Tom Boswell tears down the tear down strategy

[ThomasTomasz]

7 hours 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.

The Padres also had at the start of the season 10-12 top 100 prospects depending on the publication.  This strategy will be hugely successful for them, and I'd say the same of the White Sox as well.  Next year, their rotation will be supported by Kopech and Dunning, former top 100 prospects as well, plus Luis Robert and Nick Madrigal will be in the lineup to go along with guys who they already have brought up.  

[Frobby]

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.

For me, Baseball was most fun from 1966 to 1983.

[tntoriole]

Top 100 prospects midseason update...we have Rutschman at 6, GrayRod at 47, DL Hall at 64 and Mountcastle at 70

Orioles have 4 in top 100

Red Sox have 1 in top 100, at 90

Jays have 2,

Yankees have 2,  

Rays have 7. 

 

[Can_of_corn]

I love the variance in these lists.  Not much difference between 60 and 100.

[fansince1988]

6 hours ago, TommyPickles said:

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

I enjoy listening to the Sports Junkies on 106.7 The Fan, a few closet Orioles fans in that group and all four guys graduated from Maryland institutions. Grant from G&D is one of the last guys on DC radio that fairly regularly admits to being an Orioles fan, I enjoy his show as well. WTOPs Dave Johnson also makes it a point to give the Orioles score at 15 and 45 past the hour. Some of the others do not. 

[VaBird1]

1 hour ago, tntoriole said:

Top 100 prospects midseason update...we have Rutschman at 6, GrayRod at 47, DL Hall at 64 and Mountcastle at 70

Orioles have 4 in top 100

Red Sox have 1 in top 100, at 90

Jays have 2,

Yankees have 2,  

Rays have 7. 

 

Which list?

[tntoriole]

1 hour ago, VaBird1 said:

Which list?

http://m.mlb.com/prospects/2019

[gmelson26]

12 hours 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.   

Sounds like a REALLY excuse for a salary cap/revenue sharing.

[DrungoHazewood]

13 hours ago, tntoriole said:

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. 

Actually, that's a heck of an idea.  Just make the draft's first couple rounds solely for teams in the lower 60% of the population/wealth rankings.

[DrungoHazewood]

12 hours ago, Can_of_corn said:

I love the variance in these lists.  Not much difference between 60 and 100.

Talent is distributed logarithmically.  No matter where in the continuum you look there are 10 times the prospects one layer down.

[DrungoHazewood]

8 hours ago, gmelson26 said:

Sounds like a REALLY excuse for a salary cap/revenue sharing.

If you can come up with a way to get teams with $500M annual revenues to voluntarily give $200M of that to the league, and agree to not spend $100M of what's left, all the while taking a ~30% reduction in franchise value I'd love to hear it. Otherwise you'd get a decent chunk of teams who'd sooner vote to break off their own superleague than accept hard caps and revenues essentially on par with the Reds.

[drjohnnyfeva]

14 hours ago, Frobby said:

For me, Baseball was most fun from 1966 to 1983.

Same for me. 

The article made me think of how we walked away from Rochester when he was discussing how the Nats crow-barred themselves into DC.  Coinciding with some of our worst seasons was the continual slide of the farm system, starting when PA took over.  By 2001 it was so bad and the lack of talent so noticeable, that the Orioles were given notice by the Red Wings to improve or get lost.  PA's response was to do nothing.  But by that time most of the coaches and farm system personnel had either retired or moved to other organizations.  It took 8-10 years of neglect, but PA managed to kill it.

https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-2002-09-19-0209190059-story.html

Somewhere in the 2000's I remember ownership making a commitment to rebuilding, "Growing the arms... buying the bats."  It was never a tear down.  They kept making splashes in FA like Tejada, etc., but never really doing anything meaningful on the farm.

I trust this tear down with who has been put in charge more than any of the organizational work that has gone on since PA bought the team.   Maybe McPhail, but I think DD's tenure is going to be remembered more for what he traded away than him being any kind of architect of the handful of quality seasons from 2012-2018. 

[weams]

19 hours ago, OsFanSinceThe80s said:

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. 

Exactly. Ever,