Concerned that Buck and Dan are not that good anymore

[thezeroes]

I advocate hiring John Hart on a two and half year deal as GM that started June 15, 2018 and ended with the completion of the World Series in 2020.  Give him complete control of the entire Organization.  Let him clear out the driftwood and replace those that do not fit into the plan to compete in 2021.  I would allow him to groom the next GM, Manager and coaching staffs.

 

[maybenxtyr]

20 minutes ago, thezeroes said:

I advocate hiring John Hart on a two and half year deal as GM that started June 15, 2018 and ended with the completion of the World Series in 2020.  Give him complete control of the entire Organization.  Let him clear out the driftwood and replace those that do not fit into the plan to compete in 2021.  I would allow him to groom the next GM, Manager and coaching staffs.

 

I think Hart is pretty much banned from baseball.

[Tx Oriole]

4 hours ago, pastorfan said:

I'm only concerned from the stand point that I have no faith in them making the right moves for the future. Honestly, if they just went with defense by benching Davis, putting Mancini at 1B, Trumbo at DH, cut Pedro, and put two good defenders in the corner OF they would win a lot more. The defense and improved morale would be a boost.  

The environment is so bad that just about everyone is "underachieving." 

They won't be here for the future. Trades come down to Angelos. I would hope that the new GM and Manager would make the trades for next year and beyond. But Angelos will interfere as usual I'm afraid. 

[thezeroes]

23 minutes ago, maybenxtyr said:

I think Hart is pretty much banned from baseball.

I do not think that the sanctions applied to him.  https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2017/11/braves-john-hart-resigns.html

[maybenxtyr]

8 minutes ago, thezeroes said:

I do not think that the sanctions applied to him.  https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2017/11/braves-john-hart-resigns.html

Oh...ok. I wasn't sure.

[jabba72]

They didnt rebuild when the window told them they should. In Bucks defense, it would have made all the vets on the team miserable if they did rebuild, which im sure Buck took into consideration. It is a vet heavy team.  

[Tx Oriole]

3 hours ago, birdwatcher55 said:

I think the only big decision Peter will make is Machado and I'm firmly in the he won't be traded camp. Brady and John will be making the other calls. Despite what Cafardo writes, Duquette, in my opinion, is more or less a glorified coffee boy.

I agree with you.

[spiritof66]

 

6 hours ago, birdwatcher55 said:

I think the only big decision Peter will make is Machado and I'm firmly in the he won't be traded camp. Brady and John will be making the other calls. Despite what Cafardo writes, Duquette, in my opinion, is more or less a glorified coffee boy.

I would put Britton (if he comes back strong) and Adam in the Peter Angelos category. Of the three, I'm guessing only Britton gets traded.

[sportsfan8703]

The players are just not that good anymore. Look at 2016 and look at the roster today. Lots of familiar faces that just completely fell off this year. No excuse. 

[TouchemAll]

On 5/31/2018 at 10:53 AM, Pat Kelly said:

Here’s the thing.  There is no defending the decisions and rationale behind the composition of the 25 man unless the real plan is to tank.   You cannnot talk about how important defense is and attempt to build stronger pitching with an OF with no range or speed,  an infield where he left side positions are WIP - even with a healthy Beckham,  and a right side that features two players with limited range.  This is coupled with a bench that is platoon based, hit first, horrific defensively except for a journeyman 34-year old who is your fastest player but hits like a AAAA middle infielder.   The lineup has one great bat,  a bunch of declining players, 2 trying to find their way after early season injuries (Schoop and Mancini) and a WIP catching tandem that has barely hit all year.  

Do Buck and Dan believe this team is a good product and worth the payroll,  worth watching on TV or going to see?  

We love this team, and we are all fans but everyone wants something to get behind and cheer for...it is almost impossible to be a fan of this team, its leadership and whatever approach seems to be in place now - Buck what exactly are you seeing that is enjoyable?   Dan are you proud of this team?  What exactly would you like to say to the fans?  

In my 40 years of Os fandom I have never seen a more unwatchable, unlikeable, aimless confusing team.  

 

Well if they thought it was a good 25 man roster on April 1st.

Only and idiot would think so now...

I don't consider either them them REAL IDIOTS. Soo remember we also have the Angelos and Brady cards to deal with...

[Tony-OH]

22 hours ago, Enjoy Terror said:

I don't blame Buck. For everything I've seen he's an incredibly intelligent baseball man and has, for his entire Orioles career, made good decisions and won over the fans as a quality manager. People who remember recent history with Mazilli, Trembley, Perlozzo, & Samuel understand how great Buck is at managing a roster. Has he made some decisions that have kicked back on him? Absolutely yes. It would be difficult to find a manager who has not made some incredible mistakes. Buck Showalter is extremely important to this franchise and his replacement would not be half the manager he is. Even if Showalter was clearly done in Baltimore, I challenge his detractors to identify a better candidate for his position. 

Dan Duquette, if you recall, was out of baseball for a long time before coming here. I have difficulty remembering any point in his tenure here where I thought he made an incredibly savvy trade, signed the right person, said the right thing, etc. He's always just been "the GM" and simply "better than Flanaquette". MacPhail is the person that should get the credit for the majority of the current roster construction when it was at it's most successful. With Dan Duquette, all I've seen is poor timing, poor signings, poor trades, and this ridiculous front office power struggle and upheaval (Toronto; Brady Anderson). The most frustrating thing is Dan's unwillingness to fold his cards when the writing is on the wall; too many obviously flawed Orioles teams going for the gold when they're hovering at .500. Too many opportunities missed to cash in old veterans for young chips, and too many players signed to bad contracts that don't pan out. I am so tired of Dan Duquette; and whether his hands are bound by the owner or not, someone's head needs to roll for his entire tenure here. The Orioles had five or six great seasons in spite of Dan Duquette, I firmly believe that.

 

Hey, maybe you and Lookitspuck should create a Duquette haters club. I mean, you guys clearly don't understand/accept everything that has been written about the dynamics while he's been here, and have made up your minds that Duquette is at fault for everything.

Never mind that Duquette acquired 3/5 of the rotation in his first year or that up until he was stripped of most of his influence the team was a contender, and for the first time since 1997 was an actual World Series contender in 2014. Nope, let's not look at that. Let's not look at the fact that it was Duquette who enabled the policies to sign Chen, find Rodrigo Lopez, sign -rod and Schoop. 

Nope, nope, nope, he's just a bumbling fool who ruined MacPhail's team, you know the same MacPhail's teams that never had a winning record here in Baltimore. MacPhail certainly help build the core, but acting like Duquette had nothing to do with the success of this team during it's run is ridiculous.

 

[LookitsPuck]

4 hours ago, Tony-OH said:

Hey, maybe you and Lookitspuck should create a Duquette haters club. I mean, you guys clearly don't understand/accept everything that has been written about the dynamics while he's been here, and have made up your minds that Duquette is at fault for everything.

Never mind that Duquette acquired 3/5 of the rotation in his first year or that up until he was stripped of most of his influence the team was a contender, and for the first time since 1997 was an actual World Series contender in 2014. Nope, let's not look at that. Let's not look at the fact that it was Duquette who enabled the policies to sign Chen, find Rodrigo Lopez, sign -rod and Schoop. 

Nope, nope, nope, he's just a bumbling fool who ruined MacPhail's team, you know the same MacPhail's teams that never had a winning record here in Baltimore. MacPhail certainly help build the core, but acting like Duquette had nothing to do with the success of this team during it's run is ridiculous.

 

Oh, please.

I've never said Duquette had nothing to do with the success. I've largely said that aside from the first year or so, Duquette's trades and roster construction have been largely hit or miss....with mostly miss. He did a fantastic job in the first year of trading Guthrie and acquiring Chen/MGon and putting together a pretty competent/solid starting pitching staff. But how come the trades since that have been largely average at best...and terrible at worst?

My biggest ding on Duquette is he's been absolutely abysmal at organizational management. Aside from the major league club (which most smart people knew was going to eventually fall off due to poor impact talent in the minors especially from a SP standpoint)...Duquette has done some major damage to the farm system long term due to idiotic/poor acquisitions and trades.

I give MacPhail a lot of credit because he made a ton of shrewd trades that set the club up for respectability long term. Duquette's main strength (if you discount the 2012 campaign) has been depth signings mainly related to relief pitchers and 1 dimensional hitters. 

[Tony-OH]

11 minutes ago, LookitsPuck said:

Oh, please.

I've never said Duquette had nothing to do with the success. I've largely said that aside from the first year or so, Duquette's trades and roster construction have been largely hit or miss....with mostly miss. He did a fantastic job in the first year of trading Guthrie and acquiring Chen/MGon and putting together a pretty competent/solid starting pitching staff. But how come the trades since that have been largely average at best...and terrible at worst?

My biggest ding on Duquette is he's been absolutely abysmal at organizational management. Aside from the major league club (which most smart people knew was going to eventually fall off due to poor impact talent in the minors especially from a SP standpoint)...Duquette has done some major damage to the farm system long term due to idiotic/poor acquisitions and trades.

I give MacPhail a lot of credit because he made a ton of shrewd trades that set the club up for respectability long term. Duquette's main strength (if you discount the 2012 campaign) has been depth signings mainly related to relief pitchers and 1 dimensional hitters. 

They came into different situations. MacPhail came into a situation where the team needed to be rebuilt and had several marketable players (Bedard, Tejada, and Koji). He did a great job turning those players into some core players that went on a five year win streak. He deserves credit for that. But it was Duquette who took the core and found value players from multiple talent pools (Major league trades, minor league free agents, international markets) that ultimately made the team a winner. 

Everything was going great until that 2014-15 offseason when Toronto wanted Duquette to be their President. Once that whole situation happened, we got the rise of Buck and Brady in roster making and player acquisition decisions and we now have the worse team in baseball. Now don't get me wrong, we have ahealthy amount of owener interference again once that Duquette thing happened as well, so this doesn't all fall on Buck/Brady either.

I don't think Duquette is perfect and I do think he made some mistakes (whether he was pressured or felt pressure to make some of those moves can be debated), but other than trading away Zach Davies for what amounted to a replacement level player on a team going nowhere, every other move he's made made some sense. He had varied levels of success with his trades (more bad than good in my opinion), but I fail to see where he emptied the farm system. 

Now, signing guys like Gallardo and Ubaldo while losing draft picks certainly weree poor moves, but we also thought we were getting Fowler with Gallardo which would have made losing a lower pick for Gallardo more palatable (though it was poor scouting or lack or scouting that had Gallardo a target anyways).  

So yes, Duquette is not perfect, but he's not the reason this organization is dysfunctional or in the shape it's in. That falls solely on ownership. 

 

 

[LookitsPuck]

The reason the organization is dysfunctional certainly is ownership. That's usually the case.

I do agree that they're in different circumstances when they came on board. That said, we can still judge them based on acquisitions and trades. And Duquette just hasn't many things well (in terms of trades/acquisitions) since the 2012 season. I mean...look at guys like Ryan Webb and Brian Matusz for example. Ryan Webb was a Duquette acquisition. And after 1 season, he essentially flips him over to the Dodgers WITH A draft pick for a couple no names. And he did similarly with Matusz. And of course the idiocy of signings like Ubaldo and Gallardo. Certainly the Davies trade was non-sensical. Cutting guys like Parker Bridwell, Miguel Gonzalez when he had an option and going into the season with a potential disaster of a rotation in 2016 was also a head scratcher, etc. etc.

Yes, Duquette isn't perfect. Nor was MacPhail. But I've read your article a few times Tony, and it's certainly one take. But I don't want to give Duquette much benefit of the doubt. We're now talking about 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018 as under Duquette's rein. And it's next to impossible to figure out which trade or which acquisition or which personnel decision was Duquette's or Buck's or supposedly Brady. All I know is we need to put a good portion of the blame on Duquette. His tenure here is going to end up being 7 years long. And if we look at the starting pitching rotations over those years?

• 2012: 4.42 ERA
• 2013: 4.57 ERA
• 2014: 3.61 ERA
• 2015: 4.53 ERA
• 2016: 4.72 ERA
• 2017: 5.70 ERA
• 2018: 5.45 ERA

Those are all pretty poor or average *at best* aside from 2014. You'd think we have *some* impact arms coming up over a 7 year period (that was drafted by Duquette) into the rotation aside from Duquette's Gausman pick...where have been the others? David Hess the jury is still out on (although I like him), but we're still playing with free agent starters or acquisitions that have been anywhere from awful to merely average (aside from the guys picked up in 2012).