As we dismantle, the thing that worries me

[Mondo Trasho]

14 hours ago, VaBird1 said:

Those Pedro Martinez trades worked out ok.

In one of them, he traded Delino DeShields(!) for Pedro.

Talk about a winning trade...

[Horsepower]

The most scary thing for me as we have begun the rebuild is that we do not get rid of Davis.  Somehow someway he has to to be GONE after this season (if not sooner).  I mean literally NOT ON TH TEAM.  He may be a really good guy but we cannot have the young guys see and be a part of his poor performance.  Sadly he is like a negative cancer on the team.  He must go.

[MikeAD]

LMAO Duquette has been awesome given the restraints and all things consider. Master of trades and the whole front office has been applauded for the Britton haul, and pretty favorable on Manny.  Thank god he didnt leave for Toronto and I think a "tell all" would show that he was only trying to leave because he had little autonomy to compete in past years.  

[Frobby]

15 minutes ago, osfan83 said:

Great post.....I agree 100%. When you have a playoff team, try and win the World Series, even if you have to mortgage the future a bit. 

I understand this point of view, but in the case of the Orioles I don’t ageee with it.    I want a team that is competitive most years, not a team that stinks most of the time and has occasional windows where it goes for a ring.    

[Dipper9]

5 minutes ago, Frobby said:

I understand this point of view, but in the case of the Orioles I don’t ageee with it.    I want a team that is competitive most years, not a team that stinks most of the time and has occasional windows where it goes for a ring.    

There are fans who think like you Frobby, and then there are others who STILL 4 years later are bashing the Orioles for not signing Cruz and going for it hard after that 2014 season.  DD is in a damned if you do, damned if you don't job.  He needs to do what he feels is best for the team and not pay attention to our thoughts.  

[Thato'sfan]

5 minutes ago, Frobby said:

I understand this point of view, but in the case of the Orioles I don’t ageee with it.    I want a team that is competitive most years, not a team that stinks most of the time and has occasional windows where it goes for a ring.    

I'm optimistic about the future of the organization. Though they are a mid-market team, they have shown a willingness to spend. International spending, along with drastically improved system depth this year, would go a long way to achieve sustainable winning. If we get smart about extensions and create a great farm system, Baltimore could become a great organization. Lots of ifs and mights, but we seem to be drafting and developing better. We have a bevy of mid/back-end arms. We have a ton of potential outfielders. Lots of promising relief arms. The infield prospects are lacking, but we have Hall, Grenier, Bannon, and hopefully more to come. We also have a depth in utility/solid org guys.

Having a deep farm system would facilitate the dealing of young assets to aid a championship run.

[theobird]

I am not a big fan of Dan Duquette, and never really have been. Nothing new there. If he gets credit for these moves, OK. But then there are a lot of really bad moves he has to get credit for too. I know, the line has always been that the FO (PA) has meddled and forced his hand/crimped his style. Maybe. I will say that I have been impressed with the recent moves, the recent change in organizational philosophy. I certainly give him credit for that. But I just can't Cherry pick the good moves and credit DD, then slam all the poor moves on Brady,PA, Buck, etc. I will look at the entire body of work, and that has been very C grade to this point. I like the recent trend, and if he stays I get it. But, pardon me for not having the highest degree of confidence in him. But he might have the chance to move my grade upward, and if he does get that chance I hope he swings me into a big Dan Duquette fan!

[DirtyBird]

11 minutes ago, Frobby said:

I understand this point of view, but in the case of the Orioles I don’t ageee with it.    I want a team that is competitive most years, not a team that stinks most of the time and has occasional windows where it goes for a ring.    

Funny to be complaining about the Miller trade at the same time as Boston is giving up a pitching prospect to rent Nathan Evoldi because E Rod is hurt... again.

[ISU94]

1 minute ago, theobird said:

I am not a big fan of Dan Duquette, and never really have been. Nothing new there. If he gets credit for these moves, OK. But then there are a lot of really bad moves he has to get credit for too. I know, the line has always been that the FO (PA) has meddled and forced his hand/crimped his style. Maybe. I will say that I have been impressed with the recent moves, the recent change in organizational philosophy. I certainly give him credit for that. But I just can't Cherry pick the good moves and credit DD, then slam all the poor moves on Brady,PA, Buck, etc. I will look at the entire body of work, and that has been very C grade to this point. I like the recent trend, and if he stays I get it. But, pardon me for not having the highest degree of confidence in him. But he might have the chance to move my grade upward, and if he does get that chance I hope he swings me into a big Dan Duquette fan!

I mean, it wasn't until this past offseason that PA went away with health issues...so I mean, I think it's more reasonable to start taking what he's doing now seriously than the previous few years when we've heard for a fact that PA nixed the Britton deal last year, signed Davis/Trumbo when it was reported DD didn't want to do that, etc.

Also DD is big in IFA market, he wasn't allowed to do that and continuously says its a ownership decision.

Clearly a guy restricted. Not about cherry picking, just read the reports of some of the moves PA has obviously had his hand in and what he hasn't allowed DD to do as a GM.

[Thato'sfan]

2 minutes ago, theobird said:

I am not a big fan of Dan Duquette, and never really have been. Nothing new there. If he gets credit for these moves, OK. But then there are a lot of really bad moves he has to get credit for too. I know, the line has always been that the FO (PA) has meddled and forced his hand/crimped his style. Maybe. I will say that I have been impressed with the recent moves, the recent change in organizational philosophy. I certainly give him credit for that. But I just can't Cherry pick the good moves and credit DD, then slam all the poor moves on Brady,PA, Buck, etc. I will look at the entire body of work, and that has been very C grade to this point. I like the recent trend, and if he stays I get it. But, pardon me for not having the highest degree of confidence in him. But he might have the chance to move my grade upward, and if he does get that chance I hope he swings me into a big Dan Duquette fan!

Yeah, we will never really know who is pulling the strings but taking a look at Duquette's entire body of work(including Davis, Ubaldo, etc) he has been a B GM for me. We know the front office has been a bit of a mess but he has managed to get some good value.

[osfan83]

22 minutes ago, Frobby said:

I understand this point of view, but in the case of the Orioles I don’t ageee with it.    I want a team that is competitive most years, not a team that stinks most of the time and has occasional windows where it goes for a ring.    

Do you think the Dodgers were foolish trading for Manny? Were the Indians foolish trading for Hand?

[Frobby]

20 hours ago, osfan83 said:

Do you think the Dodgers were foolish trading for Manny? Were the Indians foolish trading for Hand?

Completely different situations.    The Dodgers have endless money and an extraordinarily deep farm system.   I’d definitely have done that deal from their perspective.    The Indians traded for a guy who is under control through 2020.   The O’s, unfortunately, don’t have a deep farm system and haven’t for about 10 years, and they have limits on what they can spend to patch holes.    In that scenario, making a regular habit of trading prospects for rentals at the trade deadline is going to make it very difficult to be consistently competitive.

[Tx Oriole]

On 7/24/2018 at 9:01 PM, brianod said:

The same guy that has lost every trade he's ever made is still in charge.  We should have let him go to Toronto and I believe the reason we didn't is the same reason we haven't won anything since 83.  The ego of our owner(s).  They don't have the money to back up the arrogance. So, we denied a persons request to go elsewhere and now we put him in charge of rebuilding.  Splendid.

Oh brother. The same guy traded Manny for 5 prospects from the Dodgers and Britton for 3 pitchers from the Yankees. Since John seems to be in control he has taken off the restraints Peter put on him. Let's just see what happens. I think things are looking up. 

[spiritof66]

On 7/25/2018 at 9:56 AM, theocean said:

Frobby, I always enjoy reading your take on here, but I feel like you often overrate Orioles prospects. Maybe, I underrate them as well.

On July 31, 2014 - the Orioles were 60-47 and in 1st place in the AL East - but only 1.5 games ahead of the Blue Jays. The O's were clearly a team competing to win it all. But, immediately, they also needed to win their division and avoid the Wild Card Game. They accomplished that, and Miller played a huge part by pitching 20 innings with 1.35 ERA.

Additionally, Bud Norris also played a huge part all year, putting up a 15-8 record with a 3.65 ERA and providing 2.1 WAR. If he's not there, Ubaldo is starting in October.

Hindsight is 20/20 - but I think the criticism of DD would be even greater if he had an Orioles team firing on all cylinders in 2014 and didn't add an impact bullpen arm like Andrew Miller. Just look at all the successful teams right now - they all want to add dominant bullpen arms to their teams.

The Cubs gave up Gleyber Torres for two months of Chapman. The Indians gave up Clint Frazier and Justus Sheffield for Andrew Miller. The Indians just gave up Francisco Mejia for Brad Hand.

Yes, it'd be nice to have Eduardo Rodriguez and Josh Hader - but the Orioles added to their teams and tried to win it all. I can't fault them at all for that. They paid the price that was required at the time. 

I think it's a bit silly to not try to win when the team is actually winning - in favor of some prospects who might possibly down the road contribute to a winning team.

I don't think the 2018 Orioles would be much better if they had Eduardo Rodriguez or Josh Hader this year. We'd probably be all yelling about how the Front Office needs to trade them to get more prospects for the future. Sometimes, teams just have to try to win in the moment.

If the Orioles had held on to Hader and Ed-Rod, and had used the money they spent on Cashner or Cobb to sign one or two guys who could hit and maybe even catch the ball,  they would still be a bad team this year. Those trades are a very small part of the team's current problem, IMO, and I would have made them  to improve the team in 2014.  

The problem is that the Orioles, at best a middle-tier team in revenues with a thin farm system based in large part on their unwillingness to invest in international free agents, vastly overdid the allocation of their resources to winning now, or in the short term. They not only traded some promising prospects for veterans but also spent heavily on stupid contracts to retain their own declining veterans well past their primes, skimped on scouting and the front office, and avoided investing in young international talent (even trying to use their allocated slot money as a source of revenue rather than as a way to invest in the team's future).  

Everything I've read and heard suggests that this extreme strategy came from the owner's desperation to make the team a winner while he would still be around to enjoy it,  his arrogance and stubbornness in believing he knew how to build a winning team, his selfish lack of concern for the franchise's future, his penchant for listening to and rewarding sycophants who would support his view and his tendency to ignore (or humiliate or send packing) those with differing views.  That view of Peter Angelos's role in creating this mess may be exaggerated, or even wrong, but it's impossible to know because he's also too gutless to tell the media out the fans about his role in the team's strategy or decisions (or about anything else) and apparently too intimidating and prone to reprisal to allow anyone else on the inside to do that. 

 

[Flacco Machado]