A look at popular CO Options we passed up on.....

[LookitsPuck]

I think it is safe to say Duquette rolled snake eyes this year when it comes to corner outfield. OPS last year vs. this year:

Snider .776/.659

Young .779/.628

Pearce .930/.682

De Aza .700/.636 (as an Oriole; and now he's hitting .858 with the Red Sox)

Lough .694/.592

I mean, that could hardly have gone any worse. Then, to add insult to injury:

Cruz .859/.985

Markakis .729/.744

I think it's fair to say that, if you had looked at probable outcomes for all these players before the season began, this is about the worst scenario one could have imagined from the Orioles' point of view. I think it is fair to question Duquette's decisions, but one does need to recognize that he's been really unfortunate with this.

He's been unfortunate, yes. But Duquette hoped that Snider's second half last year was representative of what he'd put up in 2015. That's a gamble on his part. As for Young, he put Young in a starting capacity and hoped for the best. Pearce clearly had a career year with injury issues in the past. De Aza and Lough's recent years left much to be desired.

So basically Duquette adhered to the "Throw a bunch of stuff against the wall" theory. For a club that just won 96 games last year, he did absolutely nothing to maintain that let along make the club clearly better.

[srock]

I hear ya but the problem is that in one year the Orioles wasted almost half of what Nelson Cruz would have cost on guys they DFA. They did get a little unlucky but bargain bin shopping will only get them so far. The window with this core of players is about to close and the best they could come up with was Travis Snider?

Or one could argue that's $20 million subtracted from the 2016 budget to try 3-6 new options and hope a few stick

Do not have the flexibility if Cruz is on the team and he craps out, which is probably given his age and injury history.

[DrungoHazewood]

So basically Duquette adhered to the "Throw a bunch of stuff against the wall" theory. For a club that just won 96 games last year, he did absolutely nothing to maintain that let along make the club clearly better.

What's the difference between the "Throw a bunch of stuff against the wall" theory and the "pick the guys who you think will perform well out of the candidates who fit the budget" theory? Whether or not it works out in the end?

[DrungoHazewood]

Bingo. Let that sink in for awhile. Sometimes it's better to pay for the sure thing than spend 2-6 million on a handful of suspects.

Yes, it's typically less of a short-term performance risk to sign much more expensive players. That's why there's a fairly strong correlation between payroll and regular season success. Not all teams have the luxury of a much higher payroll than Angelos will authorize.

[backwardsk]

Aoki, mentioned in the OP, was having a great season until he got hurt in June and missed a month. He's yet to get back on track since he returned -- hitting under .200, and getting on base at a .222 clip.

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[ChuckS]

Yes, it's typically less of a short-term performance risk to sign much more expensive players. That's why there's a fairly strong correlation between payroll and regular season success. Not all teams have the luxury of a much higher payroll than Angelos will authorize.

Back to my OP. There were some better options available that could have been had on short-term contracts. At least guys like Seth Smith and Aoki had fairly consistent track records. Both of those guys get on base, which is what this team sorely needed/needs. Colby Rasmus would have been a gamble but still a better one than Snider, whose had one decent half season in parts of eight different seasons in the Majors.

[ChuckS]

Aoki, mentioned in the OP, was having a great season until he got hurt in June and missed a month. He's yet to get back on track since he returned -- hitting under .200, and getting on base at a .222 clip.

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He's been back for 9 games.......

[Just Regular]

To the point in the opening post on Smith, his acquisition cost wasn't excessive, but bag of peanuts isn't right either.

In the year of Wade Davis, Brandon Maurer was a middling starter prospect struggling in the show, who went into Seattle's pen midseason.

As reliever: 37.1 IP, 38/5 K/BB, 2.17 ERA, 0.96 WHIP

Not arbitration eligible until 2017

[backwardsk]

He's been back for 9 games.......

Right, he's been unproductive for six straight weeks and counting.

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[Frobby]

I'd say Smith was a safer bet than either Aoki or Rasmus. Aoki's OPS had gone down two years in a row, and he's 33 this season. Rasmus has been pretty inconsistent.

I think it would have been reasonable for DD to expect the group of five he had to produce a .725ish OPS collectively, based on the projections I posted on the prior page. Yes, all five guys presented risk, but the odds of all five crapping out were like 3-5%.

[Tx Oriole]

Why are we discussing players that are not Orioles on Orioles Talk? Just another opportunity to bash DD - when all he has done is put us on a winning path in the 4 years he has been here.

I guess because Snider has not worked out and DD should have signed one he

has listed.

[DrungoHazewood]

Back to my OP. There were some better options available that could have been had on short-term contracts. At least guys like Seth Smith and Aoki had fairly consistent track records. Both of those guys get on base, which is what this team sorely needed/needs. Colby Rasmus would have been a gamble but still a better one than Snider, whose had one decent half season in parts of eight different seasons in the Majors.

This past offseason the board didn't like Aoki at all. At least this thread seemed to treat his signing with a big "meh", with several suggesting that David Lough and/or De Aza were better players. Smith would have been ok, there were some advocating trading for him, he wasn't a free agent. The discussion at the time was a Mike Wright-type prospect would have been required. Smith was also owed more money, and isn't a good defender. The Orioles never really seemed that interested in Rasmus, at least not at his asking price with his baggage. I suppose they could have tried the Royals' route, showing a commitment to winning by aggressively signing Alex Rios.

[Herman]

Or one could argue that's $20 million subtracted from the 2016 budget to try 3-6 new options and hope a few stick

Do not have the flexibility if Cruz is on the team and he craps out, which is probably given his age and injury history.

What's the difference between the "Throw a bunch of stuff against the wall" theory and the "pick the guys who you think will perform well out of the candidates who fit the budget" theory? Whether or not it works out in the end?

The "throw a bunch of stuff against the wall" theory is not an appropriate approach for a team with World Series aspirations. The Orioles tried to replace two productive players with a platoon of average/below average players and it didn't work. To make matters worse this approach cost the team $20 million in wasted money on guys who are no longer on the team. To be honest I think that the hard budget that the Orioles supposedly have is bogus but that's just my opinion.

Yes, it's typically less of a short-term performance risk to sign much more expensive players. That's why there's a fairly strong correlation between payroll and regular season success. Not all teams have the luxury of a much higher payroll than Angelos will authorize.

I actually agree with you

[e16bball]

The Orioles tried to replace two productive players with a platoon of average/below average players and it didn't work. To make matters worse this approach cost the team $20 million in wasted money on guys who are no longer on the team.

Nearly half of that "$20M in wasted money" figure is the $8.8M they paid Norris. Which has nothing to do with their approach to dealing with the holes left by Markakis and Cruz. And I bow to your baseball acumen if you knew (or even strongly suspected) that, after 5 years of generally league-average pitching, Bud Norris was going to implode and become a not-even-rosterable disaster.

Another $4.7M of the "wasted money" went to Tommy Hunter. Which means that $13.5M of that money actually had nothing to do with their scattershot approach to the DH/OF spots.

If your concern is that "wasted money," your issue should be much more with the refusal to non-tender or trade guys who appeared likely to be overpaid in their last year of arbitration. Norris, Hunter, Matusz, and de Aza got a combined $21.8M in arbitration, and they all probably could reasonably have been replaced with cheaper options already in the organization. But that decision wasn't about being cheap or about trying to "go small" --- that was about trying to keep as much of the core of the team together as possible. They would have done much better if they HAD tried to go cheap in those spots.

You can argue with the decision to go with Snider and in-house options at the DH/OF spots. Clearly it hasn't really worked out, Paredes notwithstanding. But it's simply not accurate to suggest that the "wasted money" is primarily the result of that decision.

[weams]

The "throw a bunch of stuff against the wall" theory is not an appropriate approach for a team with World Series aspirations. The Orioles tried to replace two productive players with a platoon of average/below average players and it didn't work. To make matters worse this approach cost the team $20 million in wasted money on guys who are no longer on the team. To be honest I think that the hard budget that the Orioles supposedly have is bogus but that's just my opinion.

I actually agree with you

I will give you a contest. You select a roster for next year based on the budget that Dan Duquette is given, and we will etch your choices in stone. And see if you outperform him. You might. It sounds like fun to me.