All the questions I wanted to ask Dan Duquette were asked in this interview

[El Gordo]

Who do you replace them with? According to Fangraphs, entering 2015 the O's got almost 20 million in production from Matusz, Hunter and DeAza in (2014). DD paid them roughly 13 million. Dd got them for a steal this year based on what they produced last year. So if you non tender these guys you need to replace the 20 million in production.

This post is too intelligent.

[El Gordo]

I think DD deserves a mulligan. For someone who suffers from delusions, hears voices, hallucinates, and is generally out of touch with reality, I think he has done a remarkable job.

[SteveO]

1. I am of the opinion that he really didnt move early on the FA market because he thought he was in-between jobs. Markakis's agent essentially confirmed that he had little talk with Nick until the end.

2. Bad gamble on Steve Pearce. Everything pointed to a bounce this season, there was really no reason to believe that Pearce would continue his production from last season.

3. Bad gamble on Weiters. I think he believed that Matt would come back much earlier.

4. Bad gamble that Snider could replace Markakis

I just feel he rolled the dice too much in the off-season aside from the fact that he essentially never had any plans to resign Cruz, Markakis, or Miller.

Overall I do think he has done a great job over the years with the Orioles but his smugness is something that has always rubbed me the wrong way.

It will be very interesting to see if they make a play for Davis or Weiters. My guess is they both walk.

When a GM is talking more about the value of a compensatory pick then resigning the guy, that is a pretty good sign the guy will not be back.

This team is not signing anyone other than maybe Manny to a deal that pays the 20 million or so Davis is gonna get AAV

[JayThomas]

Who do you replace them with? According to Fangraphs, entering 2015 the O's got almost 20 million in production from Matusz, Hunter and DeAza in (2014). DD paid them roughly 13 million. Dd got them for a steal this year based on what they produced last year. So if you non tender these guys you need to replace the 20 million in production.

Great post. In DD I trust.

[notyourbuddy]

Who do you replace them with? According to Fangraphs, entering 2015 the O's got almost 20 million in production from Matusz, Hunter and DeAza in (2014). DD paid them roughly 13 million. Dd got them for a steal this year based on what they produced last year. So if you non tender these guys you need to replace the 20 million in production.

Does anyone even take Fangraph's money evaluations seriously anymore after they modified their formula?

They've got Mike Trout worth $60M-$77M/yr. LOL no player is worth $60M-$70M/yr. No one.

[SteveO]

Does anyone even take Fangraph's money evaluations seriously anymore after they modified their formula?

They've got Mike Trout worth $60M-$77M/yr. LOL no player is worth $60M-$70M/yr. No one.

That fact alone makes the money evaluations utterly ridiculous.

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[Nevermore]

Great post. In DD I trust.

I'm glad that you do, because I don't. I don't want to completely knock DD because he did many good things for the Orioles during his tenure. But this year, he has made some mistakes that may cost the club a lot in the future. He also needs to end the fiction of "we don't negotiate with players during the season." J.J. Hardy is a player and he was signed during the 2014 season.

I was able to listen to about 3/4 of the interview when the streaming stopped. But I did hear enough. When the interviewers asked him about resigning FAs (Davis, Wieters, Chen, O'Day), he talked about getting compensatory draft picks for them. Which leads me to believe that he doesn't plan to attempt to assign any of them. Does this mean that he doesn't have plans to sign Manny long-term? He said that management tried to sign Manny long-term a couple of years ago and it "didn't work out." I got the distinct feeling that DD wants to develop and bring up players from our own farm system. Which is fine. But if management lets most of them all walk once they hit FA, that doesn't bode well for the club's future. And I then could understand why they haven't been able to sign Manny because Manny wants a winning club, not a bunch of compensatory draft picks.

I didn't get an explanation for the club's failure to resign Nelson, Markakis, or Miller. Miller, I understand, was basically a rental. But Markakis has been with the club for many, many years. Cruz was only with the club one year, but he was a really solid member, voted the Most Valueable Oriole for the 2014 season. I didn't really find out until the Seattle series how much many of Cruz's former teammates respected their guy Nellie. I just don't believe that DD truly understands this. I get the feeling that, in some ways, DD believes that players like Cruz or Markakis are replaceable machine parts. And that "the fanbase", which sometimes pine for Nellie or Nick, -- as far as DD is concerned -- just don't seem to understand this concept. I know that I, as an O's fan, do not understand the concept of replaceable machine parts. I root for players, not just colored jerseys.

I think that it was unreasonable to believe that that Snider, E. Cabrera, Parmalee, W. Wright, B. Norris, D. Young, and any of the others that O's management paid dead money for could replace Cruz, or for that matter, Markakis. Dead money is money completely down the drain with no value whatsoever (other than a compensatory draft pick for Cruz; O's management didn't offer Markakis a QO, so no draft pick for him at all). I realize that not all pending FAs can be signed, but (to beat dead horses yet again), they could have made a serious attempt to resign Cruz and maybe Markakis, instead of ending up with how many millions of completely dead money.

So having said this, I dearly hope that DD will consider serious attempts to resign at least one or possibly two of the pending free agents. And also take care of getting Manny resigned.

[SteveO]

I'm glad that you do, because I don't. I don't want to completely knock DD because he did many good things for the Orioles during his tenure. But this year, he has made some mistakes that may cost the club a lot in the future. He also needs to end the fiction of "we don't negotiate with players during the season." J.J. Hardy is a player and he was signed during the 2014 season.

I was able to listen to about 3/4 of the interview when the streaming stopped. But I did hear enough. When the interviewers asked him about resigning FAs (Davis, Wieters, Chen, O'Day), he talked about getting compensatory draft picks for them. Which leads me to believe that he doesn't plan to attempt to assign any of them. Does this mean that he doesn't have plans to sign Manny long-term? He said that management tried to sign Manny long-term a couple of years ago and it "didn't work out." I got the distinct feeling that DD wants to develop and bring up players from our own farm system. Which is fine. But if management lets most of them all walk once they hit FA, that doesn't bode well for the club's future. And I then could understand why they haven't been able to sign Manny because Manny wants a winning club, not a bunch of compensatory draft picks.

I didn't get an explanation for the club's failure to resign Nelson, Markakis, or Miller. Miller, I understand, was basically a rental. But Markakis has been with the club for many, many years. Cruz was only with the club one year, but he was a really solid member, voted the Most Valueable Oriole for the 2014 season. I didn't really find out until the Seattle series how much many of Cruz's former teammates respected their guy Nellie. I just don't believe that DD truly understands this. I get the feeling that, in some ways, DD believes that players like Cruz or Markakis are replaceable machine parts. And that "the fanbase", which sometimes pine for Nellie or Nick, -- as far as DD is concerned -- just don't seem to understand this concept. I know that I, as an O's fan, do not understand the concept of replaceable machine parts. I root for players, not just colored jerseys.

I think that it was unreasonable to believe that that Snider, E. Cabrera, Parmalee, W. Wright, B. Norris, D. Young, and any of the others that O's management paid dead money for could replace Cruz, or for that matter, Markakis. Dead money is money completely down the drain with no value whatsoever (other than a compensatory draft pick for Cruz; O's management didn't offer Markakis a QO, so no draft pick for him at all). I realize that not all pending FAs can be signed, but (to beat dead horses yet again), they could have made a serious attempt to resign Cruz and maybe Markakis, instead of ending up with how many millions of completely dead money.

So having said this, I dearly hope that DD will consider serious attempts to resign at least one or possibly two of the pending free agents. And also take care of getting Manny resigned.

If this gets done then as far as I am concerned the offseason was a success. I tend to think the Orioles need to be aggressive in locking up Manny now. While I do not expect the wheels to come completely off the applecart so to speak, I do think its going to be a down year or two coming up comparative to what we have seen the past few years. Our farm system flat out stinks, its ranked 28-30 in nearly every single post trade deadline eval I have seen, that is not good news for a team that does not spend big on FA. When you consider every team including the Blue Jays whom so many on here claim "mortgaged" their futures, have better farm systems than us right now and by a decent margin at that, that does not bode well overall for our success in the next few years unless we radically change our approach to "buying talent". The point is that this offseason would be an ideal time to sign Manny to a longterm deal. We have the money available, if we are willing to pay a fair price and not expect an AJ like hometown discount it should get done. If it does not though, I think the odds he only here till his walk year dramatically rises. I am just being realistic here. When you have a worse farm system than the other teams in your division and can only outspend one of those teams (Tampa and maybe Toronto periodically) and a large number of your core players are leaving, then your very unlikely to have more success than those other teams with more money and prospects in the short term. That's the reality of where we are. DD is a good GM, he can only do so much though.

[Nevermore]

If this gets done then as far as I am concerned the offseason was a success. I tend to think the Orioles need to be aggressive in locking up Manny now. While I do not expect the wheels to come completely off the applecart so to speak, I do think its going to be a down year or two coming up comparative to what we have seen the past few years. Our farm system flat out stinks, its ranked 28-30 in nearly every single post trade deadline eval I have seen, that is not good news for a team that does not spend big on FA. When you consider every team including the Blue Jays whom so many on here claim "mortgaged" their futures, have better farm systems than us right now and by a decent margin at that, that does not bode well overall for our success in the next few years unless we radically change our approach to "buying talent". The point is that this offseason would be an ideal time to sign Manny to a longterm deal. We have the money available, if we are willing to pay a fair price and not expect an AJ like hometown discount it should get done. If it does not though, I think the odds he only here till his walk year dramatically rises. I am just being realistic here. When you have a worse farm system than the other teams in your division and can only outspend one of those teams (Tampa and maybe Toronto periodically) and a large number of your core players are leaving, then your very unlikely to have more success than those other teams with more money and prospects in the short term. That's the reality of where we are. DD is a good GM, he can only do so much though.

Why is our farm system so bad? Especially that O's management doesn't make a lot of big trades, nor do they sign a lot of FAs and certainly not big-name free agents. If DD isn't responsible for the state of the farm system, then who is?

As for signing Manny, I don't think that Manny will want to play with a bunch of AAAA players. He's going to want at least some committment to winning. If it appears that the O's will have Manny and some AAAA players, then Manny will walk as soon as he can. So if we want to get Manny signed to a long term contract, then we're going to also have to sign at least some of our pending FAs.

[SteveO]

Why is our farm system so bad? Especially that O's management doesn't make a lot of big trades, nor do they sign a lot of FAs and certainly not big-name free agents. If DD isn't responsible for the state of the farm system, then who is?

As for signing Manny, I don't think that Manny will want to play with a bunch of AAAA players. He's going to want at least some committment to winning. If it appears that the O's will have Manny and some AAAA players, then Manny will walk as soon as he can. So if we want to get Manny signed to a long term contract, then we're going to also have to sign at least some of our pending FAs.

In 2013 the O's spent 1.23 million dollars on international amatuers which ranked them 30 out 30 teams. By comparison the next lowest team, the Angels spent 1.83 .....that is utterly ridiculous. When your team so under utilizes a market that provides 28% of the pkayers on opening day roster that same year (2013) its going to be reflected in the talent level in your minors. Compound that with stupid stuff like trading competitive balance picks to dump salary and you get the drift of why our minor league system is in the fix it is in.

Far as Manny is concerned, I see no reason why he would not be receptive to 120 plus million dollars now as opposed to waiting a 3 years. You could wait till after next season but my guess is the price tag goes up and the intrest on Manny's part would diminish if we slide back some in the standings. Now is the time to strike, we have been competitive, make a fair offer ...not a lowball offer and it should get done. If we don't get him inked 95% percent chance its because we futz around with him IMO

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[Crazysilver03]

Does anyone even take Fangraph's money evaluations seriously anymore after they modified their formula?

They've got Mike Trout worth $60M-$77M/yr. LOL no player is worth $60M-$70M/yr. No one.

Not that I disagree, but it amuses me when people use the outlier to denigrate a computation.

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[Reboulet'sStache]

Who do you replace them with? According to Fangraphs, entering 2015 the O's got almost 20 million in production from Matusz, Hunter and DeAza in (2014). DD paid them roughly 13 million. Dd got them for a steal this year based on what they produced last year. So if you non tender these guys you need to replace the 20 million in production.

If you were paying a player 500k for a 1 WAR season, you don't pay them 3 million dollars the next year for a 1 WAR season. At that level of production, you just bring up another 500k player. At some point the production just isn't worth the price, even if you're still getting value for the price.

Matusz and Hunter were/are average bullpen arms. You don't keep paying them up to the point where you're paying fair market value, you stop well before that point. Lets say the both of them were going to produce a combined 1-ish WAR year. You don't give them a combined 7m-ish dollars to do that. You bring up a bullpen arm for the league minimum, like Givens or Drake or somebody, and invest the money someplace else.

[33rdst]

If you were paying a player 500k for a 1 WAR season' date=' you don't pay them 3 million dollars the next year for a 1 WAR season. At that level of production, you just bring up another 500k player. At some point the production just isn't worth the price, even if you're still getting value for the price.

Matusz and Hunter were/are average bullpen arms. You don't keep paying them up to the point where you're paying fair market value, you stop well before that point. Lets say the both of them were going to produce a combined 1-ish WAR year. You don't give them a combined 7m-ish dollars to do that. You bring up a bullpen arm for the league minimum, like Givens or Drake or somebody, and invest the money someplace else.[/quote']

Or you do what Duquette and his staff did and decide on what value they hold for your team and pay them. You limit the risk of your 500k replacement player, with no ML track record, playing at a replacement level. There's risk either way. I'm fine with DD paying the guys who helped get him 96 wins fair value. It didn't work out. It happens. Snider played at close to 12 million last year DD paid him 2.1 plus prospects. Seems like a good move. It didn't turn out. It happens.

[primetime]

On the matter of Boras clients, what is it about Boras' method that almost always ends with his clients going to free agency and ending up with another team? Does he do something specific to create a market for his players? How is it that he always manages to find a team to that will give his clients "break the market" type deals? It's almost as if Boras does Jedi mind tricks or something on GM's to get mega deals for his guys.

Specifically on Davis, I was doing a back of the napkin type look at his market and honestly, I didn't find a big market for him as a 1st basemen. (I'll preface this by saying that there's inherent value in a power bat because of how scarce they are)

The big spending/big market teams; LAA, LAD, NYY, BOS, Cubs, White Sox, Rangers, Detroit, Seattle, Washington either have 1st base covered by a good player and/or big contract; or the Red Sox and Seattle's case, they just handed some pretty big deals and I don't know that they would double down and add another big contract.

The Jays have an option on Encarnacion, Arizona has Goldschmidt, Atlanta has Freeman, KC has Hosmer, the Giants have Belt, the Twins have Mauer. The Indians have Carlos Santana. Then you have the Rays, Marlins, Reds, Phillies, Brewers, Padres and A's who either don't spend or will be rebuilding. Colorado may fall into this category but they have spent in the past.

This leaves us and Pittsburgh with a need at 1st base. So it shakes out like this; either Pittsburgh puts a huge deal on the table for Davis as a 1st basemen, Boras somehow sells Davis as an everyday RFer for the next 5-6 years and someone gives him big money to fill RF or we actually have a legit chance to retain him if we so chose.

[Reboulet'sStache]

Or you do what Duquette and his staff did and decide on what value they hold for your team and pay them. You limit the risk of your 500k replacement player, with no ML track record, playing at a replacement level. There's risk either way. I'm fine with DD paying the guys who helped get him 96 wins fair value. It didn't work out. It happens. Snider played at close to 12 million last year DD paid him 2.1 plus prospects. Seems like a good move. It didn't turn out. It happens.

Snider was fine. But guys like Matusz and Hunter should not have been tendered. If we are trading draft picks to teams will pick up 3m contracts, you can't have such average, little used players on your roster taking up that much money.