Are we a bad team masquerading as a mediocre one?

[jtschrei]

There are many good players on this team -- Machado, Schoop, Jones, Mancini, now Beckham. The catchers were good. The pitching has just been atrocious. If you traded our rotation with the Red Sox, we'd be in first place. 

Moving forward, I don't know what the Orioles do with the Davis and Trumbo contracts. Have they ever shown a willingness to eat a contract? It turns out that Davis did indeed get Machado's money and that will be a move that haunts this team for years to come. Manny is as good as gone. 

So, the O's have a few different paths forward. I think they will choose status quo because that has been their history. I think we'll restock the rotation with some mediocre free agents and try to win it all in Buck's last season as a manager and DD's last season as GM. We'll keep everyone we have that is under contract for 2018-- Britton, Machado, Davis -- meaning, there will be no major trades. We won't extend Schoop. And depending on how next season goes, we'll either trade Manny and Britton at the deadline or we'll trade our young players to make one final run with this core group. I would be very surprised to see anything other than this. 

[Frobby]

2 hours ago, allquixotic said:

The mask is off. We stopped masquerading as a mediocre team and decided to explicitly appear as a bad team, while also in fact being a bad team. So there is no longer any discrepancy between the reality and the appearance.

?

I have to agree.   Sometimes, clarity is a good thing.