Past off season and Dan Duquette/Blue Jays distraction.

[PaulFolk]

So what are the facts here?

1) DD did not improve the team substantially (as in at all).

2) DD is working with Angelos' budget and therefore cannot spend any money on anything other than arbitration.

3) DD replaced proven talent with AAAA-level guys.

4) DD placed an inordinate amount of faith on Davis, Wieters and Machado rebounding and/or replicating past performances.

None of these are facts. They are opinions. I'm sure you understand the difference.

[Going Underground]

Baseball is a game of being wrong. If you are not wrong, you are not watching.

I could be wrong. I could be right.

[video=youtube;zN-GGeNPQEg]

[mdbdotcom]

So what are the facts here?

1) DD did not improve the team substantially (as in at all).

2) DD is working with Angelos' budget and therefore cannot spend any money on anything other than arbitration.

3) DD replaced proven talent with AAAA-level guys.

4) DD placed an inordinate amount of faith on Davis, Wieters and Machado rebounding and/or replicating past performances.

Wieters is back and put on a great performance yesterday, but let's see what happens in three weeks.

Here's hoping the team gets on track!

MSK

Oh look, same BS, different day.

[weams]

So what are the facts here?

1) DD did not improve the team substantially (as in at all).

2) DD is working with Angelos' budget and therefore cannot spend any money on anything other than arbitration.

3) DD replaced proven talent with AAAA-level guys.

4) DD placed an inordinate amount of faith on Davis, Wieters and Machado rebounding and/or replicating past performances.

Wieters is back and put on a great performance yesterday, but let's see what happens in three weeks.

Here's hoping the team gets on track!

MSK

Say something different. Seriously. I'm tired of this. Anything different.

[weams]

None of these are facts. They are opinions. I'm sure you understand the difference.

He does. He is smart. He is trying to get folks worked up.

[TonySoprano]

Just a few days ago, it was Duquette's poor work ethic...

Yup. That's 1000000% the case.

DD was wooed by Toronto, therefore he didn't care.

The result is the nonsense we get in the 2015 season.

MSK

Ignoring how the post below is contradictory to that above, but at least you were starting to get it with #1-2 below, you then lose it and fail to see how we're not the Yankees, we have a limited payroll. So since you enjoy repeating the same talking points, give us your offseason plan within the same budget we have now. I'd like specifics.

So what are the facts here?

1) DD did not improve the team substantially (as in at all).

2) DD is working with Angelos' budget and therefore cannot spend any money on anything other than arbitration.

3) DD replaced proven talent with AAAA-level guys.

4) DD placed an inordinate amount of faith on Davis, Wieters and Machado rebounding and/or replicating past performances.

[TonySoprano]

One could argue that you do the same thing with the incessant positivity.

Pick someone else to troll, or better yet stop altogether.

[mdbdotcom]

One could argue that you do the same thing with the incessant positivity.

Do you mean in the way that he relentlessly interjects into threads his opinion of how great the off-season (that ended more than two months ago) was? Guess I've missed that.

[weams]

One could argue that you do the same thing with the incessant positivity.

You better put me on ignore. Now.

[Dipper9]

So what are the facts here?

1) DD did not improve the team substantially (as in at all).

2) DD is working with Angelos' budget and therefore cannot spend any money on anything other than arbitration.

3) DD replaced proven talent with AAAA-level guys.

4) DD placed an inordinate amount of faith on Davis, Wieters and Machado rebounding and/or replicating past performances.

Wieters is back and put on a great performance yesterday, but let's see what happens in three weeks.

Here's hoping the team gets on track!

MSK

Last night this team is as close as healthy as we have been all year, and we won. Let's see what this team does now with everyone finally back.

How can you sit there with a straight face and say that Duke should have expected injuries to Hardy, Schoop, and Flaherty, as well as 2 extra months for Wieters, as well as poor performance from Tillman, Norris, Pearce, DeAza, Snider, Lough, and to some extent Joseph, Davis, Hardy, and Jones for the whole month of May? You're Monday morning Quarterbacking at best and trolling at worst. Not to worry though, I expect the O's to be playing much better over the next few weeks and thus you will suddenly be busy in your real life and unable to post much. It really is an odd coincidence how your free time to post on here coincides with when the O's are in poor streaks.

[weams]

I'd happily take advantage of that feature of the forum allowed me to, but it does not.

You need to pretend it does.

[DrungoHazewood]

One could argue that you do the same thing with the incessant positivity.

Lemme guess, your car features one of those lovely "if you're not angry you're not paying attention" bumper stickers? It's... well... unusual for positive, upbeat, happy people to be called miserable trolls.

[Crazysilver03]

So what are the facts here?

1) DD did not improve the team substantially (as in at all).

2) DD is working with Angelos' budget and therefore cannot spend any money on anything other than arbitration.

3) DD replaced proven talent with AAAA-level guys.

4) DD placed an inordinate amount of faith on Davis, Wieters and Machado rebounding and/or replicating past performances.

Wieters is back and put on a great performance yesterday, but let's see what happens in three weeks.

Here's hoping the team gets on track!

MSK

You keep saying they are proven talent like their career years are their career norms now.

[DrungoHazewood]

You keep saying they are proven talent like their career years are their career norms now.

If you think sabermetrics is bunk you may not have any issue with the idea that projections are no more than whatever they did last year.

[hoosiers]

Of course not, but do you think advocating for signing "the best talent available" generally and specifically Miller, Cruz, and Markakis this past offseason while ignoring the overall budget is a value-added conversation? Within the last page one of the front offices biggest critics has written (without any trace of irony) how the Yankees spend what is necessary to sign/retain top talent and the Orioles don't. I don't see how that is at all helpful. No kidding, because the Yankees have an almost unlimited budget and the Orioles certainly don't.

From my viewpoint, criticizing DD because he doesn't spend millions more than he did is foolish and unhelpful. If it happened once or twice a year, I'd just ignore it but it happens in thread-after-thread-after-thread by the same handful of folks.

Well, first of all, we don't know what DD's budget was, but we do know that he had offers out to Markakis AND Cruz at the same time that might have ramped up the payroll considerably higher than we started the season with. Perhaps those were offers not intended to be accepted, but I don't think those suggesting our FO had more $ to spend than what represented our OD payroll are off base. By certain accounts, the Os had a payroll north of $110M recently and still were considered among the most profitable franchises in baseball plus MASN profits approaching $50M recently were going into Os and Nats owners pockets.

Second, the makeup of the team is a function of the direction of our GM. Several of us were advocating dealing Wieters and Davis after the 2013 offseason, posted preferences to go in other directions regarding obtaining both Ubaldo and Norris (who I will remind we've been guaranteed by Weams we could deal for what we gave up for him any time we wanted) and could have had much more $ available to make up only a couple WAR from 2014. Other players who could have helped THIS season while reducing payroll, such as Eduardo Rodriguez, were traded away. IMO, the any lack of payroll flexibility and available prospects for the 2015 Orioles result directly from prior decisions of our GM and are why I don't feel it necessary to put forth a full rost er within any budget to have the right to criticize our GM.