2009... Adding Two Monster FA's

[Stotle]

OK, then... Tag Team! ;-)

What about giving up a 2nd and 3rd round draft pick to get both Tex and Dunn is a bad idea?

Now, I know lots of folks here like trades, so let's pretend it's a trade and maybe you'll like it better ;-)

Let's pretend some other team has both Tex and Dunn, and that it's legal to trade draft picks.

The team that has both of them tells AM that he can have *both* Tex and Dunn in return for a 2nd-round pick and a 3rd-round pick.

You guys would say "Nope, no way, forget it"?

Do I have that right?

I believe the idea of losing picks for the likes of Teix/Dunn should not even enter into the equation. Now, losing picks again for bullpen help...

[Greg Pappas]

OK, then... Tag Team! ;-)

What about giving up a 2nd and 3rd round draft pick to get both Tex and Dunn is a bad idea?

Now, I know lots of folks here like trades, so let's pretend it's a trade and maybe you'll like it better ;-)

Let's pretend some other team has both Tex and Dunn, and that it's legal to trade draft picks.

The team that has both of them tells AM that he can have *both* Tex and Dunn in return for a 2nd-round pick and a 3rd-round pick.

You guys would say "Nope, no way, forget it"?

Do I have that right?

It's not that signing Tex and Dunn is a sign of forsaking a rebuild, it's not trading Huff, Sherrill and BRob on top of that.

On an island I agree that getting those two for draft picks (could just as likely be a 1st and 2nd) is great, it makes sense...

[RShack]

I've always felt that this sentiment was completely overblown. How many people do you think will go to the park to see Tex play, who otherwise wouldn't have gone?

I see your point. IMO, not many at first.

However, if he came here, the media would make a big deal about how he grew up in MD ("just like Cal"), and the buzz about that would become a big deal before long. He'd be plastered all over TV, and his wholesome All-American suburban appearance would help in some quarters. Next thing you know, people who never heard of him before would start acting like they were following his career all along. So, IMO, it's not so much what the story is now, it's what it would turn into.

[Mad Mark]

Contrary to what late night "real estate gurus" will tell you, You have to spend money to make money. If you don't put out a good product then your revenues will suffer. Buying FA is an investment in future revenues. We were once at the top and now we have MASN revenues from TWO teams. They can be at the top again. Money is not the issue here.

And the award for the single most wrongheaded post in OH history goes to...bird watcher!

Money is not the issue here? Are you effin' kidding me? Money is the only issue here, and because of MLB's absurd Rube Goldberg-designed revenue distribution system, it always will be. The Yankee$ are about to a) shed considerable amounts of underperforming payroll, and b) open the biggest printing press in the history of sports. Even they won't know what to do with all the revenue New Yankee $tadium is going to produce...they will, however, know how to laugh at the rest of the league as their revenue sharing payments actually go down because of NY$! The first $300MM payroll in baseball history is right around the corner, and Hamfisted Hank is damned and determined to reestablish the Yankee$ hegemony over the sport. Scrappy and pissed off is how every team except the Red $ox are going to have to play from here on out, because the Yankee$ Ca$h Machine is about to do to MLB what the Germans did to Poland.

[Sports Guy]

I've always felt that this sentiment was completely overblown. How many people do you think will go to the park to see Tex play, who otherwise wouldn't have gone?

Seeing as you live in NJ and probably don't understand the Baltimore connection, you really have no idea about this.

I would be willing to bet you see a big increase in season ticket sales if Tex is signed.

[notfast]

I would be willing to bet you see a big increase in season ticket sales if Tex is signed.

Especially when the advertising campaign starts....

[geschinger]

Seeing as you live in NJ and probably don't understand the Baltimore connection, you really have no idea about this.

I would be willing to bet you see a big increase in season ticket sales if Tex is signed.

I could see a decent increase in season ticket sales if the team does something exciting in the offseason... But that will be shortlived. It all boils down to whether or not the team wins. If signing Tex requires doleing out a bad contract that makes putting a winning team on the field more difficult than it otherwise would be and short term gains will be erased quickly. My contention is that giving out a bad contract is a net negative and him being from Baltimore isn't going to change that equation.

[DrungoHazewood]

Seeing as you live in NJ and probably don't understand the Baltimore connection, you really have no idea about this.

I would be willing to bet you see a big increase in season ticket sales if Tex is signed.

We'll see, if he signs. But this kind of thing is almost always overblown. People used to write that Nolan Ryan would increase attendance by thousands every game he pitched, especially at home in Texas. Then somebody studied the issue and pegged the number at a few hundred.

I'm very skeptical of any Tex attendance increase in a vacuum. Maybe if it's accompanied by a winning team, but in that case the attendance would increase if the first baseman had been born in Ghana.

[Sports Guy]

We'll see, if he signs. But this kind of thing is almost always overblown. People used to write that Nolan Ryan would increase attendance by thousands every game he pitched, especially at home in Texas. Then somebody studied the issue and pegged the number at a few hundred.

I'm very skeptical of any Tex attendance increase in a vacuum. Maybe if it's accompanied by a winning team, but in that case the attendance would increase if the first baseman had been born in Ghana.

Let me say this....I don't believe that people come out to see 1 player, for the most part...There are exceptions but they want to see a winning team.

That being said, Tex is a god around here and signing him represents something larger than just bringing home the local kid...It shows a committment that fans haven't seen in a while.

After the Orioles signed Miggy and Lopez, they saw attendance jump up 300,000 the next year...It is the committment and the star power that makes people buy the tickets...Now, add to that the fact that the star would be a "local hero" and it just enhances the whole idea.

Ultimately, the team has to win to keep that attendance up but I have no doubt they will get a huge spike in season ticket sales if we sign Tex. It is up to the Orioles to not lose those new season ticket holders.

They will also be less likely to lose season ticket holders as well.

[YankThis!]

Hehe, I can only imagine the venomous posts at this site when Tex puts on pinstripes this fall. Signing him is an absolute pipe dream.

[ChaosLex]

With the numbers he's putting up, I wonder what kinda contract Giambi's going to get in the offseason...?

[RShack]

We can't sign Tex and Dunn, keep Roberts, Sherrill, Huff et al AND rebuild.

You cannot do both.

I don't see why not.

So, why not? Why can't you?

Not sure who the "et all" part is. Tex and Dunn would likely cost us a 2nd-round and 3rd-round pick.

That's not the end of the world. Most 2nd and 3rd round picks don't amount to much anyway.

That doesn't stop them from getting young kids by various means.

You can sign all the Latino's you want.

You can pick up other kids in every round except the 2nd and 3rd.

You can be smart about Rule V.

You can trade this-kid for that-kid.

You can still get kids. It comes down to picking the right ones and developing them properly.

So, all in all, I don't see why not.

What about giving up a 2nd and 3rd round draft pick to get both Tex and Dunn is a bad idea?

Now, I know lots of folks here like trades, so let's pretend it's a trade and maybe you'll like it better ;-)

Let's pretend some other team has both Tex and Dunn, and that it's legal to trade draft picks.

The team that has both of them tells AM that he can have *both* Tex and Dunn in return for a 2nd-round pick and a 3rd-round pick.

You guys would say "Nope, no way, forget it"?

Do I have that right?

It's not that signing Tex and Dunn is a sign of forsaking a rebuild, it's not trading Huff, Sherrill and BRob on top of that.

I think what's going on here is an example of "baseball ideology", by which I mean that you're getting locked into a simple prefab answer and forgetting what that simple prefab answer is supposed to be *for*. In other words, IMO, you're so locked-in on one prefab answer that you've lost sight of what the actual goal is.

The whole purpose of rebuilding is to make the franchise good in a way that it's not just flash-in-the-pan good. We want it to be good and stay good. Can we agree about that? If we can, then I think you're rejecting Tony's wishful-thinking idea, not because it conflicts with that goal, but rather because it conflicts with the standard prefab answer that gets echo-chambered around here about how to achieve that goal. The prefab answer says to rely on trades for kids and signing kids, and to focus on the future at the expense of the near term by trading anybody who's older than 27.

In actual reality, there are 3 basic tools available to the FO: signing young kids, signing FA's, and making trades. Of those 3, the one that gets oversold around here is making trades. If you don't think so, then all you need to do is demonstrate that the way teams get-good-and-stay-good is by making trades their primary tool. Face it, you can't do it, because baseball doesn't work like that. Just because people like to dream up trade ideas on a message board, that doesn't mean trades are the main part of rebuilding. Trades are actually a fairly small part of rebuilding. The main part of rebuilding is to grow your own good players. That's the main thing. Compared to that, both trades and FA's are small potatoes in the long run.

So, if we can agree that the main thing is growing your own players, and that the main value of trades and FA's is to augment that, or jump start that, then it is goofy to say that having the lineup that Tony mentioned is somehow "abandoning rebuilding" unless it meant either raping the farm system or preventing AM from building a farm system that grows good players. Now, I think we can all agree that AM has said that you grow your own pitching, and that future-pitching is the organizational strength. I think we can also agree that, no matter what might happen about anything else, whether the future-pitching comes through is gonna play a huge role in how things turn out. So, the main thing that we're disagreeing about is how to fix the non-pitching, how the franchise should fix the supply of everyday players.

Tony's wishful-thinking idea fixes the supply of everyday players sooner rather than later. If you look at it, it fixes everything about the lineup except for SS, and it fixes it for a few years. Exactly zero teams are strong everywhere. Zero teams don't have a weakness somewhere. So, while Tony's idea still leaves AM with an issue to address at SS, that doesn't change the fact that Tony's idea would make the lineup a scary thing that we could put up against anybody's.

Which means the only reason for not liking Tony's wishful-thinking idea would be that it somehow rapes the farm system or prevents AM from making the farm system better. Does Tony's idea do that? Here's my answer: "No, it does not." Here's what it does and doesn't do:

• It gets us Tex and Dunn for the farm-system-cost of 2 unknown draft picks, most likely one 2nd-round and one 3rd-round. We give up nobody who we already have. And, as FA future-farm-system-costs go, they're cheap: Tex and Dunn would typically cost one 1st-rounder apiece.
• It does not affect any of the other 50 draft picks for that year, and it does not effect draft picks in any future years (except for the normal cost of being a good team, which is you don't draft as high... but being good is the whole goal anyway, so that's not a good argument).
• By keeping BRob at 2B, Huff at 3B, and Sherrill in the BP, it costs us whatever "prospects" we could get for them. So, it does have some costs when it comes to trading proven talent for iffy prospects. But that's not the same thing as somehow raping the farm system. All it does is put us in the situation that any good franchise is in, which is you have to grow your own players.
• The only reason to say that Tony's wishful-thinking idea is bad is if you somehow believe that the unproven and unknown "prospects" we would get from a 2nd-round pick, a 3rd-round pick, and trading BRob, Huff, and Sherrill would somehow be more likely to produce a solid team than we could get by having a team that has proven or high-upside guys everywhere but SS: Wieters, Tex, BRob, Huff, Luke, AJ, Nick, and Dunn.

So, if you think Tony's wishful thinking idea is somehow a bad one, then here's what you're betting on: that a handful of unproven prospects are *more likely* to produce than are Tex, Dunn, BRob, Huff, and Sherrill. IMO, that's a crazy bet to make. AFAIK, the only reason anybody would make that bet is if either:

• They don't realize how *low* the probability is of unproven prospects turning into Actual Star Ballplayers, or
• They are in love with a prefab answer about rebuilding and have somehow forgotten what the entire purpose of rebuilding is really about.

Now, if I'm wrong about this, I would love for somebody to explain how it's wrong.

ps: I don't think Tony's wishful-thinking idea is likely to happen. This is about the merits of it, not about the likelihood of it.

[VeveJones007]

I agree with what you're saying, but you're not factoring in one important thing into your analysis. You ignore the possibility of dealing the prospects gained from the 2nd and 3rd round picks for MLB ready players down the road. Draft picks don't just have value if they reach the majors.

[Greg Pappas]

I think what's going on here is an example of "baseball ideology", by which I mean that you're getting locked into a simple prefab answer and forgetting what that simple prefab answer is supposed to be *for*. In other words, IMO, you're so locked-in on one prefab answer that you've lost sight of what the actual goal is.

The whole purpose of rebuilding is to make the franchise good in a way that it's not just flash-in-the-pan good. We want it to be good and stay good. Can we agree about that? If we can, then I think you're rejecting Tony's wishful-thinking idea, not because it conflicts with that goal, but rather because it conflicts with the standard prefab answer that gets echo-chambered around here about how to achieve that goal. The prefab answer says to rely on trades for kids and signing kids, and to focus on the future at the expense of the near term by trading anybody who's older than 27.

In actual reality, there are 3 basic tools available to the FO: signing young kids, signing FA's, and making trades. Of those 3, the one that gets oversold around here is making trades. If you don't think so, then all you need to do is demonstrate that the way teams get-good-and-stay-good is by making trades their primary tool. Face it, you can't do it, because baseball doesn't work like that. Just because people like to dream up trade ideas on a message board, that doesn't mean trades are the main part of rebuilding. Trades are actually a fairly small part of rebuilding. The main part of rebuilding is to grow your own good players. That's the main thing. Compared to that, both trades and FA's are small potatoes in the long run.

So, if we can agree that the main thing is growing your own players, and that the main value of trades and FA's is to augment that, or jump start that, then it is goofy to say that having the lineup that Tony mentioned is somehow "abandoning rebuilding" unless it meant either raping the farm system or preventing AM from building a farm system that grows good players. Now, I think we can all agree that AM has said that you grow your own pitching, and that future-pitching is the organizational strength. I think we can also agree that, no matter what might happen about anything else, whether the future-pitching comes through is gonna play a huge role in how things turn out. So, the main thing that we're disagreeing about is how to fix the non-pitching, how the franchise should fix the supply of everyday players.

Tony's wishful-thinking idea fixes the supply of everyday players sooner rather than later. If you look at it, it fixes everything about the lineup except for SS, and it fixes it for a few years. Exactly zero teams are strong everywhere. Zero teams don't have a weakness somewhere. So, while Tony's idea still leaves AM with an issue to address at SS, that doesn't change the fact that Tony's idea would make the lineup a scary thing that we could put up against anybody's.

Which means the only reason for not liking Tony's wishful-thinking idea would be that it somehow rapes the farm system or prevents AM from making the farm system better. Does Tony's idea do that? Here's my answer: "No, it does not." Here's what it does and doesn't do:

• It gets us Tex and Dunn for the farm-system-cost of 2 unknown draft picks, most likely one 2nd-round and one 3rd-round. We give up nobody who we already have. And, as FA future-farm-system-costs go, they're cheap: Tex and Dunn would typically cost one 1st-rounder apiece.
• It does not affect any of the other 50 draft picks for that year, and it does not effect draft picks in any future years (except for the normal cost of being a good team, which is you don't draft as high... but being good is the whole goal anyway, so that's not a good argument).
• By keeping BRob at 2B, Huff at 3B, and Sherrill in the BP, it costs us whatever "prospects" we could get for them. So, it does have some costs when it comes to trading proven talent for iffy prospects. But that's not the same thing as somehow raping the farm system. All it does is put us in the situation that any good franchise is in, which is you have to grow your own players.
• The only reason to say that Tony's wishful-thinking idea is bad is if you somehow believe that the unproven and unknown "prospects" we would get from a 2nd-round pick, a 3rd-round pick, and trading BRob, Huff, and Sherrill would somehow be more likely to produce a solid team than we could get by having a team that has proven or high-upside guys everywhere but SS: Wieters, Tex, BRob, Huff, Luke, AJ, Nick, and Dunn.

So, if you think Tony's wishful thinking idea is somehow a bad one, then here's what you're betting on: that a handful of unproven prospects are *more likely* to produce than are Tex, Dunn, BRob, Huff, and Sherrill. IMO, that's a crazy bet to make. AFAIK, the only reason anybody would make that bet is if either:

• They don't realize how *low* the probability is of unproven prospects turning into Actual Star Ballplayers, or
• They are in love with a prefab answer about rebuilding and have somehow forgotten what the entire purpose of rebuilding is really about.

Now, if I'm wrong about this, I would love for somebody to explain how it's wrong.

ps: I don't think Tony's wishful-thinking idea is likely to happen. This is about the merits of it, not about the likelihood of it.

Whether you are doing it intentionally or not, this post (and many others) comes across as condescending. You make it seem as if I am an ignorant sheep who can only visualize the concept of "simple" concepts... and "prefab" ideas. It is difficult to discuss things with you when you talk down to people.

I feel as if I'm a fairly intelligent man with a clear understanding of what rebuilding is. Our concepts of what that means is different. We cannot debate something when we each have a stated definition of what that is... and again... they're different from each other. Therefore we cannot be proved 'wrong'.

I didn't say that Tony's idea was bad, as a matter of fact it was me who started this thread in an attempt to understand the merits of signing two major free agents.

SG and I feel that the idea of keeping our vet guys and signing big money free agents is a change in the plan that AM began with. Hence my questioning it. Whether or not it's a bad idea or not... I am still undecided.

It's not my intent to insult you, but rather point out that the way you write sometimes comes off as snobbish. I truly do appreciate your post, and apologize if I seem too defensive.

[Tony-OH]

True, we need bats... no doubt about that, getting Dunn and Tex would do wonders for the team, but I guess what I was getting at is if you are keeping Huff, Sherrill & Roberts and adding Tex and Dunn to the lineup then the term 'rebuilding' is different than what I always interpreted it to be.

How would we continue the rebuilding process when we refuse to deal away our quality veterans?

We agree that Dunn and Tex would do wonders for the team, but I think our definitions of rebuilding are different.

Maybe not our definitions, but our time tables are different. I think if we acquire Dunn and Tex and add a decent shortstop, we can compete by 2010 and be competitive in 2009. I think we have enough pitching to be able to do that.

Now whether we can do this financially??? That's what Andy MacPhail will need to figure out.

Even if we lose our first few picks for Dunn and Tex in 2009, we're stocked with pitching right now and should be able to use some of that to land us a 3B and SS for 2009/2010. Remember, we can always get some overslot guys later to make up for losing those picks like we did with Arrieta.

I don't think this has to be a five year process. If we had better hitters in the system then maybe, but the system is barren besides Wieters and maybe Reimold right now.

Now, maybe Dunn isn't the right fit and maybe we can get a younger outfielder we can build around. I'm not against going in that direction, but after watching this club this year, I really think we add a few impact bats and our young pitching comes through, we've got something that could compete by 2010 and by 2011 at the latest.