Dan places the blame for losing year squarely on the starters

[PaulFolk]

23 minutes ago, TradeAngelos said:

"Biggest FA contract for a pitcher EVER from Orioles" LMAO if you could see me right now I am on the floor typing and laughing hysterically at the same time. Uncontrollably. 

That's like if someone takes you to the Dollar Store and says pick out whatever birthday present you want. Which is what Angelos does every single offseason as Dan walks down the clearance aisle.  In the Dollar Store.

I think you're missing the point. Even within ownership's restrictions, nobody forced Duquette to sign Ubaldo. In fact he went out on a limb to sign Ubaldo to a contract that went above and beyond what the Orioles had ever given any FA pitcher. Duquette determined that Ubaldo, of all people, was the guy to target for that kind of money and a first-round draft pick (when Ervin Santana, among others, was available for similar or less money). That's a failure on Duquette's part. Just as it was a failure when Duquette decided to give up a first-round pick for the charred remains of Yovani Gallardo.

[Frobby]

5 minutes ago, 24fps said:

That would require a crystal ball, and it doesn't take a crystal ball to predict that no one will tackle your challenge head-on.  To much potential for not only being wrong, but looking foolish down the road.  It's much more satisfying to stay on safe ground and bash DD for not having one in hindsight.

There were plenty of posters who criticized these trades when they were made.    And even a few who pretty much criticized all of them, mostly on philosophical grounds.   So, it's not all hindsight.    In any event, it's a bottom line business; if your trades work out poorly, you don't get to excuse them because you didn't have a crystal ball.    You are judged by the results.   

[PaulFolk]

19 minutes ago, thezeroes said:

So we have another GM that made a BAD trade with Hader involved.  Not only did the Orioles not see what they had in him, but neither did the Astros.

That's true. Nobody said that Duquette is the only GM who makes mistakes. But I don't see how that makes the Norris trade any better.

[Can_of_corn]

15 minutes ago, TradeAngelos said:

You are truly a gem. I sometimes think you exist just to argue with every single thing that is posted on this site. 

[Tx Oriole]

23 minutes ago, TradeAngelos said:

You are truly a gem. I sometimes think you exist just to argue with every single thing that is posted on this site. 

Maybe he is. He is full of corn sometimes but I like Can. 

[24fps]

Just now, Frobby said:

There were plenty of posters who criticized these trades when they were made.    And even a few who pretty much criticized all of them, mostly on philosophical grounds.   So, it's not all hindsight.    In any event, it's a bottom line business; if your trades work out poorly, you don't get to excuse them because you didn't have a crystal ball.    You are judged by the results.   

Criticism at the time is fair and I joined in when I thought it was warranted.  What I'm seeing from some posters in this thread is the sort of cumulative indictment that can only exist in hindsight because the standard they're using can only be determined long after the fact.  Of course baseball executives are judged by results, but judgement doesn't preclude acknowledgment of the circumstances under which decisions are made, something sorely missing in some of these posts.  

[wildcard]

49 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

No, just no.

Norris had very similar stats to four other pitchers on the roster.  He wasn't the keystone of that team.

Never said he was.

[SteveA]

18 minutes ago, 24fps said:

Criticism at the time is fair and I joined in when I thought it was warranted.  What I'm seeing from some posters in this thread is the sort of cumulative indictment that can only exist in hindsight because the standard they're using can only be determined long after the fact.  Of course baseball executives are judged by results, but judgement doesn't preclude acknowledgment of the circumstances under which decisions are made, something sorely missing in some of these posts.  

I don't think it's unfair to look at the cumulative tradeoff and release of minor league pitchers and say that it is a pattern and a bad one.

As always, we don't know the details as to how much is influenced by Dan, how much by Buck, Brady, Angelos, or others.

But there has been a clear pattern in how this team has been GM'd over the past several years.   That pattern includes:

   1) Looking for and often finding bargain basement or non-highly-touted acquisitions who can help the team for less money than paying free agents (Chen, Gonzalez, Ynoa, Asher, Pearce, Kim, etc).   Some have worked out and others haven't.

   2) Avoiding the young international free agent market.

   3) Retaining guys who have helped the team with extensions (Hardy, Trumbo, Jones, Davis, etc)

   4) Frequent use of the Rule 5 draft

   5) Using minor league pitchers as currency to try to fill holes at the major league level to keep us in contention (EdRod, Hader, Davies, Mathias, Miranda, etc).

   6) Looking for free agents late in the free agent season who have not yet signed and can be gotten for cheaper than was anticipated at the start of the free agent season (Cruz, Ubaldo, Gallardo), even if it means giving up a draft pick to acquire them.

Those 6 items have been a big constant for the entire Duquette regime.   I think a lot of people would argue that #2 is bad, #3 is dangerous because you are paying a lot for aging players, and #5 has clearly hurt the team's prospects moving forward.   #6 has helped at times (Cruz) but not others, and has also cost us draft picks.   #4 and #1 are probably good strategies to try to acquire inexpensive talent without a high risk and in general he has executed them pretty well well.

So that's the Duquette legacy.   The haters (and Haders) are going to focus on #5 and there is no doubt it has hurt us.   The supporters are going to to focus on the successes.   The big picture people are going to look at our record the 6 years before Duquette and then the 6 years he was here and see enormous improvement.

There's no right answer here.   Like damn near everything else in life, there's always gray areas.   He is not  a complete idiot who has ruined the franchise, when there's only about 7 or 8 teams that have won more games during his tenure.  I don't care how many times TxOriole says it.   And he's obviously not a genius who has never made bad deals, I think Davies/Parra is example one of a horrible deal and several others have stunk, as well as several free agent signings.   So he's not great and he's not awful.   He's been constrained by ownership; every GM is, of course,  but it's probably safe to argue that he has had more constraints than average.   That constraint may also include ownership dictating moves that DD might not have made but that people with the ear of ownership (Buck? Brady?) wanted made.   Or maybe it doesn't.   I don't think we really know.

So should he be retained?   I can't answer that question without knowing who the next GM is, and what HIS organizational philosophies will be.   I certainly don't like #2 and #5, I think they are very poor longterm strategies.   If I knew that the next GM would dramatically reverse those two strategies, I'd buy Duquette an Amtrak ticket back to New England in a heart beat.   But I don't know that, the next GM might adhere to the same strategies, either by his own choice or by ownership fiat.

All I know is that I don't want a lame duck GM heading into this offseason.   I think we should either cut bait with Duquette Monday morning, or else extend him, so that whoever is in charge this offseason has a vested interest in the success of the team in 2018 and beyond.

[wildcard]

50 minutes ago, ArtVanDelay said:

Not really on topic, but there's no way I'm bringing Zach back at 13MM.

The O's have little choice.   That can't get real value for him because he had a bad year and still has a knee probably.  They have to keep him and he will get that much in arbitration.

[wildcard]

14 minutes ago, SteveA said:

I don't think it's unfair to look at the cumulative tradeoff and release of minor league pitchers and say that it is a pattern and a bad one.

As always, we don't know the details as to how much is influenced by Dan, how much by Buck, Brady, Angelos, or others.

But there has been a clear pattern in how this team has been GM'd over the past several years.   That pattern includes:

   1) Looking for and often finding bargain basement or non-highly-touted acquisitions who can help the team for less money than paying free agents (Chen, Gonzalez, Ynoa, Asher, Pearce, Kim, etc).   Some have worked out and others haven't.

   2) Avoiding the young international free agent market.

   3) Retaining guys who have helped the team with extensions (Hardy, Trumbo, Jones, Davis, etc)

   4) Frequent use of the Rule 5 draft

   5) Using minor league pitchers as currency to try to fill holes at the major league level to keep us in contention (EdRod, Hader, Davies, Mathias, Miranda, etc).

   6) Looking for free agents late in the free agent season who have not yet signed and can be gotten for cheaper than was anticipated at the start of the free agent season (Cruz, Ubaldo, Gallardo), even if it means giving up a draft pick to acquire them.

Those 6 items have been a big constant for the entire Duquette regime.   I think a lot of people would argue that #2 is bad, #3 is dangerous because you are paying a lot for aging players, and #5 has clearly hurt the team's prospects moving forward.   #6 has helped at times (Cruz) but not others, and has also cost us draft picks.   #4 and #1 are probably good strategies to try to acquire inexpensive talent without a high risk and in general he has executed them pretty well well.

So that's the Duquette legacy.   The haters (and Haders) are going to focus on #5 and there is no doubt it has hurt us.   The supporters are going to to focus on the successes.   The big picture people are going to look at our record the 6 years before Duquette and then the 6 years he was here and see enormous improvement.

There's no right answer here.   Like damn near everything else in life, there's always gray areas.   He is not  a complete idiot who has ruined the franchise, when there's only about 7 or 8 teams that have won more games during his tenure.  I don't care how many times TxOriole says it.   And he's obviously not a genius who has never made bad deals, I think Davies/Parra is example one of a horrible deal and several others have stunk, as well as several free agent signings.   So he's not great and he's not awful.   He's been constrained by ownership; every GM is, of course,  but it's probably safe to argue that he has had more constraints than average.   That constraint may also include ownership dictating moves that DD might not have made but that people with the ear of ownership (Buck? Brady?) wanted made.   Or maybe it doesn't.   I don't think we really know.

So should he be retained?   I can't answer that question without knowing who the next GM is, and what HIS organizational philosophies will be.   I certainly don't like #2 and #5, I think they are very poor longterm strategies.   If I knew that the next GM would dramatically reverse those two strategies, I'd buy Duquette an Amtrak ticket back to New England in a heart beat.   But I don't know that, the next GM might adhere to the same strategies, either by his own choice or by ownership fiat.

All I know is that I don't want a lame duck GM heading into this offseason.   I think we should either cut bait with Duquette Monday morning, or else extend him, so that whoever is in charge this offseason has a vested interest in the success of the team in 2018 and beyond.

Real nice post.

I think the long term interest will come from Buck and ownership.  I doubt Dan get fired or  extended this  off season.

[tntoriole]

33 minutes ago, SteveA said:

I don't think it's unfair to look at the cumulative tradeoff and release of minor league pitchers and say that it is a pattern and a bad one.

As always, we don't know the details as to how much is influenced by Dan, how much by Buck, Brady, Angelos, or others.

But there has been a clear pattern in how this team has been GM'd over the past several years.   That pattern includes:

   1) Looking for and often finding bargain basement or non-highly-touted acquisitions who can help the team for less money than paying free agents (Chen, Gonzalez, Ynoa, Asher, Pearce, Kim, etc).   Some have worked out and others haven't.

   2) Avoiding the young international free agent market.

   3) Retaining guys who have helped the team with extensions (Hardy, Trumbo, Jones, Davis, etc)

   4) Frequent use of the Rule 5 draft

   5) Using minor league pitchers as currency to try to fill holes at the major league level to keep us in contention (EdRod, Hader, Davies, Mathias, Miranda, etc).

   6) Looking for free agents late in the free agent season who have not yet signed and can be gotten for cheaper than was anticipated at the start of the free agent season (Cruz, Ubaldo, Gallardo), even if it means giving up a draft pick to acquire them.

Those 6 items have been a big constant for the entire Duquette regime.   I think a lot of people would argue that #2 is bad, #3 is dangerous because you are paying a lot for aging players, and #5 has clearly hurt the team's prospects moving forward.   #6 has helped at times (Cruz) but not others, and has also cost us draft picks.   #4 and #1 are probably good strategies to try to acquire inexpensive talent without a high risk and in general he has executed them pretty well well.

So that's the Duquette legacy.   The haters (and Haders) are going to focus on #5 and there is no doubt it has hurt us.   The supporters are going to to focus on the successes.   The big picture people are going to look at our record the 6 years before Duquette and then the 6 years he was here and see enormous improvement.

There's no right answer here.   Like damn near everything else in life, there's always gray areas.   He is not  a complete idiot who has ruined the franchise, when there's only about 7 or 8 teams that have won more games during his tenure.  I don't care how many times TxOriole says it.   And he's obviously not a genius who has never made bad deals, I think Davies/Parra is example one of a horrible deal and several others have stunk, as well as several free agent signings.   So he's not great and he's not awful.   He's been constrained by ownership; every GM is, of course,  but it's probably safe to argue that he has had more constraints than average.   That constraint may also include ownership dictating moves that DD might not have made but that people with the ear of ownership (Buck? Brady?) wanted made.   Or maybe it doesn't.   I don't think we really know.

So should he be retained?   I can't answer that question without knowing who the next GM is, and what HIS organizational philosophies will be.   I certainly don't like #2 and #5, I think they are very poor longterm strategies.   If I knew that the next GM would dramatically reverse those two strategies, I'd buy Duquette an Amtrak ticket back to New England in a heart beat.   But I don't know that, the next GM might adhere to the same strategies, either by his own choice or by ownership fiat.

All I know is that I don't want a lame duck GM heading into this offseason.   I think we should either cut bait with Duquette Monday morning, or else extend him, so that whoever is in charge this offseason has a vested interest in the success of the team in 2018 and beyond.

Best post I have read in months!  Excellent summary and analysis!  Somebody mail this to the old man before the weekend!  

[24fps]

1 hour ago, SteveA said:

I don't think it's unfair to look at the cumulative tradeoff and release of minor league pitchers and say that it is a pattern and a bad one.

As always, we don't know the details as to how much is influenced by Dan, how much by Buck, Brady, Angelos, or others.

But there has been a clear pattern in how this team has been GM'd over the past several years.   That pattern includes:

   1) Looking for and often finding bargain basement or non-highly-touted acquisitions who can help the team for less money than paying free agents (Chen, Gonzalez, Ynoa, Asher, Pearce, Kim, etc).   Some have worked out and others haven't.

   2) Avoiding the young international free agent market.

   3) Retaining guys who have helped the team with extensions (Hardy, Trumbo, Jones, Davis, etc)

   4) Frequent use of the Rule 5 draft

   5) Using minor league pitchers as currency to try to fill holes at the major league level to keep us in contention (EdRod, Hader, Davies, Mathias, Miranda, etc).

   6) Looking for free agents late in the free agent season who have not yet signed and can be gotten for cheaper than was anticipated at the start of the free agent season (Cruz, Ubaldo, Gallardo), even if it means giving up a draft pick to acquire them.

Those 6 items have been a big constant for the entire Duquette regime.   I think a lot of people would argue that #2 is bad, #3 is dangerous because you are paying a lot for aging players, and #5 has clearly hurt the team's prospects moving forward.   #6 has helped at times (Cruz) but not others, and has also cost us draft picks.   #4 and #1 are probably good strategies to try to acquire inexpensive talent without a high risk and in general he has executed them pretty well well.

So that's the Duquette legacy.   The haters (and Haders) are going to focus on #5 and there is no doubt it has hurt us.   The supporters are going to to focus on the successes.   The big picture people are going to look at our record the 6 years before Duquette and then the 6 years he was here and see enormous improvement.

There's no right answer here.   Like damn near everything else in life, there's always gray areas.   He is not  a complete idiot who has ruined the franchise, when there's only about 7 or 8 teams that have won more games during his tenure.  I don't care how many times TxOriole says it.   And he's obviously not a genius who has never made bad deals, I think Davies/Parra is example one of a horrible deal and several others have stunk, as well as several free agent signings.   So he's not great and he's not awful.   He's been constrained by ownership; every GM is, of course,  but it's probably safe to argue that he has had more constraints than average.   That constraint may also include ownership dictating moves that DD might not have made but that people with the ear of ownership (Buck? Brady?) wanted made.   Or maybe it doesn't.   I don't think we really know.

So should he be retained?   I can't answer that question without knowing who the next GM is, and what HIS organizational philosophies will be.   I certainly don't like #2 and #5, I think they are very poor longterm strategies.   If I knew that the next GM would dramatically reverse those two strategies, I'd buy Duquette an Amtrak ticket back to New England in a heart beat.   But I don't know that, the next GM might adhere to the same strategies, either by his own choice or by ownership fiat.

All I know is that I don't want a lame duck GM heading into this offseason.   I think we should either cut bait with Duquette Monday morning, or else extend him, so that whoever is in charge this offseason has a vested interest in the success of the team in 2018 and beyond.

I think this is a really good interpretation of DD's track record so far.  I find #2 especially irritating, but I think that policy is attributable to ownership.  I also suspect that #3 is more attributable to ownership than many posters acknowledge.  Personally, I have mixed feelings about that.  I like longevity on a team while also understanding that it's not ideal from a pure performance standpoint.  But if my job was to put butts in seats, I would probably put a very high value on retaining fan favorites if it wasn't obviously (JJ Hardy) time to move on.  Much higher than if I had the luxury of making personnel decisions in a vacuum.  It has long been an article of faith here that PA feels that player retention is important to the fans and I'm more than willing to believe it's true.

I think that many posters lose sight of the human element that a GM has to factor into his decisions.  If you have a team that's in contention and needs a player or two, you simply cannot substitute a nuanced argument for reinforcements - you go get some players.  As far as I'm concerned, the specifics of any given trade (Parra? Really?) is fair game.  All the more so if the criticism is made at the time the trade goes down, but when you're in a battle you shoot the bullets you have and I often think that reality isn't give the weight it deserves when making these arguments about DD's worth.  

I'm also uncomfortable with the thought of a lame duck GM heading into this offseason but I'm not holding my breath.  I fully expect DD, Buck, Manny, Zach, AJ, etc. to be playing out the string in 2018 because it's always been set up that way.  2019 will be somebody else's problem, and exactly whose will be an interesting subject to speculate on for the next year or so.

[spiritof66]

1 hour ago, SteveA said:

 

1 hour ago, SteveA said:

.  .  .

But there has been a clear pattern in how this team has been GM'd over the past several years.   That pattern includes:

   1) Looking for and often finding bargain basement or non-highly-touted acquisitions who can help the team for less money than paying free agents (Chen, Gonzalez, Ynoa, Asher, Pearce, Kim, etc).   Some have worked out and others haven't.

   2) Avoiding the young international free agent market.

   3) Retaining guys who have helped the team with extensions (Hardy, Trumbo, Jones, Davis, etc)

   4) Frequent use of the Rule 5 draft

   5) Using minor league pitchers as currency to try to fill holes at the major league level to keep us in contention (EdRod, Hader, Davies, Mathias, Miranda, etc).

   6) Looking for free agents late in the free agent season who have not yet signed and can be gotten for cheaper than was anticipated at the start of the free agent season (Cruz, Ubaldo, Gallardo), even if it means giving up a draft pick to acquire them.

Those 6 items have been a big constant for the entire Duquette regime.   I think a lot of people would argue that #2 is bad, #3 is dangerous because you are paying a lot for aging players, and #5 has clearly hurt the team's prospects moving forward.   #6 has helped at times (Cruz) but not others, and has also cost us draft picks.   #4 and #1 are probably good strategies to try to acquire inexpensive talent without a high risk and in general he has executed them pretty well well.

So that's the Duquette legacy.  

.  .  .

I think this is a good summary of what the Orioles have been doing the last six years, but I understand that #2 and #3 have been mandated by ownership. That may be true of other elements of the "Duquette legacy" as well.

As I said earlier in this thread, the role of ownership -- both what we think we know about it and what is unknown about it -- for me that makes it hard to evaluate what Duquette decided, as well as difficult to project what a successor might do that's different.

[Bahama O's Fan]

35 minutes ago, spiritof66 said:

 

I think this is a good summary of what the Orioles have been doing the last six years, but I understand that #2 and #3 have been mandated by ownership. That may be true of other elements of the "Duquette legacy" as well.

As I said earlier in this thread, the role of ownership -- both what we think we know about it and what is unknown about it -- for me that makes it hard to evaluate what Duquette decided, as well as difficult to project what a successor might do that's different.

I agree with the first post and with this response. Has ownership somewhat tied Dan's hands? Would he have rather gone a different direction, but was shut down? To know that, look at his track record with other teams. Did he use the same guidelines? Perhaps it's not all him. Honestly, this season, if our pitchers just pitch to their career norms, which I'm sure Dan was counting on, we are in the playoffs, I believe. Don't forget that we have had quite a few injuries this season as well. I really don't know any other viable options in the offseason that there was to fix the starting pitching. Perhaps our coaching and scouts are poor as they did not tell Dan that Hader or Bridwell would be the answers.

[Aristotelian]

2 hours ago, SteveA said:

But there has been a clear pattern in how this team has been GM'd over the past several years.   That pattern includes:

   1) Looking for and often finding bargain basement or non-highly-touted acquisitions who can help the team for less money than paying free agents (Chen, Gonzalez, Ynoa, Asher, Pearce, Kim, etc).   Some have worked out and others haven't.

   2) Avoiding the young international free agent market.

   3) Retaining guys who have helped the team with extensions (Hardy, Trumbo, Jones, Davis, etc)

   4) Frequent use of the Rule 5 draft

   5) Using minor league pitchers as currency to try to fill holes at the major league level to keep us in contention (EdRod, Hader, Davies, Mathias, Miranda, etc).

   6) Looking for free agents late in the free agent season who have not yet signed and can be gotten for cheaper than was anticipated at the start of the free agent season (Cruz, Ubaldo, Gallardo), even if it means giving up a draft pick to acquire them.

All I know is that I don't want a lame duck GM heading into this offseason.   I think we should either cut bait with Duquette Monday morning, or else extend him, so that whoever is in charge this offseason has a vested interest in the success of the team in 2018 and beyond.

+1, very good post. The other aspect of DD's philosophy I would add is that he does not want to rebuild but also will not trade the elite prospects. He seems to be a pragmatist who generally wants to be competitive in the short term, but without going all-in. As you said, he will trade international slots and second tier prospects to make that happen.

As far as what to do with DD, I agree with extend or buy out...unless both DD and Angelos are committed to finally going all in. Then DD's contract matches the plan. He has every incentive to bust payroll up to $200M, signing Darvish and Arrieta, trade Trumbo's contract and Hays for a year of Charlie Blackmon, etc. It will be interesting to see what they will do, but if history is any guide it will probably just be more of the same, with Manny walking for a draft pick.