Prospects have little value. Bringing in talent is all that matters.

[tntoriole]

Free agents are structurally overvalued by the way the market is designed. It drives the player when they hit the free agent market to look for their big payday because of the cost controls early on. The true number of "stud" free agents, particularly pitchers, that have exceeded their cost are very, very few. And the majority of "stud" free agent deals blow up in the face of their teams and then leave them with ponderous contracts that they often have to eat. Giving up a first round pick for a signing like Gallardo, for example, is ridiculous. We are not going to sign the truly stud top guys anyway due to their cost, not due to the attached pick. The ones we are talking about are the Gallardos with a pick versus the Leakes without one. Give me the latter and keep the picks.

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[weams]

Free agents are structurally overvalued by the way the market is designed. It drives the player when they hit the free agent market to look for their big payday because of the cost controls early on. The true number of "stud" free agents, particularly pitchers, that have exceeded their cost are very, very few. And the majority of "stud" free agent deals blow up in the face of their teams and then leave them with ponderous contracts that they often have to eat. Giving up a first round pick for a signing like Gallardo, for example, is ridiculous. We are not going to sign the truly stud top guys anyway due to their cost, not due to the attached pick. The ones we are talking about are the Gallardos with a pick versus the Leakes without one. Give me the latter and keep the picks.

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Mostly, you are lucky if you get close to what you pay for in return. The idea of excess value on a FA of the top tier? All but non existent.

[Moose Milligan]

I think what you are really saying is that prospects have little value if you aren't good at drafting and developing them. Because I'd argue that there is nothing more valuable in baseball than a prospect who pans out. As an extreme example, Manny has been worth about $125 mm at free agent prices, but he has cost us less than $8 mm ($5.25 mm signing bonus, about $2 mm in major league salary, and a small pittance for minor league salaries in 2010-12). Eduardo Rodriguez, who we traded away, was worth $13.5 mm this year but cost the Red Sox $500k, and will continue to cost about $500k for the next 2-3 seasons (depending on whether he qualifies as a Super-Two after the 2017 season).

The Orioles have to have guys like this in order to afford a few of the more expensive players.

Great post, Frobby, as usual. I agree with this sentiment a lot, it's just a shame that the Orioles just can't get this right. Manny, IMO, was just too good to ruin, he'd be successful anywhere.

It's all about cheap, controllable talent. It's also about being able to call up a guy from the minors to take the place of someone who's been injured or who has been traded and have a reasonable expectation that they'll be able to contribute.

[Aristotelian]

The picks seemed more attractive when it looked like we were getting a bunch. MW taking the QO and us not getting a pick for him kind of killed the the idea of a bounty of picks this draft for me. Obviously this is based purely on emotion and not on value or statistics. But let's look at this offseason reasonably.

I'd like to have Chris Davis back. So there goes that comp pick. In fact, I don't even think about the comp pick when hoping that we resign him. So bringing Davis back feels like we could be in the playoff hunt again. So with that being said, why not get Gallardo? After watching the rotation in shambles last year, we're going to have to address it. Especially with Chen leaving. So there goes another pick.

This seems to be DD's line of thinking, and I think it is absolutely wrong-headed and terrifying. I'm sorry, we should not be giving up picks or signing veterans to long term contracts to chase a fantasy of competing in 2016. We have too many holes to fill and Wieters prevents us from coming anywhere close to filling them within budget. BOS is adding Price, meanwhile we lose Chen and replace him with Gallardo? At best that gets us back to a .500 rotation. Not good enough. Not worth giving up two picks that could turn into the next Manny and Gausman.

DD has to face a strategic choice now. Do you continue with the "half in" strategy of competing but not all the way, sacrificing prospects while still coming up short? Or do you face reality and start thinking about the long term?

[hoosiers]

Despite the Os poor draft history of the past 17 years or so, the most assured way of competing is to build a team with pre-FA, early-arb players occupying approx. seven to 10 of the top 17 slots. The top 17 represent the starting rotation, the lineup including DH and the top three bp arms.

It is very difficult for mid and small market teams to compete long term without building a quality minor league system.

IMO, 2016 is a year to put together a good team that has upside possibilities with major leaguers who can be dealt at the deadline (Wieters, Trumbo) and stockpiling our minor league system while seeing how other situations (Tillman, Bundy, Mancini) play out.

[DrungoHazewood]

Do teams regularly do better than 1 all-star every 3-4 years? It seems that our failure wasn't in developing top level talent, but in extracting value from fringe players.

Probably not. Nowadays there are, what, 35 players on the All Star Team, times two. So that's 2.3333 per team. Then we go down the rabbit hole of where they come from and the fact the team turns over 50%(?) each year. So in five years you have 170 All Stars and 150 team-seasons... I have no idea what my point is here besides that you're probably right.