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Does the Orioles' New Payroll Change Your Opinion on the Wieters QO?


CaptainRedbeard

Have you changed your opinion on the MW QO?  

37 members have voted

  1. 1. Have you changed your opinion on the MW QO?

    • No- Was for the QO initially, still am now
      25
    • No- Was against the QO initially, still am now
      6
    • Yes- Was against the QO initially, but for it now
      5
    • Yes- Was for the QO initially, but against it now
      1


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The hot topic of the first half of the offseason was Wieters' QO. While I was in favor of it because I thought it was a risk worth taking, I agreed with many others that Wieters on a 1/$15.8MM contract was not a good allocation of resources with Joseph around big holes in many places on the roster. Many people thought that his acceptance was going to hurt the Orioles' offseason plans, perhaps in a disastrous way.

Similar criticisms were made, with sound basis, on the Trumbo acquisition and O'day contract. In all cases, it looked like the Orioles were getting roughly market value, but not at positions of need. The assumption being that there wouldn't be payroll left to address the true positions of need, namely SP and corner OF.

At the time that the Orioles made Wieters' QO, they must have known that they had the payroll flexibility to afford it if he accepted it, far more flexibility than any of us fans realized.

Assume, for the purposes of the poll, that we still end up signing Gallardo (or are still willing to add the equivalent amount of payroll for a SP). Do you think the Orioles were wrong to make Wieters the QO?

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The hot topic of the first half of the offseason was Wieters' QO. While I was in favor of it because I thought it was a risk worth taking, I agreed with many others that Wieters on a 1/$15.8MM contract was not a good allocation of resources with Joseph around big holes in many places on the roster. Many people thought that his acceptance was going to hurt the Orioles' offseason plans, perhaps in a disastrous way.

Similar criticisms were made, with sound basis, on the Trumbo acquisition and O'day contract. In all cases, it looked like the Orioles were getting roughly market value, but not at positions of need. The assumption being that there wouldn't be payroll left to address the true positions of need, namely SP and corner OF.

At the time that the Orioles made Wieters' QO, they must have known that they had the payroll flexibility to afford it if he accepted it, far more flexibility than any of us fans realized.

Assume, for the purposes of the poll, that we still end up signing Gallardo (or are still willing to add the equivalent amount of payroll for a SP). Do you think the Orioles were wrong to make Wieters the QO?

Considering his acceptance clearly did not hamstring the team in making other moves this offseason, it certainly seems worth the risk to me. (I was in favor of the QO at the time, too, but really disappointed when he accepted. Now doesn't seem as big a deal.)

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We still have holes and I would rather see the $16m going to fix them than give us two catchers. I'd rather have Kazmir than Gallardo and Wieters.
I'd rather have Price, but in the real world he is just too expensive. And so would Kazmir be. How much more than the 3/48 plus the opt out would the O's have had to pay to make up for no opt out, pitching in the AL East, in OPACY instead of NL West, in Dodger Stadium? 5/90 M? Would he be worth that?
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I'd rather have Price, but in the real world he is just too expensive. And so would Kazmir be. How much more than the 3/48 plus the opt out would the O's have had to pay to make up for no opt out, pitching in the AL East, in OPACY instead of NL West, in Dodger Stadium? 5/90 M? Would he be worth that?

Yeah, I agree with you here. I don't think the Orioles were particularly cost effective with how they spent money this offseason, the Davis and Gallardo deals are likely overpays, but there just weren't alot of missed opportunities in this offseason's market. Almost every SP got overpaid or very friendly opt-outs. I'm not anti opt-out the way the Orioles are, but I think teams were definitely undervaluing them in how they were giving them out, particularly for SP.

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If Gallardo and Fowler pass their physicals, any idea as to what the Payroll will come to? My guess in the neighborhood of 160M.

Gallardo is only $9MM this season, O'day at $6MM, and no word as to how Fowler's contract is distributed. My guess is closer to $150MM, but over that threshold. Still astronomical compared to what anybody would have expected.

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I was for the QO (like the majority of us were from what I recall) because I thought Wieters would turn it down and we would get a pick.

I was pretty bummed when Matt accepted knowing that it would eat about 15 mil into our payroll for this year, but now that it seemingly has not effected us spending on improving the team I am happy to have him back.

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I didn't want Wieters back, but I thought it was worth the risk considering the state of our farm system.

Gotta credit Angelos for taking the hit and allowing DD to make moves.

Now if I found out the Wieters gamble prevented us from signing a better pitcher, than I would reverse stance and vote against offering him a QO. I absolutely hate the Gallardo signing. Beyond losing a pick, I wouldn't touch him with the red flags trending in the wrong direction. If that 15 mil to Wieters would have allowed us to get a better caliber pitcher and retained our first rounder than I'd have gladly sacrificed the potential comp pick and let Wieters walk.

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I wonder if anyone will pick the 4th option: "Yes- Was for the QO initially, but against it now" LOL

I was thinking that's like a little kid at the carnival "Well ya see mister I wanted to go on the ride, but it made me sick, so now I want my dollar back!":laughlol:

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I wonder if anyone will pick the 4th option: "Yes- Was for the QO initially, but against it now" LOL

I was thinking that's like a little kid at the carnival "Well ya see mister I wanted to go on the ride, but it made me sick, so now I want my dollar back!":laughlol:

Ha! Yeah I put that in there just for the sake of completeness. I thought it would be funny if somebody picked it.

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I was against it then and I haven't changed my mind. I was only for it when it was suggested that we could turn around and trade Wieters if he accepted, which wasn't true (at least not right away). That's 15.8M that could be spent on other areas, major league or prospect.

If we didn't have Joseph, do you think Wieters would be worth a 1/$15.8MM contract? What major league area would you spend it on?

I think it's still not an ideal use of resources but I don't think it inhibited our ability to spend this offseason. We made an acquisition at every position that we had a hole. I don't think we would have been able to get Price/Grienke if we hadn't signed Wieters. The only other SP with reasonable contracts are Kazmir and Chen, and beyond the opt-out issue, they're not making much more than Gallardo this year. Ditto for Fowler vs. Heyward and Upton. The only player the extra salary this season really would have helped with is Cespedes, and that again is a difficult contract to compare to.

When it comes down to it, I think Wieters adds 1.5 WAR over Joseph for the price of $15.8MM, so about $10MM/WAR. The market rate is $8MM/WAR, so it really doesn't look like we overspent much at all, now that we know we weren't lacking for money to get players at the rest of the positions where we needed one.

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I don't know if it's possible without being in the negotiation process first hand,

But if Wieters salary + what we spent on Gallardo & Fowler would have gotten us Kazmir and Cespedes + keeping all our picks. I'd have taken that in a heartbeat, buy-outs be damned.

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I don't know if it's possible without being in the negotiation process first hand,

But if Wieters salary + what we spent on Gallardo & Fowler would have gotten us Kazmir and Cespedes + keeping all our picks. I'd have taken that in a heartbeat, buy-outs be damned.

My point is more that it's likely that the buy-outs were the problem for the Orioles, not the inability to afford the AAV of Kazmir/Cespedes in the 2015 salary because of Wieters. I too would have preferred Kazmir/Cespedes, but I don't think Wieters stopped us from getting one of them individually - although perhaps the possibility of both.

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I don't know if it's possible without being in the negotiation process first hand,

But if Wieters salary + what we spent on Gallardo & Fowler would have gotten us Kazmir and Cespedes + keeping all our picks. I'd have taken that in a heartbeat, buy-outs be damned.

Cespedes would have wanted 6/140 M to play for the O's and Kazmir 5/90M, IMO. So that comes to 41.3 as compared to Gallardo's and Fowler's combined 35.8 M
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