Tom Boswell tears down the tear down strategy

[Frobby]

I am not going to make ad hominem attacks on Boswell.   His column is not about the Orioles in particular, despite the paragraph I quoted.    He just doesn’t like the whole tear down concept.    

[weams]

46 minutes ago, Frobby said:

I usually love his stuff, but I disagree with him here.   One of his points is that the 20 teams that have never lost 200 games over 2 seasons in the last 50 years have won 33 of the last 50 World Series.     Yeah, Tom, DUH.    Teams like the Yankees don’t have to go into full rebuild mode.    Talk about a poor use of statistics.   

Ah, give him a break. The Nats lost a heartbreaker...

[eddie83]

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.  

 

[tntoriole]

10 minutes ago, Frobby said:

I am not going to make ad hominem attacks on Boswell.   His column is not about the Orioles in particular, despite the paragraph I quoted.    He just doesn’t like the whole tear down concept.    

But he romanticizes a past that never existed. The St. Louis Browns or the Washington Senators never competed each season for their loyal fans, they just were fodder for the Yankees dynasty. 

[eddie83]

20 minutes ago, theocean said:

As more and more teams straight up tank, there is going to be diminishing returns to that strategy. Right now, you could argue that the Orioles, Blue Jays, Royals, Tigers, and Marlins are all straight up tanking. The Mariners, Giants, Diamondbacks, and soon to be Mets are doing traditional-type rebuilds. The Padres, Reds, and White Sox just all tanked for a number of years and still aren't particularly any good.

There's only so much elite talent - and you have almost half the league trying to do the same strategy, at the same time, hoping to come out on top. It's just not going to add up for every team.

The Reds tanked and are on their sixth year of rebuilding. The White Sox are on their seventh year of rebuilding. Neither team looks very encouraging. The Padres are on their fifth year of rebuilding - sure they got Machado, but they still need a lot to work out before they can compete.

Yeah, it worked for the Astros and it worked for the Cubs - but that was before the entire league decided to copycat them. And - they are big market cities, it makes a difference.

It is dependent upon what type of players you have at a specific time. The Mets for instance tried to win this year and dealt some young talent and it failed, is it a good thing they tried? We will see what they do at the deadline but they still have a solid core of young talent to work with. I disagree about the White Sox. They were going nowhere and if anything should have blown it up sooner. The Mariners have not been to the playoffs since 2001. 

It is not possible for all teams to win at the same time so no strategy will ever work for all.  

[ShaneDawg85]

Nobody likes losing, that's without debate, and let's be realistic you're going to lose more in full tear down rebuild mode. But, I'd argue what's far worse is playing the middle ground and just padding to lose slightly less and win slightly more. Almost half of my life has been spent watching the Orioles utilize this strategy, and it never has and never will work.

[theocean]

33 minutes ago, eddie83 said:

It is dependent upon what type of players you have at a specific time. The Mets for instance tried to win this year and dealt some young talent and it failed, is it a good thing they tried? We will see what they do at the deadline but they still have a solid core of young talent to work with. I disagree about the White Sox. They were going nowhere and if anything should have blown it up sooner. The Mariners have not been to the playoffs since 2001. 

It is not possible for all teams to win at the same time so no strategy will ever work for all.  

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.

[eddie83]

7 minutes 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.

Sure, it just doesn’t make any sense to me to try to be “mediocre” unless you are achieving that with young talent. If Trey Mancini was a rookie and 24 year old I would not want him moved.

Not wasting resources on that is better than throwing money and prospects away. 

[Going Underground]

We shall see in a few years if all these teardown teams will be competitive. I am sure most will not be.But the profits will be higher then ever.As for Rosenthsl and Boswell, I don't think they are being critical of Baltimore but Angelos.Someone else today was way more critical of Baltimore. 

[wildcard]

1 hour ago, Frobby said:

I am not going to make ad hominem attacks on Boswell.   His column is not about the Orioles in particular, despite the paragraph I quoted.    He just doesn’t like the whole tear down concept.    

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.

[FanSince88]

I don't know what exactly people like this author want the Orioles to do.  Sure, we could have signed Manny, Harper, Kimbrel, and Keuchel last offseason and still not had the top payroll in the MLB.  But what would it have accomplished?  It wouldn't have solved the massive, systemic problems with our minor league system and overall talent pool.  The Padres have a much better organization that ours right now, and they're still way out of the playoff race even with Machado...they aren't even good enough to be mediocre yet. 

That's not to say we shouldn't ever sign free agents, but there's a time and a place for that, and now is not that time.  Hopefully, Elias will start making strong free agent signings once we start seeing prospects become ready for prime time...with any luck that should be around the winter of 2021.   Until then, it's heads-down focus on developing the entire pipeline, not just signing free agents who are close to being past their prime to guaranteed deals.  If this author doesn't like that he should maybe put his energy into reforming the service time system.  If a team has nobody around big-time free agents to support them, by the time they do get prospects ready to play, the free agents signees will have already started to decline or their contracts will have already expired.  It's all about timing.  

[weams]

8 minutes ago, FanSince88 said:

I don't know what exactly people like this author want the Orioles to do.  Sure, we could have signed Manny, Harper, Kimbrel, and Keuchel last offseason and still not had the top payroll in the MLB.  But what would it have accomplished?  It wouldn't have solved the massive, systemic problems with our minor league system and overall talent pool.  The Padres have a much better organization that ours right now, and they're still way out of the playoff race even with Machado...they aren't even good enough to be mediocre yet. 

That's not to say we shouldn't ever sign free agents, but there's a time and a place for that, and now is not that time.  Hopefully, Elias will start making strong free agent signings once we start seeing prospects become ready for prime time...with any luck that should be around the winter of 2021.   Until then, it's heads-down focus on developing the entire pipeline, not just signing free agents who are close to being past their prime to guaranteed deals.  If this author doesn't like that he should maybe put his energy into reforming the service time system.  If a team has nobody around big-time free agents to support them, by the time they do get prospects ready to play, the free agents signees will have already started to decline or their contracts will have already expired.  It's all about timing.  

"We should never sign expensive, pick attached, Free Agents."

weams 2019

[Tx Oriole]

2 hours ago, tntoriole said:

Maybe Tom would have us all go back to the marvelous 1950s when the Yankees won 8 pennants, Cleveland won 1 and White Sox won 1.   And every other fan base had basically no prayer, at all, for any reason, for any season including our predecessors, the Browns,  who finally had to move from that great baseball town of St Louis due to their decades of ineptitude only interrupted by the World War era teams. 

Rebuilds are the only reason any fan base except the Yankees and Dodgers ever has a prayer of seeing a World Series.  Yes, GMs can still get it wrong and crapshoots are still a part of winning, but I will take our current system over the “good old days” every time. 

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. 

 

 

[JR Oriole]

Yes.  We should deploy the Nats strategy of always fielding good teams, but then failing every single October.  They should try winning a playoff series sometime this century.

[OsFanSinceThe80s]

2 hours ago, TonySoprano said:

Boz is like a college professor with tenure.  No one touches them and they are allowed to retire on their own terms.  He was once one of my favorite writers but I refuse to give his publication any views for years.

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?