Why you are feeling so down about the Orioles

[Spy Fox]

The team looks pretty bad. The very difficult schedule is the only thing giving me much optimism. The teams we've faced so far have a combined record of 46-23. Many of those wins were against us, but they're still 35-18 against the rest of the league. Every team we've faced so far has been playing well. This is as tough a two-week schedule as you'll get all year.

Of course eventually they will have to beat good teams in order to be a good team. From now until May 27 I only count three out of 12 series against probable contenders (CLE, LAA, BOS). If the team doesn't get their feet under them and climb back to a respectable record by that point, they're probably toast. 

[Can_of_corn]

1 minute ago, Spy Fox said:

The team looks pretty bad. The very difficult schedule is the only thing giving me much optimism. The teams we've faced so far have a combined record of 46-23. Many of those wins were against us, but they're still 35-18 against the rest of the league. Every team we've faced so far has been playing well. This is as tough a two-week schedule as you'll get all year.

Of course eventually they will have to beat good teams in order to be a good team. From now until May 27 I only count three out of 12 series against probable contenders (CLE, LAA, BOS). If the team doesn't get their feet under them and climb back to a respectable record by that point, they're probably toast. 

You can look good while losing.

[Going Underground]

8 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

You can look good while losing.

Panic in Detroit? They will be playing a team that had not played since Friday 

[Ripken]

Once Cobb settles in and Tillman gets that devastating 60day hangnail injury, I will actually like the pitching staff, including those coming up at a later point.

They gotta do something with that offense though.  It is brutal.

[tntoriole]

2 hours ago, Tony-OH said:

Let me ask you a question and please give me an honest answer.

Imagine being a major league GM, but in an organization where the manager, friend of the owner, owner, and his two sons all had part of the major decisions on personnel. Imagine not getting true budget to work with but have to make deals then take it to ownership and that decision crew for final decisions. 

Now despite this you take a team that hadn't even had a winning season in 14 years and in two years you have them in the AL Championship series.

Now imagine another team comes in and says, "We'll give you a raise, a longer guaranteed contract, and full autonomy to make the decisions within a known budget."

Are you telling me you wouldn't be interested? I don't see how Duquette is to blame here. The Orioles gave him a chance to get back into baseball and he worked his tail off under tough circumstances to make them successful, so why wouldn't he listen to an opportunity where he can make money and have more control? Who wouldn't?

I don't think Duquette is perfect as GM, but when he had pretty much full autonomy to make personnel moves the Orioles were pretty good. Once he was limited and others had more influence, the organization has taken a downturn.

I'll be honest, I know some people in the organization and there was once a time that some were pulling for me to get a position in the organization. I'm fairly certain Duquette was the guy who thought it wasn't a good idea because of my background with the Hangout (supposedly but who knows why really). I've reached out to Dan before and gotten no response. As far I'm concerned, the guy doesn't like me or doesn't think I'm worth even responding to.

So I literally have nothing to gain from supporting him in this situation. In fact, one of my pet peeves is people who don't even have the professionalism to respond back to me. I should be anti-Duquette if I was looking at this personally.

I'm not though. I've never made any evaluations of front office, managers, or players based off my personal opinions of them or how they treated me. I mean, I absolutely loved Dave Trembley as a person and baseball man, but I realized he probably wasn't a great fit as the Orioles manager. 

At the end of the day, there's a lot of smoke that Duquette lost a lot of influence over his consideration of the Blue Jays offer during the 2014 offseason. Duquette may not be perfect, but I believe when he was given full autonomy (or at least as full as anyone under Angelos) to make personnel moves the organization was much better.

Again, I can’t disagree with most of what you accurately describe here.  In answer to your question...certainly, I would have been interested if I was Dan.  

But if I am interested in another woman, does that mean I leave my less than happy marriage and just run off?  And if I do run off, do I expect the person left behind to be happy about it for me?  And if I have a dalliance but then, for whatever reason, come back to the relationship, do I honestly think it is not going to seriously affect my relationship going forward with that person.

Dan Duquette has benefitted just as much, if not more, from getting this job as the organization has received in return.  He is now back in baseball and has done some very good things in difficult and trying circumstances.  Otherwise, except for Peter Angelos,  he would still be in a baseball academy in New England. 

My point was simply that Dan knew what he was getting into here, it is certainly no secret at all about the Angelos dysfunctionality.  And Dan certainly had to know that if he went into a dalliance with an AL East club that Peter Angelos would not just say “Great, God bless you!  “  Anybody on this board even could have predicted how the pitbull lawyer would react...he would make it personal and bitter.   Dan made a calculated gamble that he could get the Toronto job.  He lost that gamble.  What would have been best for the organization at that point would have been to bring in a new GM (only because we can’t get a new owner)..Angelos should have fired Dan, but didn’t.    Probably because he wanted to punish him and otherwise make his life miserable for the rest of his deal (lol, that is just irresponsible speculation on my part.)

So this divorce in effect without a divorce in reality then led to zero improvement of the 2014 club which was when this group was at its peak window.   I think if Dan had just realized that working for Angelos means loyalty is valued much, much more than competence, and Dan wanted to maximize his ongoing relationship with Angelos, then he might have gone directly to the old man as soon as approached by Toronto and said “Peter, these guys think they can get me to break my contract with you.  They cannot.”   

It is all water under the bridge now, and I am just a fan with no inside or any other knowledge about the true facts,  but, as a psychiatrist, I do know something about dysfunctional human relationships, personality clashes and organizational dynamics.   Dan lost influence in the organization primarily because he did not correctly assess the likely reactions of Peter Angelos to this dalliance.... or he knew, and just gambled anyway. 

And, just for the record, I was strongly advocating on this board for a 4years deal for Cruz at the time, 4 years for Nick at the time, and for going for broke with Miller and not trading Davies, and not releasing Miggy,   While I understand some here say, well  “I understand why Dan did not do those things at the time”, I would say, this is what gets GMs fired, namely does the GM make choices that turn out, on balance, good or bad, no matter if they “were understandable” at the time. 

Thanks for your great insights!  They are always very astute and very valuable to all of us on OH. 

 

[OsFanSinceThe80s]

41 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

I understand not trying to keep Miller.

I don't understand keeping O'Day over Miller.

I think Miller was set on signing with the Yankees and being their closer.

That being said I wanted the Orioles to at least make an offer for Miller.

 

[now]

On 4/14/2018 at 1:22 AM, Frobby said:

Davis, who cost more than Cruz, Markakis and Miller combined.

Kinda sums it up 

[now]

6 minutes ago, OsFanSinceThe80s said:

I think Miller was set on signing with the Yankees and being their closer.

That being said I wanted the Orioles to at least make an offer for Miller.

 

Just curious, did we  even get a draft pick for Miller leaving?

[Ripken]

3 minutes ago, now said:

Just curious, did we  even get a draft pick for Miller leaving?

No.

[Frobby]

55 minutes ago, Tony-OH said:

Cruz and Miller should have been resigned but especially Cruz based on no only what he provided on the field but in the lockeroom. I have no qualms with him not resigning Markakis, but I don't think his focus was where it should have been or Travis Snider would not have been his replacement.

I've heard things about how tumultuous things were after the Toronto situation. I don't know exactly what moves were affected, but you can look at the lack of activity (besides losing three players) that shows something was not right for a team coming off a great season. 

To be clear, my main point is just that losing those three players had nothing to do with Toronto.   In fact, I went back to look and all three of those guys signed with other teams before the first report that the Blue Jays were interested in Duquette.    Now that doesn’t mean that things weren’t going on before that first report, but I just don’t think those things are properly linked.   To me, the O’s were on a tight budget and decided that (1) they didn’t want to give a fourth year to Cruz or Markakis, and (2) Miller was a luxury for them with Britton, O’Day and Brach already in the pen and their limited funds were best spent elsewhere.    

Now, I think it’s entirely possible that Duquette immediately began losing influence after the Toronto rumors surfaced — as he should have, probably.   But I’ve always felt the team’s efforts to compile a credible outfield that year looked worse in hindsight than they did at the time:

- Young had a .779 OPS in 2014 but only .628 in 2015.

- De Aza was a career .733 hitter who had hit .877 for the O’s when he was acquired in 2014.   He hit .678 OPS for the O’s in 2015, then .809 OPS the rest of the year after we traded him in early June.

- Pearce was a career .768 OPS hitter through the 2014 season, and had a career year in 2014.   He hit .711 OPS in 2015.

- Snider was a career .709 OPS hitter who had a .776 OPS in 2014 and finished that year extremely strong.  He had a .659 OPS in 2015.    

- Lough went from .694 OPS in 2014 to .555 in 2015.

In short, it wasn’t a surprise that any one of these guys had a down year, but for all five to fail simultaneously was pretty terrible luck.   Obviously none of them were as good as Markakis or Cruz, but it would have been perfectly reasonable to expect a .725-.750 OPS from this group rather than the .670ish performance we got.   

[eddie83]

1 hour ago, Tony-OH said:

Cruz and Miller should have been resigned but especially Cruz based on no only what he provided on the field but in the lockeroom. I have no qualms with him not resigning Markakis, but I don't think his focus was where it should have been or Travis Snider would not have been his replacement.

I've heard things about how tumultuous things were after the Toronto situation. I don't know exactly what moves were affected, but you can look at the lack of activity (besides losing three players) that shows something was not right for a team coming off a great season. 

I heard Angelos was willing to go 3 years and not 4 for Cruz. 

No matter what this whole Toronto situation baffles me. Either let him walk or let him do his job. It floors me that this is how Peter handled it and also makes me wonder how many voices were kissing up to him afterwards to try to take advantage of it. 

[25 Nuggets]

To answer the OP, it's very simple to me: I'm down on the Orioles because they can't hit their way out of a paper bag right now.

[Can_of_corn]

1 minute ago, birdwatcher55 said:

This club is 11-30 since last September with much of the same personnel. What does that tell you? It tells we're not good and things are not going to get better under this lame duck regime. So the most logical thing to do is get the right management team in place now and start bringing some clarity to 2019 and beyond.

I don't think it is easy to shop for quality front office personnel in April.

[TouchemAll]

On 4/13/2018 at 10:55 PM, Tony-OH said:

Buck picks his players. Buck said Tillman was better than last year and was part of the reason he was signed to a major league contract and given a spot in the rotation. He keeps pitching Chris Tillman.

He let Cortes make the team, (doesn't have an out pitch) and then put him in impossible situations. Buck has a lot of power on who ends up on his ball club. He helped put this club together including these horrid pitching staffs. He doesn't get a pass.

He asked for Davis to be resigned, appealed to the owner, and got him and now he keeps batting him in the middle of the order. He wanted Trumbo resigned.

How about his hitting and pitching coaches? Same crappy approaches at the plate from most hitters not named Mancini (Machado just has so much talent). Most of the pitchers have lost velocity this year and who is the last pitcher that looks like they have significantly improved?

Buck does a lot of things well. He's a very good in game manager (though his Ubaldo/Britton fiasco is one of the worse managerial moves in Orioles history) and he's class guy. 

Saying that, his fingers are all over the current situation. He doesn't get a pass like he's some 1940s manager who just gets players and has to just use them. He's part, a significant part of some very negative parts of the organization's situation. 

 

 

 

Sadly this is all WAY to true.

[atomic]

1 hour ago, Can_of_corn said:

I don't think it is easy to shop for quality front office personnel in April.

I am sure there are plenty of managers available.