O's Must Resign Davis

[DrungoHazewood]

And I would like to lock up Manny for his arb years and three years beyond. Offering him a Stanton type contract would be nuts.

I would love to offer him a 10-plus-year deal. Odds of a career ending injury are slim, and very few players performing at Manny's level ever have a massive performance decline. Manny is 20th all time in fWAR through age 22. Only a few guys in the top 30 on that list aren't HOFers, and the worst players are guys like Cesar Cedeno and John McGraw who approached 50 WAR careers.

[DrungoHazewood]

Money is still money. If the Orioles have such a limited budget, as those smarter than me claim. How is giving a huge contract to a 23 year old any different then giving it to Davis. Your still allocating a large percentage of your payroll to one player and hindering your ability to sign others. Superstar or not, Manny isn't winning a championship by himself. Hence my point. Losing Davis will hurt the rest of the team.

Who cares if you're hindering your ability to sign others when you've locked in 5+ wins every year? You can reasonably assume that Manny won't decline significantly (or at least catastrophically) over the next 10 years. Davis is almost guaranteed to decline over the next 5-6 years.

[Dark Helmet]

If you sign Manny to a six or seven year deal, the first three years reflect that he would not be a free agent yet, so the deal doesn't hit peak cost until year four, by which time the team's revenue should be higher.

Your not getting Manny for 6 years. He's looking at a 10 year deal with an opt out. Imo. How can you guarantee higher revenues? If this team is a fringe .500 team the next four years, I'd expect much lower revenues. Hell, they still claim poor after all the playoff revenues and increased attendance over the past 4 seasons.

[Dark Helmet]

Who cares if you're hindering your ability to sign others when you've locked in 5+ wins every year? You can reasonably assume that Manny won't decline significantly (or at least catastrophically) over the next 10 years. Davis is almost guaranteed to decline over the next 5-6 years.

Your right. Who cares. Manny's 5 WAR is huge on a 60 win team.

[osfan83]

Your right. Who cares. Manny's 5 WAR is huge on a 60 win team.

I feel pretty good about making the post season next year.....and I think a core of Jones/Machado/Schoop/Gausman/Britton/Joseph/Tillman/Ubaldo/Givens.....with some smart additions, is good enough to win a wildcard spot.

Hell if we won 3 more games this year we would be playing on Tuesday.....bad bounces and bad luck could account for a 6 game swing in standings easily.

[Dark Helmet]

I feel pretty good about making the post season next year.....and I think a core of Jones/Machado/Schoop/Gausman/Britton/Joseph/Tillman/Ubaldo/Givens.....with some smart additions, is good enough to win a wildcard spot.

Hell if we won 3 more games this year we would be playing on Tuesday.....bad bounces and bad luck could account for a 6 game swing in standings easily.

I wish I felt that good about our chances. Losing Davis will hurt. As will Chen and O'Day. Will Jones back issues be a recurring thing? Lots of question marks.

[DrungoHazewood]

Your right. Who cares. Manny's 5 WAR is huge on a 60 win team.

You'd have to be pretty darned incompetent to win 60 games with a 25-year-old superstar as part of your core. If you put Manny, Jones, and Schoop on a team otherwise made up of Norfolk Tides they might win 60. If $25M a year for an MVP candidate hinders your ability to win the front office would have to be even more pathetic than you think they are.

[DrungoHazewood]

I wish I felt that good about our chances. Losing Davis will hurt. As will Chen and O'Day. Will Jones back issues be a recurring thing? Lots of question marks.

Losing all of the pending free agents makes this a, say, 70-win team. Give or take. But a 70-win team with an entire offseason in front of them and roughly $50M/yr for acquiring improvements.

[Nevermore]

How do you support the team, but not its management?

If management is working against the best interests of the team, then I cannot support it while it is engaged in this behavior. Let me emphasize this again: O's management does NOT equal The Orioles. It's the players who go out there and win or lose games, not the GM, not other executives, and certainly not Peter Angelos.

[osfan83]

If management is working against the best interests of the team, then I cannot support it while it is engaged in this behavior. Let me emphasize this again: O's management does NOT equal The Orioles. It's the players who go out there and win or lose games, not the GM, not other executives, and certainly not Peter Angelos.

And it's the players fault that they under-performed and missed the playoffs this year....not management.

[mdbdotcom]

Your not getting Manny for 6 years. He's looking at a 10 year deal with an opt out. Imo. How can you guarantee higher revenues? If this team is a fringe .500 team the next four years, I'd expect much lower revenues. Hell, they still claim poor after all the playoff revenues and increased attendance over the past 4 seasons.

He's not a free agent for three more years. Give him a deal now that guarantees him $20-25 million for his first years of free agency and allows him to become a free agent at the age of 29 should be very attractive to him.

Revenues will rise because MLB revenues keep rising.

A $119 million payroll is not crying poor.

[Nevermore]

IMO the reason that the O's decline in attendance from 1998 to 2011 was so measured was that there was the attempt (however inept) to field a competitive team every year until 2008 when AM openly began to rebuild. Even then the decline was less that one would expect from an angry reflexive fan base especially when you factor in some fractional defection to the Nationals. When the team started winning again, the reverse looks to be happening at roughly the same pace. I haven't taken the time to look at other franchises, Pittsburgh for example, to see if there are similarities but it is clear to me that affection/disaffection among the Orioles fan base is best described as a tidal phenomenon rather than a binary one. I wouldn't put too much stock in the threats you are hearing.

These fans will be voting with their wallets. The decline in fan attendance was quite noticeable during the 14 years of losing seasons. Whenever I saw highlights on TV, I could see that the fans were simply not there; there were a lot of green, empty seats disguised as fans. Also, I would frequently drive downtown for various reasons. I used to avoid the streets around OPACY because of all of the traffic on game days. I found out that, on game days, I didn't have to avoid the areas around OPACY because there wasn't very much traffic. I could see a few vendor booths outside the park, but not many people were visiting them. Now that we have winning (or at least .500) teams, the attendance has increased and if I'm driving somewhere other than to the park (I almost always take Light Rail there), I have to avoid the area again.

[Nevermore]

And it's the players fault that they under-performed and missed the playoffs this year....not management.

Oh, I heartily agree. But also the FO didn't bring back key players from the 2014 team, and didn't adequately replace them.

[wildcard]

I love these posts that analyze Davis' future value solely on this year. Did last year even happen? Don't people understand that Davis will probably have as many bad years as good ones in the next 6-7 years? If we can sign him to a contract that takes that risk into account, I'm all for it. If we sign him to a contract that assumes he has 6-7 more seasons like 2015 in him, well that's just crazy.

Davis has averaged 40 Homers, 110 RBI and an 865 OPS over the last 4 years. Guys like that are in high demand. He has put himself in a great position to make a lot of money at 30 years old. I don't begrudge him that. The O's can no longer afford him.

Manny projects to hit 40 homers next year and bat 3rd. Jones and Schoop both project for 30 homers. The O's are going to have to be creative. Add some mid range hitting talent and rely on Mancini, Walker and/or Wilkins. They have options. They can move up and down to the majors and minors. Manny and Jonathan were brought up from the minors to fill gaps. Now it time for the next wave. They can have players that have bat control like Clevenger and Parra. It will be a different offense but it can be a good one.

[Mayor McCheese]

Losing all of the pending free agents makes this a, say, 70-win team. Give or take. But a 70-win team with an entire offseason in front of them and roughly $50M/yr for acquiring improvements.

Machado's extension should not count towards the so called "budget" or free money.

IMO I don't see the payroll increasing from last year. I think they spend around $20-30MM and have payroll around $85-$90MM.