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

[Redskins Rick]

You are spot on here.. There was tons of risk signing Cruz.. That said, if there was a time to take some risk, this offseason was it. You were only facing 1 year of potentially being overextended from a budget standpoint given the salaries coming off the books next year. I understand the disappointment with this past offseason. They were close, they did nothing to get closer. They let 3 major contributors leave and so far their decisions look bad. Unsure why anyone is surprised that people are upset.

I am not a subscriber to the notion that DD sabotaged the offseason or didn't have the teams best interest at heart. I believe they thought they were better than they were based on their margin of victory and getting back Machado and Wieters. I heard a lot of that here on the board this offseason too. So far they were wrong and it hasn't worked. Obviously the budget was an issue as well

Not MSK

The budget wasn't the main issue, the payroll is higher than it's been in the past.

Cruz was way too much money and for 4 years, people are whining now about not keeping Cruz, will not admit in, it two years, when he stops hitting.

[InsideCoroner]

The problem with Duquette's plan for the season is that the loss of a bat like Cruz's hurts the quality of pitches everyone else sees.

If having a power bat meant that the hitters ahead of you were going to get better pitches, then Cano would be getting a steady diet of fastballs this year and killing it, with the most powerful guy in the AL so far this year hitting right behind him. How's that working out for Robinson?

[bpilktree]

The last few years the team has won the close games and when something bad happened they were able to minimize the damage. This season it seems for whatever reason it is snowballing. 2 of the last three are good examples. Pearce gets a bad read on a hit to left he could have caught. That turns into a huge inning and a loss. Last night they were a bad hop away from turing a double play and getting out of the inning still up 4-0. We got a bad hop and then the inning went terrible after that. Some of the mistakes have been self inflicted and had some bad luck as well but right now when it happens the flood gates open up.

[DrungoHazewood]

There are those who care only about wins and losses. Then there are those who believe stats are more important than anything you actually see on the field.

Coming into the season, stats were used to justify non-movements.

Now, I want the stats to win some games for us since that's all that counts.

MSK

I know you like to use "stats" and "sabermetrics" as pejorative terms to denigrate and dismiss. But the real phrase is "evidence". We like to use actual pieces of evidence, be that quantified performance metrics, scouting reports, injury information, projections, or whatever, to paint a full picture of what has happened and what is likely to happen. It seems that you take issue with this because just watching the games and wanting wins is so open-ended. There's no responsibility, there's no trying to pin down the impact of decisions, there's no consideration of rational budgets. You're saying you want wins, and you want them now, and you don't care about anything else. You don't even care, you don't even want to know, if your solutions are likely to produce those wins.

I really think that you want ownership and management to go buy stars and then watch those stars win, and if it doesn't work or there's years of trying to dump terrible contracts, who cares? They tried, it's not your money, it's not your responsibility to clean up the mess. There's no downside, as a fan, to complaining 99% of the time, and expecting irresponsible acquisitions.

And if you deny the validity of evidence-based decision making you can deny that the acquisitions were irresponsible in the first place. You're the guy with six credit cards maxed out to the limit and a mortgage that's 75% of your monthly income, and you don't care because you know you have a trust fund to bail you out. You want wins, you want them now, and you know there's no personal repercussions to demanding that.

[TiredofLosing20]

The budget wasn't the main issue, the payroll is higher than it's been in the past.

Cruz was way too much money and for 4 years, people are whining now about not keeping Cruz, will not admit in, it two years, when he stops hitting.

Right, to include Cruz'/Miller/Markakis or some combination of the three would have been difficult given where the payroll is. My point isn't being critical of the budget itself just that keeping all/any of those guys would have been difficult if you believe that they are near the top of what they can spend, which I tend to believe.

I agree, Cruz was way too much money for too long and I posted weeks ago that I wouldn't judge his contract a month into it. But this was the year to go after it IMO and I probably would have made that deal (Miller too). They didn't and now Cruz and Miller's results thus far are rubbing salt in the wound. Just shouldn't be shocked that people are upset and of course the known Debbie Downers are out in full force.

DD made informed decisions based on risk/reward and right now looks like he was wrong. It really is as simple as that. IMO he has been more right than wrong since he has been in Baltimore.

[24fps]

There are those who care only about wins and losses. Then there are those who believe stats are more important than anything you actually see on the field.

Coming into the season, stats were used to justify non-movements.

Now, I want the stats to win some games for us since that's all that counts.

MSK

Then there are those who embrace false dichotomies with a passion normally seen only from sailors on shore leave after six months at sea. Let's not forget them.

[DrungoHazewood]

Unsure why anyone is surprised that people are upset.

I'm not at all surprised. Some subset of all fanbases is always upset no matter what the state of the franchise is. The people who are most upset now were upset midway through 2012, and again in 2014, and were nearly apoplectic in 2013.

But in this particular case, sure, people will be upset whenever popular players are let go. And doubly so when the season doesn't go according to plan. I guess I'm just looking for some acknowledgment from the embittered folks that the systematic analysis has legitimacy, that (for example) Cruz' success wasn't a foregone conclusion but instead a significant risk and that even if there's money coming off the books in '16 and beyond it's still not exactly responsible to have $15M in dead weight on the payroll.

[DrungoHazewood]

DD made informed decisions based on risk/reward and right now looks like he was wrong. It really is as simple as that. IMO he has been more right than wrong since he has been in Baltimore.

The naysayers are not going to want to hear this, but I'd argue that DD wasn't wrong, even with the extremely early returns on Cruz' and Millers' performances and the O's current record. You still have to make rational projections for the rest of those contracts, and those have only very slightly changed from two months ago. Cruz is still a 35-year-old DH who was a below-average performer from 2011-13. Miller's career high in innings as a reliever is still 62. An awful lot of free agent deals look awesome two months in, and by year 2 or 3 their teams are desperately trying to cobble together a 25-cents-on-the-dollar salary dump.

[Redskins Rick]

The naysayers are not going to want to hear this, but I'd argue that DD wasn't wrong, even with the extremely early returns on Cruz' and Millers' performances and the O's current record. You still have to make rational projections for the rest of those contracts, and those have only very slightly changed from two months ago. Cruz is still a 35-year-old DH who was a below-average performer from 2011-13. Miller's career high in innings as a reliever is still 62. An awful lot of free agent deals look awesome two months in, and by year 2 or 3 their teams are desperately trying to cobble together a 25-cents-on-the-dollar salary dump.

I just posted in another thread. I find it amusing that while we are arguing about Markakis, he is being listed 2nd and could very well be the worse contract on the books for the Braves.

[Ripken]

I didn't want Nick, JJ, or Miller re-signed. And, if not Cruz, fine. Still, was there really no other way to add offense to the team? All we [basically] did was let three contributers go and hand out raises, some very questionable, to half the team. I'm not suggesting gross over payment or lopsided trades; I just think there was more that could have been done.

[eddie83]

The naysayers are not going to want to hear this, but I'd argue that DD wasn't wrong, even with the extremely early returns on Cruz' and Millers' performances and the O's current record. You still have to make rational projections for the rest of those contracts, and those have only very slightly changed from two months ago. Cruz is still a 35-year-old DH who was a below-average performer from 2011-13. Miller's career high in innings as a reliever is still 62. An awful lot of free agent deals look awesome two months in, and by year 2 or 3 their teams are desperately trying to cobble together a 25-cents-on-the-dollar salary dump.

I had no issues with the offseason but I will ask are you trying win on every deal? I mean look at the value the Orioles have in someone like Miguel Gonzalez or Chen. Could you not make the argument that if you are a contending team that lacks position player talent in your system that the place to invest your risk is in hitters?

I see our team being very cheap on the pitching side the next couple of years. Gonzalez and Tillman salaries will go up through arbitration but the pen should be able to be built mainly in house and I bet they go in house to replace Chen and Norris. We lack position player talent in the system at the higher levels so isn that the place to risk money or trades?

[Redskins Rick]

I didn't want Nick, JJ, or Miller re-signed. And, if not Cruz, fine. Still, was there really no other way to add offense to the team? All we [basically] did was let three contributers go and hand out raises, some very questionable, to half the team. I'm not suggesting gross over payment or lopsided trades; I just think there was more that could have been done.[/QUOTE]

Not sure there was a ton of available and quality FAs this off season.

[DrungoHazewood]

I had no issues with the offseason but I will ask are you trying win on every deal?

I think you're trying to get good value out of every deal. You're balancing performance risk and budget room. I would classify Cruz as a high-risk contract not only because of the size but because of the performance/age profile. You don't have to come out ahead on every deal on a WAR/$ ratio, but you do have to come out ahead on enough of them (combined with a big chunk of pre-free agency players) that you can compete with $200M teams on a $120M budget. You can stomach the occasional 2011ish Markakis making $13M but providing $10M in free agent value. The Orioles simply can't afford to have a lot of $15M bench players or guys they've paid to go away.

[Redskins Rick]

I think this is a good post and reasonable approach. I agree that power hitting OF/DH would seem to be a place to take more risk based on our near term MiL depth. That was mainly why I wanted Cruz and thought the risk was worth it.

The risk was probably worth it, until year #4 and then you have dead money in 2018

[El Gordo]

The risk was probably worth it, until year #4 and then you have dead money in 2018

I thought and still do, that you'll get 2 productive years out of Cruz and the final two will be a bust.