If This Is It-2017 Offseason

[big_sparxx]

However this pans out we can look at a few things going forward. Just my thoughts...

1) Will Buck want to oversee a total rebuild? I don't think so. Does he personally have to accept responsibility for the teams struggles this year? Personally, I think it's his responsibility to get the team ready to compete on the field. Have his staff let him down? Massively.

2) The value of AJ. Hate to say it but he's not getting any younger either. Are we gong to let him stay in B'more or let him try and win a title elsewhere (thinking that a rebuild virtually guarantees that a championship isn't coming).

3) Are we willing to lose the left side of the infield completely in 2 years? Hardy then Machado? Can't see it. Hardy will go because of his age. Manny will stay because he's the ONLY marketable commodity to push people through the turnstiles.

4) Britton should be traded. We don't re-sign closers. I'm ok with that.

5) The replacement parts. Seriously, our philosophy of "all in" OBVIOUSLY hasn't worked. We can't be Earl's 3 run HR team with no runners on base. Time to break down that philosophy.

6) Recognize your core and build from that. We're stuck with Davis. Bye Matt. love you, got your jersey, but you are expendable. This team should be built around Tillman, Gausman, Bundy, Manny, Schoop as our core.

7) Dan's done. Not sure if it's entirely his fault that we got Crush with a horrible deal, but that alone seals his fate imho (I'm not even going to mention the rejects he brought into our rotation)

8) Be very aware of our rivals. The MFY did what they did because they had the farm. We don't. Bahston is losing Papi and will be looking for a DH (Trumbo).... just sayin.

9) Time to change the offensive philosophy. We manufacture nothing offensively, and it is killing our chances. We can't keep waiting for the bombs to come.

10) Fix the rotation. Re-signing Tillman is a must, and DO NOT add old beaten up and tired arms who need to '"locate" to offset their declining fastball.

[Aristotelian]

By the way, I will add another possible offseason move: extend Kim. He is the only guy on the team who gets consistent goods ABs, does not strike out, and hits for a high OBP. He is a terrific fit for this team and will only get better. He can still probably be had for a discount, although less than we are getting now. Maybe 2/$15M for 2018-19 on top of the $3.5M he is dues next year. Otherwise we will be looking at a Choo type of contract to keep him beyond 2017.

[Tx Oriole]

I suggested this thread yesterday but I was only joking. Wow. 2 games back with 44 to play and some have thrown in the towel. Incredible. What a bunch of front-runners.

I'm fairly new to this site and certainly not impressed by the level of support behind the team during bouts of adversity. Some of you guys have no shame. Sorry but it needs to be said - the truth stings sometimes. I'm sure some of you will defensively (and reflexively) claim it's okay to look to the future but that's not the point I'm getting at. It's more the denial of instant gratification that leads to absolute terror-stricken mindsets. What a weak bunch of pathetic sad-sacks. Show some semblance of a constitution and stand behind your team and accept rough patches/losses and come back the next day without so much white-flag waving. Just once. Be a man for god sakes.

And try to resist the urge to cowardly (on a website) strike back. This is my opinion, nothing more. I went after no one in particular so please don't feel personally offended. Just an observation.

I understand where you are coming from. But I can see why some are calling for Manny to be traded because of the haul the team could get in return. Some think the FO won't be able to resign Manny anyway. I am disappointed the team has been playing some bad ball. Just not ready to thrown in the towel for this season.

[FlipTheBird]

Trumbo gets a QO and is gone.

No QO for Wieters. He goes FA and does not find the big contract he is looking for. O's re-sign him 3/30

Pedro is re-signed 3/24

O's extend Tillman. 4/61m plus an option.

Mancini is traded for a young, cheap right fielder.

O's offer to eat half of Jimenez contract and see if there are any takers.

Tillman, Bundy, Gausman and Gallardo are set for next year. Miley is a question mark.

O's add Rule 5 outfielder.

Trumbo, Pearce, Reimold, McFarland, Duensing and hopefully Jimenez are gone.

You're going to have to explain to me what Matt Wieters has done in the last three seasons to warrant three more season as an Oriole. Guy is toast.

[Frobby]

The problem with all that is that team is worse than the one we have now that is collapsing....

Bottom line is the Orioles will need to rebuild. The longer the inevitable is put off, the more it's going to hurt when it is unavoidable and the longer it's going to take to recover from it. It'll be 1998-2011 all over again.

I think I will wait until the season is over to judge whether a rebuild needs to be seriously considered. Last offseason, I said I would consider a sell-off if we were not in contention at the trade deadline. Well, we were in contention at the trade deadline, and in fact, we are in contention today. The team has not played particularly well since the end of June, but it is not as if they've fallen off the face of the earth. You may think they are "collapsing," but I think that remains to be seen. They might recover and play well the rest of the way, they might hover around .500 ball the rest of the way, or they might really take a serious tumble. I'm not going to pre-judge the outcome.

[allquixotic]

I think I will wait until the season is over to judge whether a rebuild needs to be seriously considered. Last offseason, I said I would consider a sell-off if we were not in contention at the trade deadline. Well, we were in contention at the trade deadline, and in fact, we are in contention today. The team has not played particularly well since the end of June, but it is not as if they've fallen off the face of the earth. You may think they are "collapsing," but I think that remains to be seen. They might recover and play well the rest of the way, they might hover around .500 ball the rest of the way, or they might really take a serious tumble. I'm not going to pre-judge the outcome.

We will all have a better picture of what to do in the future, the closer we get towards that future; that's sort of a tautology. I think the point of this post was to jump the gun a little, look at trends over the course of the season, then kind of assume X (where "X" for most posters in this thread is "the O's will miss the playoffs"), and then state what we should do if that is true. In other words, a hypothetical situation.

You don't even want to offer up a guess as to what would be the best path forward if the O's finish the season, say, with 83 or 84 wins and miss the playoffs? Fair enough, I guess, but it seems a lot of people like to fill their time -- especially during tough times for the O's -- thinking about what might be, as a way to fill the void. And maybe as a way to stir up a little hope in the way of, "Even if things end badly this year, we can do these good things to turn it around next year or the year after."

[crawjo]

We have to see how they finish off this season first. But I don't think I would blow it up. Too many good players still in their primes. I would say the #1, 2, and 3 priority should be extending Machado. I would also try to extend Schoop, and maybe Tillman. At this point, I would not give a qualifying offer to Wieters. I would give a QO to Trumbo.

I would primarily look for a right fielder and a left-handed setup man in the offseason. I would not be inclined to trade any of our established players unless blown away by an offer. For the left-handed setup guy, I would think there would be some candidates on the free agent market. For RF, I would look for a trade, preferably for somebody who can play defense and get on base. Power would not be a priority.

[allquixotic]

If the Orioles can't afford Manny then signing Davis was a huge mistake. If they can't afford Manny then they need to trade him because letting him walk for a pick is terrible. And if they need trade Manny then it's rebuild time and having a $170 million first baseman is useless.

The general idea of a rebuild is that you trade players who are either older, or will be a free agent soon (or both). Young and under team control are the hallmarks of someone you would keep, even if they aren't an outstanding player (...yet).

You want to keep around some veterans, so you keep the ones that are under team control for a while and/or seem to be relatively inexpensive. You don't want to keep any very expensive veterans though, which means not Davis.

http://www.rotoworld.com/teams/contracts/mlb/bal/

From that list, I'd definitely keep: Bundy, Gausman, Schoop, Givens, Joseph, and Wilson.

I'd definitely trade: Britton, Jones, Ubaldo, Tillman.

The rest are kind of up in the air. If they're young and under team control, obviously keep them. If they're set to be a free agent in 2018 or 2019, and could return some good prospects, trade them.

The idea is to sell high, buy low. If you have a guy under team control who's 26-30 years old, will be a free agent in 2018-2019, and is putting up career numbers right now, a "full steam ahead" O's club would keep them until they go FA, in the hope of contending in 2016-2018. But a rebuilding club would deal them for the right mix of prospects.

I agree with you that it's rebuilding time. Unfortunately, we might have to keep Davis another year in the hopes that he'll bounce back and be worth some money, because right now no other team will buy him unless we eat a huge portion of his salary.

[LookitsPuck]

The O's have never sold high in the Duquette era. They won't start next year.

[allquixotic]

Put me in the "never rebuild, always retool" camp. What does rebuilding mean? It generally means years of failure, under-performance, and eternal "hope" without a payoff.

One factor you're not considering here is internal growth of our young players: Bundy, Gausman, even pieces like Kim, Rickard, etc. If Bundy and Gausman continue to develop apace, that starts to shore up your rotation. It might look more like Tillman, Gausman, Bundy... and four/five... with your 1-3 starters being legitimate TOR pitchers.

Do we need a little creative destruction here? Yes, I think we do. But to tear down and start from scratch? That's admitting complete defeat and roster failure. We aren't anywhere NEAR there, IMO. You keep your good guys regardless, so signing Machado and Tillman to longer-term deals would be a great start. Then you look to fill holes. We'll have one in right field and possibly left, plus a fluid rotation. I can't see scrapping a whole roster because of that situation.

No one is saying scrap the entire roster; I don't think a team ever has sold their entire 25-man roster in the off season. But it becomes a question of definitions. At what point does it become a rebuild instead of a retool? Where do you draw that line? It's kind of arbitrary, isn't it? If you start trading away your ML talent, one by one, at which point does it stop being simply a wise trade move as part of a retool, instead morphing into a rebuild? 10% of the roster? 20%? 50%?

While internal growth of our young players definitely helps, I don't think we have enough young players in our system with potential to play in the ML above replacement-level, to sustain the current philosophy on trading. We are accumulating "farm debt" every time we trade away talent for a one or two-year ML loaner like Miley or Ubaldo or Trumbo. Eventually, that debt becomes so crippling that you can't make any moves, so if your ML club isn't good enough, you can't make it any better without trading away ... ML players. And trading an ML player for an ML player does not make the team better unless your trading partner is an absolute idiot; why would they knowingly make their team worse while making your team better? They won't, generally.

The emergence of Bundy and Gausman won't make us a contender by itself. We need even more effective arms. Having a mostly solid #1 through #4 is essential to make a run at the World Series. If you have more than one bad pitcher in your rotation, you're kind of hosed. Even the most optimistic among us have to admit that right now we only have three solid starters, and that third one -- Gausman -- is only half-solid at best. We've got a long way to go. But we can't afford to simply trade our way to having a strong rotation. What are we going to trade away to get them? Manny? Schoop? That's like cutting off your left arm to save your right. It doesn't work.

[LookitsPuck]

The O's should most definitely trade Britton.

[Frobby]

We will all have a better picture of what to do in the future, the closer we get towards that future; that's sort of a tautology. I think the point of this post was to jump the gun a little, look at trends over the course of the season, then kind of assume X (where "X" for most posters in this thread is "the O's will miss the playoffs"), and then state what we should do if that is true. In other words, a hypothetical situation.

You don't even want to offer up a guess as to what would be the best path forward if the O's finish the season, say, with 83 or 84 wins and miss the playoffs? Fair enough, I guess, but it seems a lot of people like to fill their time -- especially during tough times for the O's -- thinking about what might be, as a way to fill the void. And maybe as a way to stir up a little hope in the way of, "Even if things end badly this year, we can do these good things to turn it around next year or the year after."

The OP was not as specific as the bolded sentence -- it just referred to missing the playoffs, and made no mention of how many games we end up winning. Needless to say, we might win 89 games and still miss the playoffs by a game, or we might fall way off the pace and end up 6-7 games out of the playoff picture. Those are very different scenarios with regard to my willingness to consider a big rebuild vs. a normal offseason of tweaking what we have. And personally, I am not in the mood to spend a lot of time thinking about what I would do in a negative hypothetical scenario, when I still have very realistic hopes for a positive outcome to the season. I'll worry about those things if they happen.

[wildcard]

You're going to have to explain to me what Matt Wieters has done in the last three seasons to warrant three more season as an Oriole. Guy is toast.

If the O's were to re-sign him it would be on the basis of what he has done this year.

- Had a pretty good first half and made the All-Star team.

- The O's pitcher trust him to call a good game. He is well thought on for this skill in the clubhouse.

- He is 4th in MLB in caught stealing percentage (37%)

- He ranks 7th in RBI for catcher in the MLB

- he ranks 12th in homers for catcher in the MLB

He has had a bad offensive month since the All-Star break. Let's see how he finishes the season.

The big question is how would letting him go upgrade the team? Who would you replace him?

[Aristotelian]

The O's should most definitely trade Britton.

Why now? We still have him through 2018 and he will still get a very high return in January or July of 2018. We actually do not have a very deep bullpen as we are seeing right now with Brach struggling and O'Day injured.

[LookitsPuck]

Why now? We still have him through 2018 and he will still get a very high return in January or July of 2018. We actually do not have a very deep bullpen as we are seeing right now with Brach struggling and O'Day injured.

We're talking about 2017 offseason (so after this season).

I don't want us to keep running into a scenario where we hold on to a guy either too long from an effectiveness standpoint...or perhaps worse a cost/effectiveness standpoint a la Jim Johnson where we salary dumped him to Oakland for Jemile Weeks.

Jim Johnson put together back to back 50+ SV seasons with a 2.72 ERA and 153 ERA+. And we dumped him as being too expensive.

That is something we can ill afford to do time and time again. And I get it...if you're a contender, you typically don't trade extremely effective assets. But some of those assets are somewhat replaceable. Think about it. The O's have traditionally had very good closers.

BJ Ryan, Chris Ray, George Sherrill, Kevin Gregg (dud, let to Jim Johnson), Jim Johnson, Zach Britton.

With the change in strike zone, cost of Britton and age....we need to learn to get into a mindset where we can both compete AND trade viable assets that can be replaced.

Yes, we may not have a very deep bullpen with some of the injuries and ineffectiveness recently...but we've had a very good bullpen since 2012. And that's with good reason.