Connolly: Orioles starting pitching historically bad

[MDtransplant757]

I think I can lobby congress to lower the drinking age by showing them how bad the pitching has been. 

[Can_of_corn]

Just now, MDtransplant757 said:

I think I can lobby congress to lower the drinking age by showing them how bad the pitching has been. 

If you join the military and get stationed in AZ you can drink on base.

 

Better double check to see if they changed that before you go and enlist.

[OriolesMagic83]

According to Dan, this is still a playoff team.  He'll probably trade a few of the O's better prospects if the O's are within 5 games of the wild card at the deadline, even if they are under .500.

I wish the O's had let Mercenary Dan go to the Blue Jays.

[Orioles0615]

29 minutes ago, NashLumber said:

Play the music 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MQ4ZIBoEd4

 

[Uli2001]

53 minutes ago, OriolesMagic83 said:

According to Dan, this is still a playoff team.  He'll probably trade a few of the O's better prospects if the O's are within 5 games of the wild card at the deadline, even if they are under .500.

I wish the O's had let Mercenary Dan go to the Blue Jays.

At this point, the roster construction is so awful, the minor leagues are so bare of talent, that it almost looks like he sabotaged the Orioles.

[ThomasTomasz]

37 minutes ago, Uli2001 said:

At this point, the roster construction is so awful, the minor leagues are so bare of talent, that it almost looks like he sabotaged the Orioles.

I'm not blaming Duquette.  He was barely allowed to bring any of his own people in.  The only two people he brought with him were special assistant Lee Thomas and executive director of international scouting Fred Ferreira, and lets be honest, we don't spend internationally yet he did land us Kim.  

The rest of the scouting department was left the same when MacPhail left, and is just continually reshuffled.  It is YEARS of minor league neglect, not just winning recently that has caused our farm system to be at this point.  The only homegrown players we have are Joseph, Machado, Mancini, Schoop, Gausman, Bundy, Britton, Givens and Hart.  Everyone else was acquired via trade, or was a free agent signing.  

This is on ownership for not investing in the scouting department, and this is on ownership for their stubborn refusal to go into the international market.  MLB teams as a whole spent over $200 million on international spending this year.  What did the Orioles do?  We traded away our international bonus slots to the White Sox for a lefty relief prospect who may be better known as a friend of ballhawk Zack Hample.  

Duquette, with all of his dumpster diving and bargain-hinting signings that has panned out for us, have kept us winning despite a weak minor league system and a middling payroll for a team that has this many wins.  I can't put this all at his doorstep.  

[NashLumber]

5 minutes ago, ThomasTomasz said:

I'm not blaming Duquette.  He was barely allowed to bring any of his own people in.  The only two people he brought with him were special assistant Lee Thomas and executive director of international scouting Fred Ferreira, and lets be honest, we don't spend internationally yet he did land us Kim.  

The rest of the scouting department was left the same when MacPhail left, and is just continually reshuffled.  It is YEARS of minor league neglect, not just winning recently that has caused our farm system to be at this point.  The only homegrown players we have are Joseph, Machado, Mancini, Schoop, Gausman, Bundy, Britton, Givens and Hart.  Everyone else was acquired via trade, or was a free agent signing.  

This is on ownership for not investing in the scouting department, and this is on ownership for their stubborn refusal to go into the international market.  MLB teams as a whole spent over $200 million on international spending this year.  What did the Orioles do?  We traded away our international bonus slots to the White Sox for a lefty relief prospect who may be better known as a friend of ballhawk Zack Hample.  

Duquette, with all of his dumpster diving and bargain-hinting signings that has panned out for us, have kept us winning despite a weak minor league system and a middling payroll for a team that has this many wins.  I can't put this all at his doorstep.  

I think this is a fair judgement of the scenario. I only differ in that they have spent a lot more money of late, but on heavy contracts like Davis' and not on proven quality starting pitching. 

[ThomasTomasz]

19 minutes ago, NashLumber said:

I think this is a fair judgement of the scenario. I only differ in that they have spent a lot more money of late, but on heavy contracts like Davis' and not on proven quality starting pitching. 

I can go into detail on that.  The payroll has certainly expanded over the years, but part of that is the price to retain your core.  Our young players hit arbitration, so you go from making the minimum below $600,000 to most starting players making a couple million, and they get another raise each year.   Chris Tillman, in his final arbitration year, is making $10 million.  Top performers Manny Machado and Zach Britton are making over $11 million in their second arbitration year.  Schoop and Gausman are making $3.4 million in their first years, and at least Schoop is getting a hefty raise this off-season. 

Then, we spent to retain Davis and O'Day, and if the rumors are true, Angelos unlocked that money at the last hour because he is a fan of Davis.   We brought back Mark Trumbo, in part because his contract demands from earlier in the off-season were halved because he had no market.  Our biggest FA signings over this period have all been bargains except for Ubaldo Jimenez.  Nelson Cruz was on the market forever due to the QO offer attached to him.  Welington Castillo's market suffered from the emphasis on pitch framing, so we got him for cheap at $6 million.  Kim signed for two years, $7 million.

Despite the increase in payroll, which is certainly true, we still only have the 10th highest payroll, and according to records on SteveTheUmp's website, the Orioles are typically between 10-20 from the Dark Ages of 00 to now in regards to total payroll.  While the numbers are going up, we are essentially still spending the same amount of money on the team when inflation is factored in.

Also, I dont think we can blame spending on pitchers here either.  Look, I know you have to approach all avenues, but free agent starting pitching costs a ton, and you don't get the quality arm in many cases.  Ubaldo is a perfect example of this- at the time he signed with us, he was an average SP who could have dominant streaks of success, but also fall off the cliff, and he signed for close to $50 million.  Look HERE for the top 25 FA list from MLB.com.  The first pitcher is Aroldis Champman at #9, but the best available SP wasnt until #14 until 37 year old Rich Hill showed up.  Then you had Jeremy Hellickson, who had a QO attached to him, but is essentially another version of Chris Tillman.  That was it, except for honorable mention Ivan Nova, and no one can tell me they expected the kind of season from him we are seeing right now.  The best way for us to acquire an impact starter is going to be a younger starter via trade like Gerrit Cole or Sonny Gray, and that is going to require prospects that we don't have.  

So unfortunately, the Orioles had few options to improve their starting pitching this year, so they went with what they thought would work like it has in the past- lineup filled with power, great bullpen, middling starters.  And due to a variety of circumstances, things are not working.  I was already on edge with the pitching due to losing the pitching coach, bullpen coach and long-time catcher in the same off-season, but I didn't think things would be this bad.  Nor did I think the offense would fall off the cliff.  At least Schoop has learned to work the counts and both he and Mancini use all of the field.  I'm not defending per se how the team was constructed, but its not like we had many options.  

[atomic]

Just imagine how bad the pitching would be if we had Wieters poor pitch framing.

[atomic]

10 hours ago, Uli2001 said:

At this point, the roster construction is so awful, the minor leagues are so bare of talent, that it almost looks like he sabotaged the Orioles.

We have Cisco, Mountcastle, and Hayes and just brought up Mancini this year.  I would hardly call it bare of talent.

[O's are Legends]

Have no idea how to look it up, but it would be interesting to find out when the last time a team gave up double digit runs all with 2 outs. All Hellickson had to do was be a average pitcher tonight, that didn't happen.

For those watching, was there any explanation why Buck didn't take Hellickson out after the walk to Bautista or the 2 run double to Montero?

Can't keep having the offense bail out this type of pitching, as Terry Crowley once told our friend Weams "We hit enough to win three pennants." once again, the offense isn't the issue.

[foxfield]

1 minute ago, O's are Legends said:

Have no idea how to look it up, but it would be interesting to find out when the last time a team gave up double digit runs all with 2 outs. All Hellickson had to do was be a average pitcher tonight, that didn't happen.

For those watching, was there any explanation why Buck didn't take Hellickson out after the walk to Bautista or the 2 run double to Montero?

Can't keep having the offense bail out this type of pitching, as Terry Crowley once told our friend Weams "We hit enough to win three pennants." once again, the offense isn't the issue.

Clearly trying to manage the pen.  We cant yank SP 3 innings in every night, but it shouldn't be too much to ask SP to go 5 or 6 innings with a run per inning.  Which would have worked out fine tonight.  No offense isn't the issue tonight.  Pitching stunk.

[Frobby]

The O's should bring up ten pitchers tomorrow, so Buck can yank his starters at the first sign of trouble for the rest of the year.   

[tntoriole]

11 minutes ago, foxfield said:

Clearly trying to manage the pen.  We cant yank SP 3 innings in every night, but it shouldn't be too much to ask SP to go 5 or 6 innings with a run per inning.  Which would have worked out fine tonight.  No offense isn't the issue tonight.  Pitching stunk.

Unfortunately when you have six starters : 1 good, 1 fairly good,  one mediocre lefthander and then 3 complete disaster areas, it is hard to do any better. 

[tntoriole]

One could make the argument that the entire problem, the entire reason for this season is due to Chris Tillman's complete collapse as a major league pitcher.  Even a mediocre 3 or 4 more wins from him and we would be easily positioned in the wildcard.  Last year, 16 wins, this year, 1....add say a dozen wins this year if we had the Tillman performance of 2016 and we would be in first place in the division.