

What has our DH production been this year compared to last year?

[Il BuonO]

What has our DH production been this year compared to last year?

Paredes has been pretty good.

[Il BuonO]

What has our DH production been this year compared to last year?

Through 18 games last year Cruz had a .894 OPS and Paredes has a 1.064 OPS in the the same number of games. Not all those games were at DH.

[Bahama O's Fan]

Paredes WAR is 1.1 through this year. I can't figure out how to see Cruz's through this point last year.

[weams]

Paredes WAR is 1.1 through this year. I can't figure out how to see Cruz's through this point last year.

Just divide it by four. You'll be close.

[weams]

Paredes WAR is 1.1 through this year. I can't figure out how to see Cruz's through this point last year.

The sample sizes and type of question that you are asking is so small and has no predictive value anyway that is plenty close enough. This is not real statistical data that means anything.

[weams]

Just divide it by four. You'll be close.

It's about 1.2 for last year. 1.6 for this year. Snider over Nick more than makes up for the difference.

[Bahama O's Fan]

The sample sizes and type of question that you are asking is so small and has no predictive value anyway that is plenty close enough. This is not real statistical data that means anything.

I'm not saying Paredes will replace Cruz, I just mean that so far, we have replaced his production from that spot.

[Russsnyder]

Snider has been worth more than Markakis. Lets not distort too many facts. If the argument is we didn't replace Miller and Cruz fine, but Markakis has been replaced.

Defensively Snider compared to Markakis is a major downgrade. Not even close. We will see where we end up at the end of the year. There is a lot of season left. Right now the lack of trying to make improvements to the team from outside the organization has landed us in last place.