Dan's Offseason Moves Part One: Cruz

[DrungoHazewood]

I think his point was that Duquette hasn't done a lot of 3+ year deals. It's not like he's 1 for 10. He's 1 for 3, and IMO the jury is still out on Hardy and Jimenez.

I'd be interested in how many folks who would have been fine punting on several years of a Cruz deal after he declines are already declaring Hardy and Jimenez failures who should never have been signed.

[SteveO]

Is that fair considering Duquette didn't do anything to replace him or Markakis? I'm guessing people voted no hoping Duquette would have done something. Instead of hitching his wagon to half a dozen meh players.

At the end of the day, if you let your reigning team MVP and one of your more popular players (Markakis) walk the year after you cruise with relative ease to a division crown after years of not doing so, you better have a rock solid plan on how to replace that production and it better be success or your gonna get criticized and rightfully so. The plan was not solid. If it were, we would not be sitting in 4th place, we would not be having this discussion.

If the Orioles are only going to sign guys to deals in which they can be reasonably sure they limit their liability and not have dead money, then this franchise is in deep water moving forward. The FA market is not designed to provide the value you get in developing your own players. This team acts in free agency like they want to to be Tampa Bay but they lack the talent pipeline to act that way and its a recipe for longterm failure once the core guys of this team leaving.

[Ripken]

I think his point was that Duquette hasn't done a lot of 3+ year deals. It's not like he's 1 for 10. He's 1 for 3, and IMO the jury is still out on Hardy and Jimenez.

Fair enough. I wanted Hardy but not for that much and not if it meant letting Cruz walk. Beyond that, I think 1 out of 3 is concerning, too. In that, there's been very little long term commitment. I guess that's good if you don't have anyone you want around for several seasons but it's tough to see a plan. Having 6 or 7 picks next season would be great but would also mean we let every major FA go and didn't sign any FAs with a pick attached. There are a few guys I like who don't cost a pick but if we're to be players in FA this off season Dan needs to do very well because the farm is not stocked.

[DrungoHazewood]

At the end of the day, if you let your reigning team MVP and one of your more popular players (Markakis) walk the year after you cruise with relative ease to a division crown after years of not doing so, you better have a rock solid plan on how to replace that production and it better be success or your gonna get criticized and rightfully so.

The odds were quite good that if they'd resigned Cruz and Markakis they would have gotten significantly less production from those two than they did last year. Cruz had been worth less than two wins each of the three years prior to 2014, and it's a horrible decision to count on an age 33/34 spike carrying over. And Markakis was worth almost nothing in 2013, rebounding to average production in 2014. They gave the O's about six wins in 2014, I'd have put their median projection in 2015 at 3-4 wins. So, to reiterate, the likely outcome of resigning these two guys was 2-3 wins fewer than in 2014, and decline from there.

[TonySoprano]

In the offseason poll on whether we should have matched Seattle's offer, 76% said no. http://forum.orioleshangout.com/forums/showthread.php/145416-Would-you-have-matched-SEA-offer-to-keep-Cruz-an-Oriole?highlight=cruz So there's a ton of 20/20 hindsight going on here IMO. As I've said a few times recently, if I had known Cruz would have this good of a season in 2015, I would have been in favor of the deal. But there was no reason to expect him to be this good in 2015. More likely was that he'd be somewhat down from 2014 (though still pretty good), and then the back end of the deal would be extremely risky.

Thanks for finding this. I did a brief search last night and found similar threads along those lines. For me, it was never a question of how well he'd do in the first year. It was how would he do in year 3 and in particular year 4.

[Ruzious]

I gotta laugh how some people are just never going to get it about Cruz - no matter what he does and no matter what others say.

[Rick_Schu]

MVP caliber year? You're talking about Cruz? You mean his 2014 season that wasn't half as valuable as the real MVP? Where he was about the 50th-best position player in the majors in the year where he turned 34 and OPS'd under .700 from 1 June through 31 August? Coming off three years of less than two wins each?

Ok, maybe not MVP, but 40 dingers for $8 million is a bargain, and saying we might not get a great value in 2019 or whatever sounds lame after we got that return. I just want to see this team win something, 1983 was a long ass time ago.

[DrungoHazewood]

Ok, maybe not MVP, but 40 dingers for $8 million is a bargain, and saying we might not get a great value in 2019 or whatever sounds lame after we got that return. I just want to see this team win something, 1983 was a long ass time ago.

It was a huge bargain, and his performance was by far his best in years. I would love for them to win, but spending $50-60M on a 35-year-old DH is almost always a way to accelerate the losing. Cruz' 2015 performance notwithstanding. I don't think it's a case of "not great value in 2019". It's a case of him ending up like Carlos Beltran, who at 34 was a 4.5 win player, at 35 a 3+ win player, then at 36 was flat-out terrible, and no better at 37.

[backwardsk]

The 2015 Orioles score more runs per game than the 96 win 2014 Orioles.

I loved Cruz on the team last season. I would have brought him back, but understand the reasons not to. I would have preferred to bring back Miller over him though. That's what I felt at the time and still do. Some would say that he wouldn't have come back if wasn't the closer. Maybe so, but it looks like we didn't make him an offer.

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[Bmorebirds24]

Need to go back one move.

I was against extending Hardy for 40 million dollars after his HRs had dropped from 25 to 9 and he missed 20 games with a sore back.

If you don't make that mistake I would have risked the money on Cruz

I'm with this. I would not have extended Hardy and I would have resigned Cruz.

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[Bahama O's Fan]

I'm with this. I would not have extended Hardy and I would have resigned Cruz.

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So no Hardy, who plays SS? Machado? and then who plays 3B? Could you count on Manny at that time?

[backwardsk]

So no Hardy' date=' who plays SS? Machado? and then who plays 3B? Could you count on Manny at that time?[/quote']

Sandoval or Ramirez, lol.

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[Scrat1]

I'd be interested in how many folks who would have been fine punting on several years of a Cruz deal after he declines are already declaring Hardy and Jimenez failures who should never have been signed.

This is dead on.

People are acting like the front office should have known that Cruz, despite nearly every historical precedent, was going to repeat 2014 and then some. The same people are also acting like the front office should have known that Hardy would collapse. Hardy was signed at a younger age, for a lower cost, and can play elite defense, so if he isn't hitting (as we're seeing), he can still provide some value. Cruz has no such safety net. Hardy is on schedule to turn in his second worst year since he's been in the majors, the worst since 2006.

It was reasonable to expect Cruz to continue to be a reasonably productive bat, and it was reasonable to expect Hardy to regress some; it is not reasonable to think the front office should have anticipated that both Hardy and Cruz would buck historical trends. Before this year, Hardy had been worth 13.5 WAR over the past four years. Cruz, on the other hand, had been worth 7.4 WAR, just over half as much. And yet somehow it was stupid for DD to extend Hardy (at a lower price) instead of extending Cruz.

The logic boggles the mind. It's the very definition of Monday morning quarterbacking. And this all ignores the fact that this is the first year of each of their contracts. But even if Cruz defies history and becomes a mid-late 30s Barry Bonds, and Hardy is out of baseball in a year, DD made the right decision not to extend Cruz. Process, not results.

[Nevermore]

At the end of the day, if you let your reigning team MVP and one of your more popular players (Markakis) walk the year after you cruise with relative ease to a division crown after years of not doing so, you better have a rock solid plan on how to replace that production and it better be success or your gonna get criticized and rightfully so. The plan was not solid. If it were, we would not be sitting in 4th place, we would not be having this discussion.

If the Orioles are only going to sign guys to deals in which they can be reasonably sure they limit their liability and not have dead money, then this franchise is in deep water moving forward. The FA market is not designed to provide the value you get in developing your own players. This team acts in free agency like they want to to be Tampa Bay but they lack the talent pipeline to act that way and its a recipe for longterm failure once the core guys of this team leaving.

I am quite flummoxed with all of the DFA's that the O's had this year. The latest is Reimold. It's getting ridiculous. So much dead money that could have been used to resign Cruz and Markakis.

[Frobby]

This is dead on.

People are acting like the front office should have known that Cruz, despite nearly every historical precedent, was going to repeat 2014 and then some. The same people are also acting like the front office should have known that Hardy would collapse. Hardy was signed at a younger age, for a lower cost, and can play elite defense, so if he isn't hitting (as we're seeing), he can still provide some value. Cruz has no such safety net. Hardy is on schedule to turn in his second worst year since he's been in the majors, the worst since 2006.

It was reasonable to expect Cruz to continue to be a reasonably productive bat, and it was reasonable to expect Hardy to regress some; it is not reasonable to think the front office should have anticipated that both Hardy and Cruz would buck historical trends. Before this year, Hardy had been worth 13.5 WAR over the past four years. Cruz, on the other hand, had been worth 7.4 WAR, just over half as much. And yet somehow it was stupid for DD to extend Hardy (at a lower price) instead of extending Cruz.

The logic boggles the mind. It's the very definition of Monday morning quarterbacking. And this all ignores the fact that this is the first year of each of their contracts. But even if Cruz defies history and becomes a mid-late 30s Barry Bonds, and Hardy is out of baseball in a year, DD made the right decision not to extend Cruz. Process, not results.

I agree with everything you said here except one thing: I am sure there are plenty of examples of guys who had a better season at 34 than they did at 33. It happens often enough. However, the odds of a decline were much greater than the odds of improvement. The odds that Cruz would have a 6 WAR season, given his age and track record, were probably 0.1% or less. The odds that he'd have a 4.5+ WAR season were probably about 10-20%.