Tom Boswell tears down the tear down strategy

[OsFanSinceThe80s]

2 hours ago, eddie83 said:

The whole topic kind of amuses me. Teams have always done rebuilds, it just now they are more transparent about it and are no longer wasting their money on veteran position players who don’t produce anyway. The quality pitchers by in large have always gone to contenders.  

 

When you aren't the Dodger, Yankees, Red Sox it doesn't make sense to sign high priced (and usually average) free agents when rebuilding your organization. Invest all that $$$ into player development instead and build a team that will be capable of winning every year. 

It's not really that hard to understand if you take a few minutes to think about it. 

[OsFanSinceThe80s]

1 hour ago, wildcard said:

No the article is not really about the O"s.   And when you think of it Boswell has never seen a Washington based MLB team win the World Series.  It may seem to him that playing well is the goal for the Nats.    He almost seems to be telling the Nats not to go down the tear down route now that Scherzer and company are getting older. 

In truth he Nats aren't faced with the same kind of competition that the O's are.   Atlanta, Philadelphia and Washington are similar markets.   The Mets and Marlins have been poorly run for years.   It not like trying to win the World Series in a division with the Yankees and Boston -- two of the MLB's richest teams.

I think Elias is right to go the route he is going.   Trying to accumulate as much talent as possible to make a run to the WS.   Its the best shot the O's have.

Boswell has never seen a Washington based team win a playoff series let alone World Series. 

[TommyPickles]

I hate the DC sports media, and I’m from DC.

[DrungoHazewood]

2 hours ago, theocean said:

That's my point. There's a lot of people who think that a complete teardown is the only way to go after the success of the Astros. It simply will not work for all teams if a bunch of teams are trying that strategy at the same time.

Maybe not, but even if all the bad teams from today don't all become good at the same time, at least they will have put all their resources towards developing young, cheap talent rather than saddling themselves with $10s of millions in mid-level free agents.

Eventually we should get back to a point of more competitive balance as more and more small-to-mid or even large market teams focus on building from within instead of signing free agents.  They won't need to tank, at least not often, if they're successful.  Unless the players and larger teams succeed in changing the CBA to shift a lot of compensation to younger players. 

[DrungoHazewood]

32 minutes ago, OsFanSinceThe80s said:

Boswell is a dinosaur and doesn't understand baseball today. There is a huge difference to what the Orioles are doing in 2019 versus the drought of 1998-2011. Has he even read Astroball?

Remember when he invented Total Average?  It was flawed, but pretty cutting edge for 40 years ago.  It's like that didn't really catch on so he gave up on analytics and shifted focus to bashing the Angelos regime, and celebrating every opportunity for the Nats to stick it to Baltimore.

[fansince1988]

I think its only a matter of time before MLB brings in the ping-pong balls and goes to a draft lottery. Hopefully not for a few more seasons.

Edited July 27, 2019 by fansince1988
typo

[Can_of_corn]

2 minutes ago, fansince1988 said:

I think its only a matter of time before MLB brings in the ping-pong balls and goes to a draft lottery. Hopefully not for a few more seasons.

That sure put a stop to tanking in the NBA.

[fansince1988]

Just now, Can_of_corn said:

That sure put a stop to tanking in the NBA.

The closed-door ping pong ball draft system didn't put a stop to tanking, but it did open the door for draft manipulation. Just wait until we lose 120 games and then Boston or the Mets end up with the number one overall pick.

[Can_of_corn]

4 minutes ago, fansince1988 said:

The closed-door ping pong ball draft system didn't put a stop to tanking, but it did open the door for draft manipulation. Just wait until we lose 120 games and then Boston or the Mets end up with the number one overall pick.

Or the Rays can move to Orlando and happen to get back to back #1 picks.

[DrungoHazewood]

34 minutes ago, fansince1988 said:

I think its only a matter of time before MLB brings in the ping-pong balls and goes to a draft lottery. Hopefully not for a few more seasons.

Make the draft order by inverse of population within a 20 mile radius of the team's stadium.  The only way you can game the draft is to get people to move away, or build a stadium where nobody lives.  The Yanks are more-or-less permanently the #30 pick, the older team in a two-team market gets 66% of the overlap.

[Can_of_corn]

Just now, DrungoHazewood said:

Make the draft order by inverse of population within a 20 mile radius of the team's stadium.  The only way you can game the draft is to get people to move away, or build a stadium where nobody lives.  The Yanks are more-or-less permanently the #30 pick, the older team in a two-team market gets 66% of the overlap.

Sounds like the Braves already planned for this.

[tntoriole]

5 hours ago, Tx Oriole said:

To me baseball was more fun then. Maybe it was because of the players then. I don’t know for sure why but baseball seems not as much fun now as then. Same with the NFL. Maybe it’s because I’m old and lost some interest I’ll guess. 

 

 

Most all things were more fun when I was young.  Most nostalgic desire for going back to a past time is psychodynamically a yearning to be young again. 

[tntoriole]

54 minutes ago, fansince1988 said:

I think its only a matter of time before MLB brings in the ping-pong balls and goes to a draft lottery. Hopefully not for a few more seasons.

Nonsense...teams that finish in the last half dozen or so should get even more picks in the draft and should be able to trade them.   Teams that can spend 200 million should never get first round picks. 

[ThomasTomasz]

Most Nats fans hate the Orioles more than they like their own team, so Boswell has to cater to those folks by writing something like this.  Especially in the wake of mid-season prospect reports giving a lot of credit to the Orioles and the Nationals struggling to find pieces they can trade to improve their major league club.  

Also, lest Boswell forget, the Nationals essentially employed this strategy once getting to DC, which allowed them to add homegrown elite talent such as Harper (#1 OVR 2010), Strasburg (#1 OVR 2009) and Rendon (#6 OVR 2011) that has been at the core of their success.  In a sense, the Nationals were the blueprint for the Cubs and Astros, who are now the blueprint for the Orioles and other teams.  

[ThomasTomasz]

7 hours ago, DrungoHazewood said:

The Orioles farm system from the time Cal came up until now has been sporadically productive, at best.  And their infrastructure, scouting, and analytics have often been laughably behind.  The losing from 1998-2011 was because they never tore it down and dedicated themselves to building a self-sustaining, state-of-the-art organization.  Patch and pray is a good way to describe it.  The losing from 1998-2011 was never on purpose - they kept a league-average payroll through much of that, and didn't have or use any surpluses to do anything positive for the future.

I'll read the article when I get a chance, but I'm guessing Boswell doesn't like tanking so he found selective facts to show it doesn't work.  And it's a little funny that his favorite team tanked so they could get Strasburg and Harper, setting them up nicely for a decade of winning records and playoff births.

Great post, and only one correction which helps further your point: I investigated the payroll on another forum a few years back, more often than not during that time, the Orioles had a payroll at least top 12 in the league.  A few times dipping below, but it was either 12 or higher the majority of the time.