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Fangraphs’ Hulett: A Minor Review of 2017 - Baltimore Orioles


Frobby

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    • Any flexibility for AR and TON leaving, would almost certainly be eaten up by the increases in the other guys' Arb salaries.  And you're also walking into Gunnar's last season of control, so has he been extended?  Or do you trade him? I'm not saying you can't sign Burnes.  But I am saying if you want to keep payroll under 200 mil, and still be a competitive team, he better be pitching at a high level for the salary he's projected to be making.
    • Good post. We might be able to add one or two elite guys but there isn't much margin for error if they turn into a bad contract. You have to believe that next year is "the year" and Burnes is the guy to deliver the title.  After '27 you would have Rutschman and O'Neil expiring along with potentially Castillo if we got him instead of Burnes. So there would be some flexibility to retool in '28, but we would need to replace those guys with new talent. 
    • This is good work and I think that 100 million is a good ballpark area of what the payroll can look like for just those players. 
    • We got Eflin from the Rays and took on $18M in salary in a similar buy trade to what I am proposing. This has nothing to do with the Rays model. 
    • Yayyy they will become the TB Rays. I respect them but how many titles have they won? You know the answer to that. Zero.  41 years is long enough. 
    • Obviously the main talk on the board right now is about adding free agents, with Burnes being the most discussed.  Now, one of the main arguments for signing a big free agent is the team is young, cheap and nobody is making much money yet.  This is all true.  However, that is set to change and change fairly quickly.  I've run some numbers to demonstrate what the payroll will look like in 2027, without any extensions.  I don't claim to be an expert on this so if I made a mistake regarding years, or if you think my projection is faulty, by all means say so.  But these are the numbers as I've calculated them; I chose middle projections, so the individual projections could be higher or lower. Position Players Rutschman (Arb 3) 17 million Holliday (Arb 1) 5 million Henderson (Arb 2) 13 million Westburg (Arb 2) 8 million Cowswer (Arb 2) 8 million Kjerstad (Arb 1) 5 million O'Neill (FA contracts) 16.5 million Pitchers Bradish  (Arb 3) 8 million Rodriguez (Arb 2) 7 million Bautista (Arb 3) 12 million That's 100 million dollars for 10 players.  Now, I think you can project some guys to be on that team that won't be in arb yet.  That's Basallo, Mayo (though he might be), and  Bradfield.  On the pitching side, Povich and there are some others, like Cano and McDermmott, for instance, but I didn't project them out b/c pitching is so volatile and I'm not sure they're core pieces. Conclusions: So they have 100  million dollars laid out here.  The positional side looks solid still, though they need to be figuring out what they're going to do on the other side of this first group of prospects- Rutschman, Henderson, Westburg, Cowser.  They're going to have to trade them, which is a lot of talent going out the door, or extend them, which will increase their salaries significantly, and that's with another wave of guys, Basallo, Mayo and EBJ set to enter arbitration themselves. The pitching side is pretty thin.  Now, again, I haven't projected out some guys presently in the org who could reasonably be on that staff, but at best it is probably 2-3 guys in AAA or above. Now, this might bolster people's arguments to sign Burnes; I'm not sure it does but I could see that.  It might bolster people's arguments they need to start focusing on pitching in the draft; likewise, I'm not sure it does but I could see that too. People are going to argue about what payroll should look like- 150 vs 200 million.  That's par for the course. But what I think this should demonstrate is if they sign a Burnes, or take on Castillo, that's pretty much it.  They aren't the Yankees and they don't have room for two of those contracts- not if they want to remain competitive after 2027.  And if that contract doesn't work out, they're in serious trouble.  They just can't spend their way out of trouble. Now some people seem fine with focusing on 2025-2027, and that's the window.  I firmly believe Elias has a longer window than that, and I'm ok with that, but that is something else someone might want to argue. We all acknowledge payroll is going to go up, but I thought we should see what it actually looks like and put a number to it.  
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